The {{Citation needed}} template aims to promote accountable discourse.

To ensure that all Wikipedia content is verifiable, anyone may question an uncited claim by inserting a simple {{Citation needed}} tag, or by using a more comprehensive {{citation needed|reason=Your explanation here|date=April 2016}} clause.

Example: 65% of people believe in ghosts.^{[citation needed]}

Citation needed statements are part of Wikipedia's backlog of outstanding problems. Currently there are 301,758 articles with "Citation needed" statements. You can help reduce the backlog!

When and how to use this tag responsibly

A "citation needed" tag is never, in itself, an "improvement" to an article - but a request for someone else to verify a statement- a form of communication between members of a collaborative editing team. For the user of the encyclopedia however it is at best a somewhat cryptic distraction. (Although it may alert an experienced user to a problem with the veracity of a particular statement). Tags that remain in place for months or years form an ever growing Wikipedia backlog.

• Do tag thoughtfully. Avoid frivolous or "hit-and-run" tagging. Consider the hypothetical fellow-editor who will, hopefully, notice your tag, see your point in inserting it, and try to find the citation you have requested. Is it clear just what information you want cited? Is the information probably factual? (If it isn't, then it needs deletion or re-writing rather than citation!) Is it really self-evident?
• Do you have the power or skills to fix the citation? If you know how to research a topic which you place a tag on, try to take responsibility for your tags. If you feel strongly enough about something to deface an article in an endeavor to get it improved, then place the fix on your checklist. Visit the article concerned occasionally and see what has happened to your "contribution", and try to fix it when you have the opportunity.

When not to use this tag

Before adding a tag, at least consider the following alternatives, one of which may prove much more constructive:

• Do NOT tag palpable nonsense. Delete it.
• Do NOT tag controversial, poorly sourced claims in biographies of living people. Delete them immediately!
• If you are sure the statement you want to tag is not factual, even if it does not come under either of the preceding headings, it may still be appropriate to be bold and simply remove the text (delete it!). Be sure to add a suitable edit summary such as "Very doubtful - please do not revert without giving a citation". If the original statement was accurate after all, this gives someone the chance to put it back, hopefully with a proper citation this time.
• If a statement sounds plausible, and is consistent with other statements in the article, but you have honest doubts that it is totally accurate, then consider making a reasonable effort to find a reference yourself. In the process, you may end up confirming that the statement is too doubtful to remain at all, or you may find an excellent citation yourself. Either of these outcomes is better than a bare tag, however "justified" it might be.
• If you feel an article, or a section within an article, needs more than one or two tags, then at least consider adding a {{Unreferenced}}, {{Refimprove}}, or {{Unreferenced section}} tag to the article or section concerned instead of an ugly battery of individual tags.
• A reference at the end of a paragraph typically refers to the whole paragraph, and similarly a reference at the end of a sentence may well be taken as referring to the whole sentence. If (for instance) a particular part of a sentence or paragraph seems to cry out for a separate citation, try if at all possible to check the original citation rather than risk adding tags to already well referenced text.
• NEVER insert a "citation needed" tag (or, worse, a whole battery of them) to make an extraneous point, to "pay back" another editor for inappropriate behaviour of any kind, or because you generally "don't like" a subject, a particular article, or another editor. Gross examples of this sort of thing are, frankly, vandalism, but otherwise thoughtful and well-behaved editors may at times be guilty of this one unconsciously.

If your work has been tagged

• If you can provide a reliable source for the claim, then please just add it! If you are not sure how this is to be done, then be bold and replace the "Citation needed" template with enough information to locate the source. You may leave the copyediting to someone else, or learn more about citing sources on Wikipedia. This beginners referencing guide for Wikipedia provides a brief introduction on how to reference Wikipedia articles.
• If someone tagged your contributions with a "Citation needed" tag and you disagree, discuss the matter on the article's discussion page. The most constructive thing to do in most cases is probably to supply the reference requested, even if you feel the tag was not justified -- after all citations are supposed to help every type of reader.

How to help reduce the backlog

At the moment, there are over 301,758 articles with "Citation needed" statements. You can browse the whole list of these articles at Category:All articles with unsourced statements.

Frequently the authors of statements do not return to Wikipedia to support the statement with citations, so other Wikipedia editors have to do work checking those statements. With 301,758 statements that need WP:Verification, sometimes it's hard to choose which article to work on. The tool Citation Hunt makes that easier by suggesting random articles, which you can sort by topical category membership.

See also

• Template:Citation needed
• Template:Citation needed-span
• Template:Verify source
• Template:Unreferenced for an article (rather than an individual statement) which does not cite any references or sources.
• Template:Refimprove for an article (rather than an individual statement) that has some citations, but not enough.
• Template messages - Sources of articles
• Inline verifiability and sources cleanup templates
• Wikipedia:Verification methods – listing examples of the most common ways that citations are used in Wikipedia articles
• Wikipedia:Citing sources/Example edits for different methods – showing comparative edit mode representations for different citation methods and techniques.
• Wikipedia:Citation templates – a full listing of various styles for citing all sorts of materials

External links

• Media related to Citation needed at Wikimedia Commons