Template:Unreferenced

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Template documentation


This template should be used only on articles that have no sources.

Alternatives:

  • In articles that have some sources, but not enough, the {{refimprove}} template should be used instead.
  • Other templates, listed below, should be used when the sources are inadequate for other reasons.
  • Be bold! Consider searching for references and adding them to the article, instead of this template.
  • Consider not adding this template to extremely short articles.

This adds articles to Category:Articles lacking sources. This template should not be substituted (subst:).

Usage

This template should be placed at the top of an article. There are two optional parameters:

  • Description field: The optional description field is used to indicate more specifically what should be referenced. An example of its usage is {{unreferenced|article's section called "Childhood"}}. The description field is commonly omitted, which is acceptable, and the information box displayed in an article would then read "This article does not cite any references or sources." If a description is supplied, the word article in the information box is replaced with the description; for the example just given, the information box would read "This article's section called 'Childhood' does not cite any references or sources."
  • Date parameter: The date parameter, which is recommended, is used to indicate when the template was added to a page. An example of its usage is {{unreferenced|date=June 2008}}. 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.

The two optional fields can be used together, and placed in either order. For example, both {{unreferenced|article's section called "Childhood"|date=June 2008}} and {{unreferenced|date=June 2008|article's section called "Childhood"}} have the same effect.

Differences from related templates

One difference between the {{unreferenced}} template and the similar templates {{refimprove}} and {{unreferencedsection}} is that {{unreferenced}} adds an article to Category:Articles lacking sources, while {{refimprove}} and {{unreferencedsection}} add an article to Category:Articles needing additional references.

A common practice is to supply a description of "section", as in {{unreferenced|section}}, which results in an information box reading "This section does not cite any references or sources." This is the same message that is displayed when using {{unreferencedsection}}, but the two templates place an article in different categories, as noted above.

Note: when adding {{unreferenced|section}} to a section of an article, then the date parameter must be included. Otherwise, SmackBot will change the template to {{unreferencedsection}} when it adds the date parameter.

Redirects

The following templates redirect to {{unreferenced}}, meaning that they are synonyms that work exactly as {{unreferenced}} works:

The following template previously redirected to {{unreferenced}}, but has been changed:

See also

The following templates are useful in cases where there are some sources, but these are inadequate or insufficient: