Template:Unreferenced

Template documentation[view] [edit] [history] [purge]

Usage

• {{Unreferenced|date=December 2025}}
• {{Unreferenced|find=World War II|find2=Mediterranean|date=December 2025}}

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.
• 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 just an external link.

Alternatives:

• Be bold! Consider searching for sources and citing them in the article, instead of adding this 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 2025' (no default)
• |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 2025}}

{{Unreferenced|find=search keyword(s)|date=December 2025}}

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 2025}}

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.

Date parameter:

The |date= parameter is (generally) used to indicate when the template was added to a page. An example of its usage is {{Unreferenced|date=December 2025}}. 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.

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 2025 (as described above), which are hidden categories.

Differences from related templates

The similar template {{More citations needed}} adds an article to Category:Articles needing additional references.

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

This template generates a tag to indicate that an article has no citations.

Template parameters[Edit template data]

This template prefers inline formatting of parameters.

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Type (e.g., section)	1	Text to replace the word "article", usually "section". This is a legacy feature, and this usage has been replaced with the separate '{{Unreferenced section}}' template. Example section Auto value article	String	optional
Month and year	date	Provides the month and year of the citation request; e.g., 'January 2013', but not 'jan13' Example January 2013 Auto value {{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}	String	suggested
Find sources keywords	find	Search string for 'find sources' template. May be one or more words. Set to value 'none' to suppress 'find sources' output. Example Your keyword list Auto value empty string	String	optional
Find2	find2 unquoted	Search keywords for 'find sources' unquoted search.	String	optional

Tracking categories

• Category:Articles lacking sources (129)
• Category:Articles needing additional references (63)

See also

• wikipedia:Wikipedia:Citation needed and {{Citation needed}} – for marking a particular claim as needing a citation
• {{More citations needed}}
• {{Unreferenced section}}
• wikipedia:Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles
• wikipedia:Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup

Footnotes

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:Unreferenced/doc. (edit | history)
Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox (create | mirror) and testcases (create) pages.
Add categories to the /doc subpage. Subpages of this template.