Template:Unreferenced/doc

This is a documentation subpage for Template:Unreferenced.
It may contain usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original template page.

Shortcut

{{Unr}}

This template is used on many pages and changes may be widely noticed. Test changes in the template's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own user subpage. Consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them.

This template should only be used on articles that have no citations or references at all. Don't add this template to articles that contain even one general reference, bare URL, or citation-containing footnote. A citation is any description of a reliable source that supports any of the article content. The format of the citation and the name of the section heading are not what determines whether a link or citation is a source.

Usage

{{Unreferenced|date=December 2024}}
{{Unreferenced|find=World War II|find2=Mediterranean|date=December 2024}}

When to use

You should only add this template to articles that contain no citations or references of any kind.

Do not add this template:

In articles that have some citations, but not enough, the {{More citations needed}} template should be used instead as a general template, or the {{Unreferenced section}} template for individual sections that have no citations.
In articles containing a list of sources at the end, but no inline citations, including parenthetical references or in-text attributions, consider {{no footnotes}} when the article would be significantly improved by detailed attribution of sources to specific claims.
Watch out for lists of general references that someone has incorrectly listed under ==External links==. If the link leads to a reliable source that supports some article content, then that website is a reference, not an external link.
Other templates, listed below, should be used when the citations are inadequate for other reasons.

Alternatives:

Be bold! Consider searching for sources and citing them in the article, instead of adding this template.
In articles about people and businesses, consider using the more specific {{Third-party sources}} template.
Consider not adding this template to very brief stubs, since anyone visiting the page can see, in a single glance, that it contains no citations.

Parameters

There are six parameters, one positional, and five named parameters. All parameters are optional.

|1= – scope of notification (e.g., 'paragraph', 'section', 'article', etc.) default: 'article'. see Details.
|date= – month name and year; e.g. 'December 2024' (no default)
|find= – search keywords for {{find sources}} param 1 (double-quoted search); default: page title. See details below.
|find2= – search keywords for {{find sources}} param 2 (unquoted search). Alias: unquoted. See below.
|small= – set to left or no; see details at Ambox. Default: standard-width banner.
|status= – if set to hasaref, alters the tracking category to Category:All articles possibly lacking sources

Examples

{{Unreferenced|date=December 2024}}

or

{{subst:Unreferenced}}

Substitution of this template will automatically fill the date parameter.

The optional |find= parameter is available, for modifying the operation of the {{find sources}} links displayed by the template:

{{Unreferenced|find=search keyword(s)|date=December 2024}}

see below for details.

To flag an individual section as being unreferenced, use the {{Unreferenced section}} template, which categorizes more narrowly:

{{Unreferenced section|date=December 2024}}

Details

Positional parameter 1

Positional parameter |1= is the 'type' parameter, which may be set to paragraph or section or any string value. To mark an unreferenced section of an article, please use {{Unreferenced section}} instead.

Find parameters:

There are two 'find' parameters available to control the presentation and operation of the {{find sources}} links optionally displayed by the {{Unreferenced}} template. By default, the template displays {{find sources}} with a quoted search query equivalent to the exact article title. Sometimes, especially if the article has a long, descriptive title, or if it includes parenthetical disambiguation terms, this may not give useful results. The find parameters can be used to provide the search keywords of your choice to the {{find sources}} links. Use:

|find= to specify keywords for an exact search (double-quoted query); this corresponds to {{find sources}} positional param |1.
|find2= to specify keywords for an unquoted search; this corresponds to {{find sources}} param |2. The alias |unquoted= may be used instead.

The value "none" may be passed to 'find' (|find=none) to suppress display of find sources links. (Note that specifying |find=none and a nonempty value for |find2= is not a valid combination.)

General information

This template can either be placed at the top of an article, at the bottom of the article page (in an empty "References" or "Notes" section—usually just before a {{Reflist}} template), or on the article's talk page.

Categorization

This template adds the article to Category:Articles lacking sources and a monthly subcategory such as Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2024 (as described above), which are hidden categories.

Differences from related templates

Short-cut

{{Unref}}
{{NR}}
{{No ref}}
{{No sources}}
{{Citesources}}

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. See a monthly parameter usage report for Template:Unreferenced in articles based on its TemplateData.

TemplateData for Unreferenced

<templatedata> { "description": "This template generates a tag to indicate that an article has no citations.", "format": "inline", "params": { "1": { "label": "Type (e.g., section)",

"description": "Text to replace the word \"article\", usually \"section\". This is a legacy feature, and this usage has been replaced with the separate '

' template.",

"type": "string", "required": false, "autovalue": "section", "example": "section" }, "date": { "label": "Month and year", "description": "Provides the month and year of the citation request; e.g., 'January 2013', but not 'jan13'", "type": "string", "required": false, "autovalue": "July 2024", "example": "January 2013", "suggested": true }, "find": { "label": "Find sources keywords", "description": "Search string for 'find sources' template. May be one or more words. Set to value 'none' to suppress 'find sources' output.", "type": "string", "required": false, "autovalue": "empty string", "example": "Your keyword list" }, "find2": { "label": "Find2", "description": "Search keywords for 'find sources' unquoted search.", "type": "string", "required": false, "aliases": ["unquoted"] } }, "paramOrder": [ "1", "date", "find", "find2" ] } </templatedata>

Tracking categories

Footnotes