Template:Fact/doc

Citation needed (also known by the redirects Cn and Fact) is a template used to identify questionable claims that lack a citation to a reliable source. It produces a superscripted notation like the following:


 * Humphrey Bogart has won several snooker world championships.

Usage
You may append a date to the template in the following format:

Notes:
 * Do not substitute this template.
 * If you don't add a date parameter, a bot will date your entry with the month and year at a later time.
 * The date parameter consists of the name of the current month and the year only, not full dates. The names of the months are capitalised in English. Any deviation from these two rules will result in an "invalid date parameter" error.

It is also recommended to add the (non-displayed) reason parameter to leave a better record for future editors. For example, the following usage might be appropriate to the claim that "Humphrey Bogart has won several snooker world championships.":

Adding this template to an article places the article into Category:Articles with unsourced statements or a dated subcategory thereof.

Please remove the template when you add a citation for a statement.

Examples


The above wikitext will render as follows:

This sentence shows the template used at the end.

When not to use this template
Material that is doubtful and harmful may be removed immediately, rather than tagged. See Burden of evidence. Claims that you think are wrong may alternatively be tagged with dubious.

If you have the time and ability to find an authoritative reference, please do so. Then add the citation yourself, or correct the article text. After all, the ultimate goal is not to merely identify problems, but to fix them.

Any editor may add this template to any uncited passage for any reason, but many editors object to what they perceive as overuse of this tag, particularly in what is known as "drive-by" tagging, which is applying the tag without attempting to address the issues at all. Consider whether adding this tag in an article is the best approach before using it, and use it judiciously. Wikipedia's verifiability policy does not require reliable sources for common facts (e.g., "The Moon orbits the Earth"), or that citations be repeated through every sentence in a paragraph. All direct quotations and facts whose accuracy might be challenged (e.g., statistics) require citations.

This template is intended for specific passages that need citation. For entire articles or sections that contain significant material lacking sources (rather than just specific short passages), there are other, more appropriate templates, such as Unreferenced or Refimprove.

How to respond to this tag
The addition of this tag is a request for an inline citation to support the tagged statement. If you are able to provide a citation to support the claim, then please do so.

Except for certain kinds of claims about living people, which require immediate production of inline citations, there is no specific deadline for providing citations. Please do not delete information that you believe is correct simply because no editor has bothered to provide a citation within an arbitrary time limit. Where there is some uncertainty about its accuracy, most editors are willing to wait about a month to see whether a citation can be provided.