To help contributors, the English-language Wikipedia has an exhaustive list of reliable sources that are recommended to refer to when writing articles.
However, Forbes and the Daily Mail are not recognized by Wikipedia as reliable sources for writing articles.
In fact, Daily Mail hasn’t been recognized as an authoritative source since 2017, according to the consensus decision of the Wikipedia community in the discussion of this issue. The editors argued that the decision was negatively affected by the "low level of fact-checking and sensationalism of the materials".
Sometimes editors consider a publication to be quite reliable (this is one that has previously published much more reliable material), so its reputation is less clear. Old Daily Mail articles can generally be used to present the historical context. However, only specialists with the appropriate expertise can choose the allowed articles.
The rules about Forbes are not so severe. Therefore, the English Wikipedia says that the publication is an authoritative source of information if the authors of the content are directly employees of the publication (staff), whose posts are subject to mandatory editorial control.
However, Forbes also publishes the materials of the author's column (contributors), and the magazine is usually not responsible for their content.
The editors only look over the written materials without any fact-checking, so English Wikipedia does not recommend referring to such articles. Exceptions are only the publications of authoritative experts in the relevant subject of the post.
With such strict restrictions, Wikipedia guarantees high standards for articles published in the encyclopedia, which will serve as a reliable source of information for users of the resource. Choosing the right source is not easy! Contact our editors for advice!