Anyone can create a personal web page, self-publish a book, or claim to be an expert. That is why self-published material such as books, patents, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, personal or group blogs (as distinguished from newsblogs), content farms, Internet forum postings, and social media postings are largely not acceptable as sources.
These might be useful to read to find more reliable sources of information, but shouldn't be used as sources in citations. They are run by fans, amateurs, and are basically self-published sources, no one is checking to make sure they are correct, so while they may have correct information, they may also have incorrect information, we can't rely on them. The following sites are examples of questionable sources that may either have poor reputation for checking the facts, lack meaningful editorial oversight, or have an apparent conflict of interest:
Any material must be supported by reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Use sources that directly support the material presented in an article and are appropriate to the claims made. The best sources have a professional structure in place for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments. The greater the degree of scrutiny given to these issues, the more reliable the source.
In several countries in Asia, beauty pageants are seen as more important than they are in the West.
National or top-level pageant official social media accounts may be an allowed under the WP:ABOUTSELF exception, but independent RS are preferred. Note that an article primarily based on self-published material may not pass the general notability guideline.
Per the Wikipedia:Image use policy we can generally only use images that are free for everyone to reuse and modify, like the rest of the Wikipedia. (There is a limited possibility for fair use images, but only in rare cases; for one thing, images of living people are almost always required to be freely licensed.) So, many articles have to live without any images illustrating them, which can be especially hard for articles about beauty. Here are some possibilities to find free licensed images for beauty pageants or contestants. If you do find some, please upload them to Wikipedia:Wikimedia Commons, so other language Wikipedias (and even other non-Wikipedia users) can also use them.
The laws of several countries put images made and published by their government into the public domain.
However, not all images on government web sites were made by the government. This requires some care: if the image doesn't specifically say it was made by someone working for the government, then it might have been made by someone else, and therefore not be public domain even if on a government web site. Take a look at the context: government images are usually of people with government officials, or otherwise in government contexts.
Flickr is a popular image website that allows users to mark their images with Creative Commons licenses. Those marked "Some rights reserved" with the icons
Attribution or
Attribution Share-Alike, as well as those marked
Public domain dedication, and
United States government work (see above) are acceptable for our purposes. You can use the "Commercial use & mods allowed" choice on the "Any license" dropdown on
the Flickr search page to help find them.
Again, care needs to be exercised to tell which images are most likely owned by the Flickr user, so can be released, and which likely aren't, so are probably copyright violations. For example, see
https://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelhoward836/15719264673 - this is a picture of a beauty queen at a contest, and marked "Some rights reserved"
Attribution. However, it is low resolution (under 1000 pixels per side), it looks like a professional quality image, while the user on the site is not marked "Pro" for professional,
his photostream does not have any other images from the event (which might indicate he was physically there, taking photos), and instead has a wide variety of other images from unrelated events, including several that seem to be screen captures from television programs. From all these factors, is most likely the user is not the photographer of this image, so can't release it. For a different example, see
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/14070410574 - this is a picture of a different beauty queen, also high quality, marked "Some rights reserved"
Attribution. However, here, this is a high resolution image (3000 x 5000 pixels), the user is marked Pro for professional, and has multiple images from the same event:
[2]
[3]
[4]. We can believe this is the photographer and has the rights to release the image.
YouTube is a popular video hosting website, that allows users to mark their videos with "License: Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)" (often hidden under the SHOW MORE link in the description), which meets our requirements. Screenshots of these can make acceptable images. The Creative Commons selection under the YouTube search can help, but doesn't actually restrict the results to only Creative Commons videos, we need to look for the mark on each individually.
Again, some YouTube users upload videos they don't actually own the rights to, and we need to be careful of those. An example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VldAwXNQs0c - this is a compilation of beauty pageant contestants, marked Creative Commons Attribution license. However, look at the video - many of the parts have watermarks of different television channels or programs, and the YouTube user is not any of those channels. They almost certainly do not own the rights to those videos. In contrast, consider https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkk3HqxPJvc - this is also marked Creative Commons Attribution license. Here, however, beauty pageant winner is clearly being interviewed by the program host, which host shows up in multiple other episodes of this YouTube channel, and the channel is mostly dedicated to such interviews. We can believe the YouTube channel owns and can release the video.
Anyone can create a personal web page, self-publish a book, or claim to be an expert. That is why self-published material such as books, patents, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, personal or group blogs (as distinguished from newsblogs), content farms, Internet forum postings, and social media postings are largely not acceptable as sources.
These might be useful to read to find more reliable sources of information, but shouldn't be used as sources in citations. They are run by fans, amateurs, and are basically self-published sources, no one is checking to make sure they are correct, so while they may have correct information, they may also have incorrect information, we can't rely on them. The following sites are examples of questionable sources that may either have poor reputation for checking the facts, lack meaningful editorial oversight, or have an apparent conflict of interest:
Any material must be supported by reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Use sources that directly support the material presented in an article and are appropriate to the claims made. The best sources have a professional structure in place for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments. The greater the degree of scrutiny given to these issues, the more reliable the source.
In several countries in Asia, beauty pageants are seen as more important than they are in the West.
National or top-level pageant official social media accounts may be an allowed under the WP:ABOUTSELF exception, but independent RS are preferred. Note that an article primarily based on self-published material may not pass the general notability guideline.
Per the Wikipedia:Image use policy we can generally only use images that are free for everyone to reuse and modify, like the rest of the Wikipedia. (There is a limited possibility for fair use images, but only in rare cases; for one thing, images of living people are almost always required to be freely licensed.) So, many articles have to live without any images illustrating them, which can be especially hard for articles about beauty. Here are some possibilities to find free licensed images for beauty pageants or contestants. If you do find some, please upload them to Wikipedia:Wikimedia Commons, so other language Wikipedias (and even other non-Wikipedia users) can also use them.
The laws of several countries put images made and published by their government into the public domain.
However, not all images on government web sites were made by the government. This requires some care: if the image doesn't specifically say it was made by someone working for the government, then it might have been made by someone else, and therefore not be public domain even if on a government web site. Take a look at the context: government images are usually of people with government officials, or otherwise in government contexts.
Flickr is a popular image website that allows users to mark their images with Creative Commons licenses. Those marked "Some rights reserved" with the icons
Attribution or
Attribution Share-Alike, as well as those marked
Public domain dedication, and
United States government work (see above) are acceptable for our purposes. You can use the "Commercial use & mods allowed" choice on the "Any license" dropdown on
the Flickr search page to help find them.
Again, care needs to be exercised to tell which images are most likely owned by the Flickr user, so can be released, and which likely aren't, so are probably copyright violations. For example, see
https://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelhoward836/15719264673 - this is a picture of a beauty queen at a contest, and marked "Some rights reserved"
Attribution. However, it is low resolution (under 1000 pixels per side), it looks like a professional quality image, while the user on the site is not marked "Pro" for professional,
his photostream does not have any other images from the event (which might indicate he was physically there, taking photos), and instead has a wide variety of other images from unrelated events, including several that seem to be screen captures from television programs. From all these factors, is most likely the user is not the photographer of this image, so can't release it. For a different example, see
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/14070410574 - this is a picture of a different beauty queen, also high quality, marked "Some rights reserved"
Attribution. However, here, this is a high resolution image (3000 x 5000 pixels), the user is marked Pro for professional, and has multiple images from the same event:
[2]
[3]
[4]. We can believe this is the photographer and has the rights to release the image.
YouTube is a popular video hosting website, that allows users to mark their videos with "License: Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)" (often hidden under the SHOW MORE link in the description), which meets our requirements. Screenshots of these can make acceptable images. The Creative Commons selection under the YouTube search can help, but doesn't actually restrict the results to only Creative Commons videos, we need to look for the mark on each individually.
Again, some YouTube users upload videos they don't actually own the rights to, and we need to be careful of those. An example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VldAwXNQs0c - this is a compilation of beauty pageant contestants, marked Creative Commons Attribution license. However, look at the video - many of the parts have watermarks of different television channels or programs, and the YouTube user is not any of those channels. They almost certainly do not own the rights to those videos. In contrast, consider https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkk3HqxPJvc - this is also marked Creative Commons Attribution license. Here, however, beauty pageant winner is clearly being interviewed by the program host, which host shows up in multiple other episodes of this YouTube channel, and the channel is mostly dedicated to such interviews. We can believe the YouTube channel owns and can release the video.