User:Mr. Straub/citeneeded

Is a citation missing?

What is a citation? A Citation is another word for a reference.

In some wikipedia articles there is information that is important and should be referenced, but there is no reference.

For example, the following sentence has many important details that should be referenced.

The species became known to Western science in 1873, when John Edward Gray, the turtle expert at the British Museum, described the specimen sent to him from Shanghai by Robert Swinhoe.

What should we do?

You can look up the materials yourself and create a reference. But that is time consuming and you may not know enough about the subject.

Another option is to add a citation needed tag.

Citation needed tag

A "citation needed tag" simple lets other readers know that a reference is needed.

The tag in the edit mode looks like this:

{{Citation needed|date=Month Year}}

The "date=Month Year" is today's month and year. So if today is June 2013, your tag would look like this:

{{Citation needed|date=June 2013}}

Where to put your citation tag

Place the tag at the end of the sentence that needs a reference. If there is more than one sentence, just place it at the end of the last sentence.In edit mode, it will look like this.

The species became known to Western science in 1873, when [[John Edward Gray]], the turtle expert at the [[British Museum]], described the specimen sent to him from [[Shanghai]] by [[Robert Swinhoe]].{{Citation needed|date=June 2013}}

When you click on save, it will look like this:

The species became known to Western science in 1873, when John Edward Gray, the turtle expert at the British Museum, described the specimen sent to him from Shanghai by Robert Swinhoe.