Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup

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WP:WUAC

Welcome to WikiProject: Unreferenced Article Cleanup!

Did you know that, as of 2007-02-14, there were over 48,000 articles in Category:All articles lacking sources? As of December 1, 2008 there were over 154,000 articles in Category:All articles lacking sources.

This project will hopefully bring together editors to add references to these articles and by leaving a project banner on the talk page of articles we have cleaned up, others will follow suit.

Contents

[edit] Scope

This project is aimed at any articles lacking sources. This includes, but is not limited to, all articles in Category:All articles lacking sources.

It is recommended that editors focus on smaller, stub-class articles, rather than already established pieces. This has several advantages:

  • Providing references for a small article will encourage later stub-expanders to follow suit and cite their sources.
  • It provides an opportunity to expand stub articles as part of the process
  • It may take less than an hour to reference a stub article, whereas a larger article may take days.
  • Faster "turn-around times" are encouraging for the editor, help prevent burn-out, and are good for the project.

This is not to discourage editors from pursuing larger articles, but it may be a good idea to form a taskforce with several editors for such a project.

[edit] Goals

The current primary goal of this project is to stop Category:All articles lacking sources from growing! This means referencing articles faster than they are added to the category. We need all the help we can get!

[edit] Guidelines

See </Guidelines>

[edit] Status

Number of articles improved by project users
347

[edit] Where to Start

The table below shows the number of unreferenced articles by month, it is recommended to work on the later articles as the chances are greater to influence more current editors if they see this projects banner on their articles talk page. The mostly recently tagged articles will not have dates and can be found in Category:Articles lacking sources which can also be access with the shortcut WP:ALS:

Number of Unreferenced Articles by Month
2006 # of Articles 2007 # of Articles 2008 # of Articles 2009 # of Articles
January 2915 January 6964 January 851
February 3090 February 6220 February 0
March 4112 March 7671 March 0
April 3684 April 7309 April 0
May 3745 May 6003 May 0
June 3979 June 7479 June 0
July 3488 July 6384 July 0
August 784 August 4109 August 7025 August 0
September 723 September 4272 September 5792 September 0
October 1686 October 4762 October 8012 October 0
November 1703 November 5827 November 6447 November 0
December 2672 December 6592 December 8067 December 0

[edit] Hints and Tips

  • If you feel you have fully referenced the article remove the {{unreferenced}} template.
  • If there are still unreferenced sections of the article replace {{unreferenced}} with the {{refimprove}} template.
  • Add a ==References== or ==Notes== section to the article with a {{reflist}} template below to automatically generate the list of footnotes
  • Add the Project banner to the article's talk page
  • Use the Wikipedia template filling web page to easily create a citation template from an ISBN or URL.
  • Enable the RefTools gadget to make creating citation templates easy, go to MyPreferences/Gadgets and enable RefTools.
  • Use the Web Cite Archive web page to automatically archive any URL that you use as a citation, then use the archiveurl and archivedate field in the {{cite web}} citation template to ensure that your citation will always be available.
  • Google Books Advanced Search - Set the Search option to Limited preview and full view to remove the snippet view results.
  • Google News Advanced Search
  • Goolge News Archive Advanced Search - Set the Price option to No Price to remove the articles with prices.
  • Many local public libraries offer online access using their library card number to various databases via providers like EBSCO which provides access to many journals and newspapers not available directly on the internet.
  • Consider adding to your edit summary: References added as part of [[WP:WUAC|Wikiproject Unreferenced Article Cleanup]]!

[edit] Project banner

WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup
This article was provided with references by a volunteer or taskforce from WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup on [[{{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}-{{subst:CURRENTMONTH}}-{{subst:CURRENTDAY2}}]]. If you edit this page, please build on the good work by citing your sources.

This banner is used to signify that an article has been provided with references by a member of this project. Unlike traditional project banners, this banner is to placed on the talk page after the improvements have been made. This will hopefully encourage others to follow suit when editing the article, and perhaps even join the project! The template should be placed in section 0 of the articles talk page after any project templates and before any threaded discussions.

Use the following code to place the banner on the article's talk page:

{{WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup|date=YYYY-MM-DD}}

The date field is optional, but should be included. For the chronically lazy, you may copy and paste this code to automatically produce the template with the current date inserted:

{{WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup|date={{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}-{{subst:CURRENTMONTH}}-{{subst:CURRENTDAY2}}}}

When this template is applied the article's talk page becomes a member of Category:WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup

[edit] Active members

Please sign your name here if you decide to help out!

  1. Qarnos 08:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
  2. Douglike 15:07, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
  3. Eagleplatinum 15:07, 04 April 2007 (UTC)
  4. DesertAngel 02:18, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
  5. --Mozillaman 13:50, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
  6. brian stormen 19:11, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
  7. Pinkadelica 02:27, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
  8. Travellingcari 04:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
  9. Scapler (talk) 17:23, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
  10. Captain-tucker (talk) 02:08, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
  11. GaryColemanFan (talk) 20:37, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
  12. TALKIN PIE EATER REVIEW ME 02:26, 2 July 2008 (UTC) This should be fun!
  13. OlEnglish (talk) 08:08, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
  14.    Juthani1   tcs 15:10, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
  15. mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 22:47, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
  16. Fribbler (talk) 13:19, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
  17. Tiger Khan (talk) 05:07, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
  18. Whpq (talk) 21:50, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
  19. Jack1956 (talk) 21:17, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
  20. LakeAtNight (talk) 19:00, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
  21. Offenbach (talk) 18:56, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
  22. Dan, the CowMan (talk) 19:51, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
  23. Rlendog (talk) 20:14, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
  24. Gaia Octavia Agrippa Talk | Sign 12:15, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
  25. Xenovatis (talk) 12:31, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
  26. --Zaher1988 · Talk 11:57, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Userbox

This user is a member of the Unreferenced Article Cleanup WikiProject.


Add the following template code to your user page to display the above userbox:

{{Unreferenced Article Cleanup}}

Adding the above userbox will make you automatically a member of Category:WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup members.

[edit] Invitation template

If you would like to invite someone to join this project just place the following template code on their talk page:

{{WUAC Invite}}

 Please accept this invite to join the Unreferenced Article Cleanup WikiProject, a WikiProject dedicated to decreasing the number of unreferenced articles on Wikipedia. As of December, 2008 there were over 154,000 unreferenced articles on Wikipedia, we need your help! Simply click here and sign your username to accept!

[edit] Successes

The following articles have been improved by this project:

[edit] Related projects

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Unreferenced_Article_Cleanup"
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