Wikipedia:Citation needed

This is an information page. It is not an encyclopedic article, nor one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting.

Shortcuts WP:CITENEED WP:NEEDCITE

A complete version of the documentation for this template is provided at Template:Citation needed. If you are new to editing and instead just need a general overview of how sources work, see the referencing for beginners help page.

To ensure that all Wikipedia content is

You can add a citation by selecting from the drop-down

For information on adding citations in articles, see Help:Referencing for beginners. For information on when to remove this template messages, see Help:Maintenance template removal.

A "citation needed" tag is a request for another editor to supply a source for the tagged fact: a form of communication between members of a collaborative editing community. It is never, in itself, an "improvement" of an article. Though readers may be alerted by a "citation needed" that a particular statement is not supported, and even doubted by some, many readers don't fully understand the community's processes. Not all tags get addressed in a timely manner, staying in place for months or years, forming an ever-growing Wikipedia backlog—this itself can be a problem. Best practice recommends the following:

• Tag thoughtfully.
  self-evident
  that it really does not need to be cited at all? (Some things do not.)
• Some tags are inserted by people well-placed to find a suitable citation themselves. If this is the case, consider adding these articles to
  verifiability issues
  yourself.

Before adding a tag, at least consider the following alternatives, one of which may prove much more constructive:

• Do not use this tag because you
  Examples}}, {{Why}} or {{Non sequitur
  }}, as appropriate, instead.
• If the content is nonsense or is unlikely to be true, be bold and delete it!
• If the content is a common misconception, replace it with a cited contradictory statement. This prevents the misconception from being readded and reremoved again and again.
• Do not tag controversial material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced. Remove it immediately!
• Per
  WP:DIARY
  , do not tag excessively trivial claims. Remove them.
• If you are sure the statement you want to tag is not factual, even if it does not come under either of the preceding headings, it may be more appropriate to simply remove the text (delete it!). Be sure to add a suitable edit summary, such as "Very doubtful – please add a citation if you return the content". If the original statement was accurate after all, this gives someone the chance to put it back, hopefully with a proper citation this time.
• If a statement sounds plausible, and is consistent with other statements in the article, but you doubt that it is totally accurate, then consider making a reasonable effort to find a reference yourself. In the process, you may end up confirming that the statement needs to be edited or deleted to better reflect the best knowledge about the topic.
• If an article, or a section within an article, is under-referenced, then consider adding an {{
  Refimprove}}, or {{Unreferenced section
  }} tag to the article or section concerned – these tags allow you to indicate more systemic problems to the page.
• A reference at the end of a paragraph typically refers to the whole paragraph, and similarly a reference at the end of a sentence may almost always be taken as referring to the whole sentence. If a particular part of a sentence or paragraph seems to require a separate citation, or looks as if it may have been inserted into the text at a sentence or paragraph level, try to check the original reference rather than adding tags to text that may already be well referenced. The extra parameters available in the {{Citation needed span}} template may allow you to indicate which section you want to refer to.
• Do not insert a "Citation needed" tag to
  make a point, to "pay back" another editor, or because you "don't like" a subject, a particular article, or another editor
  .

• If you can provide a
  Wikifying to someone else, or learn more about citing sources on Wikipedia. This beginners' referencing guide for Wikipedia
  provides a brief introduction on how to reference Wikipedia articles.
• talk page

  . The most constructive thing to do in most cases is probably to supply the reference(s) requested, even if you feel the tags are "overdone" or unnecessary.

There are 534,623 articles with "Citation needed" statements. You can browse the whole list of these articles at Category:All articles with unsourced statements.

Frequently the authors of statements do not return to Wikipedia to support the statement with citations, so other Wikipedia editors have to do work checking those statements. With 534,623 articles containing statements that need

• Template:Citation needed
• Template:Citation needed span
• Template:Verify source
• Template:Unreferenced for an article (rather than an individual statement) that does not cite any references or sources.
• Template:More citations needed for an article (rather than an individual statement) that has some citations, but not enough.
• Template messages – Sources of articles
• Inline verifiability and sources cleanup templates
• Wikipedia:Verification methods – listing examples of the most common ways that citations are used in Wikipedia articles
• Wikipedia:Citing sources/Example edits for different methods – showing comparative edit mode representations for different citation methods and techniques.
• Wikipedia:Citation templates – a full listing of various styles for citing all sorts of materials
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Reliability
• Category:All articles with unsourced statements – list of all pages with {{citation needed}}

• Media related to Citation needed at Wikimedia Commons