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Template:Unreferenced/doc.
(edit | history) This template has a
sandbox (edit) for editors to experiment.
 | This template should be used only on articles that have no sources at all. 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.
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Usage
This template should be placed at the top of an article and should not be substituted (subst:).
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 is (generally[1]) used to indicate when the template was added to a page. An example of its usage is
{{Unreferenced|date=December 2009}}. 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=December 2009}} and {{Unreferenced|date=December 2009|article's section called "Childhood"}} have the same effect:
Categorization
This template adds articles to Category:Articles lacking sources, a hidden category.
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 {{Unreferenced section}}, but the two templates place an article in different categories, as noted above.
Note: when adding {{Unreferenced|section}} to a section of an article, 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 templates previously redirected to {{Unreferenced}}, but have been changed:
See also
The following templates are useful in cases where there are some sources, but these are inadequate or insufficient:
- ^ 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.
Template documentation
