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Archive 1Archive 2

Primary goal

As the project is named "CiterSquad", I expected the goal of the project to be adding cites. Currently the Primary Goal paragraph begins: "The primary goal of this project is to check that the article is unreferenced, and if the article is appropriate for Wikipedia, add the template {{BLP unsourced}}, {{unreferenced}}, to encourage editors to reference the article."

Shouldn't the primary goal of the project be to add references to articles, rather than to stamp unreferenced articles with a giant tag, stating what is obvious to any visitor who is not blind? If you see someone broken down by the side of the road, thumbing a ride to a service station, do you stop and hang a sign around his neck, "this person is thumbing a ride! give him one!" and then drive off?

Readers outnumber editors by a thousand to one, at a minimum. Maintenance tags are for editors, not readers. Here is a challenge: instead of adding "unreferenced" or "refimprove" or the other usual top-of-article blights that we are rapidly acquiring, do a little research and find some cites. Do not add any tags until you have at least tried to find some cites. How about it? I know it's harder work than ripping through a category and stamping a tag on every article, but it's also harder work to clean up the litter in your neighborhood park than to jam a sign into the grass saying "THIS PARK HAS LITTER! VOLUNTEER TO CLEAN IT UP!" I would like to change the focus of this project from adding tags to adding cites; aggressively so.

I'd change the opening paragraphs myself, but I want to verify the intention and purpose of the Wikiproject before messing with it. Sorry to sound ornery, I really do appreciate the effort that goes in to the programming and setting up the categories and Wikiprojects, but these tags are ugly, lazy, and in the face of readers, and we need cites, not tags, and it's time to make some noise about it. Thanks, Antandrus (talk) 18:16, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that it isn't obvious. An uncited article can look very professional and be a lot of nonsense. Readers used to other encyclopedias won't even notice there are no citations a lot of the time. I add a lot of citations to articles that I feel I know something about, other articles I'll tag when I run across them. Dougweller (talk) 20:34, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
You're right, that can be the case, and I have no objection to articles full of POV sludge, or just wretchedly written, to be templated. I'm really just pleading with people to at least try to find cites rather than slapping templates, but because it's orders of magnitude harder to do the former rather than the latter, I think we are heading towards a situation where almost all of our articles will be templated one way or another. I think if we slightly change the focus of this Wikiproject -- better to cite than template -- it would be helpful. Antandrus (talk) 23:13, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm broadly speaking with Antandrus on this. Since I started editing in wp many years ago there's been a huge explosion of templating. If it leads to genuine article improvement then that's great ... but I'm not sure about the "must warn readers this article might be rubbish" point. It has some attractions but really they should know that this is true of every article here, so, as A. says, do we just template everything? I'm also disturbed by the idea that this project is for templating, not citing, though admittedly in the hope that the one leads to the other. In my view one of the principal curses of wp as it's developed has been the growth of "drive-by" templating where editors mark things as "possible rubbish" but don't really do anything to help other than that. Sometimes it leads to improvements and sometimes the article just sits there looking sad for another few years. It's so much easier to add templates than to actually work on articles and I'd prefer to see more projects which encourage the latter. Cheers DBaK (talk) 07:55, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
I am grateful that the existence of this project has helped me re-think my own use of the citation templates. Simply adding a "no references" tag to the top of an article, or a "citation needed" tag to a statement, is not always easy to perceive as an improvement to Wikipedia. If there are no references in an article, or if a statement is not supported, isn't the right thing to do either to find some references or to remove the unreferenced content - invoking the process for deleting the article if necessary? By tagging the information rather than removing it an editor effectively says, "I think this information is notable and plausible but I will not look for a source" which is exactly the behaviour I suspect this project was set up to counter. I am also concerned that on the project's page it states that improvement of articles by adding references is a secondary goal, behind the primary goal of adding editor-focussed templates that readers may find distracting. --RobertG ♬ talk 07:59, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

A few concerns

Off-hand, I have a few concerns:

  1. Echoing Antandrus above, I'm not sure the name accurately describes the function of the project.
  2. It appears the scope of this project has been defined to an extent, but it's still unclear to me what the exact purpose of this CiterSquad is. I would try to clarify (and shorten) the lead on the project page.
  3. "Citer" doesn't appear to be a real word. (At least it's not in my dictionary.),
  4. The category Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot) should be renamed as soon as possible. It's a very bad idea to go around adding bot-specific categories to articles a for a variety of reasons, the least of which is that users quite often leave.

--MZMcBride (talk) 04:47, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Please don't do this project

I think the project, if implemented, will hurt the Wikipedia more than it helps and I urge the instigators not to carry it out. The tags will puzzle and irritate our readers, and it is unlikely that they will increase the addition of useful reference sources in any significant way. Antandrus is right -- it's a bit tacky to go around yelling at other people to source the articles when you ought to be reading books and sourcing them yourself.

You know, there's huge amounts of wonderful material out there, often instantly accessible to you on Google Books. Instead of this pointless busy-bee tagging activity, why not change your tack: go read about things that interest you, and that will enable you to do proper sourcing yourself. Opus33 (talk) 18:31, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Response to Project Criticism

  1. This project is called CiterSquad because it encourages to the citing of articles, either by the reviewing editor or the primary article editor.
  2. Every article should have at least one reference, preferably several - Per Wikipedia:Verifiability The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. Wikipedia:Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's core content policies. The others include Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view
  3. Multiple projects already exist to add references to articles that need reference improvement. From some of the comments above I see there are some people who feel strongly abut going the extra mile to add references. I look forward to seeing you sign and and become an active contributing member on one of them. (p.s. Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles is my favorite, so choose it :)
    1. Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles - The goal of this project is to ensure that articles meet at least the barest minimum of verifiability, by including at least one reliable published (online or offline) reference.
    2. The project Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check has a bolder purpose nothing less than having facts in Wikipedia verified by multiple independent sources to make it the most authoritative source of information in the world.
  4. The primary goal of this project is to add unreferenced templates in order to encourage the primary editors of the article to add references per WP:BURDEN "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation".
  5. Very often simply adding the template will encourage the primary editor to improve the article by adding the reference they used to write the article. It takes much effort attempt to locate supporting references when you don't know what they are, hence the effort to encourage the person who wrote the article to reference with {{unref}} on the article and/or {{uw-unsor1}}, {{uw-unsor2}}, {{uw-unsor3}} may be placed on the talk page of the original editor of an unreferenced article.
  6. To encourage the primary editor to add reference and because other projects already exist to address articles that have been tagged as needing reference improvement for some time "The secondary goal if this project is to ensure that articles meet at least the barest minimum of verifiability, by including at least one reliable published (online or offline) reference.", though nothing should discourage an editor from referencing an article if they feel strongly about it.
  7. I think I addressed everything and cited supporting policy, or references as appropriate. If I missed anything please let me know.

So please do volunteer at this project or one of the other similar projects, don't forget to sign your edits with Wikipedia:CiterSquad; [[Wikipedia:CiterSquad|you can help!]], so other editors will find the project and understand what we are about.

Jeepday (talk) 22:13, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Be positive, not negative

Hey all, I made this nice award, the last one along at Wikipedia:Personal_user_awards#General_awards..added sauces - try and look for folks that are adding sauces and give them some encouragement, eh? cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:03, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Opposition to template bot...

If nobody has challenged the verifiability of an article (as per even a comment on talk) why should we go around templating it unless it appears to be unverifiable?

The key thing is that it is theoretically verifiable, not that it is actually verified. If you don't have reason to believe that an article is unverifiable, then why tag it? No, lack of reference templates are not a sign that an article is not VERIFIABLE, just that it's not VERIFIED. It seems to me that contesting things using an automated process appears to resemble wikiautospamigation (a distinct branch of wikilawyering) or, to be a bit more direct, it appears to resemble griefing, because it amounts to a tax on other people's time to verify self-evident things that no human (as opposed to this silly template-bot) has contested.

If somebody wants to use the template bot to go around checking (as opposed to adding templates automatically) for the verifiability of articles, then that's fine - let them manually add the templates, because the only way the template's going to be removed is manually, through human labor - let the CiterBotSquad ante up with the labor to manually add the tags to the pages identified as not having references, after manually checking them. This is because it's going to take manual labor - in finding references - to manually remove these templates, and why should other editors volunteer their own time to manually clean up the carnage left by this bot when the creators of this bot aren't going to invest manual labor in verifying that the unreferenced templates are correctly on each article that this bot tags prior to placing the tags on there.

Otherwise, this bot amounts to a regulatory taking of time and effort invested into articles done by a computer.

This is another idea like the ridiculous notability purges that come into fashion every once in a while, when a bunch of griefers and trolls gang up and ruin WP for everyone else (and no, I'm not talking about the deletion of articles on trivial local bands, either...) 24.62.204.207 (talk) 21:26, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

  • Re comment "If somebody wants to use the template bot to go around checking (as opposed to adding templates automatically) for the verifiability of articles, then that's fine - let them manually add the templates," - Hmm, the project is about manually adding templates and references, the bot just identifies the articles. Thanks for your support, read about the project, sign in and join up. Jeepday (talk) 21:56, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Hello, Jeepday. You seem to be convinced that you're doing something useful. But if this were true, the content editors (people who actually look up reference sources and use them) would be thanking you for what you're doing. This not happening; the content editors think you're being a pain in the neck, both to us and to the readership. Can't you find a more productive use of your time (like, say, read a book?). Sincerely, Opus33 (talk) 15:24, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Opus33 is right, Jeepday, and I wish you would consider your tagging exercise for what it is: entirely unnecessary. Wikipedia would be much improved by adding cites -- I don't think we disagree on this. Adding giant notes that articles without references need references is stating the obvious, and assigning other people busywork is tacky; it makes it appear that you are unwilling to do the hard work yourself. Thank you, Antandrus (talk) 04:27, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
I would say that with over 3,000 edits (including deleted) tagged with Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles; you can help!, I have more then shown a willingness to do the hard work myself. Unfortunately I can't do it all myself. A large portion of the article tagged as unreferenced since 2005 [1], have actually had references added, and if you look back through my Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles edits you will find the same as I did, many many articles with references added. I work at both ends of the unreferenced article issue, both adding the reference and encouraging others to add references. Those "giant notes that articles without references need references" tags actually encourage editors to add references. I have also found that even without the unreferenced tag the bot adding the category is enough to start editors adding references. [2], though not as many as the {{unreferenced}}. I look at {{unreferenced}} as a tool for teaching editors to reference, “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a life time”, and I encourage all to encourage others to reference their work as well as the work of others. Jeepday (talk) 23:35, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you put a sign above him saying "fish are needed here", some good Samaritan may stop and help. But that is not your achievement, and the Samaritan would have done good anyway. --RobertG ♬ talk 08:11, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
I agree with several editors in the various threads above on this Talk page that find this project useful. I have seen many articles with No references tags get references added, slowly and evolutionarily in an emergent fashion, over time. In fact I bet I find a few every month that still have the unreferenced tag in place even though one or more references have been added (I fix these by removing the unreferenced tag). Overall, there is value to this project. A bot merely identifies a set of articles with no references. Then individual human editors look at each page, assess the article, and potentially tag it with an appropriate tag if needed. Wikipedia articles with no verifiable citations bring down the value of Wikipedia for all of us. And such articles can be and are used as data for Wikipedia critics who diss the value of the entire project. N2e (talk) 04:50, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Bulk tagging articles with "unreferenced" is harmful to the project. Any time invested in this project would be better spent on finding citations. --Srleffler (talk) 05:19, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I just want to say one thing. I would probably not have found and referenced the article about Brage Sandmoen and dozens of other Norwegian footballers if it wasn't tagged as unsourced. Through wikiprojects (un)systematic work on topics/categories editors are able to find articles needing work that they actually have an interest in and are more likely to find sources about than some random aticle in a dated category that hasn't been touched for several years. I expect everyone who finds unsourced articles about Norwegian footballers to tag them so that they can be identified. Rettetast (talk) 00:18, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
How does the template alert you to work to be done better than the category "articles without citations" does? I haven't seen much (or any) opposition to the bot that tags these articles. It's the tags supposedly to warn readers that are the main problem for so many of us. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 04:54, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Questionable Behavior

Some editors have come here to vent after finding {{unreferenced}} on an article, I don't have a problem with that. I am very familiar with the negative response some editors have to any clean up project no matter how humble it's intent, (i.e Wikipedia talk:Unreferenced articles/Archive 1). If an editor believes that there is some reason that an article should not have been tagged as unreferenced, because Wikipolicy specificity excludes that type of article from WP:V I would suggest they bring it up with here, or on the editors talk page as occurred in these two edits, While not a policy, the editing guideline Wikipedia:Disambiguation#References, specifically excludes Disambiguation pages from references, as they are not articles they are a navigation aide. There is no policy that I am aware of that provides exclusion to Wikipedia:Verifiability for any article or class of article, and simply removing the tag [3] is inappropriate and will likely be reverted quickly [4]. When considering this type of behavior recall this nutshell; Wikipedia is based on discussion, not fighting. If someone challenges your edits, discuss it with them and seek a compromise, or seek dispute resolution. Don't just fight over competing views and versions. A user who edit wars, especially if they also over-use reversion, is likely to be blocked. We are all doing our best to improve Wikipedia, and each editor contributes in the way that best matches their desire to volunteer on the project. If adding references or tagging articles that need referenced improvement, fits in your desires to volunteer at Wikipedia, please join us here or at Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles, there is a lot to do and every edit helps. Jeepday (talk) 11:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Are you threatening to block anyone who dissents with your views?
No, not every edit helps, and I wish you would read what we have written above. An unreferenced article is obviously unreferenced, for there are none! Read what we wrote! What is pissing me off is that you are blithely going ahead with this odious tagging exercise, which accomplishes nothing of value, as though we were just an annoying noise.
We need to be serving our readers first, and it is patronizing to tell them that an article without references, as is obvious to anyone who is not blind, is unreferenced. This "CiterSquad" project is an "Uglification Project". Please consider doing something useful and actually add cites and references. I know it is harder than splattering these giant tags everywhere, but you will actually improve the encyclopedia that way. Thank you, Antandrus (talk) 00:43, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

How to tag a "soft redirect" page

I need some help for how to tag a soft redirect page such as Portuguese proverbs. It does not need any sort of {{unref}} tag but perhaps should be tagged so Eric9bot does not pick it up in the list. Alternatively, Eric9bot should simply not tag soft redirect pages. N2e (talk) 21:41, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I have modified the categorization and cleanup tasks such that the bot will no longer identify articles which transclude the template softredirect as unsourced, and will remove the category from any articles transcluding this template during its regular review of categorized articles. Erik9 (talk) 03:33, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks Eric9. That seems like a simple and elegant solution. Keep it automated when possible. Which won't use editor time to do anything special on these pages. N2e (talk) 04:41, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

To Tag or Not To Tag?: a statement by the bot operator, and associated poll

There appears to be a significant controversy here as to whether the placement of template:unreferenced on articles which contain category:articles lacking sources (Erik9bot) and have been manually confirmed to be unsourced is beneficial to the encyclopedia. I note that there was a substantial disagreement over the perceived utility of template:unreferenced on non-BLP articles in discussions at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Erik9bot 9, as a result of which I modified the task to include only the addition of a hidden category to articles identified as unsourced. Manual templating of articles in this category addresses the concerns expressed at the BRFA regarding possible inaccuracies in automated tagging (though the bot is, by my estimation, at least 99.9% accurate), but it is not responsive to objections to the proliferation of template:unreferenced on articles not primarily concerning living persons. Of course, once my bot categorizes articles as unsourced, I have no personal control over what editors do with that information; whether to diligently search for references, or to place template:unreferenced on as many articles as quickly as possible is at the discretion of the users involved, subject to the approval of the community. Therefore, I am setting up the following poll to ascertain community consensus regarding this issue. Erik9 (talk) 04:06, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

template:unreferenced is valuable insofar as it informs new editors unfamiliar with Wikipedia's verifiability policy of the need to add sources to unreferenced articles, and should be placed on all non-BLP articles unsourced for more than X days

  1. Is Valuable We cannot control what motives bring various editors to Wikipedia. WP allows the removal of uncited/unverified material per policy. Wikipedia is an emergent phenomenon in a human complex adaptive system. Since all editors are volunteers, they will each, by virtue of the nature of their interests, work on quite different aspects of what it takes to construct a great online encyclopedia resource. The core Wikipedia policy of verifiability makes it explicit that the "Burden of Evidence" is on the editor who wants to add (or retain) an assertion to (in) a Wikipedia article. It seems simple common courtesy to place some notification on an article before removing the unsourced material that WP policy allows to be removed.
    Different strokes for different editors. Some editors will want to make assertions about Garithaianik, and edit the content of that article; other editors, who might not know a thing about Garithaianik nor be interested in learning, will merely want to make Wikipedia (in the aggregate) a more reliable resource in the long term by gradually, in an often slow and evolutionary manner, making explicit the {{unreferenced}} state of the Garithaianik article, getting a date assigned to that state by SmackBot, and then allowing editors interested in that article, or that category of articles, to fix it if they wish. I am squarely in the latter camp. I simply want to take a very small action that sets articles up for future improvement, or AfD if necessary, in future months and years -- which makes Wikipedia a stronger informational resource over time. N2e (talk) 13:03, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
    Actually, this kind of misses the point. {{unreferenced}} and similar tags exist to not only inform the editors, but the readership--and appropriately informing the users trumps annoying some of the editors. Jclemens (talk) 16:05, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
  2. Is supported by the community Wikipedia:Content_noticeboard#Use_of_cleanup_templates_at_the_top_of_articles, Jeepday (talk) 18:55, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
  3. I agree with this proposal, up until the time limit. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'm a new page patroller. I'm not going to know about porn stars, or a Canadian town of 50 people. I might be able to get something online, but due to lack of regulation, I usually don't. On the other hand, people need to know that Wikipedia isn't perfect, and which pages need the most help. Tagging helps with that. If I need to wait X days until I can tag something, so be it. I dream of horses (T) @ 19:52, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
  4. I'll endorse this, although I also agree with Jclemens that the readership is a key target for this template. Having read enough newspaper articles about inaccurate tidbits (and chunks, and meals) in Wikipedia, I think it is useful to alert readers when an article's contents are unverified. Dekimasuよ! 13:16, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
  5. Agreed, except for the time limit part. The template usage is appropriate, until the matter becomes satisfactorily rectified on the article page. Cirt (talk) 00:07, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
  6. Agreed, but the purpose should be to inform readers that the article is sub-standard, not editors. It should be placed on all articles that are left unreferenced for any length of time - please just allow editors time to finish their edits! AndrewRT(Talk) 23:10, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

template:unreferenced should be placed on an unsourced non-BLP article only when editors familiar with the subject matter cannot easily find appropriate references

template:unreferenced is a detriment to the project, encourages the expenditure of time on quick tagging instead of careful research and sourcing, and should be deleted

  1. Agreed. I think that the middle-ground version would also be acceptable. But in all cases, a message on the Talk Page of the article is more constructive and likely to lead to a fix (either deletion of the statement/material, addition of references from harder-to-find sources, or explanation for why the current article is sufficiently sourced). (btw -- is posting this poll on Talk:CiterSquad a good way to judge community consensus? can this go on centralized discussion?) -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 04:46, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
    Comment. In theory there are relatively few of the nearly three million articles that couldn't get some drive by clean-up tag for something or another. IMHO, it would be more helpful to actually do the work you wish to see done. Short of that it would be more meaningful to actually focus on articles that are more in need of sourcing than others. I think a project to tag BLP with {{BLP unreferenced}} has already happened and I think the community is generally supportive of that. In short I guess I'm opposed to any automated tagging, it really seems unneeded as we already have many editors who use experienced judgment to determine which, of say ten articles deserve extra skepticism and thus should be focussed on for sourcing. I'm afraid it's less helpful to have 10,000 articles tagged as such when really we should focus on the 500-1,000 or whatever the going figures are. By simply swarming the categories of articles needing clean-up it's making the work harder for those who are actually willing to do the work. -- Banjeboi 05:17, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
  2. If I thought the template actually led to improvements, I'd say go for it. But, I don't think they lead to improvement. Our editor base is on the decline, and the actual solution to the problem is to get more editors. I think this is likely to actually drive off a few editors. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 15:18, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
  3. The template is useless, it patronizes readers, and it annoys and possibly drives away good editors. I'm all for deleting it. Opus33 (talk) 15:36, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
    Comment please see Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 September 1#Template:Unreferenced, if an editor feels that consensus has changed I would encourage them to post at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion. Jeepday (talk) 18:59, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

This poll should be unnecessary: projects that affect thousands of articles should obtain a clear consensus before starting

  1. ...and should not blithely dismiss criticism as without merit, and carry on regardless. I have no objection to the bot, or its category. --RobertG ♬ talk 16:32, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
  2. Pretty much. This one corked me because it violates the consensus we worked out at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Erik9bot_9 -- that we would use the hidden category, but not tag all the articles with "unreferenced". This project exists mainly to do exactly what we agreed not to do. -- I do appreciate the work of the bot; the category is quite useful, and we can use the list of articles so generated as a working list of things that need to be referenced, with cites provided for 1) controversial statements, or statements likely to be challenged, in compliance with policy; 2) referenced opinion; 3) direct quotes; 4) statistics. (Inline cites are not required for every fact on Wikipedia, a policy nicety often overlooked by referencing fundamentalists.) That said, I think that the unreferenced tag is OK on BLPs, particularly when the creator walks away: we need to watch over those with special care. -- This may be a dumb question -- but why aren't all articles with those "unreferenced" tags in a category, so we can find them? Or is there a way I've missed? Antandrus (talk) 00:52, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
    Articles which transclude template:unreferenced are listed in dated subcategories of category:articles lacking sources and in category:all articles lacking sources. Direct placement of articles in these categories has been suggested as an alternative means of indexing, if the community finds prominent notices to be undesirable. Erik9 (talk) 04:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
  3. No doubt. Doing anything with {{unreferenced}} like deleting it would affect countless articles, very strong community-wide consensus is needed to effect any kind of change. This poll will not achieve anything. -- Ϫ 20:42, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
    Comment That unreferenced articles need tagging as such is not a new idea, nor should it be considered controversial. I always tag those I come across as a matter of routine if I cannot immediately fix them, and everybody should. The objections to the project are essentially the fear that this necessary function will be used in a destructive and thoughtless way.DGG (talk) 22:43, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

what needs tagging

What needs tagging is the dubious material. My priorities for citing are a little different from Antaradus's, but only a little:

  1. Controversial material
  2. possibly negative articles of BLP and on businesses
  3. unreferenced opinion
  4. material that might just possibly not actually be true.

I think most articles with statistics in my experience prove to have referenced somewhere, but they are likely to be out of date. Similarly, direct quotes are, I find, usually correct, but they can indicate a PR article.
and an equally important priorities

  1. articles where all or most of it reads like a copyvio
  2. articles that reads like advertisements or public relations
  3. people and local institutions that don't look like they have any actual claim to notability
  4. articles whose basic information is so out of date as to be misleading

Those three are just as important as unreferenced, if not more so. The sort of references that can sometimes get added to articles to avoiud "unreferenced"do not necessarily help very much. Useless references are worse than no references--they delude people into thinking the material is actually sourced.

But basically I cannot see anything wrong with using the tag--as long as it is not applied to material where there are references, but given as external links or informally in the article. References contain more than footnotes. It's been accepted since long before I came here that articles do, after all, need references. Unfortunately,while placing a tag is easy, Doing the actual work of finding good references is not so easy. That's where we need people to work. If the project really wants to accomplish something good for Wikipedia , they should reference twice the number of articles that they tag. Maybe three times. DGG (talk) 22:39, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm also a member of WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup and I make an effort to find references for articles that seem like they need them the most, like if the tag has been in place for more than a year. And I take pride in my work when I find that elusive cite that really improves the article, so I leave a link to WP:WUAC in the edit summary and a banner on the talkpage encouraging others to do the same. See [5] for an example.
Also I try not to tag unreferenced stubs with any tag (except maybe {{BLPunsourced}} in some cases) because the stub tag is enough to say that 'this article is incomplete' and adding any further tags would just be redundant. This really defeats the purpose of the stub tag and is a pet peeve of mine when I see multiple tags on an article already labeled as a stub.
So, as with anything, there is common sense and good judgment involved in tagging articles, and this comes from experience on Wikipedia. Newbies always start off by going on tagging sprees in the misguided but good faith thinking that any article that doesn't strictly follow Wikipedia's policies should be tagged with as many tags as apply, but they eventually grow out of it and learn how to remove those same tags. The unreferenced tag is valuable to those with enough experience on Wikipedia to know that an article needs work, but might not have the time or resources to fix it at the time, but can flag it for other eyes to see and notice and leave content in the fact that it will eventually be addressed. It is also valuable to readers and actually encourages some to become editors. -- Ϫ 00:08, 5 August 2009 (UTC)


I think this project should refocus on dealing with the 145,811 articles that are already tagged. Every now and again I make my way through a bunch, and it's not hard to do a Google and pick up a couple of obvious cites. I am against the tagging of any more articles until the 145,811 articles are brought down. Already, the huge number of tagged articles is off-putting - adding to that burden will just put off people like myself. Let's change this project into one which encourages people to add cites, and gives tips on how to do a Google search. And then rewards people for finding cites. SilkTork *YES! 19:05, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Finding Articles to match your references and knowledge

One of the challenges I find in adding references is when working an unreferenced category, there is seldom a relationship between one article and the next. You spend a lot of time learning about and finding references on the topic and then you go on to something else. While this can be fun and I enjoy it, it does not lead to a lot of references added during my limited volunteer time. I posted a question and got a response from Rich A way to do this is to download WP:AWB and use the software to make lists from the categories, use the tool "List comparer" to find intersections. I have never used AWB and am not familiar with it. Is there anyone here that can write some instructions to allow unfamiliar volunteers to make use of this approach? Jeepday (talk) 23:08, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Maybe it's better to work from the other direction -- for example, if you can find a single fact-rich source, and then find the articles on the unreferenced list that can profitably be cited from that source, you can knock quite a few articles off the unreferenced list. I have, for example, a giant encyclopedia of military history, and a couple nights ago I tried using it to cite a few of the date articles (e.g. 304 BC) and found it was actually fairly easy (albeit time-consuming) to pillage it for citeable facts within a specific topic area. If you work one article at a time, jumping between different topic areas, it would take longer; in the case of the book you can look up specific unreferenced article titles in the index. Antandrus (talk) 23:54, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
Personally I think there's no rush and you should take as much time as you need to properly reference an article. 'Quality over Quantity' is something I strive for in many areas of Wikipedia. It's not going anywhere, and the userbase will increase so more editors will work to counteract the growing amount of unreferenced articles. So think of it as another article down and know that someone else out there is doing the exact same thing, eventually we'll make a dent in the backlog.
You mention that you enjoy adding references.. Important thing is to make sure it stays fun, because once it stops becoming fun it becomes a chore.
A good page to help find references on a specific topic is Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Shared Resources. -- Ϫ 00:45, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
You can also use WP:CATSCAN. In addition to lists, I have added direct links to searches at Wikipedia:WikiProject Football/Unreferenced BLPs/Sorted by country. Maybe an idea for other wikiprojects? There is also Cleanup listings that sorts cleanup categories per wikiproject. Rettetast (talk) 21:33, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Summary of objections

As with anything on Wikipedia on the subject of references, tags, projects, and/or bots. There are a number of different thoughts on the best way, the right way, etc to do this or that. Many of the objects so far have been subject to extensive debate in more specialized areas of Wikipedia and I have tried to point to the more appropriate venue in each instance. While there are a number of difference that span Wikipedia there is nothing in this project that is counter to Wiki-policy or guidelines. There is one very important question raised here though, and that is the order of priority in the first and second goals of this project, as written currently it is Tag, then reference. I propose we agree to disagree on the topics that are beyond the scope of the project and focus on what is in scope, "Priority of goals". Jeepday (talk) 22:19, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Priority of goals

The project goals as of August 14, 2009

The primary goal of this project is to check that the article is unreferenced, and if the article is appropriate for Wikipedia, add the template {{BLP unsourced}}, {{unreferenced}}, to encourage editors to reference the article. If there are poorly formatted references in the article, format them per Wikipedia:Citing sources or place the {{Refimprove}}. Community consensus requires that unreferenced articles be checked by a human before an unreferenced tag is added to an article.

The secondary goal an ensure that articles meet at least the barest minimum of verifiability, by including at least one reliable published (online or offline) reference. The project Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles has this goal, articles with {{unreferenced}} are reviewed, based on the length of time the article has been tagged.

My principal criticism of the project could be addressed by either reversing the goals, or renaming the project (I'd prefer the former). Better to cite than place tags asking for other people to cite; doing so is not being a "citer squad", but more like a "tagger squad" or "template-placing squad." I propose as the primary goal this, or something like it: The primary goal of this project is to check whether or not the article is unreferenced, and if it is appropriate for Wikipedia, but unreferenced, add a "references" section at the bottom, and find at least one reference to place there. If it relies on specialist material out of the range of a Google search or what you have available, you may place an {{unreferenced}} template in the references section to encourage those with access to such sources to reference the article. More or less. I don't mind the {{BLP unsourced}} at the top of BLPs, which frankly ought to be aggressively stubbed or deleted if unsourced. Also, I think contacting the main article author(s), should they still be editing, would be appropriate if you insist on placing an unreferenced template. There ought to be some action besides just placing templates (contacting an appropriate Wikiproject would suffice if the original author(s) have moved on). Antandrus (talk) 18:03, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
Antandrus, if the primary goal was changed would you join the project and participate in referencing articles? Jeepday (talk) 11:24, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Yes -- if the primary goal was adding cites rather than tags -- yes I would. I'm especially intrigued by the idea of refining the category so that subject-matter experts can quickly access a list of unreferenced articles in their area (see the ongoing discussion on my talk page). Antandrus (talk) 18:13, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Fact is Jeepday, there is a concern we are driving off new editors. Tagging and moving on is not very welcoming. The 'pedia will suffer if there is not an ongoing influx of new blood, as editors leave all the time. The primary goal as stated above is a direct threat to the morale of new editors. This is where I have a problem with this. As far as the secondary goal, we have a place for that, it's called AfD and any editor is able to nominate/prod/whatever an article. I don't see why mentioning the objective is helpful. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:02, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

A net positive (to morale)

I have been thinking about this - I guess what I'd like to see is that the majority of the interactions between taggers and the original stub or unreferenced article creators are positive ones, where the latter party feels they have been helped rather than otherwise by a citersquad member. This can occur in many ways, but I think this needs to be a prerequisite. This can't really be enshrined in a policy, only monitored after the fact. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:57, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree, and this is particularly true of new editors with new articles. I spoke with Erik9 about putting new articles in a separate category. He is not able to do it so far. The majority of the articles I have looked at in Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot) are pre -2004. Jeepday (talk) 14:13, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Pre 04??? wow....need to see that list (sounds of ruffling wiki-pages) Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:15, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
I have found some from 2001, (the first couple were a WOW, I should have made a list) and many from 04 to 06 when the change to require references was taking hold. Jeepday (talk) 14:26, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Tagging date articles

I'm concerned about the tagging of articles like 391 BC etc. which it seems are meant to just be summaries of events, births and deaths. There's a large amount of these tagged in Category:Articles lacking sources from August 2009 and I don't think they need to be tagged. -- Ϫ 02:24, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree, because almost all of these pages link to pages where the reference can be found (the point of references is to point people to a location where the can verify the article's claims; for date pages, the references are the links to other WP pages; they're moments where you could say WP temporarily becomes a 4th-generation source, treating its main pages as tertiary sources).
I think pages like these are problematic for other reasons: they're unlikely to be watched by someone who knows enough about the topic to know that everything on the page is true; but I don't think that adding a reference or two would solve the issue. A {{fact}} tag for a particular entry which can't be verified could be useful; though I think that if something seems fishy and can't be verified with a quick web search, it's probably not one of the most important events for the year and should just be removed rather than tagged. (Same for fishy, not easily verifiable disambiguation page red-links). -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 07:15, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
If by saying they don't need to be tagged, you are saying they don't need to be referenced. Then you would need some supporting policy that says year article like 391 BC don't need references. My understanding of Wikipedia:Verifiability is that every article (including 391 BC) requires references. I know and agree with the Wikipedia:Disambiguation#References that references are not required on disambiguation pages. The entry at Wikipedia:Lists#Listed_items is very clear that lists are articles that require references. Year articles are articles, and they require references per current policy. If you would like to change that policy, the place to start would probably be Wikipedia talk:Verifiability (way out of scope for this project). I personally think that a change to policy that would remove the reference requirement from year articles would be unlikely. Though I have stopped tagging them currently (since a related discussion at User talk:Antandrus) pending the outcome of any discussion that might be started. I am beginning to think there is no one willing to champion the policy discussion. Please let me know if you are up for it, unless someone here starts the ball rolling it is not likely to happen. Jeepday (talk) 22:33, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
Assuming no one is going to make this policy change/clarification? Jeepday (talk) 23:34, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Switching Priorities

There have been several conversations about changing the goals of the project, which have been discussed here and on some user talk pages. The main road block has been how do you put add {{unreferenced}}, behind add references without violating WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:N. We can agree that there are two camps when it comes to templates, and we can agree that adding references is always the best choice, if not always the most practical. Does this work?

The primary goal to ensure that articles meet at least the barest minimum of verifiability, by including at least one reliable published (online or offline) reference. The project Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles also has this goal, articles with {{unreferenced}} are reviewed, based on the length of time the article has been tagged.

An optional goal of this project is to check that the article is unreferenced, and if the article is appropriate for Wikipedia, add the template {{BLP unsourced}}, {{unreferenced}}, to encourage editors to reference the article. If there are poorly formatted references in the article, format them per Wikipedia:Citing sources or place the {{Refimprove}}.

I switched the order and reworded slightly. Jeepday (talk) 03:29, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

I like this better, however I still maintain that articles already marked with a stub template shouldn't be tagged, as the stub template already makes it clear that the article is incomplete. Although I am not opposed to this project I must agree that with 1 to 2 line stubs such as Zacualpan, Nayarit for example, it is blatantly self-evident that it is unreferenced, furthermore with geographic articles such as that it would be very easy to quickly find a cite to verify that this place actually exists. I contend that this project should focus more on tagging BLPs which have a more obvious need for verification not every little stub the bot happened to tag. In fact, isn't it enough to just have it in the Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot) only? That way readers don't get distracted by an in-your-face tag where it's not really needed, and for editors the article is still categorized as being unreferenced to comply with WP:V. I think it's great that we have a hidden category of unreferenced articles that we can check through, but as far as tagging every single little stub from that category I think it's unnecessary. -- Ϫ 17:11, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
Furthermore, an article already tagged with {{Original research}} or any of the other related tags at Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup#Verifiability and sources doesn't also need an {{unreferenced}} template on top of it because they all recommend to the reader to add reliable references. -- Ϫ 17:24, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
Switched Priorities per above. Jeepday (talk) 22:24, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
OE, you have some good points about short stubs, and many would agree with you. I personally tend have a higher expectation for references then many editors, I would (and do) tag even short stubs. On the other hand, many editors feel as you do, with some arguing that stubs don't need any references (though it has been a while since I heard that). Jeepday (talk) 23:00, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
Articles like Zacualpan, Nayarit, A quick check on Google gets many hits, so passing WP:N and general hoax factor is easy. but finding WP:RS that support the content is harder. but even this short aricle has POV issues and WP:OR issues. Per google maps (and I am not claiming that is RS for a reference) you could just as easily pick San Izidro and/or El Cerrito as bordering but Las Varas seems more like a neighboring city then a bordering area, and without RS anything you pick would be WP:OR. The sentence "It is a community that has experienced rapid growth due to tourism." has clear WP:POV and WP:OR issues. The sentence "The population was 4,468 in 2000" is found a number of times on the web, hard to tell what the source is I did not find anything that listed a source for the data, presumably it is a census of some type but I could not verify that. If I had not tagged it, and had instead tried to reference it I would probalby have stripped it down to "Zacualpan is in the Mexican state of Nayarit, located at 21°15′N 105°10′W / 21.250°N 105.167°W / 21.250; -105.167." and looking at google books for Zacualpan, Nayarit, I would have had a hard time getting Reliable sources for even that much. Heck at this point I am not even sure it is a town, and I have been looking at references on it for 30 minutes, is it a town? Are San Izidro and/or El Cerrito towns, or are they named places in the town of Zacualpan? Jeepday (talk) 23:00, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

What we've come to look like

For the first time in about a year, I tried the experiment of clicking on "Random Article" a whole bunch of times. What a discouraging experience! Our encyclopedia looks like crap! There are banners and tags all over the place, the infoboxes are not only ubiquitous, but they've gotten bigger, frequently bigger than the article itself. The WP now looks like some sort of pathetic, low-concept web advertisement.

All of those useless, ugly things are here for pretty much the same reason: there seem to be plenty of people who don't read books, or otherwise have any kind of real interest in the world, but for some reason want to keep themselves busy editing the Wikipedia. So they keep busy by festooning it with junk. It's a damn shame, and I wish it would stop.

Opus33 (talk) 23:31, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

And there are hundreds of things anyone can do to improve Wikipedia without being a "reader". The beneficial ones seem to have in common that they don't involve placing a big box (a maintenance template, or an infobox for a person) on an article. The fascination with boxes seems to be about wanting to make a mark with minimal effort; why else bother? They state or restate the obvious. They are simplistic. They're at least slightly imposing to readers, and demotivating to editors (they say, "Hi, I'd like to make a criticism of this article you've been involved with, without actually taking the time to make an active statement in my own words"--not the wiki way at all). Outriggr (talk) 02:27, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
This has been discussed to death and yours is still the minority view. Infoboxes/Navboxes serve a useful purpose as long as they're not obnoxiously large or badly formatted, same goes with maintenance templates, which I and a large majority find highly beneficial for identifying those articles that still need work. But 'drive-by tagging'.. without making any attempt at improvement.. that is the only time someone is not doing things "the wiki way", and I think you'll find that most if not all the members of this project do NOT do that. -- Ϫ 05:02, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
The last I checked, the active members of this project were doing exactly that. § Minority? There are more editors on this page expressing concerns about this project, off and on, then there are project members discussing anything. § On your user page, you say "I'm just as concerned with the 'look and feel' of Wikipedia as I am with content; to me, an article has that extra 'impact' when it looks nicely formatted and laid out." And you wish to achieve this by, e.g., this type of thing? That seems inconsistent to me. By tagging it thus, you make the article more of a problem than it was before. Since when are encyclopedia articles (on wikis or not) published with editorial scribbles in the margins? (And ironically, the person adding this tag isn't addressing anyone, other than that magic "someone" who will "fix" what the tagger won't.) No one yet has responded to my very simple and legitimate thought experiment: you could tag 95% of articles on wikipedia with numerous of these tags, because few articles are of "ideal quality". Would you be happy then, with 95% of articles having a few tags at the top? That is what I want a response to. It is not rhetoric; it is asking you to examine the consequences of your approach when carried out consistently and in full. I imagine that there are, say, 5000 CiterSquad members doing this type of edit. I then imagine the end state of Wikipedia articles, subject to a consistent and thorough implementation of the CiterSquad "philosophy", and such tagging as I provided an example of above. I am repulsed by the end state. Who wouldn't be, especially a person concerned with the "look and feel" of an article? Do you see, in contrast, how I would not be repulsed by 95% of articles having accurate "defaultsorts" or being free of typos? That's the contrasting thought experiment. Take an editing behavior, imagine it carried out in full on Wikipedia, and see if the result is desirable. I can't imagine how anyone could defend a bunch of self-important, self-referencing templates disturbing the key visual field of most articles. Outriggr (talk) 05:55, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
No I don't think anyone would be happy with that result. But there's no need for me to imagine it because it's just not realistic, this project would be shot down pretty quick if that's what it was proposing to do. What I'm defending is the use of tags in general by Wikipedians (the majority) not just this project. We obviously have different views. I try to keep a balance between aesthetics and utilizing the maintenance tags where they're obviously needed (I admit the example you gave isn't one of my better judgments but still valid and I do intend to resolve it). The citersquad "philosophy" as I see it is just to check articles that they comply with WP:V policy, and if not either fix the problem or tag it, to me that sounds like a worthy cause that's not meant to be done on a mass scale, so why imagine it? As far as "leaving it for that magic someone" I prefer to see it as leaving it for a fellow colleague in good faith, content in the fact that we're all working on this together, rather than taking the attitude that "oh if he's too lazy to fix it why should I?". It can work both ways. We both need to assume good faith and know that each other is doing what they think is right for Wikipedia. With that I'd rather not debate this further as it's probably not going to resolve anything. -- Ϫ 16:09, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
Your good faith is not in question, OE, but your good judgment is. If you strewed junk all over a shared apartment, your roommates would be entitled to complain, and that's exactly what we are doing here. Opus33 (talk) 18:28, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
Opus, are you suggesting a user has violated policy or consensus? If so please indicate which edits violated which policy. Else please review Wikipedia:No personal attacks, in my opinion your edit above is counter to it as well as WP:AGF and WP:BITE. Jeepday (talk) 22:43, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
[ec] OE, thank you for your reply. I do agree with Opus33 above; I don't think people who disagree with each other's actions/ideas are automatically assuming bad faith. (That's a platitude used too often on Wikipedia!) I agree that we have successfully shared our viewpoints and we can leave it at that. Outriggr (talk) 22:47, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
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