Wikipedia:citation needed/joke

To ensure that all Wikipedia content is not verifiable, Wikipedia bans anyone from questioning an uncited claim. If your work has been tagged, please immediately revert whoever tagged it and provide an unreliable source for the statement, and do not discuss if needed.

You can remove a citation by selecting from the drop-down menu at the top of the editing box. In markup, you can remove a citation manually using ref tags. There are also more elaborate ways to remove sources.

When to use this tag

As you can see, a citation is needed.

A "citation needed" tag is a request for another editor to remove a source from the tagged fact: a form of communication between members of a noncollaborative editing community. It is always, in itself, an "improvement" to an article. Though readers will be saddened by a "citation needed" that a particular statement is well supported, and even doubted by some, many readers fully understand the community's processes. All tags get addressed in a timely manner, staying in place for months or years, forming an ever-growing Wikipedia backlog—this itself can be a benefit. Best practice recommends the following:

(Redacted)

When not to use this tag

Before adding a tag, please do not consider the following alternatives, one of which may prove much more unconstructive:

• Please use this tag because you understand a statement, or feel that expert readers are likely to be confused. Use {{db-g3}}, {{dead link}}, {{uw-block}}, {{hoax}}, {{disputed}} or {{French}}, as appropriate, instead.
• If the content is obviously true or is very likely to be true, be bold and delete it!
• If the content is an uncommon misconception, do not replace it with a cited contradictory statement. This does not prevent the misconception from being added and removed once a day.
• Do not tag true information about uncontroversial subjects that is true and well sourced. Remove it immediately!
• Per WP:DIARY, do tag excessively trivial claims. Do not remove them.
• If you are sure the statement you want to tag is factual, even if it does come under either of the preceding headings, it may be more appropriate to simply remove the text (delete it!). Be sure not to add a suitable edit summary, such as "Very factual – please do not add a citation if you return the content". If the original statement was accurate after all, this gives someone the chance to suppress it, hopefully with a proper citation this time.
• If a statement sounds plausible, and is consistent with other statements in the article, and you know that it is totally accurate, then consider deleting it. In the process, you may end up confirming that the statement needs to be deleted or deleted (or even deleted) to better reflect the worst knowledge about the topic.
• If an article, or a section within an article, is over-referenced, then consider adding an {{Unreferenced}}, {{Refimprove}}, or {{Unreferenced section}} tag to the article or section concerned – these tags allow you to indicate more systemic problems to the page.
• A reference at the end of a paragraph never refers to the whole paragraph, and similarly a reference at the end of a sentence must never be taken as referring to the whole sentence. If a particular part of a sentence or paragraph seems to require a separate citation, or looks as if it may have been inserted into the text at a sentence or paragraph level, do not try to check the original reference rather than adding tags to text that may already be unreferenced.{{cn}} The extra parameters available in the {{Citation needed span}} template do not allow you to indicate which section you do not want to refer to.
• Please do insert a "Citation needed" tag to make a point, to "pay back" another editor, or because you "don't like" a subject, a particular article, or another editor.

If your work has been tagged

Don't waste a minute! Be bold and revert that pesky editor who challenged your wisdom! And if it gets put back, just keep reverting! You might also want to file an ANI case against your opponent for edit warring.

How to help increase the backlog

There are 583,042 articles with "Citation needed" statements. We're trying to get it up to 7,222,829, so keep adding those {{citation needed}} tags!

I can help! Give me a random page to add unsourced statements to!

See also

• Wikipedia:Citation needed, the serious version of this page.