Template talk:Unreferenced

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This template is one of several templates used to provide or request sources for articles.

Contents 1 Archive 2 This should be a deletion template 3 Too Many References 4 Sources vs external links - website-only documentation 5 Category:All articles lacking sources 6 Proposed Edit 7 What is "foo"? 8 Layout problem with Infoboxes 9 Notification template 10 This template should rarely be used, it is for lazy editors 11 Merge with Template:Primarysources? 12 Request 13 EDIT 14 Partially unrefererenced 15 My new 'unreferenced2' tag 16 Reference to Jimbo's quote 17 adequately 18 Reliable sources has been supereceded by Attribution 19 Merge from Wikipedia:Reliable sources 20 Sudden thought

[edit] Archive

Older messages (including a TfD discussion and a discussion on the proper placement) can be found in the archive.

[edit] This should be a deletion template

This should be a deletion template; we can add categorization by month like {{wikify}}, articles that still have no sources after three months should be eligible for immediate deletion. That'd light a fire under editors' asses to put some sources in. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:20, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Note: See also Wikipedia:Speedy deletion criterion for unsourced articles which may be a more centralized discussion point. -- nae'blis 17:40, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Seriously, do we want to date this template? Rich Farmbrough, 19:53 21 November 2006 (GMT).

That is a really, really good idea (thanks to nae'blis, I think[3]). Its implementation should be fairly simple and non-controversial, but it will greatly improve the utility of this template. -- Satori Son 21:12, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad the idea is gaining some traction. :) The problem is what to do to effectively implement it. A default parameter won't work since this already has one (although maybe that can be removed, I hardly ever see it used). A named parameter ({{unreferenced|date=November 2006}}, for example) raises the barrier to implementation somewhat, though if we can get a bot to come through and date them afterward if it's left out, it would make that part easier. Any ideas on how to get a grip on the 30k uses this template already has, so we don't blow the whole system up in trying to fix it? 21:33, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I can run a bot to fix those instances to "November 2006". Perhaps a second parameter ({{unreferenced||November 2006}} would be a solution. Alternatively set the template up however is best, and I can run a bot to fix the old default calls to the template. Rich Farmbrough, 23:12 22 November 2006 (GMT).

Probably not a second unnamed parameter, unless it switches order with the first one. I've tried to strike up a conversation with Beland, who apparently runs the wikify-date conversion bot, on how hard it would be. My instinct is to say that the optional parameter that is there now is very rarely used and can be deprecated/swapped pretty easily, or failing that, to use a bot and a named parameter. Maybe I'll post this at RFC to get more eyes... -- nae'blis 05:52, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Most of the dated templates are dated by bot now. Rich Farmbrough, 21:16 27 November 2006 (GMT).

OK I've put a "date=" field, and created the supporting categories a la cleanup, I've implemented it in two test articles. No docs yet, have a look, and see if it preents any problems. Rich Farmbrough, 22:08 27 November 2006 (GMT).

Seems to be working okay, I processed a dozen or so and found most of them to be in the last few months (thankfully), but went ahead and made the subcats through late 2005. I'll update the main description page and do some publicising tomorrow or the day after, unless you can think of anything else... slick work by the way, thanks for your contributions to getting a grip on this. -- nae'blis 06:13, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Template only created in August! Rich Farmbrough, 12:02 28 November 2006 (GMT).

That's odd. At least one entry I saw went back to June 2006, but it might have been a variant title that got merged later. That's good to know, though. -- nae'blis 14:12, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

The merged page history goes back to January 2005, and there's a TfD discussion above from February 2005. I'm sure this was merged from one or more of the 16 templates that now redirect to it, but if we want to fix those as well, we're looking at almost 2 years of aggregated use! -- Satori Son 14:28, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

That'll be it, then. I've just found a March 2006 one. I have some historical data dumps, perhaps I can scan those. Rich Farmbrough, 16:32 28 November 2006 (GMT).

Incidentally I don't think it's the end of the world if some (or even a lot) are dated wrongly - I always assumed the templates were worded "from XXXX" meaning perhaps even before. I'd like to get the backlog done before the December lot starts in two days. Rich Farmbrough, 16:35 28 November 2006 (GMT).

Agreed. Since there are so many, getting the date perfect is not critical at this point. -- Satori Son 18:13, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'm running a dump from December 2005, then there's a gap 'til June. Should be able to start them tonight. Rich Farmbrough, 22:39 28 November 2006 (GMT).

December 2005 run, June almost finished, July started. Plan is finish June/July this evening, Aug tonight, Sept tomorrow morning, Oct tomorrow evening. Nov will probably be morning of 1st Dec, then it's just a question of keeping up. Rich Farmbrough, 09:45 29 November 2006 (GMT).

[edit] Too Many References

Is there a template for too many references? --WhiteDragon 17:55, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Not that I know of. Which is good, I think...the better-referenced an article is, the better. That way, if a website vanishes, or a source is discredited, there will still be enough presumably good references to keep the article trustworthy.

If you're worried about the appearance of the References section, there are solutions; see Stegosaurus#Footnotes for an example of how a fair number of refs can be managed. --zenohockey 06:52, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sources vs external links - website-only documentation

I'd like to ask people's opinions on use of Unreferenced with the following class of articles, which I've seen a lot of:

• Article text about person, band, organization or company, reads like it's uncontroversial
• "External links" section to article subject's website, which bears out the article's facts
• No "References" section

In my opinion, the "external link" is useful, and so belongs right where it is, but it fails WP:REF, and the article should be tagged as unreferenced. I've usually added a HTML comment citing WP:REF. But I'd like to hear what others are doing. --Alvestrand 05:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

External links (if properly put into that section!) are useful, but they do not qualify as RS, so I tend to tag those articles. Even worse are articles which are listing only online links, but as their references. See Cheating in counterstrike, my "favourite" references section so far. Kncyu38 10:06, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

In the situation described by Alvestrand, where the website is owned by the article subject, the link may well qualify as a reliable source (see WP:RS#Self-published sources in articles about themselves). In such a situation, I would not tag the article as unreferenced, but move (or copy) the external link to a newly-created "References" section. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 06:28, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category:All articles lacking sources

Why does this template put articles in Category:All articles lacking sources? That page says the category "exists primarily as an aid to bots and other automated processes", but as a botmaster myself I know that it's very easy to go through Category:Articles lacking sources by month and traverse the relevant subcategories. In my opinion, the category unnecessarily clutters up the list of categories at the bottom of articles tagged with the template. See for instance geometric analysis where the only useful category for the reader is Category:Mathematical analysis. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 06:20, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's a near clone of the cleanup scheme. The category is useful for Dragons flight/Category tracker but there is doubtless a better solution that we can work to. I'll ask Dragons flight. A side issue is that putting cleanup tags right at the very end (as we do with stub tags) makes the "real" categories the first in the list, which may think is better. I'll do this to geometric analysis as an illustration. Rich Farmbrough, 11:57 10 December 2006 (GMT).

User:Derlay suggests on his talk page:

Sometimes related articles have a distinct initial substring in their names (for example, articles about United States Navy ships have names beginning with "USS"), and then it's much easier to look for them in one single category than in multiple monthly (or daily) categories. --Derlay 00:05, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Rich Farmbrough, 17:09 14 December 2006 (GMT).

[edit] Proposed Edit

<div class="messagebox cleanup metadata plainlinks">
{|style="width:100%;background:none"
|width=60px|[[Image:Information_icon.svg|40px]]
|'''This {{{1|article or section}}} does not cite its [[{{SITENAME}}:Citing sources|references or sources]].'''<br /><small>Please help [{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|action=edit}} improve this article] by introducing appropriate citations. ([[Help:Contents|help]], [[{{SITENAME}}:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check|get involved!]]) {{#if:{{{date|}}}|This article has been tagged since '''{{{date}}}'''.}}</small>
|}</div><includeonly>{{#if:{{{date|}}}|[[Category:Articles lacking sources from {{{date}}}]]|[[Category:Articles lacking sources]]}}[[Category:All articles lacking sources]]</includeonly><noinclude>
{{/doc}} 
</noinclude>

Which looks like:

---

-- PatrickFisher 09:29, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

As I asked on Template talk:Context, what is the reason for including the icon? The reader's focus should primarily be led to the text and not to the template. Patrick did not answer there, while Gurch agreed with me. I therefore propose that the icon be deleted. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 02:55, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, I'm curious as well. I've removed the {{editprotected}} tag until the question is answered. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:50, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Hasn't another admin, Zsinj, already made the requested edit? Personally, I agree that there was not much point to it. -- Satori Son 01:22, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Seeing that I'm not alone, I removed the picture. The rest of the edit still stands. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 07:03, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I like dab's comment from Template_talk:Fact#Shorten: "why shorten it? I say make it blink, in an 18pt font. This is our last line of defence against the ever-looming "Wikipedia is unreliable" verdict" - that said, I won't revert the removal without further discussion, but I don't see the point in making this template less obtrusive. -- nae'blis 20:10, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I thought about it for a while. I don't agree because it conflates lack of references with unreliability, in my opinion. However, it does seem to be the general opinion on Wikipedia that lack of references is a cardinal sin, so I have to concede that Naeblis has a point. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 07:28, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What is "foo"?

Some of the sample tags on this page have the word "Foo" inserted in them. What does this mean? Is it vandalism? If not, could someone explain on the page why the word is in the tag?--Dmz5 19:31, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

See wikt:foo. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 02:55, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I would assume lots of users come to this page to figure out how to use these tags. Having a "metasyntactical" term in the sample template seems confusing to me. Can't it be changed to "article title" or something more obvious?--Dmz5 19:36, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Good point. I changed it; tweak if necessary. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 00:38, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Layout problem with Infoboxes

Hi folks. This template here produces a layout problem. On articles with an infobox on the right, the box overwrites the infobox. Problem articles are for example Beaverton, Oregon, or Oregon. See this screenshot, which shows the rendering of Beaverton, Oregon in Firefox 2.0 on Windows XP SP2.

I played a bit in my sandbox for finding a change that would fix this. If we would change the template code to

<!-- start unreferenced --><div class="messagebox cleanup metadata plainlinks">
{|style="background:none"
|'''This {{{1|article or section}}} does not cite its [[{{SITENAME}}:Citing sources|references or sources]].'''<br /><small>Please help [{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|action=edit}} improve this article] by introducing appropriate citations. ([[Help:Contents|help]], [[{{SITENAME}}:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check|get involved!]]) {{#if:{{{date|}}}|This article has been tagged since '''{{{date}}}'''.}}</small>
|}</div><includeonly>{{#if:{{{date|}}}|[[Category:Articles lacking sources from {{{date}}}]]|[[Category:Articles lacking sources]]}}[[Category:All articles lacking sources]]</includeonly><noinclude>
{{/doc}} 
</noinclude>

which would remove the "width:100%" it would look like this. So I propose to remove the "width:100%" unless somone has a better idea. --Ligulem 12:49, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Plus the problem described in this archive thread is still not solved. This would still be the same with or without my change above as IE7 puts the box below any infobox creating the problem shown in Image:Norefs.jpg --Ligulem 09:59, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok. I've removed the "100%" per above for now. --Ligulem 12:11, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

The text is no longer centered. This is ugly. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 14:42, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the unneeded table. The text should now be centered again. --Ligulem 15:25, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notification template

I'd like to create a template to place on the talk pages of users who create articles without sources, asking them to provide the sources they use. Any wording suggestions? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:24, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd start with {{needsource}} and go from there, though that may do the job by itself... -- nae'blis 04:33, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer, but the wording in that one just really grates on me. It feels patronizing, wordy, and misdirected. "as you might be aware there is currently a drive to improve the quality of Wikipedia by encouraging editors to cite the sources they used when adding content." What the hell is that doing in a warning template? I'm going to make a conciser template for new articles that basicly says "thanks for creating an article, but we need your sources or it might be deleted," and has a link back to the specific article, a {{sources-warn}} to go with {{nn-warn}} and {{spam-warn}} Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 07:30, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposed wording:

Hi, I noticed that you created [[{{{1}}}]], but listed no sources for the information contained in the article. According to Wikipedia's content policies, all information must be verifiable from reliable sources. Therefore, it's necessary to cite your sources so other editors can check that the information included in the article is correct and matches the sources used. Information not previously published in such sources is prohibited as original research, since other editors can't verify it. Unsourced information may be challenged and removed at any time, and articles that can't be verified are likely to be deleted. Guidance on how to cite your sources is available, and if you need any further help, feel free to leave a message on my talk page.

[edit] This template should rarely be used, it is for lazy editors

If you time to browse articles and find fault with them, then you have the time to do a little research and put in references. That would be better for Wiki that this. 99% of people that use the template, will never notify the people that have been contributing to this article and most will have moved on and never see it. And the template will stay. Before using this template, take the time to leave a message on the contributors talk pages, or fix it yourself. Don't be lazy. --71Demon 15:58, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

If you want to clean up a list like Wikipedia:Dead-end pages or Special:Lonelypages, the only hope of getting things properly done is to catch the attention of the people who are putting in material without references. The template helps do that. And the people who have not moved to other things will normally have it in their watchlist, so they will see it. I think. --Alvestrand 16:21, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Putting 'unreferenced tag' in your edit summary is all you need to do to notify the page's editors, assuming it's in their watchlist. Cop 633 18:43, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

The "lazy" editors, are those not bothering to cite their sources. Anyhow, this template has some use. For one, when articles are nominated for deletion, people can see that there's been ample time/notice for references, and an article is unlikely to ever get any. Also, its a service to our readers, to note the claims of the article aren't backed up, and to be extra cautious. As well, there's a tendancy for people to simply assume how things are done, is how they should be. Most peole fail to cite sources, because most articles they see, don't. This tag helps tell new editors, that even though a particular article doesn't cite sources, it aught to. --Rob 02:56, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

This lazy editor adds this template frequently when doing stub sorting. My primary focus is on stub sorting, so noting an unsourced article as such is all I have time to do as I stub sort, which is a never-ending maintenance task in and of itself. Caerwine Caer’s whines 11:45, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge with Template:Primarysources?

Template:Primarysources has been re-written since it was originally about requiring "secondary sources", which wasn't really founded in policy and there were some other problems with it (see talk page there). So, it is proposed to rename it to Template:Reliablesources. Yet, is there any case where would want to notify about "sources or references" (as this template says), yet would not want to encourage at least some "credible, third-party sources" (as Template:Primarysources says)? So, I think it might be best to consolidate a "good sources" template at Template:Sources; Template:Unreferenced could either remain as it is, as an "any sources" template, or be redirected there. —Centrx→talk • 14:58, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

response on Template talk:Primarysources Jeepday 16:18, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

• No merge. They're different, and both are needed. --Alvestrand 19:25, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
  • This isn't a vote. Please explain what is wrong with the reasons I gave and suggest improvements. —Centrx→talk • 19:26, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Wanted to make clear my position. I don't agree with your reasoning - articles that don't have ANY sources are different from articles that just have primary sources. We can quibble about the names of the templates (I wince every time I use "unreferenced"), but I oppose a merge. --Alvestrand 21:26, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

• I prefer it the way it is. Template:Reliablesources explains too much and (to me) would be used to articles which have some sources or external links just not the right ones. This template is used for articles which have no source and no external links at all. Garion96 (talk) 18:02, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, an alternative would be to change it to "This article or section needs sources or references that appear in credible, third-party publications. Please include appropriate citations from reliable sources.", or some form thereof, without half the Template:Primarysources. The purpose is that completely unsourced articles do still need reliable sources, they are just in a different current state. It does no good to put "This article needs sources" on a sourceless article and then when someone adds sources, to put another template that "This article needs reliable sources"; it should just be said in the first place. —Centrx→talk • 14:49, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

User:Centrx I hear you are saying, that you don’t feel that editors are using reliable sources when they respond to the tag {{tl:Unreferenced}} and you think/hope that by changing the template they will. But the template already includes a link to Wikipedia:Citing sources that pretty much lays out step by step what to do. It also includes directions to add footnotes and citations, and they don’t always do that either. If we put in everything on the about referencing in the tag you might just as well either provide step by step directions on the questionable article or fix it yourself. I think the assumption with the {unreferenced} tag is that someone will correctly reference the article by the wikipedia guidelines. If they don't you have two choices, fix it yourself or use one of a bunch of more specific templates to help guide them. Jeepday 04:59, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

People are far less likely to click on and read a link. If someone thinks they know how to "cite sources", they aren't to bother reading the page that tells them "how to cite sources". If it says it right on the template, anyone reading the template will see it. Also, Wikipedia:Citing sources doesn't really say much of anything about reliable sources; it tells how to cite sources in the appropriate style, whether they be random personal websites or the Decline and Fall. I see no reason not to have "This article or section needs to cite reliable, third-party sources." It is quite short. —Centrx→talk • 05:08, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose per Alvestrand Kamope · talk · contributions 19:27, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - proposal open for a month and no consensus, accodingly I'll remove the tags. Addhoc 15:34, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

• oppose - The two pages are used for different purposes, both important. It is better the way it is now.--Sefringle 08:02, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request

Hi! Can you help in adding thhe Arabic interwiki for this template?

<nowkik>ar:قالب:مصدر</nowiki>

Thanks. - Qasamaan 23:20, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Done. For templates that have a doc page, you can do it yourself (scroll to bottom). Doc pages are not protected. --Ligulem 22:35, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] EDIT

Pleas add this link to the bottom of the template. It's a research resource that I programmed to automatically search for the article name. Saves shiteloads of time. Here's the code:

<small><span class="plainlinks">[http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-quick-search?pos=1&num=25&id=SMI0204-0-1763&newsearch=Y&res=Y&type=sub&keyword={{PAGENAMEE}}&method=relevance&auth_checked=Y (search for sources)]</small></span>

Thanks. ~ Flameviper ^{Who's a Peach?} 17:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Why should a search link for any one particular search link be added? I imagine there's probably a way for an individual user to add a such a link to their skin via javascript, and it might even be a good thing to make more easily available, but I really can't see Wikipedia promoting any one single search engine over the others. Caerwine Caer’s whines 18:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

(Side note) In my capacity as an admin reviewing the edit request: I don't see consensus yet, and I have thus removed the editprotected tag for now. Feel free to readd it once you have consensus or drop me a note on my talk page. Cheers, --Ligulem 22:30, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Hm... I would be a bit uncomfortable linking any particular site over another, but the general idea seems helpful. Perhaps it would be better to create a page along the lines of Help:Finding sources or some such? (I haven't been able to find one, unfortunately). Luna Santin 22:33, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

It is not specific to this article, and no one (I hope) would suggest that wikipedia put it on all pages, so I can't see a reason to have it. Firefox has a neat little tool... But that is off topic, I would say I leave the link off the article Jeepday 04:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Partially unrefererenced

Is there a template for articles which leave substantial portions unreferenced (not necessarily in one section), as opposed to being completely unreferenced? I had a quick search but couldn't find anything.

If there is no such template, I think it might not be a bad idea to have one, especially if people are feeling inclined to delete articles which have been marked with this tag for x amount of time.

-- Qarnos 10:35, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

There used to be one, but it was deleted in February 2005; see the TFD discussion. Personally, I think your proposed template would fill a useful role. Two possible options at the moment are using {{fact}} tags and {{Citations missing}}. --Muchness 19:05, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Expanding on the above proposal, would anyone object to changing this template from:

to

-- Qarnos 20:14, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• I like the proposed change to "adequately", Having only one reference while it is better then none, still does not meet WP:V or WP:N 03:19, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
• I also fully support this change. If a 20-kb article has one reference, it should still be tagged, and "adequately" fixes this problem. Thanks! Steevven1 ^{(Talk) (Contribs) (Gallery)} 22:22, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
• What does "adequately" mean here? Can it not be said about every article on Wikipedia, save for some of the featured ones? If this change means that everyone is now free to add that degrading tag to a million articles because they all could do with more references, then I'm against it. No article is perfect, but we shouldn't start them all with big tags to excuse this fact. I am much more for using the {{fact}}-tag to flag specific statements that needs a citation. This is both more reader and editor friendly than just throwing a big "some important things here are not referenced, but we won't tell you what. Have a nice read". With specific fact-tagging editor's will know which statements that need looking up to find the source, while readers will know exactly what might be dubious information. But, again, does this change now mean that a million articles should start with this tag? Shanes 05:56, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

• "Adequately" means there are sufficient sources to verify all the information contained within an article. There are about a million articles on Wikipedia which should start with this tag - that is the problem we are trying to resolve! I am not going to spend an hour adding a {{fact}} tag to every sentence of an article because people don't like blanket tags like this. If a 20kb article has just one reference, then it should be tagged. Click "random article" ten times in a row and see how many articles you find with any references, let alone one or two. Wikipedia needs to clean up its act with regard to references and this, in my opinion, is one step in the right direction. -- Qarnos 11:36, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

• I think the change to "adequately" was a mistake. I find it important to make a distinction between the articles that do not cite any references and those that are not adequately referenced. Perhaps two tags are needed here rather than one. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 01:33, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

• I think the move to "does not adequately" was correct and I think it is strongly supported by Wikipedia:Attribution Editors should provide attribution for quotations and for any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, or it may be removed. The burden of evidence lies with the editor wishing to add or retain the material. the tag {{unreferenced}} whether it says "does not adequately" or "does not site" states that this reference on this article are not sufficient to meet expectations. If there is one reference or no references does not mater, the expectation of attribution is not met and that's what this template is for. On occasion a single reference may be sufficient for a stub but as seen in Wikipedia:Notability expectations for multiple reference exist and so if there were two tags and if an article goes from none to one reference editors would be swapping out "does not site" for "does not adequately" because the article is either adequately referenced or is not. As an aside to Qarnos - a quote from WP:A Although everything in Wikipedia must be attributable, in practice not all material is attributed., so yep there is a million out there and they all need to be fixed. Jeepday 03:24, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

• I strongly disagree with the use of "adequately". The situation before was very clear... if an article had no sources, it needed at least one, period, end of story, and the tag was usually not disagreed with. If an article had a source but needed more, then the specific statements were highlighted with {{fact}}, and people could discuss whether a particular statement was controversial and whether it needed sourcing. Now, the situation is far less clear. Someone says "I think the article needs more sources", without pointing out what statements need sourced, or why more sources are needed. So someone else is then free to remove the tag, and similarly doesn't need to give any specific reasons other than that they vaguely disagree. It makes the discussion far less precise. If the "adequately" clause remains, I encourage others to stop using this template, and to only use {{fact}} instead. --Interiot 04:33, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My new 'unreferenced2' tag

See {{unreferenced2}}, and my user page for my reasons for its existence.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 03:54, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reference to Jimbo's quote

I quite don't understand what this link does anything with Jimbo's quote on top of this article. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-October/054929.html --Manop - TH 22:04, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] adequately

I suggest wikilinking "adequately" to Wikipedia:Attribution in the template. Jeepday 00:24, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reliable sources has been supereceded by Attribution

Reliable sources has been supereceded by Attribution. Should this template be updated to refer to current policy.--ZayZayEM 14:50, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Yup. Addhoc 20:42, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Done - Harryboyles 21:22, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Except that it has not. See for example Wikipedia talk:Attribution#This merger is a really bad idea--Henrygb 22:56, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Ooooh. Sorry. I was just reporting what I was reading.--ZayZayEM 03:46, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Yep, to be fair the situation has changed in the last few days. Addhoc 18:13, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge from Wikipedia:Reliable sources

I have suggested on Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources that Wikipedia:Reliable sources be merged and redirected to Wikipedia:Attribution#Reliable_sources. Please see the discussion (if any) at Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources. Signed Jeepday 14:50, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sudden thought

While the phrase normally passes me by without a second glance, I just now realized something about the wording of "does not adequately cite its references." By definition, this implies that there are references from which the content is derived, when the article may very well be a convincingly-worded collection of lies, as was the case with the now-long-dead article "Porchesia." Surely a user could misinterpret this to mean that the original contributors simply forgot to put in the sources, but that thouse sources — "its references" — still exist somewhere. Why shouldn't the wording be something like "does not cite sufficient sources", or, in when this is the case, "does not cite any sources," with the possible addtion of "and may therefore be unreliable"? Does this possibly exist in the form of another template? Lenoxus " * " 00:38, 25 March 2007 (UTC)