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Template:Citation needed

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[citation needed]

[edit] [history] [purge] Documentation icon Template documentation

{{Citation needed}} (also known by the redirects {{Cn}} and {{Fact}}) is a template used to identify questionable claims in articles that lack a citation to a reliable source. The template produces a superscripted notation like the following:

Humphrey Bogart has won several snooker world championships.[citation needed]

The template indicates that it may be that Humphrey Bogart played snooker at some point and it may be that he won some tournaments at some point but no reliable, published sources were given to verify it and the information is not considered common knowledge.

Usage

You may append a date to the template in the following format:

{{Citation needed|{{subst:DATE}}}}

Notes:

  • Substitution of this template will automatically fill the date parameter.
  • If you don't add a date parameter, a bot will date your entry with the month and year at a later time.
  • The date parameter consists of the name of the current month and the year only, not full dates. The names of the months are capitalised in English. Any deviation from these two rules will result in an "invalid date parameter" error.

It is also recommended to add the (non-displayed) |reason= parameter to leave a better record for future editors. For example, the following usage might be appropriate to the claim that "Humphrey Bogart has won several snooker world championships.":

{{Citation needed|reason=This claim needs a reliable source; Bogart was a famous actor, and his major biographies don't mention snooker.}}

Use of this template places the article into Category:Articles with unsourced statements and Category:Articles with unsourced statements from October 2024 (example).

Please remove the template when you add a citation for a statement.

Examples

This sentence shows the template used at the end.{{Citation needed|reason=reliable source needed for the whole sentence}}

The above wikitext will render as follows:

This sentence shows the template used at the end.[citation needed]

The template should be inserted after punctuation, such as a period or comma.

When not to use this template

Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons should be removed immediately. Do not tag it: immediately remove it. For more information, see the section on poorly sourced contentious material in the policy page Biographies of living persons.

Material that is doubtful, harmful (and possibly slanderous) may be removed immediately, rather than tagged. See Burden of evidence.

The {{Citation needed}} template is intended for use when there is a general question of the verifiability of a statement, or when an editor believes that a reference verifying the statement should be provided. Other templates are available for other or more specific issues, see the list of inline templates. For example, claims that you think are incorrect should be tagged with {{Dubious}}, and those which represent a non-neutral view should be tagged with {{POV-statement}}. Being specific about the nature of the problem will help other editors correct it.

If you have the time and ability to find an authoritative reference, please do so. Then add the citation yourself, or correct the article text. After all, the ultimate goal is not to merely identify problems, but to fix them.

While an editor may add this template to any uncited passage for any reason, many editors object to what they perceive as overuse of this tag, particularly in what is known as "drive-by" tagging, which is applying the tag without attempting to address the issues at all (hit-and-run). Consider whether adding this tag in an article is the best approach before using it, and use it judiciously. Wikipedia's verifiability policy does not require reliable sources for common well-known facts (e.g., "The Moon orbits the Earth"), or that citations be repeated through every sentence in a paragraph. All direct quotations and facts whose accuracy might be challenged (e.g., statistics) require citations. See WP:MINREF for the list of material that is absolutely required to be followed by an inline citation, rather than a general reference or no citation at all. Also note that the burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material.

This template is intended for specific passages that need citation. For entire articles or sections that contain significant material lacking sources (rather than just specific short passages), there are other, more appropriate templates, such as {{Unreferenced}} or {{Refimprove}}.

Do not use this template on policies, guidelines, or other non-article pages.

How to respond to this tag

The addition of this tag is a request for an inline citation to support the tagged statement. If you are able to provide a citation to support the claim, then please do so.

Except for certain kinds of claims about living people, which require immediate production of inline citations, there is no specific deadline for providing citations. Please do not delete information that you believe is correct simply because no-one has provided a citation within an arbitrary time limit. Where there is some uncertainty about its accuracy, most editors are willing to wait about a month to see whether a citation can be provided.

See also

Inline templates

Highlighting some text that needs a citation
Incomplete citations
Verification
Content
Timeliness

Article message box templates

  • {{Cite check}}, article/section may have inappropriate or misinterpreted citations.
  • {{Refimprove}}, article/section has weak or incomplete sources/references/citations.
  • {{Unreferenced}}, article/section has no sources/references/citations given at all.
  • Citation method and style

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