Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Backlog drives/August 2026
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Welcome to the WikiProject Unreferenced Articles August 2026 backlog drive! On the first day of the drive, there were nearly 47,000 articles in the total unreferenced article backlog, including 41,899 articles tagged as entirely without references on Wikipedia.
Our goals for this drive are fivefold:
- Add inline citations to at least 6,000 unreferenced articles
- Bring the total backlog to below 40,000 articles (stretch goal)
- Clear the backlog of unreferenced biographies of living persons completely
- Clear the backlog of unreferenced articles from 2011 completely
- Bring the number of months of unreferenced articles down from 178 to below 170.
Reducing the number of unsourced articles improves the quality of Wikipedia as a whole, verifying accurate information in articles and helping to remove the inaccurate.
To participate: (§ Detailed instructions)
- Find an unreferenced article. These can be found in the backlog of articles tagged as unreferenced.
- Add to the article at least one inline citation of a reliable source which verifies information in the article, then accurately update its tags.
- Remember to tag your edit summary with AUG26 once per article to tally the points later; [[WP:AUG26]] helps to advertise the event as well.[a]
The referencing portion of the drive will run from August 1, 00:00 UTC until September 1, 23:59 UTC. Only submissions made in this period will be counted. The review period of the drive will extend until September 7, 23:59 UTC to allow time for additional reviews.
Where to get help
[edit]For advice on adding references, read the § Tips on this page and the helpful guide at Wikipedia:Citing sources, or ask at the WikiProject Unreferenced Articles talk page.
If you have questions or concerns about the drive, please use the backlog drive talk page or contact the organizers, Cielquiparle, ARandomName123, and SunloungerFrog. For technical issues, contact DreamRimmer, who is providing technical support for this drive.
Rules
[edit]- 1 point for adding at least one inline citation from a reliable source to an unreferenced article, usually tagged with {{Unreferenced}}, {{BLP unsourced}}, or {{Prod blp/dated}}. Untagged, but unreferenced articles are also acceptable.
- 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.
- If the article is not fully supported by the new reference, add {{citation needed}} as needed.
- 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. (See this discussion)
- All citing contributions without
AUG26in the edit summary will not be counted.[a]- If making multiple edits to an article, include "AUG26" 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
[edit]Find an article in Category:Articles lacking sources (credits to User:Ajpolino and User:Ipigott). Here are some ways to search:
- By search term: go to the search bar and type
[search term] incategory:"All articles lacking sources". - By WikiProject: go to Bambot's WikiProject Cleanup Listings, find the project name and click "by cat", then scroll to find the category "Cites no sources".
- By article topic: use the navbox on Category:Articles lacking sources, or search
articletopic:[topic] incategory:"All articles lacking sources". - By category: use WP:PetScan to find the intersection between "All articles lacking sources" and a chosen category by entering both in "Categories" on separate lines, without the "Category:" part.
- By popularity: see § Popular articles
- By category or WikiProject, and popularity: use the pre-canned queries in Petscan filtering by category or WikiProject, or create Petscan queries of your own following this user-friendly guide – and even organize the output by popularity (or other criteria).
Then, find a reliable source.
- Familiarize yourself with reliable sources on Wikipedia.
- For tips, see § Some tricks and § Determining what sources are usable.
If at least one reliable source is found, follow these steps:
- Cite it inline. Be sure to include all the needed citation data including the title, date, and author/publisher (see WP:CITE). Page numbers and ISBN are strongly recommended wherever present. Place the citation after the punctuation, with no space.
- Add {{reflist}} and ==References== if not yet present (see MOS:ORDER).
- Remove {{Unreferenced}}, {{BLP unsourced}}, or {{Prod blp/dated}}. It is recommended to replace it with {{More citations needed}} if large parts of the article are still unreferenced, or add {{cn}} to short chunks of text.
- Add an edit summary including "
AUG26". Do this only once per article, even if you make multiple edits.
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
[edit]
Goals:
- Add inline citations to at least 6,000 unreferenced articles
- Bring the total backlog to below 40,000 articles (stretch goal)
- Clear the backlog of unreferenced biographies of living persons completely
- Clear the backlog of unreferenced articles from 2011 completely
- Bring the number of months of unreferenced articles down from 178 to below 170.
| Date | Participants | Total articles |
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 August 2026 | 101 | 46,988 | — | — |
| 2 August 2026 | 115 | 46,202 |  786
|
786
|
| Date | Participants | Articles |
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 August 2026 | 101 | 41,889 | — | — |
| 2 August 2026 | 115 | 41,137 | 752
|
752
|
| 3 August 2026 | 117 | 40,664 | 473
|
1225
|
Milestones
[edit]Oldest backlogs
[edit]
|
Category:Articles lacking sources from July 2011
|
28 / 32 (88%)
|
|
Category:Articles lacking sources from August 2011
|
35 / 54 (65%)
|
|
Category:Articles lacking sources from September 2011
|
21 / 38 (55%)
|
|
Category:Articles lacking sources from October 2011
|
22 / 61 (36%)
|
|
Category:Articles lacking sources from November 2011
|
17 / 41 (41%)
|
|
Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2011
|
40 / 79 (51%)
|
Smallest backlogs
[edit]
|
Category:Articles lacking sources from February 2023
|
9 / 12 (75%)
|
|
Category:Articles lacking sources from February 2025
|
18 / 36 (50%)
|
|
Category:Articles lacking sources from November 2023
|
4 / 49 (8%)
|
Leaderboard
[edit]Last updated August 03, 2026, 09:15 UTC
Participants
[edit]Reviews
[edit]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.
Tips
[edit]Determining what sources are usable
[edit]Even if we are just citing one source for an article, that source must be chosen carefully. That source needs to:
This is a lot to take in. And worse, sometimes you won't be able to find a source that meets these criteria! 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, print-on-demand, or self-published from groups such as Lulu.com, AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Trafford Publishing, Xlibris, PediaPress, etc. (tip: search Wikipedia for the publisher's name)
- Websites made up of user-generated content such as IMDb, Goodreads and Fandom
Some tricks
[edit]Searching for sources (detailed guide at Wikipedia:Advanced source searching)
- The {{Unreferenced}} template placed at the top of unreferenced pages contains many search links pre-filled with the article topic (and configured to exclude other Wikipedia articles).
- On Google and some other search engines:
- Use "" (double quotes) to search for the term exactly. This means that "pinnochio" should only show pages containing "pinnochio", not pinocchio (but note that sometimes quotes are disregarded and the wrong term is shown anyway).
- Use - (dash) to exclude pages containing unwanted terms, e.g. -wikipedia.
- Some articles, especially for more general topics, might have sources available with slightly different wording, e.g. "basketweaving" vs "basket weaving", "basket weaver", etc.
- Search millions of old and new books at Google Books and Archive.org. For Archive.org, go to https://archive.org/search, click the search bar, then click the "search text contents" radio button to search inside over 10 million books.
- Access to some pay-walled content, including academic journals, Newspapers.com and ProQuest, is provided to editors via The Wikipedia Library.
- Check for sources in related articles on Wikipedia but do not simply copy the reference. Only after you've checked that the source is reliable and does indeed verify the text, you may use the citation.
Reading and parsing sources
- Use the text searching feature to locate what you are looking for faster, such as Ctrl+F on Windows or ⌘ Cmd+F on macOS.
- Translation for reading:
- You can use machine translation, either at a website or as built in to your web browser. However, these translations may be rough and should not be used indiscriminately in Wikipedia.
- To translate text that cannot be copied, for example on Google Books, you can take a screenshot of a passage and upload the image to Google Translate.
Processing articles
- While you're there, you could expand the article with new information from your reliable sources, or clean up or tag other problems you find.
- Twinkle might be helpful for cleaning up article banners and nominating articles for deletion
- If you are familiar with AWB/JWB, you can use it to quickly add a "References" section and {{reflist}} template.
Popular articles
[edit]The list below contains some popular articles without references whose titles start with E or F. They are taken from Massviews analysis at Wikimedia Cloud Services (WMCS). Please remove entries once references have been added. This section will be updated regularly.
- Fiat Pratola Serra modular engines
- Frederick William, Prince of Nassau-Weilburg
- Ek Hi Raasta (1993 film)
- Electoral history of Barack Obama
- FN Grand Browning
- Frederick William, Duke of Courland
- Five Races Under One Union (Manchukuo)
- Fiat 100 series engine
- Ek Nazar
- Football Federation American Samoa
- Egypt national under-17 football team
- Emperor Taizong of Jin
- Flags of international organizations
- Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth
- Ek Bar Mooskura Do
- Flag of Buryatia
- Elizondo, Navarre
- Fabryka Samochodów Małolitrażowych
- Family tree of Swedish monarchs
- Festetics family
- Frederick II, Duke of Lorraine
- Fauteuil
- Ecuador national under-20 football team
- Ernest Augustus II, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
- Emerald Cave (Thailand)
- French basketball league system
- Fontana Delle Tette
- Egypt national football team all-time record
- Family tree of Chinese monarchs (221 BCE – 453 CE)
- Fabulous Boys
- EMD GP10
- Filmography about Wong Fei-hung
- Faussart
- Federal Minister for Special Affairs of Germany
- Electric Vendetta
- Edixa Reflex
- Edo period in popular culture
- England Dan & John Ford Coley (album)
- ECL Language tests
- Eurofima coach
- First declension
- FC Moravia FCM
- Friedrich Thyssen
- FN Browning
- Farooqui
- Frogtown, Clarke County, Virginia
- Frïs Vodka
- Fíaskó
- Elisabeth Murdoch College
- Formula Renault 2.0 Alps
- Foreign exchange derivative
- Europa (web portal)
- Frequency compensation
- European route E76
- Earl of Cambridge
- Echoes (radio program)
Unreferenced biographies
[edit]The articles below are all of the remaining unreferenced biographies of living people on Wikipedia. At the top of the list, those that are marked in bold are awaiting deletion via WP:BLPPROD.[b] Please remove entries once references have been added. This section will be updated regularly.
Badges
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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
Notes
[edit]- ^ a b In the edit summary, "AUG26", "WP:AUG26", and "#AUG26" all count.
- ^ found at Category:BLP articles proposed for deletion