Wikipedia talk:Citation needed

Request for opinions - is 'citation needed' overused

I wonder if anyone else feels that there are too many requests for citations needed that disturb reading flow and are often requesting citations for things that, in all honesty really don't need a citation. I have just come from yet another page (Mig 31 I didn't write it, I have never edited it before) where just about every para ends in 'citation needed', despite the fact there are many many inline citations hardly any of which are for contentious facts, and virtually all the requested information could be found in the references. One was actually asking for a citation to justify the description that was not only obviously true to anyone with basic knowledge in the area but was also illustrated with pictures in links already in the sentence.

I feel "Citation needed" has is often transitioning from a noble idea to ensure good referencing practise into a form of cut and paste vandalism. There is no perfect solution, however one I suggest;

A note to users suggesting;

- Everyone can be a writer as well as an editor. Before requesting a citation, make a reasonable effort to find one yourself. At least scroll through any references provided and try Google.

- If you are not familiar with the topic, and the statement does not seem contentious, think carefully before requesting a citation.

And however politically impossible it will be in an editor dominated political culture, I would love a bot to remove requests for citation are automatically removed after 6 months unless the person who has asked for a citation provides an explanation of their attempt to locate a citation themselves.Winstonwolfe (talk) 07:14, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Winstonwolfe, "citation needed" is definitely overused. And I hate it when an editor overtags with it instead of simply placing Template:Unreferenced or Template:Refimprove at the top of the article, or in a section that is specifically unsourced or needs more sources. Flyer22 (talk) 07:28, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

As for trying to find a source yourself before tagging something as needing a citation, that is what the WP:Burden and WP:Preserve policies state. Flyer22 (talk) 07:30, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Sometimes the requests border on the absurd. Last night I edited the page on Goerke's Corners, Wisconsin adding a pop culture reference (It's mentioned several times in a 1949 movie.) and including a link to the movie's page here in Wikipedia, which includes more information on the reference than I used. Within less than four hours, somebody, probably a bot, added a request for citation. I'd think that having a link to the other page in my addition would have been sufficient. JDZeff (talk) 22:46, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

It's not sufficient as Wikipedia is forever changing. That is, the citation(s) on the other page could change or be deleted. You should copy it/them over to the new page. Each Wikipedia article need it's own citations - that is, it needs to stand alone. — Lentower (talk) 04:22, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

{{Citation needed}} is not seriously overused, except when {{Unreferenced}} or {{Unreferenced section}} can be used.

Though I prefer {{Citation needed-span}} as it shows exactly what text needs to be verified by citation. — Lentower (talk) 04:22, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Is there a point where we can say that "citation needed" has become vandalism? It appears (yes, I am using weasel words; I cannot prove these assumptions) that it happens when an editor feels slighted in NPOV battles. Instead of retiring gracefully, they seem to spam articles with CITE tags at the end of virtually every sentence. Far from improving our encyclopedia, it makes articles nearly unreadable. I am primarily a consumer now, editing mainly for grammar and links (my highly-active editing days are past), but I find excessive CITE tags incredibly disruptive. If we decide that CITE is fine as it is, could we consider changing the very long [citation needed] tag with something smaller, along the lines of [ref?] or even [?] with a tooltip of "Citation needed. Please help improve this article by adding reliable sources"? User:Kevin.159.53 posting as IP 159.53.78.143 (talk) 15:59, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

I think there is a limit to assuming good faith on this one, and we have long crossed it. "Citation needed" is and always was about vandalism by NPOV battle losers and deletionists. It certainly doesn't make Wikipedia any better for the reader; it does the opposite. 97.104.85.21 (talk) 17:30, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, "citation needed" has in fact become a running joke on explain xkcd and xkcd what if for that very reason.

there hasn't been a discussion here on what to do when one finds a page that has been overtagged. i stumbled across a page, during a meandering stroll down a wiki-hole, and it was almost unreadable. i actually know very little (okay, nothing) about the subject, so can't try to add a few sources. i checked the history, and they were all added, 3 weeks ago, by one user. i looked at that user's page, and he/she seems to be a very active editor out here. so much so, that i would certainly think he/she would know better than to do this. i checked the 3 sources already on the page (1 dead, 1 marked as dead but not, 1 fine)--the dead one and the one marked as dead but available had both been checked 3 weeks ago by the same editor that inserted all the tags. i added a section on the Talk page, calling out the overuse of the tags. (no attempt had been made on the Talk page to discuss the article's verifiability by the overtagging editor.)

so...what is one supposed to do? here's the page. laugh as you must: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_swing Colbey84 (talk) 14:47, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Apologies, but object strongly, to content in article here based on decades of experience

… both as an academic faculty member in the sciences, and as a longstanding editor at WP. Here are the specific objections.

1. Essentially, from a probabilistic perspective, it is never the case (probability approaching zero) that the citation-at-end-of-paragraph-covers-whole-paragraph generalization is true here. This sentence/guideline should be deleted, or edited to read that "Paragraphs with single citations at end of paragraph should periodically have the single citation checked—i.e., after intervening edits—for its continuing coverage of the entire paragraph's material; when the material is confirmed, the reference should explicitly state the coverage (e.g., 'The full content of this sentence is taken from {{cite journal… '), addition of which should be traceable through the Edit summary. Until such checking is done, a single paragraph-ending citation should bear an inline {{verification needed}} tag." If one needs a professional justification for this comment, see any set of scientific reviews, e.g., off top of head, here, and tabulate the number of paragraphs appearing that have but a single citation. In technical, fact-filled writing, that number is near to zero.
2. The same is essentially true of the attachment of a single citation to a complex or long sentence that is technical, or otherwise fact-filled. Again, consult any small set of scientific reviews for justification, or even just the one linked above. In such, you will see that sentences routinely have two or more citations, often appearing at the breakpoints between phrases in their construction (or attached to individual elements connected by conjunctions). Again, the verbiage of this "Citation needed" article should reflect reality—that it is, probabilistically (in this editor's experience), more likely at WP that an editor has added a disparate phrase, post hoc, unsourced, than they returned to the original source, and found further information to add from that source, such that a new edit is also covered by the old citation. In this sense, an editor should be directed in this article, with something like, "Any newly appearing material should be considered suspect, as unsourced, until it is verified as having been sourced from the originally appearing citation, and until such time the original single source can be checked, an inline {{verification needed}} tag should be placed."
3. From the perspective of one that has professional publication experience and (therein) experience generating team-produced documents of high quality, as well as longstanding WP editorial experience and professional consulting experience regarding scientific R&D operations, the prohibition, stated here in this article, of having both section {{refimprove}} and inline {{citation needed}} tags is likewise poorly considered and so seriously flawed, especially in combination with the foregoing assumptions made regarding paragraph-single-citation situations. Operationally, and for simplicity, consider a section with a tag of {{refimprove}} for one paragraph that contains abundant technical or historical content, sentence after sentence, but no citations, and no inline {{citation needed}} tags. Consider the following: An editor comes upon the tag and completely unsourced paragraph, attempts to help and finds a source for one sentence (and for sake of argument, while it could be any sentence of the paragraph, let's make it), the last sentence of the paragraph. The editor adds that citation. Per the stated assumptions, even if the editor placing the one source (and knowing its limited coverage to the single sentence) leaves the section tag in place, the next editor to come along, based on the presumptions of this article, would see fit to remove the section tag, even though only a small percentage of the issue (one unsourced sentence of several) had been addressed.

It is for the reason of clarity of the status of individual elements in a shared document, created by a team, that full, explicit information, line by line is preferred over more global (section by section) tags. Anyone who has produced a shared regulatory document knows that "More sources are needed in this section." is not so helpful of a sidebar Comment; much preferred, instead, is "The first half of Sentence 4 still needs a source." Global section or chapter Comments, in shared document generation, are simply flags to call wide attention of other editors to big remaining problems (the same role section and article tags are intended to play here); it is the inline tag that is the workhorse, and makes clear where work is actually, specifically needed. In short, the inline vs. other tags serve different purposes, and to deny their joint appearance in problematic sections is simply misguided, operationally.

The bottom line from my reading of this article on this tag: It is hopefully optimistic, and as a result hopelessly disconnected from the realities of shared document production, and of the way in which work is done at Wikipedia. If people take this article seriously, it goes a long way to explaining the rampant unchallenged plagiarism and other WP:VERIFY violations that are easily and repeatedly found throughout this encyclopedia, which claims its reliably to be just that—the extent to which it is actually traceable to sources that can be verified.

There is only a single reason I can see, for not allowing thorough tagging of sentences, paragraphs, and sections that are problematic vis-a-vis sourcing, and it is one I find wholly unjustifiable from a scholarly perspective (see Ch. Lipson's "Doing Honest Work…")—that we care more for the cosmetic aspects, the appearance of our articles, than for truly moving articles toward quality (and informing readers, honestly, about their status, meanwhile).

I would encourage a strong edit of this guiding article, to move it in the direction of reflecting, and so dealing with, Wikipedia reality, and encouraging honest and continuing assessment of the status of texts and sources at Wikipedia. Cheers. Le Prof 50.179.252.14 (talk) 02:31, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

See the mild edit I did of this date. Cheers. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 03:33, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

And I disagree with you making these substantial changes without discussion. A number of editors, including me, disagree with the way you add "citation needed" tags. That was most recently clear in this discussion. You overtag, and commonly add "citation needed" tags where they are not needed. So you should not be changing this page to comply with your tagging style. And if you insist on reverting, I will insist on starting a RfC on the matter and bringing in as many editors to this discussion as possible. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:02, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

For now, I alerted this and this page to this discussion. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:22, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

I can certainly appreciate the Prof's logic.

I also have a huge problem with the passage that was reverted to: "If you feel an article, or a section within an article, needs more than one or two tags then ALWAYS add a {{Unreferenced}}, {{Refimprove}}, or {{Unreferenced section}} tag to the article or section concerned instead of an ugly battery of individual tags..", and it's not just the weird double periods at the end of the one sentence paragraph.

It's difficult to find any article within the English Wikipedia where it's not technically feasible to stick an eye-wateringly obtrusive {{Refimprove}} template right at the top. Many pages I visit to copyedit have had one there for years with no help offered as to what particular word or phrase is especially problematic and no clue given on the article's discussion page as to when I can remove the template since the test to be passed before removal is essentially Sisyphusian.

I also agree with Flyer22 that, because of the repercussions and wide-ranging nature of the changes, the reverted edit should be treated as the Bold part of BRD and look forward to being educated by the ensuing discussion... BushelCandle (talk) 08:37, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

The basic difficulty of the "cn tag lover's" argument is that a cn tag is in itself NEVER an "improvement" to any article. The theory is that it will quickly attract a responsible editor who will check the statement concerned for verifiability, and either add a good, reliable citation, delete the statement as doubtful and unverifiable, or, perhaps best of all - add a new statement - cited this time, that better accords with the sources. As we all know - this kind of improvement practically never happens as the result of a cn tag - the typical example will stay (for weeks, months, or even years) until someone deletes it as stale and unnecessary - all too often without either changing of deleting the statement in question, or for that matter adding a good citation.

These tags would not be necessary at all if:

• Editors worked directly from sources more than they do (while avoiding direct plagiarism of course, and citing everything that needs to be cited). Plead guilty to this one myself occasionally. It would be futile to deny that many wiki articles need constructive, well cited improvements.
• The editors who love to tag everything in sight bore the guidelines here more in mind - which essentially boil down to this - if the statement you are about to tag is THAT doubtful you would more than likely be much better off simply deleting it altogether. If you suspect it is probably true, but feel that nonetheless that it really needs to be cited, then finding a citation yourself is MUCH more constructive than tagging it. I might add that IF (and, alas, it is a big big IF!) the tag is justified, then the tagger is likely him/herself to be the very person to have a good idea where to start looking for the right citation!
• A sentence, and a paragraph, and even a section, very often (although of course not always) essentially represents a single thought, that can be referenced by a single citation. WHERE this is obviously the case it is NEVER good policy to add several cn tags in the middle of the sentence (paragraph, section). Alas it often happens, which is why the sections objected to are there.
• A really genuinely "BAD" article or section needs an overall tag - it is futile, generally speaking, to attempt to tag every doubtful point. Even here - better really to remark (on the talk page please) that the article or section in question is bad, and rewrite it yourself - making sure to add your citations as you go - or at least before you put your work in the "public" article area. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 12:24, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Agreed, although, given this discussion, I think you should have discussed this addition before adding it. I agree with the "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." sentence because excessive tagging often makes things worse and it has not shown to help any more than a single tag. And in both cases, the tags can be there for years. Rather than always focusing on the WP:Burden policy, editors need to start taking the WP:Preserve policy in mind; it states, in part, "Fix problems if you can, flag or remove them if you can't. Preserve appropriate content. As long as any facts or ideas would belong in an encyclopedia, they should be retained in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 03:16, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Two changes

Hi all, made a couple changes to the page:

• First, with these edits, I invited viewers of the page to help with the backlog. This includes using an external tool that is very useful at making the 300, 000 article backlog more manageable.
• Second, with this edit, I made the section about using the template less bullying and incrimination for adding the template: editors frequently add cns to articles which they don't have the interest, time or skills to research properly. We don't want the help page to be accusatory and create guilt for people who are doing positive contributions elsewhere on the site.

Let me know if there are any questions, Sadads (talk) 13:10, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Really excellent changes - now a much more useful little guide. I cut one sentence however, that seemed out of place - raising a question that would only apply to editors between two sentences referring to issues applicable to the (much larger) body of users who are NOT editors - and presumably have no idea what the citation needed tag is about. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 04:20, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

More recent changes

I added a policy shortcut template link to WP:CITENEED. It has since been changed to an information page template by Moxy, though he/she originally had it as a supplement template. Either change is obviously better, but I'm curious if the "policy" has enough consensus to be considered an actual guideline, as it currently states it "...describes a communal consensus...". It's certainly a de facto consensus, but I'm assuming there's a more formal process to be considered "communal consensus"?    DKqwerty    04:41, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Okay, so I just looked at Moxy's user page, and clearly he/she would know far more about this than I. (As an aside, I'm sometimes surprised by the occasional lack of formality on Wikipedia, especially when other times I make what I assume is a simple change and then my head's taken off for it.) At any rate, is there a formal process here?    DKqwerty    04:48, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

WP:Essay explains alot. This has never been a policy/guideline page. I made the edit after I saw your above addition to WP:FAILEDVERIFICATION with an edit-sum stating policy link.....edit was fine...but this pages status within the community was not. This page is simply a "layman's version" of the templates documentation both are a type of essay WP:Local consensus. As for what essay banner to use...thought this was best from those at Wikipedia:Template messages/Wikipedia namespace. As for promotion to a guideline...with a bit of work it could pass the WP:PROPOSAL process.--Moxy (talk) 05:30, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Tweaks

Thanks Sadads for reading my text so closely and tweaking bits you found prolix or unclear. Generally I approve; I have been writing professionally for well over fifty years now, and long ago lost any sensitivity to having my deathless prose meddled with by a pesky editor or two. On the other hand I have reinstated just a couple of things that used to make sense and ceased to after your intervention - and I have also further tweaked both your work and mine to further reduce any "accusatory" tone. I only hope I have not been so diplomatic that I might be thought to be patronising! --Soundofmusicals (talk) 09:50, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for being transparent. Not completely happy with those revisions, but lets keep going back and forth with small revisions, so that we can respond to eachother. At the moment I am traveling, so I will take a closer look/edit tomorrow or the next day when I am not in airports. Sadads (talk) 23:37, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Soundofmusicals, I don't like the "It is a paradox" paragraph you made with this edit. This is because I think it is pure opinion that the "most thoughtful, responsible tags are inserted by the very people best placed, by their background knowledge of the subject concerned, and their familiarity with the sources, to find a suitable citation." The vast majority of Wikipedia is written by non-experts, and so many tags are thoughtfully placed by editors with little or no knowledge of the subject at hand. And we should be encouraging editors to source the content, or otherwise fix it, if they can. This is currently being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Preserving a burden. WP:Permalink is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:05, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

As you see there, there is a difference of opinion on who should source what, though, and S Marshall understandably became frustrated by some of the sentiments expressed there. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:10, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

I am very disturbed indeed by an apparent implication that ANY of Wikipedia is written by people "with little or no knowledge of the subject at hand" or that people with little or no idea what they are talking about are the people who should be editing articles or tagging them. I would never edit or tag any article on a subject on which I did not have at least some background, and I hope you wouldn't either. The only exception I can think of off hand is "Herbert 4 Mabel" style graffiti or similar nonsense. But this is not the kind of matter that we (ought to) waste time (both ours and that of others) on a "citation needed" tag to anyway. Anyone who can comment to the effect "I am not an expert" would be better confining his/her attentions to topics where (s)he IS "something of an expert" at least - although not necessarily in the sense of holding formal qualifications or being engaged in professional research in the relevant field. In fact "presumption of good faith" implies, surely, that we assume our fellow editors are not totally ignorant of the subject in hand - "all else confusion"!

But I'm sure this is not what you mean. I must admit that I am by no means sure myself that the sentence you don't like is the best way of putting things - it strikes me as a bit patronising. On the other hand - assuming that someone who wants to add a "cn" tag is (ideally, anyway) doing so from a background of genuine informed doubt as to the factuality of a statement, and is therefore more, rather than less likely that most people viewing his tag, to find the missing citation, seems a simple assumtion of "good faith". In this context "good faith" and "total ignorance" are, if not totally incompatible, then rather contradictory. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 14:12, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Disregarding minor edits (like tweaks or reverting vandalism), I usually edit topics that I am very familiar with. But, like many others, I also WP:Patrol, and occasionally become involved in topics that I am less familiar with...whether it's due to curiosity, a WP:Dispute resolution matter, or a matter involving our policies or guidelines. While I don't add tags unless I'm occasionally replacing an old tag or am adding a proposed merge tag, many editors here stumble upon a topic that they are not very familiar with and start tagging things out of concern. If they do it right, it's a good application of WP:Preserve. The wording you added makes it seems like editors need to be experts on a topic before they edit a Wikipedia article, and that's just not true. Also, people are likely to take the expert wording to mean someone "holding formal qualifications or being engaged in professional research in the relevant field." Template:Expert needed rarely works. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:30, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Hope the last small change makes what I am driving at here a little clearer. On the whole, helpful edits (especially helpful citations) tend to come from people with at least a vague idea what they are talking about. For such people to engage in wholesale tagging, with no intention to (ever) make any effort whatever to replace their {own} tags with the required citation, seems at best an awful waste. Editing (and especially tagging) text about stuff you know little or nothing about can be justified now and then but as a general rule it is really fraught - I think you agree with me that it is not something an essay like this needs to encourage. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 11:35, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the assumptions you are making here Soundofmusicals: the most important use of tags in editing is from people that know absolutely nothing about a topic, and having difficulty understanding what the author. A tag indicates that whatever the knowledgeable/intentional writer of the article did doesn't seem to fit or doesn't community to a "general audience" a clear to understand statement -- so that person needs to make it fit better. Also, following up on Flyer: I write and edit in topics that I know nothing about, because I know how Wikipedia works (and nearly 100,000 and 500+ articles significantly expanded later, I still interact on an average day when not communiting organizing at least 10-20 articles -- most of which I know nothing about). I tag because I know I can get the problems in front of people that know something about the article and can make it more useful for a general public, at some point in the future -- even if it takes years to go through the backlog. Sadads (talk) 23:49, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Sadads - I'm afraid we have a very different idea of what a citation tag is for. My reading of standard Wiki policy is that it is for asking for a citation of statements of doubtful veracity, or that otherwise need to be verified by a reference to a reliable source. The idea that a citation tag might be inserted by someone totally ignorant of a subject to make it clearer is absolutely astounding. How would the tag (or for that matter a citation for the statement tagged) make something clearer. Isn't there a "clarity" tag for just this situation? Sorry, but this kind of logic is outseide MY experience and totally alien to any expertise I might have - I do really need some clarification here because you totally do not make sense. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 09:10, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment, Sadads. Soundofmusicals, this edit you made doesn't really the resolve the issue I expressed above about the non-expert aspect. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 06:54, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Please Flyer - none of the versions of this paragraph have ever actually said that ALL useful tags are inserte4d by people with a bit of background in a subject (although that would be pretty close to what I think) - the point was initially, and remains, more that someone capable of inserting a proper citation might at least consider doing so. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 09:10, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

citation not needed.

I wonder about having a {citation not needed} tag, which possibly wouldn't show anything, but would be a placeholder for a removed {citation needed} tag. There are enough {citation needed} tags that I felt like removing, but wasn't sure what to replace them with. Some things really are obvious to anyone who might care. Some things are likely not cited. One that I recently noticed is a negative statement, which are rarely cited. (No-one writes a journal article saying that they didn't do something!) Gah4 (talk) 04:32, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Clarity tags.

On looking, I found several of these - they could be what is needed when text actually need clarification rather than (or even as well as) citation. In any case we don't want to ask for a citation for something because we don't understand it! I've also cut or reworded some more text that somebody felt people might find "insulting". --Soundofmusicals (talk) 10:24, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

I was just noticing in High speed rail some unneeded {clarify} tags. One is on 'usually', which could have some clarification, but not much. Another is on 'traditional' which, again, doesn't need much clarification. That is, both are fuzzy enough already that there isn't much to say about them. There is no physical reason for a sharp boundary between 'high' and 'not so high' speed rail, so there really isn't a way to clarify the whole discussion. (Compare to supersonic vs. subsonic air travel.) Gah4 (talk) 22:37, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

The subject of clarity tags and their "relatives" is relevant here only to point out that they are distinct from citation required tags, and not to be confused therewith, as one of the participants here appeared to be doing... Or was this just me being hyper-sensitive? Anyway... --Soundofmusicals (talk) 03:08, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Well, I keep finding Citation Needed where I don't believe it is. Sometimes I can figure out what to do about them, sometimes not. I did fix some clarity tags, too. I suspect you might be just a little too sensitive. I try not to be too sensitive, to do the things I can do, and not worry about the ones I can't. Sometimes I know I am right, but lose anyway. Oh well. Gah4 (talk) 09:05, 27 April 2016 (UTC)