Talk:Coldwater Community Schools
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Primary sources
[edit]Deepsnowi80, in removing this maintenance template you make it difficult for other editors to see where secondary sources need to be added. Every single source in this article is a primary source. While primary sources may be used in specific applications on Wikipedia (and I am not questioning the use of them here), WP:PRIMARY is quite clear: Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources, and to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources.
Therefore, any article that only references primary sources is not in compliance with the policy, and editors should look for secondary sources. Please do not stand in the way of other editors being alerted to improve this article. Dclemens1971 (talk) 01:11, 10 September 2026 (UTC)
- I don't agree that NCES and the State of Michigan are primary sources. They are simply providing data from an unrelated organization. The NCES, although affiliated with the US Department of Education, simply provides statistics given to it by others. In the case that it is reporting, not analyzing, data external to it makes its status as a "primary source" arguable. The same can be said for the source giving the district boundaries, the State of Michigan. Reading, Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Article advice under the references section, I'm not persuaded that the article is "based" on primary sources and deserves a flag at the top. I think we can compromise by putting the flag in the history section. Deepsnowi80 (talk) 01:26, 10 September 2026 (UTC)
- Raw data produced by a government body is a primary source. It may be independent of the subject, but it's a primary source. Dclemens1971 (talk) 01:29, 10 September 2026 (UTC)
- There are no school district or school articles on Wikipedia that report statistics such as enrollment and budget that are legitimate, in that case. Because those statistics all derive from the district themselves. Would a secondary source like a newspaper fact-check the NCES through an interview and make its presence on Wikipedia acceptable? Perhaps, but the information that districts provide about themselves like enrollment data is almost never published in a newspaper, nor are precise school district boundaries, yet it's a predictable part of any school article. Deepsnowi80 (talk) 01:52, 10 September 2026 (UTC)
- I didn’t say this article can’t use these sources. I just said a Wikipedia article should also have secondary sources, if only because that’s part of the test of the subject’s notability. Dclemens1971 (talk) 03:30, 10 September 2026 (UTC)
- There are no school district or school articles on Wikipedia that report statistics such as enrollment and budget that are legitimate, in that case. Because those statistics all derive from the district themselves. Would a secondary source like a newspaper fact-check the NCES through an interview and make its presence on Wikipedia acceptable? Perhaps, but the information that districts provide about themselves like enrollment data is almost never published in a newspaper, nor are precise school district boundaries, yet it's a predictable part of any school article. Deepsnowi80 (talk) 01:52, 10 September 2026 (UTC)
- Raw data produced by a government body is a primary source. It may be independent of the subject, but it's a primary source. Dclemens1971 (talk) 01:29, 10 September 2026 (UTC)