Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Backlog drives/November 2024

edit

Main page		Discussion		How to guide		Resources		Mistagged articles		Backlog drives

Shortcut

WP:NOV24

This backlog drive is still under construction, and will need to be revised before the drive begins. Feel free to make changes, but please discuss on talk if any disagreements arise. Thanks!

Welcome to WikiProject Unreferenced Articles's November 2024 backlog drive! The referencing portion will begin on November 1 and run until December 1, 23:59 UTC. At the start of the drive, there were [insert] articles tagged as entirely without references on Wikipedia.

There is a very simple way to improve Wikipedia: add at least one inline citation of a reliable source to any article tagged as lacking sources. Fewer unsourced articles means the quality of Wikipedia as a whole increases, accurate information becomes more reliable and transparent, and inaccurate information can be removed. (§ Detailed instructions).

1 point will be awarded for sourcing. Mass deletion or tag removals are strictly prohibited, and will be subjected to disqualification.

Fix a random page lacking sources

Sign up here

If you need tips or guides, you can take a look at § Tips, the helpful guide at WP:CITE, or ask at the WikiProject's talk page. The drive will begin on November 1 and run until December 1. To encourage additional reviews, the drive will be extended for one week (December 1-8) as an additional review period. Only reviews will be counted during this period.

Rules (TBD)

1 point for adding at least one inline citation from a reliable source to an unreferenced article, usually tagged with {{Unreferenced}} or {{BLP unsourced}}.
- No points for simply listing references in a section.
- To keep this drive focused, no points for adding additional citations to one article, though editors are encouraged to do so whenever possible.
- Primary sources are permitted so long as they are only used to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts. Please see WP:PRIMARY.
0.5 points for reviewing submissions of the drive. See more at /Reviews.
- The point is less because reviewing submissions is easier than finding reliable sources. Nevertheless, reviewers have an extremely important job of verifying submissions and require a high level of trust.
No points for deleting an article via AfD, PROD or blank and redirect.
- Per this discussion, encouraging these actions would cause more heat than light and does not belong to the focus of the drive.
All citing contributions without [[WP:NOV24]] in the edit summary will not be counted.
- If making multiple edits to an article, include NOV24 in only one edit summary.
- If the editor forgets to put that summary, they may add it retroactively using a dummy edit.
Problematic behaviors are grounds towards disqualification and blocks. Examples are:
- Spamming articles to AfD/PROD/blank and redirect
- Mass-removal of {{Unreferenced}}
- Adding fake references and content
- Being disruptive by being uncivil, wikilawyering, etc.

Detailed instructions

Find an article in Category:Articles lacking sources (Credits to User:Ajpolino and User:Ipigott).

Go to the search bar and type [search term] incategory:"All articles lacking sources".
Go to the search bar and type articletopic:[topic] incategory:"All articles lacking sources". The list of topics can be found at mw:Help:CirrusSearch/articletopic.
Take a look at § Popular articles
For WikiProjects, take a look at Bambot's WikiProject Cleanup Listings, click on your project's "by cat", then scroll down to "Cites no sources".
Use WP:PetScan and find the intersection between "All articles lacking sources" and your category.

Then, find a reliable source. Look for reliable sources, see §§ Some tricks and Determining what sources are usable for tips.

If at least one reliable source is found:

Cite it inline.
- Please add all the needed author, title and date metadata (see WP:CITE).
- For recent books, ISBN and page numbers are strongly recommended.
- The inline citation should go after the period without a space, not before it:
Add {{reflist}} and ==References== if none are present (see MOS:ORDER).
Remove {{Unreferenced}} or {{BLP unsourced}} when you are finished adding citations.
(recommended) Add {{More citations needed}} to large parts of the article or add {{cn}} to short chunks of text.
Add an edit summary including: [[WP:NOV24]]

If no reliable source can found with the best of your effort, according to WP:BEFORE, there are a few options:

PROD the article if it is obvious that the article should be deleted.
AFD the article if it is not obvious that the article should be deleted.
Merge discussion and redirect the article if the article has some useful content but it is not notable.
Make a new thread at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced articles if you are unsure.

Progress

Update this page

Goal: Bring the backlog down by 15,000 (? to be confirmed) and clear Category:All unreferenced BLPs.

Progress Chart
Date	Participants	Articles	Change since previous day	Change since beginning
1 February 2024	241	111,643	—	—

Milestones

Placeholder

Oldest backlogs

Cleared backlogs
Placeholder

Leaderboard

Placeholder

Participants

Sign up here

Reviews

All participants with experience in citing sources are encouraged to perform reviews. Reviewers will be awarded 0.5 points for each review. A tool is available to locate unreviewed submissions and simplify wikitext formatting.

Go to the /Reviews subpage

Tips

Determining what sources are usable

Even though we are just citing one source to the article, that source must be chosen carefully. That source needs to:

This is a lot to take in. And worse, sometimes you couldn't find such a source! It can be very hard to determine whether you should go forward to cite the article or ask for its deletion, even for experienced WikiGnomers, and sometimes you have to follow through with your gut feelings.

Some suitable sources may be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Resources or Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources. Examples of common not suitable sources include:

Tabloids – Daily Mail, listicles at Hindustan Times, etc.
Blogs – Wordpress, Blogger, personal websites
Wikipedia mirrors, substantially duplicating existing content
Books not under editorial control, self-published (tip: search on Wikipedia the publisher's name)

Some tricks

Searching sources

Use "" (double quotes) to search for the term exactly. This means that "pinnochio" will only show up articles with words matched with "pinnochio", not pinocchio (although some websites will disregard this and show the wrong search term anyway).
Some articles, especially for more general topics, might have sources available with slightly different wording -- "basketweaving" vs "basket weaving," "basket weaver," etc.
Search inside millions of old and new books at Google Books and Archive.org - for the archive, go to https://archive.org/search then click the search bar, then click "search text contents" radio button, it will search over 10 million books.
Access to some paywalled content, including Newspapers.com and ProQuest, is provided to editors via The Wikipedia Library.
For Google, use - (ie. dash) as a way to remove unwanted entries, like -pinocchio
See more tips at Wikipedia:Advanced source searching
You can search for related articles on Wikipedia (as in other pages or other languages) and access some sources there. Do not copy the reference in verbatim. Only after you've checked the source and that the source indeed verify the text, you may cite it in the article.

Reading and parsing sources

Use machine translation, either at a website or as built in to your web browser, for reading foreign article texts.
For foreign texts on Google Books where their texts cannot be copied, take a screenshot, go to Google Translate and click on the "Images" button. Upload the image there and Google Translate will translate the passage inside the image itself.
Use the text searching feature to locate what you are looking for faster, such as Ctrl+F on Windows or ⌘ Cmd+F on macOS.

Processing articles

Twinkle might be helpful for cleaning up article banners and nominating articles for deletion
While you're there, you could expand the article or clean up any other problems you see with it.
If you are familiar with AWB/JWB, you can use it to quickly add a "References" section and {{reflist}} template.

Badges

1 point
5 points
10 points
25 points
50 points
100 points
200 points
300 points
500 points
750 points
Top 3 of the drive
Top 2 of the drive
Top 1 of the drive