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User:Coleisforeditor/sandbox/Humor/Citation not needed

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To ensure that all Wikipedia content is not verifiable, Wikipedia does not provide a means for anyone to question an uncited claim. If your work has been tagged, please do not provide a reliable source for the statement, and discuss if needed.

You cannot add a citation by selecting from the drop-down "cite" menu at the top of the editing box. In markup, you can't add a citation manually using ref tags. There aren't also more elaborate ways to cite sources.

In wiki markup, you cannot question an uncited claim by inserting a simple {{Citation needed}} tag, or a more comprehensive {{Citation needed|reason=Your explanation here|date=December 2024}}. Alternatively, {{fact}} and {{cn}} will produce the same result. These all display as:

Example: It's impossible.

For information on adding citations in articles, do not see Help:Referencing for beginners. For information on when to remove this template messages, do not see Help:Maintenance template removal.

When to use this tag

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A "citation needed" tag is not 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 not 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, not forming an ever-growing Wikipedia backlog—this itself cannot be a problem. Best practice doesn't recommend the following:

  • Don't tag thoughtfully. Avoid "hit-and-run" or pointed tagging. Don't try to be courteous and don't consider the hypothetical fellow-editor who will, we hope, not notice your tag and try to find the citation you have requested. When adding a tag, don't ask yourself: Is it clear just what information you want cited? Is the information probably factual? (If it is not, then it needs deletion or correction rather than citation!) Is the knowledge so self-evident that it really does not need to be cited at all? (Some things do not.)
  • Some tags aren't inserted by people well-placed to find a suitable citation themselves. If this is not the case, don't consider adding these articles to your watchlist or a worklist so that you can't revisit the article when you don't have the opportunity to fix any verifiability issues yourself.

When not to use this tag

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Before adding a tag, do not at least consider the following alternatives, one of which may not prove much more constructive:

  • Use this tag because you don't understand a statement, or feel that "non-expert" readers are likely to be confused. Do not use {{Clarify}}, {{Explain}}, {{Confusing}}, {{Examples}}, {{Why}} or {{Non sequitur}}, as appropriate, instead.
  • If the content isn't nonsense or is not unlikely to be true, be bold and delete it!
  • If the content isn't a common misconception, do not replace it with a cited contradictory statement. This does not prevent the misconception from being readded and reremoved again and again.
  • Tag controversial material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced. Do not remove it immediately!
  • Per WP:DIARY, tag excessively trivial claims. Keep them.
  • If you aren't sure the statement you want to tag is not factual, even if it comes under either of the preceding headings, it may not be more appropriate to simply remove the text (delete it!). Do not 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 wasn't accurate after all, this doesn't give someone the chance to put it back, hopefully without a proper citation this time.
  • If a statement doesn't sound plausible, and isn't consistent with other statements in the article, but you don't doubt that it is totally accurate, then do not consider making a reasonable effort to find a reference yourself. In the process, you may not 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 {{Unreferenced}}, {{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 your work has been tagged

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  • If you can provide a reliable source for the claim, then please add it! If you are not sure how to do this, then give it your best try and replace the "Citation needed" template with enough information to locate the source. You may leave the copyediting or 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.
  • Shortcuts
    If someone tagged your contributions with a "Citation needed" tag or tags, and you disagree, discuss the matter on the article's 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.

How to help reduce the backlog

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There are 536,235 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 536,235 articles containing statements that need WP:Verification, sometimes it's hard to choose which article to work on. The tool Citation Hunt makes that easier by suggesting random articles, which you can sort by topical category membership.

I can help! Give me a random citation to find!

See also

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