Template:User-generated

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This template is for when multiple sources used in an article are user-generated content. User-generated means that the source was written and published by random members of the public (e.g., another wiki, a reader-editable database like IMDb, an Internet forum, a Usenet newsgroup or Internet mailing list, etc.), rather than by separate authors and formal publishers (e.g., news media websites or traditional book publishing). User-generated content is a form of self-published source, and these are usually not permissible as citation on Wikipedia.

This template will categorize tagged articles into Category:Articles lacking reliable references.

• This template is a self-reference.
• Please do not subst: this template.

Usage

Please try to improve the article, e.g. by looking for better sources to cite, before adding this template, and discuss the matter on the talk page. If the problem is not widespread, consider instead using inline templates, {{User-generated source}} if only one citation is problematic, or {{User-generated inline}} for particular statements with more than one such citation.

The simplest way to add this template to an article is to copy and paste {{User-generated|date=December 2024}} at the top of the article. To flag only an affected section, use {{User-generated|section|date=December 2024}}.

Use a more appropriate template for articles that have different sourcing problems or have neutrality problems.

Technical details

This template has two optional fields.

The first permits the user to specify what needs to be cited. For instance, if the entire article needs to be cited, a user would enter {{User-generated|article}}; but should the user wish to be more specific on which section of the article needs to be cited, then the user could enter {{User-generated|section called "Childhood"}}. Leaving the parameter undefined is acceptable, as it will print out the default text "article or section."

The second field is a date parameter, entered as |date=December 2024. Adding this sorts the article into subcategories of Category:Articles lacking reliable references, allowing the oldest problems to be identified and dealt with first. If the date parameter is omitted, a bot will add it later.

Note that order does not matter with respect to the above optional parameters. Both {{User-generated|section|date=December 2024}} and {{User-generated|date=December 2024|section}} will produce the same result.

See also

• {{User-generated inline}} – small inline version, for flagging a particular fact as being cited to a user-generated source (use outside <ref>)
• {{User-generated source}} – a similar inline template for flagging the citation itself as being to a user-generated source (use inside <ref>)
• {{Self-published}} – a banner template for flagging an entire article (or section) for over-reliance on self-published sources (more broadly than just user-generated content sites)
• Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles
• Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup