User talk:80.31.225.48

Maroon 5 certifications and sales
Hi! I noticed you've been making lots of edits to Wikipedia's Maroon 5 articles to add sales and certification information. While that information is invaluable, I'd like to remind you that Wikipedia privileges verifiability, so when it comes to added sales figures, it's important that they be backed up by reliable sources. Therefore, even if you have decent reason to believe a song has sold 1,141,000 copies rather than just 1,000,000 copies, it's not appropriate to edit that in unless you can supply a new reference to a reliable source to replace the old one. Similarly, replacing an old number with a new one but leaving the old reference is highly misleading to casual readers of the article, who may mistakenly believe the new number is backed up by a reliable source. Information obtained from unreliable sources, including fansites, web forums, and other sites Wikipedians have noted as websites to avoid should not be added. On a similar note, certifications shouldn't be noted unless the reference generated by the certification template — most commonly, a link to the RIAA — actually shows that that certification has been awarded. It is an unfortunate fact that many albums and singles cross sales thresholds for certifications long before actually being certified; to give just two noteworthy examples, "Somewhere over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World" has sold enough for a quadruple platinum certification but has only been certified one-time platinum, and Coldplay's "Yellow" has only been certified gold despite having sold enough for a double platinum certification. But nevertheless, for verifiability's sake, we have to make sure we only add what the RIAA and other certifying bodies have actually awarded. Thanks! Mmrsofgreen (talk) 03:00, 7 December 2014 (UTC)