Citation needed

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An example of the citation needed template as seen in an article on the English Wikipedia Citation needed example.png
An example of the citation needed template as seen in an article 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. By Wikipedia policy, editors should add citations for content, to ensure accuracy and neutrality, and to avoid original research. [3] The citation needed tag is used to mark statements that lack such citations. [1] As of June 2023, there were more than 539,000 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. [4]

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. [5]

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]". [6]

Randall Munroe has frequently used "[citation needed]" tags for humorous commentary in his writings, including in his 2014 book What If? . [7] [8] [9]

Youtuber Tom Scott and The Technical Difficulties used "[citation needed]" as the title for a Wikipedia-based gameshow that ran from 2014 to 2018. [10]

Related Research Articles

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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. 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. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Glenn, Joshua (January 2, 2008). "[citation needed]". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on July 27, 2018. Retrieved July 27, 2018.
  6. 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.
  7. Munroe, Randall (2014). What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Hachette UK. ISBN   9780544272644 . Retrieved June 15, 2021.
  8. Hill, Kyle (September 2, 2014). "Review: XKCD's What If?". Nerdist . Retrieved July 12, 2021.
  9. Poole, Steven (September 19, 2019). "Book Review: 'What If' by Randall Munroe". The Wall Street Journal . Retrieved July 12, 2021.
  10. Citation Needed, from the Technical Difficulties (Comedy, Game-Show, Talk-Show), Tom Scott, Gary Brannan, Chris Joel, The Technical Difficulties, March 19, 2014, retrieved August 19, 2024{{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link)