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Template documentation
This
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Template:Unreferenced/doc.
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This template has a
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This template should be used only on articles that have no sources at all.
Alternatives:
- In articles that have some sources, but not enough, the {{Refimprove}} template should be used instead.
- Other templates, listed below, should be used when the sources are inadequate for other reasons.
- Be bold! Consider searching for references and adding them to the article, instead of this template.
- Consider not adding this template to extremely short articles.
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This adds articles to Category:Articles lacking sources. This template should not be substituted (subst:).
Usage
This template should be placed at the top of an article. There are two optional parameters:
- Description field
- The optional description field is used to indicate more specifically what should be referenced. An example of its usage is
{{Unreferenced|article's section called "Childhood"}}. The description field is commonly omitted, which is acceptable, and the information box displayed in an article would then read "This article does not cite any references or sources." If a description is supplied, the word article in the information box is replaced with the description; for the example just given, the information box would read "This article's section called 'Childhood' does not cite any references or sources."
- Date parameter
- The date parameter, which is recommended, is used to indicate when the template was added to a page. An example of its usage is
{{Unreferenced|date=August 2008}}. Adding this parameter sorts the article into monthly subcategories of Category:Articles lacking sources, rather than adding it to Category:Articles lacking sources itself, allowing the oldest problems to be identified and dealt with first. If the date parameter is omitted, a bot will add it later.
The two optional fields can be used together, and placed in either order. For example, both {{Unreferenced|article's section called "Childhood"|date=August 2008}} and {{Unreferenced|date=August 2008|article's section called "Childhood"}} have the same effect:
Differences from related templates
One difference between the {{Unreferenced}} template and the similar templates {{Refimprove}} and {{Unreferencedsection}} is that {{Unreferenced}} adds an article to Category:Articles lacking sources, while {{Refimprove}} and {{Unreferencedsection}} add an article to Category:Articles needing additional references.
A common practice is to supply a description of "section", as in {{Unreferenced|section}}, which results in an information box reading "This section does not cite any references or sources." This is the same message that is displayed when using {{Unreferencedsection}}, but the two templates place an article in different categories, as noted above.
Note: when adding {{Unreferenced|section}} to a section of an article, the date parameter must be included. Otherwise, SmackBot will change the template to {{Unreferencedsection}} when it adds the date parameter.
Redirects
The following templates redirect to {{Unreferenced}}, meaning that they are synonyms that work exactly as {{Unreferenced}} works:
The following templates previously redirected to {{Unreferenced}}, but have been changed:
See also
The following templates are useful in cases where there are some sources, but these are inadequate or insufficient: