Wikipedia:WikiProject Timeline Tracer/Guidelines

Reference information for all participants

Main Guidelines

Our purpose:

• Where dates or periods are mentioned that are important to the article's subject, those must be clear, accurate and must have citations to reliable sources
• When an article's subject should have its orgins and development described, the article must have a history section and this must be accurate and have reliable sources.

If you see an article needing corrections or missing information, the best thing to do is, of course, to be bold and fix it. Barring that, you have several options:

• First and most important is to place inline calls tagging the problem lines. Enter {{Timefact}} in the body of an article as a request for other editors to find sources for verifying the chronology, timeline and dates provided as reference in the content. It will display: ^{[chronology source needed]}

.
If the missing citation refers to lineage or historical claims, you may use {{Histfact}}, requesting not only a source but a source that corroborates the historical claim or context. It will yield: ^{[history source needed]}

Usage

1. Use {{Histfact}} to label a passage which is incomplete without a cited source of historical or chronology information
2. Use {{Timefact}} to label a statement which lacks a source confirming or providing its chronology or timeline as per Wikipedia:Citing sources

Examples

• In the sentence "it was started by Lord Champs in 2001 and enhanced two years later ..."

• You will place {{fact}} if you are simply requesting a source that says that it was started by Lord Champs in 2001
• You will insert {{Timefact}} if what you are requesting is a source that confirms when it was started and its development after that.
• You will place {{Histfact}} for showing the need for a source that specifies not only the date of starting but also the historical development (that it was enhanced), how and when.

• In the sentence "that organization was founded in 1978 when the natural disasters had increased..."

• You will place {{fact}} if you are simply requesting a source that says that the organization was founded in 1978
• You will insert {{Timefact}} if what you are requesting is a source that says when the disasters increased in relation with the year of foundation
• You will place {{Histfact}} for showing the need for a source that specifies in what historical context that happened, what disasters were those, where and when.

• In the sentence "those celtic tribes survived more than one invasion...":

• You will place {{fact}} if you are simply requesting a source that says that those tribes survived many invasions
• You will insert {{Timefact}} if what you are requesting is a source that says when that happened
• You will place {{Histfact}} for showing the need for a source that specifies in what historical context that happened, what invasions were those

• If you want to alert the authors of the article that there may be need for some more work, add the template {{histref}} at the article's talk page, it will show as:

This article needs more sources for chronology/history verification. Please improve the sources if you can. This article is under evaluation by the WikiProject Timeline Tracer. Please remove this message only after the article has been corrected.

• If you have specific ideas about what the article is missing, you can add them as a parameter:

{{histref|Some ideas go here.}}

This yields:

This article needs more sources for chronology/history verification. Specifically: Some ideas go here. Please improve the sources if you can. This article is under evaluation by the WikiProject Timeline Tracer. Please remove this message only after the article has been corrected.

An alternative is to place {{histrefm}}. Adding this template to the article's talk page causes the following box to appear there:

This article needs more Sources for chronology/history verification WP Timeline Tracer

Placing any of these tags will add the article to the category Articles lacking chronology/history sources

Edit summary

• When adding the {{histref}} template, you can use the following edit summary: This article needs sources for chronology/history verification. See [[WP:TIMETRACE]].
• When actually adding sources, you can use: Adding chronology/history sources. [[WP:TIMETRACE|You can help!]]

Talk Page

Usually it is a good idea, even if not a must, to go to the article's talk page and leave a brief explanation as well as some suggestions in a helping tone.

You should also add {{WikiProject Timeline Tracerl}} to the top of the talk page, under other already existing scope banners.

If the banners are more than one, you can place {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} and nest all the scope banners and ours in that shell, see {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} for knowing how to do that.

Reporting

• If you will not assume the task of verifying and helping an article but just want to mark and add the article to the category Articles waiting for chronology/history evaluation, just add at the article's talk page {{histrefeval}}, it will show this tag:

This article is waiting for chronology/history sources evaluation by WP Timeline Tracer

Some guidelines about what to look after

To read about how to deal with sources can be found at WP:TIMETRS

• Articles in general

Chronology and history of a subject are sometimes disregarded or lacking sources. Chronologies, history and references to these are often interrupted or inaccurate. Movements, religions, groups and organizations are many times named or linked to the subject of the article with incorrect or inaccurate links of lineage.

• Movements, modern religions, philosophies, traditions groups, martial arts

Many of these claim historical or cultural heritage, but lack sources verification. Many articles may reference self-produced online or offline references. WP:OR

• Peoples and languages

Roots and relationships are many times obscured or manipulated to satisfy specific interests.

• Literary traditions

Literary traditions are sometimes liberally attributed.

• Concepts (including scientific discoveries and schools of philosophy)

May have parallel origins in more than one historical or geographical point.

• Organizations, large groups, nations

Many stubs need to be verified and cleaned in history references.

• Older books, works of art, musical pieces, etc.

Sometimes appropriated because they have been orphaned by societies no longer existing.