Usage

When to use

You may add this template only to articles that contain zero citations or references of any kind.

Do not add this template:

  • In articles that have some citations, but not enough, the {{More citations needed}} template should be used instead as a general template, or the {{Unreferenced section}} template for individual sections that have no citations.
  • In articles containing a list of sources at the end, but no inline citations, including parenthetical references or in-text attributions, consider {{no footnotes}} when the article would be significantly improved by detailed attribution of sources to specific claims.
  • Watch out for lists of general references that someone has incorrectly listed under ==External links==. If the link leads to a reliable source that supports some article content, then that website is a reference, not an external link.
  • Other templates, listed below, should be used when the citations are inadequate for other reasons.

Alternatives:

  • Be bold! Consider searching for sources and citing them in the article, instead of adding this template.
  • In articles about people and businesses, consider using the more specific {{Third-party sources}} template, to encourage citation of WP:Independent sources rather than the subject's own website.
  • See Wikipedia:Biographies of living people for guidance on dealing with unreferenced biographies of living people.
  • Consider not adding this template to very brief stubs, since anyone visiting the page can see, in a single glance, that it contains no citations.

How to use

{{Unreferenced|date=March 2024}}

or

{{subst:Unreferenced}}

Substitution of this template will automatically fill the date parameter.

To flag an individual section as being unreferenced, use the {{Unreferenced section}} template, which categorizes more narrowly:

{{Unreferenced section|date=March 2024}}
Date parameter
The date parameter is (generally[1]) used to indicate when the template was added to a page. An example of its usage is {{Unreferenced|date=March 2024}}. 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.

General information

This template can either be placed at the top of an article, at the bottom of the article page (in an empty "References" or "Notes" section—usually just before a {{Reflist}} template), or on the article's talk page.

Categorization

This template adds the article to Category:Articles lacking sources and a monthly subcategory such as Category:Articles lacking sources from March 2024 (as described above), which are hidden categories.

Differences from related templates

The similar template {{More citations needed}} adds an article to Category:Articles needing additional references. {{Medref}} adds the article to Category:Articles needing additional medical references as well as Category:Articles needing additional references.

Short-cut

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData documentation for this template used by VisualEditor and other tools; see the monthly error report for this template.

TemplateData for Unreferenced

This template generates a tag to indicate that the article has no citations.

Template parameters

ParameterDescriptionTypeStatus
Type (section)1

Something to replace the word "article", normally "section". This is a legacy feature, and this usage has been replaced with separate '{{Unreferenced section}}' template.

Auto value
Stringoptional
Month and yeardate

Provides the month and year of the citation request; e.g., 'January 2013', but not 'jan13'

Auto value
{{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}
Stringsuggested

Tracking categories

See also

Footnotes

  1. Because of the nature of the workflow using the current date makes sense, it is simpler to add, especially for the WP:bots it means that older dated categories do not have to be constantly created and deleted, and it enables some measure of progress. Moreover it is "good enough" to get the articles into the workflow and the intention is to ensure they are cleaned up eventually. Occasionally however it may be useful to bulk add items, to older categories, for example when the system was initially set up, when merging two schemes or when adding to the current month would swamp it disproportionately.