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Latest revision as of 00:10, 15 March 2024

This article does not cite any sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Unreferenced" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

• {{Unr}}

This template is used on approximately 120,000 pages. To avoid major disruption and server load, any changes should be tested in the template's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own user subpage. The tested changes can be added to this page in a single edit. Consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them.

If you plan to make breaking changes to this template, move it, or nominate it for deletion, please notify Twinkle's users and maintainers at Misplaced Pages talk:Twinkle as a courtesy, as the standard installation of Twinkle adds and removes this template. Thank you!

This template should only be used on articles that have no citations or references at all. Don't add this template to articles that contain even one general reference, bare URL, or citation-containing footnote. A citation is any description of a reliable source that supports any of the article content. The format of the citation and the name of the section heading (e.g., ==External links==) are not what determines whether a link or citation is a source.

Usage

• {{Unreferenced|date=December 2024}}
• {{Unreferenced|find=World War II|find2=Mediterranean|date=December 2024}}

When to use

You should only add this template to articles that contain no citations or references of any kind.

Do not add this template:

• In articles that have some citations, but not enough, the {{More citations needed}} template should be used instead as a general template, or the {{Unreferenced section}} template for individual sections that have no citations.
• In articles containing a list of sources at the end, but no inline citations, including parenthetical references or in-text attributions, consider {{no footnotes}} when the article would be significantly improved by detailed attribution of sources to specific claims.
• Watch out for lists of general references that someone has incorrectly listed under ==External links==. If the link leads to a reliable source that supports some article content, then that website is a reference, not just an external link.
• Other templates, listed below, should be used when the citations are inadequate for other reasons.

Alternatives:

• Be bold! Consider searching for sources and citing them in the article, instead of adding this template.
• In articles about people and businesses, consider using the more specific {{Third-party sources}} template, to encourage citation of WP:Independent sources rather than the subject's own website.
• See Misplaced Pages:Biographies of living people for guidance on dealing with unreferenced biographies of living people.
• Consider not adding this template to very brief stubs, since anyone visiting the page can see, in a single glance, that it contains no citations.

Parameters

There are six parameters, one positional, and five named parameters. All parameters are optional.

• |1= – scope of notification (e.g., 'paragraph', 'section', 'article', etc.) default: 'article'. see Details.
• |date= – month name and year; e.g. 'December 2024' (no default)
• |find= – search keywords for {{find sources}} param 1 (double-quoted search); default: page title. See details below.
• |find2= – search keywords for {{find sources}} param 2 (unquoted search). Alias: unquoted. See below.
• |small= – set to left or no; see details at Ambox. Default: standard-width banner.
• |status= – if set to hasaref, alters the tracking category to Category:All articles possibly lacking sources

Examples

{{Unreferenced|date=December 2024}}

or

{{subst:Unreferenced}}

Substitution of this template will automatically fill the date parameter.

The optional |find= parameter is available, for modifying the operation of the {{find sources}} links displayed by the template:

{{Unreferenced|find=search keyword(s)|date=December 2024}}

see below for details.

To flag an individual section as being unreferenced, use the {{Unreferenced section}} template, which categorizes more narrowly:

{{Unreferenced section|date=December 2024}}

Details

Positional parameter 1

Positional parameter |1= is the 'type' parameter, which may be set to paragraph or section or any string value. To mark an unreferenced section of an article, please use {{Unreferenced section}} instead.

Date parameter:

The |date= parameter is (generally) used to indicate when the template was added to a page. An example of its usage is {{Unreferenced|date=December 2024}}. Adding this parameter sorts the article into monthly subcategories of Category:Articles lacking sources, rather than adding it to Category:Articles lacking sources itself, allowing the oldest problems to be identified and dealt with first. If the date parameter is omitted, a bot will add it later.

Find parameters:

There are two 'find' parameters available to control the presentation and operation of the {{find sources}} links optionally displayed by the {{Unreferenced}} template. By default, the template displays {{find sources}} with a quoted search query equivalent to the exact article title. Sometimes, especially if the article has a long, descriptive title, or if it includes parenthetical disambiguation terms, this may not give useful results. The find parameters can be used to provide the search keywords of your choice to the {{find sources}} links. Use:

• |find= to specify keywords for an exact search (double-quoted query); this corresponds to {{find sources}} positional param |1.
• |find2= to specify keywords for an unquoted search; this corresponds to {{find sources}} param |2. The alias |unquoted= may be used instead.

The value "none" may be passed to 'find' (|find=none) to suppress display of find sources links. (Note that specifying |find=none and a nonempty value for |find2= is not a valid combination.)

General information

This template can either be placed at the top of an article, at the bottom of the article page (in an empty "References" or "Notes" section—usually just before a {{Reflist}} template), or on the article's talk page.

Categorization

This template adds the article to Category:Articles lacking sources and a monthly subcategory such as Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2024 (as described above), which are hidden categories.

Differences from related templates

The similar template {{More citations needed}} adds an article to Category:Articles needing additional references. {{More medical citations needed}} adds the article to Category:Articles needing additional medical references as well as Category:Articles needing additional references.

Short-cut

• {{Unref}}
• {{NR}}
• {{No ref}}
• {{No sources}}
• {{Citesources}}

TemplateData

TemplateData for Unreferenced

Tracking categories

• Category:All articles lacking sources (71,251)
• Category:All articles needing additional references (475,321)

See also

• Misplaced Pages:Citation needed and {{Citation needed}} – for marking a particular claim as needing a citation
• {{Find sources}}
• {{More citations needed}}
• {{Unreferenced section}}
• Misplaced Pages:Template messages/Sources of articles
• Misplaced Pages:Template messages/Cleanup

Footnotes

1. Because of the nature of the workflow using the current date makes sense, it is simpler to add, especially for the WP:bots it means that older dated categories do not have to be constantly created and deleted, and it enables some measure of progress. Moreover it is "good enough" to get the articles into the workflow and the intention is to ensure they are cleaned up eventually. Occasionally however it may be useful to bulk add items, to older categories, for example when the system was initially set up, when merging two schemes or when adding to the current month would swamp it disproportionately.

• Templates used by Twinkle
• Citation and verifiability maintenance templates