Wikipedia:Interviews

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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This page in a nutshell: Interviews are usually primary sources, but may be secondary sources or a mixture of the two. Interviews may be published in reliable publications, or may be self-published or advertisements. They may be used for sourcing some facts amid a mixture of sourcing types, but a person does not pass GNG if interviews are the only kind of sourcing they have.

Interviews highlight an interesting tension in Wikipedia policy. On the one hand, interviews can be published in reliable publications; they are regularly found in highly respected news sources such as The New York Times and BBC News. On the other hand, most of the content in an interview comes directly from whoever is being interviewed, and the interview is usually about themselves. People can say whatever they like about themselves. At first glance, it can be difficult to see where interviews fall with respect to Wikipedia's sourcing policies. Are they primary or secondary sources? Do they count as reliable sources, or not? This essay addresses the issues involved.

It is okay to use interviews to source some facts. Interviews may sometimes be the best or clearest sources, especially for biographical or personal information. You will often need to treat them as primary sources, which will sometimes require in-text attribution. However, the mere fact that a person has been interviewed does not automatically mean that interviewee qualifies for a separate, stand-alone article.

A published interview may be:

primary or secondary,
independent or non-independent of the subject matter, and
reliable or unreliable for the material it is being used to support in a Wikipedia article,