Appearance in reliable, 3rd party media. That's reliable.

1) "credible source 11 up, 1 down Someone or something whose words, ideas, or notions are considered to be veritable and factual. Urban Dictionary is not one of these. The idea that Urban Dictionary is a credible source is laughable, at best." Source and further information: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=credible%20source 2) ""If your mother tells you she loves you, check your sources". It's important for you to research and find out some of these things on your own, to make sure it isn't just someone spouting bad, or outdated, information on some message board." Source and further information: http://indiegamer.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-13449.html 3) "In research, Secondary data is collecting and possibly processing data by people other than the researcher in question. Common sources of secondary data for social science include censuses, large surveys, and organizational records (Mintel). In sociology primary data is data you have collected yourself and secondary data is data you have gathered from primary sources to create new research. In terms of historical research, these two terms have different meanings. A primary source is a book or set of archival records. A secondary source is a summary of a book or set of records. Advantages to the secondary data collection method are - 1) it saves time that would otherwise be spent collecting data, 2) provides a larger database (usually) than what would be possible to collect on ones own However there are disadvantages to the fact that the researcher cannot personally check the data so its reliability may be questioned." "There are two different types of sources that need to be established in order to conduct a good analysis. The first type is a primary source which is the initial material that is collected during the research process. Primary data is the data that the researcher is collecting themselves using methods such as surveys,direct observations, interviews, as well as logs(objective data sources). Primary data is a reliable way to collect data because the researcher will know where it came from and how it was collected and analyzed since they did it themselves. Secondary sources on the other hand are sources that are based upon the data that was collected from the primary source. Secondary sources take the role of analyzing, explaining, and combining the information from the primary source with additional information. Secondary data analysis is commonly known as second-hand analysis. It is simply the analysis of preexisting data in a different way or to answer a different question than originally intended. Secondary data analysis utilizes the data that was collected by someone else in order to further a study that you are interested in completing. In contrast to secondary data, primary data comes from observations made by the researchers themselves. This often creates credibility issues that do not arise with secondary data." "In order to use secondary data three steps must be completed: locate the data evaluate the data verify the data Locating the data can be easily done with the advancements of searching sources online. However, people need to be aware of the details when searching online since pages can be out of date or poorly put together. Therefore, use caution and pay attention to whether it is a reliable data source online and check when the last update was. To evaluate the data a researcher must carefully examine the secondary data they are considering to ensure that it meets their needs and purpose of study. The person must look at the population and what the sample strategy and type were. It is also important to look at when the data was collected, how it was collected, how it was coded and edited, along with the operational definitions of measures that were used. Finally, the data must be verified to ensure good quality material to be used in new research." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_data Further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_sourcing 4) "Credibility refers to the objective and subjective components of the believability of a source or message. Traditionally, credibility has two key components: trustworthiness and expertise, which both have objective and subjective components. Trustworthiness is a based more on subjective factors, but can include objective measurements such as established reliability. Expertise can be similarly subjectively perceived, but also includes relatively objective characteristics of the source or message (e.g., credentials, certification or information quality). Secondary components of credibility include source dynamism (charisma) and physical attractiveness. Credibility online has become an important topic since the mid-1990s, as the web has increasingly become an information resource." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credibility 5) Further information: - "Credibility Assessment": http://www.tammypayton.net/courses/search/credible2.shtml - "Use valid, credible sources for information": http://plagiarism.umf.maine.edu/valid.html - "An Educators' Guide to Credibility and Web Evaluation": http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/wp/credibility/

it needs to be carved into granite.

They need to sound as though they have researched that area well, and are not agenda driven, and clearly think for themselves.