Citation needed

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An example of the citation needed template as seen in an article about the mushroom on the English Wikipedia. Citation needed example.png
An example of the citation needed template as seen in an article about the mushroom on the English Wikipedia.

The tag "[citation needed]" is added by Wikipedia editors to unsourced statements in articles requesting citations to be added. [1] The phrase is reflective of the policies of verifiability and original research on Wikipedia and has become a general Internet meme. [2]

Contents

Usage on Wikipedia

The tag was first used on Wikipedia in 2006, [2] and its template created by user Ta bu shi da yu. [3] According to Wikipedia's policy, editors should add citations for content, to ensure accuracy and neutrality, and to avoid original research. [4] The citation needed tag is used to mark statements that lack such citations. [1] Wikipedia editors may use tools like Citation Hunt to address these uncited statements. [5] As of June 2025, there were more than 604,000 pages on Wikipedia (or roughly 1% of all pages) containing at least one instance of the tag. [1] Users who click the tag will be directed to pages about Wikipedia's verifiability policy and its application using the tag. [6]

A variant of the tag, [cetacean needed], is used on Wikipedia's list of cetaceans page. [7]

Usage outside Wikipedia

A 2007 xkcd comic by Randall Munroe featuring a protester with a "[citation needed]" placard Webcomic xkcd - Wikipedian protester.png
A 2007 xkcd comic by Randall Munroe featuring a protester with a "[citation needed]" placard
Poster at the 2017 March for Science Citation needed - March for Science (cropped).jpg
Poster at the 2017 March for Science

In 2008, Matt Mechtley created stickers with "[citation needed]", encouraging people to stick them on advertisements. [8]

In 2010, American television hosts Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert led the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where some participants held placards with "[citation needed]". [9]

Randall Munroe has frequently used "[citation needed]" tags for humorous commentary in his writings, including in his 2014 book What If? . [10] [11] [12]

The podcast "Citations Needed" is a Webby nominated [13] media criticism podcast, hosted by journalists Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson to explore the intersection of media, PR, and power. [14]

YouTuber Tom Scott and The Technical Difficulties used "[citation needed]" as the title for a Wikipedia-based gameshow that ran from 2014 to 2018. [15]

Wikipedian Molly White publishes a newsletter covering the cryptocurrency and technology industries called Citation Needed. [16] [17]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Redi, Miriam; Fetahu, Besnik; Morgan, Jonathan; Taraborelli, Dario (May 13, 2019). "Citation Needed: A Taxonomy and Algorithmic Assessment of Wikipedia's Verifiability". The World Wide Web Conference. WWW '19. San Francisco, CA, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 1567–1578. arXiv: 1902.11116 . doi:10.1145/3308558.3313618. ISBN   978-1-4503-6674-8. S2CID   67856117.
  2. 1 2 McDowell, Zachary J.; Vetter, Matthew A. (2022). "What Counts as Information: The Construction of Reliability and Verifability". Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality. Routledge, Taylor & Francis. p. 34. doi: 10.4324/9781003094081 . hdl:20.500.12657/50520. ISBN   978-1-000-47427-5.
  3. ↑ Ta bu shi da yu (June 15, 2005). "Template:Citation needed". English Wikipedia . Retrieved March 23, 2025.
  4. ↑ 栗岡 幹英 [Masahide Kurioka] (March 1, 2010). "インターネットは言論の公共圏たりうるか：ブログとウィキペディアの内容分析" [Can the Internet be the Public Sphere of Discourse? : Contents Analysis of Blog and Wikipedia]. 奈良女子大学社会学論集 [Nara Women's University Sociological Studies] (in Japanese) (17). 奈良女子大学社会学研究会 [Nara Women's University Sociological Study Group]: 133–151. ISSN   1340-4032.
  5. ↑ McDowell, Zachary; Vetter, Matthew (2022). Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality. New York: Routledge. p. 33-34. ISBN   978-0-367-55571-9.
  6. ↑ McDowell, Zachary J.; Vetter, Matthew A. (July 2020). "It Takes a Village to Combat a Fake News Army: Wikipedia's Community and Policies for Information Literacy". Social Media + Society. 6 (3). doi: 10.1177/2056305120937309 . ISSN   2056-3051. S2CID   222110748.
  7. ↑ Helm, R. R. (November 10, 2015). "Awesome nerd joke hidden in Wikipedia's "List of Cetaceans" | Deep Sea News" . Retrieved August 5, 2025.
  8. ↑ Glenn, Joshua (January 2, 2008). "[citation needed]". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on July 27, 2018. Retrieved July 27, 2018.
  9. ↑ Johnson, Ted (November 1, 2010). "Satirical rally calls for sanity and/or fear". Variety . Archived from the original on November 16, 2010. Retrieved July 27, 2018.
  10. ↑ Munroe, Randall (2014). What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Hachette UK. ISBN   9780544272644 . Retrieved June 15, 2021.
  11. ↑ Hill, Kyle (September 2, 2014). "Review: XKCD's What If?". Nerdist . Archived from the original on July 13, 2021. Retrieved July 12, 2021.
  12. ↑ Poole, Steven (September 19, 2019). "Book Review: 'What If' by Randall Munroe". The Wall Street Journal . Archived from the original on May 8, 2024. Retrieved July 12, 2021.
  13. ↑ "Podcast | Citations Needed". Nima Shirazi. Retrieved November 8, 2024.
  14. ↑ Groundwater, Colin (April 29, 2020). "The Best Podcasts to Listen to in Self-Isolation". GQ. Archived from the original on April 30, 2020. Retrieved November 8, 2024.
  15. ↑ Scott, Tom; Brannan, Gary; Joel, Chris (March 19, 2014). "Citation Needed, from the Technical Difficulties". The Technical Difficulties. Archived from the original on March 8, 2021. Retrieved August 19, 2024.
  16. ↑ White, Molly (November 10, 2023). "Laser eyes". Citation Needed. No. 43. Retrieved June 4, 2025.
  17. ↑ Cohn, Cindy; Kelly, Jason (May 21, 2025). "Love the Internet Before You Hate On It". How to Fix the Internet. Electronic Frontier Foundation . Retrieved June 4, 2025.
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