The "citation needed" marker as rendered by the standard MediaWiki 'monobook' CSS

"Citation needed", most commonly rendered as ^{[citation needed]}, is a common editorial remark on Wikipedia, which has become used to refer to Wikipedia in wider popular culture.

[edit] Wikipedia usage

The tag is added to Wikipedia articles by the use of a template called "{{fact}}", and is recommended for use next to questionable facts which are not yet cited to a source. The template adds the text "[citation needed]" in a superscript, stylistically similar to a footnote marker, and gives a hyperlink to a page explaining the need for effective citation. At the same time, it lists the article in an internal maintenance category of articles needing citation.^[1] It was created by user "Ta bu shi da yu" (Chris Sherlock) in June 2005.^[2]

The clear visual marker allows the text to be easily identified as requiring a source, and the internal category allows the status of such articles to be tracked. As of August 2009, there were around 155,000 articles which had one or more passages marked as requiring citations, slightly over 5% of all articles.^[3] As of October 2008, there had been around 125,000,^[4] and in August 2007, fourteen months earlier, the number had been slightly over 75,000.^[5]

[edit] Wider usage

An iconic^[6]xkcd cartoon playing on the trope, titled "Wikipedian Protestor"

On July 4, 2007, the webcomic xkcd published a comic (pictured) which depicted a protestor holding up a "citation needed" sign during a political speech. The site's forums suggested the use of "citation needed" stickers a few days after the original post,^[7] with the first examples being spotted applied to advertising posters later in the month.^[8] The idea of applying stickers was again popularised in January 2008^[9] and a number of photographs of them applied to signs and posters have since appeared on flickr.^[10]

It has also been used as a humorous t-shirt slogan, drawing attention to Wikipedia's strict policy on accuracy.^[11]

[edit] References