Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles

Welcome

This is a WikiProject, a collaboration area and open group of editors dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of a particular topic, or to organizing some internal Wikipedia process. Please see the Guide to WikiProjects and the Directory of WikiProjects for more information.

Shortcut: WP:URA

Welcome to the Unreferenced articles WikiProject. We are a group of volunteers dedicated to reviewing and adding references to articles that are in Category:Articles lacking sources and Category:Unreferenced BLPs.

Per wikipedia's verifiability policy: 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. Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's core content policies. The others include No original research and Neutral point of view.

There are currently over 300000 unreferenced articles, which is wikipedia's biggest cleanup category, we need your help! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them on our discussion page.

Getting started

• Want to join? Click here and then edit. Add your name to the list using the {{User|Name}} format.
• Need help adding references? See the Hints and tips and See also sections below. Still stuck ? ask a question on the talk page.

Goal

The goal of this project is to ensure that:

• Articles meet at least the barest minimum of verifiability and notability, by including at least one reliable published (online or offline) reference. The highest priority are Biographies of Living Persons.

• An optional goal of this project is to add as many reliable references to articles as you can find. While this is optional, it is recommend, particularly when dealing with Biographies of Living Persons.

Related projects

• The Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons WikiProject focuses specifically on living persons.
• The Citation Cleanup Project aims to improve the quality and consistency of citations and footnotes in Wikipedia.
• The Fact and Reference Check WikiProject 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."

Tasks

Unreferenced biographies of living persons

Focusing on the old subcategories from Category:Unreferenced BLPs, currently this is:

Unreferenced articles

Focusing on the old subcategories from Category:Articles lacking sources, currently this is:

Articles needing additional references

Focusing on the old subcategories from Category:Articles needing additional references, currently this is:

Open tasks:

• Identify and correctly tag articles which have been tagged incorrectly. See the hints and tips section for more info.

Hints and tips

This is list of the main ideas to keep in mind when working on this project. For a more detailed, step-by-step guide see this how to guide.

General

• In order to help people find this project, consider using an edit summary like the following: Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles; [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles|you can help!]]
• If the article has even one reference or external link (that is related to the article content) use -

• Templates {{Refimprove}}, {{Primarysources}}, {{Onesource}} and {{rs}} as appropriate to put the article in Category:Articles lacking reliable references
• Templates {{Verify source}}, or {{Verify credibility}} tags to put the article in to Category:Wikipedia articles needing factual verification.
• If the reference is spam or completely unrelated, you may want to remove it and consider further action.

• If an article has no reference, attempt to locate and add a reference(s) to the article.

• Add a section ==References== adding "{{Reflist}}" below will automatically generate the list of footnotes if they are used.
• At the barest minimum add a link to the reference you found.

Check validity of articles

• Check if the article qualifies for speedy deletion/prod/afd/merge/redirect, review the rules and nominate as appropriate.
• If suspicious, check for possible copyright violation.
• Consider using {{find}} to look for sources.
• Validity related templates include {{citation style}}, {{OR}} and others from Category:Citation and verifiability maintenance templates

Banner

This article was provided with references by a Unreferenced articles project volunteer on 2010-03-20. If you edit this page, please build on the good work by citing your sources.

How to use

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:

{{Wikipedia Unreferenced articles improved|date=YYYY-MM-DD}}

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

{{Wikipedia Unreferenced articles improved|date={{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}-{{subst:CURRENTMONTH}}-{{subst:CURRENTDAY2}}}}

When this template is applied the article's talk page becomes a member of Category:Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles improved

Volunteers

Userboxes {{User Unreferenced Articles}} This user is a member of the Unreferenced articles WikiProject.

Feel free to sign your name and leave any comments if you volunteer for this cleanup project. You might want to consider adding {{User Unreferenced Articles}} to your userpage, which will produce a box like the one at right.

1. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving (Should we have a userbox?)
2. Jeepday (talk) 02:38, 17 May 2007 (UTC) I am ready! (yes to the userbox)
3. PhilKnight 16:06, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
4. Enslin I was just thinking there should be something like this.
5. E104421 12:19, 18 June 2007 (UTC) - Good idea!
6. DGG (talk) 04:04, 17 July 2007 (UTC) I support all improvement projects--deletion is the last resort, not the first.
7. Dabomb87 21:16, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
8. ArielGold 07:13, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
9. —Viriditas | Talk 02:00, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
10. Pinkadelica 09:17, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
11. --Esprit15d 21:23, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
12. --Pearrari 23:26, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
13. Lquilter Lquilter (talk) 14:14, 29 November 2007 (UTC) - excellent project idea. Very important.
14. Ascidian 23:06, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
15. BelovedFreak 23:59, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
16. FCSundae (talk) 08:00, 5 May 2008 (UTC) - Going after unreferenced BLPs.
17. Excirial ^{(Talk,Contribs)} 11:52, 30 May 2008 (UTC) I will be going after the oldest articles first, excluding bands and music records
18. --THE FOUNDERS INTENT ^PRAISE 22:33, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
19. Vejvančický I´m trying to improve mainly Czech unreferenced stubs.
20. --Hut 8.5 13:34, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
21. --Rosiestep (talk) 21:36, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
22. Whpq (talk) 20:09, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
23. Bearian (talk) 18:30, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
24. The New Mikemoral^talk_contribs 00:42, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
25. Ricardiana (talk) 05:00, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
26. HJMitchell You rang? 22:50, 28 April 2009 (UTC)- might as well add my name to the list! I do a lot of this stuff for other causes!
27. Ernstblumberg (talk) 13:54, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
28. Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail} 04:09, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
29. Esowteric (talk) 13:47, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
30. Arthree (talk) 07:16, 3 June 2009 (UTC) - Might as well do something useful while at work...
31. œ^™ 00:09, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
32. Nicosia1 (talk) 15:06, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
33. Mattg82 (talk) 01:27, 23 December 2009 (UTC) - Happy to help with this project.
34. Altamel (talk) 22:01, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
35. Jezebel'sPonyo^shhh 17:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC) I was already working through the list on my own, I might as well do it in good company!
36. Nabil rais2008 (talk) 15:57, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
37. RDBury (talk) 21:42, 13 February 2010 (UTC) - Specializing in math articles.
38. Ice Mario!!! 01:00, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
39. ManicSpider (talk) 04:25, 9 March 2010 (UTC) Starting at the oldest articles and working my way forward! ^_^
40. N2e (talk) 20:59, 10 March 2010 (UTC) — improving Wikipedia to help ensure only verifiably sourced information has become my most important wikitask. Happy to join the team officially.

Invitation

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

Please accept this invite to join the Unreferenced articles WikiProject, a WikiProject dedicated to decreasing the number of unreferenced articles on Wikipedia. As of February, 2010 there were over 285,000 unreferenced articles on Wikipedia, we need your help! Simply click here and sign your username to accept!

Barnstar

• Awarded to any volunteer's hard work in referencing articles. Just place the following code on the volunteer's talk or award page to reward their efforts. {{subst:The Citation Barnstar|message ~~~~}}

See also

Finding references

• Google web search
• Google books search
• Google news search
• Google scholar

• Wikipedia:List of free online resources
• Wikipedia:Goodcharts - A list of links to verify music chart positions and certifications.

Related projects

• WikiProject Citation cleanup
• WikiProject Fact and Reference Check
• WikiProject Resource Exchange