Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced articles

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Holding a competition?

Take a look at this diff to see an idea I've been tossing around. Any comments are welcome. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:34, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Casliber and I are working to put together a contest modeled after the Wikipedia:Stub Contest focusing on fixing unreferenced articles. I would invite anyone and everyone who is interested in fixing unreferenced articles to comment on the proposed contest at User:ONUnicorn/Unreferenced Contest. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 20:59, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

If participation on this talk page is any indication

I ought to give up tackling articles in Articles lacking sources from June 2007.

• An unwarranted FORK -- the quick response is "a clearly notable subtopic"
• A substantially duplicated article - PROD reverted without explanation
• A challenge to the facts in the article -- "stop being disruptive and find the references yourself" (which are often in another language or in printed sources)
• A challenge to the facts in the article -- WP:NODEADLINE

Fully a tenth of the articles are tagged deficient in references. Of those, probably between one and five percent are contra-factual. That's between 5,000 and 25,000 articles that are fiction. That's enough to cast doubt on the reliability of the encyclopedia as a whole. I know that studies have said that WP has as good or better accuracy that other information sources, but I'm not convinced.

Make that argument in public and the responses are blase.

What's the plan here? Rhadow (talk) 21:14, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Maybe do something to fix some of these articles, rather than berating other editors for their "failures"? Andy Dingley (talk) 22:50, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Updated mistagged articles

I have updated the mistagged articles list, which is shorter (4 pages down to 1) and more accurate than before. Mattg82 (talk) 13:59, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Mattg82, thanks for this, I have been working through the list but am finding that the vast majority have already been resolved. Would it be possible to generate a new, up-to-date list? Thanks for looking into this, Boleyn (talk) 08:58, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

I have updated the list, let me know if it is ok. I may have to tweak the database query if not. Mattg82 (talk) 01:22, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi, Mattg82, that was really helpful, could you please update the list again? Thanks, Boleyn (talk) 18:29, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

Y done. Mattg82 (talk) 23:39, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Progress: Cat:Articles lacking sources from October 2006 empty

Sandy Reed was the last unsourced article in Category:Articles lacking sources from October 2006 when it was sourced on 17 June 2018. As of today, there are 730 articles in Category:Articles lacking sources from November 2006. Sam Sailor 07:58, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Bot

Is there any way for a bot to identify unreferenced articles which haven't yet been tagged? I'm trying to work through some of the ones from October 2018 but unfortunately many of them have been around a long time without having been tagged. It would be good to have a clear idea of the actual issue. Boleyn (talk) 15:36, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

• It ought to be possible, you could have a bot which examines an article for various reference formats (e.g. external links, ref tags, citation templates) and report the article as unreferenced if it can't find any. Try WP:BOTREQ. Hut 8.5 17:06, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Hut 8.5. Boleyn (talk) 19:11, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

assistance with Mistagged unreferenced articles cleanup

Hello. I was wondering if anyone would like to help with the cleanup at Wikipedia:Mistagged unreferenced articles cleanup. I've been going through the newly updated list but I don't want to be the only one working on it. Thank you if you can help! :) --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 02:27, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your hard work on this, MrLinkinPark333. how often i the list updated? I've done some work on it but am struggling as it is so often already appropriately tagged. Thanks, Boleyn (talk) 21:10, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

@Boleyn: I don't know about the regularity of the update. I've only gone through some specifically albums/songs. If there are reliable sources added already or if I can add one, then I focus on them for removal. Better to have even one more person to go through the list :) --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 21:26, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, I see editors need to delete entries themselves when done, which is fine. I've done quite a few, thanks for alerting us to the project. Boleyn (talk) 22:15, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

@Boleyn: No problem. A question I have is: when an article on the mistagged list is indeed unreferenced, should it be removed anyways to show that I indeed checked it? The article in question is Zamir Jafri - it has an external link not ref. Thanks! --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 20:26, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes leave unref and remove from the list, article only has a official page external link. Mattg82 (talk) 21:54, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

@Mattg82: Okay. thank you for the reply. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 23:03, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

List of unreferenced articles

@Boleyn: in reference to Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Unreferenced_articles.

The bot is in beta. Initial test results. 48 out of 1000, or about 5% have no references. If there are 5.5 million articles total, the list would be at least 250,000 long. The bot has not processed all 5.5m yet as this would take a while. However once done, the next time it runs it would only process new articles appearing since the last time, thus it will run fast after the first run. Not sure where to put the data, it's more than can be posted to a single page without overwhelming limits of computer and user. -- GreenC 01:37, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

I am abandoning this to work on other projects. If anyone wants a list of all unreferenced articles let me know. -- GreenC 14:39, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

It might potentially be useful if it could determine whether the article has been tagged as unreferenced, and tag it if it hasn't been. Most of them do have some sort of external link though which is a basic type of reference. Hut 8.5 17:01, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Determining if a {{unreferenced}} tag exists is easy enough. To automatically tag might be a problem with WP:CONTEXTBOT because there will be a false positive rate. As noted above out of 48 matches, 4 were false positive. I might be able to get the FP rate down further but never zero. Even when it makes a mistake, it won't be a bad mistake because the number of refs would still be small. The bot excludes the External links section since those are not refs. The Initial test results shows what it found which is pretty good IMO, other than those 4 FPs. -- GreenC 17:30, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

I think those of us who watch this category would find it very useful (if a bit depressing) to have those articles tagged, even with some false positives. I'm surprised it's not already a bot function. Now that WP:NPP is fairly organized, hopefully a one-time run of the bot is all that would be necessary. GreenC, thanks for all the time you've already put into this!! Ajpolino (talk) 18:44, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Sounds like a tagging bot would be the most useful. A little encouragement is all I need to keep going :) Will do some more test runs and work on the FP filters. -- GreenC 21:30, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Ajpolino, the article 'Sang Linggo nAPO Sila was tagged with {{refimprove}} even though it has no references, only external links. Is that best, or should it have been tagged {{unreferenced}}? -- GreenC 21:43, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

GreenC, reasonable people may disagree (and I invite them to do so here). But I'd prefer it get tagged with {{unreferenced}}. Honestly, so many articles are tagged with refimprove (~350,000) that I'm not sure anyone is really looking at that backlog. At least this one has a few eyes on it. So I wouldn't sweat the external-links-as-references false positives too much (again, others feel free to disagree with me here). The unreferenced tag might still bring useful eyes to those. Thanks a million for your time! Ajpolino (talk) 16:51, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Ajpolino sure glad to help, I've been able to get the FPs way down. There is {{no footnotes}} such as Ezequiel Iturrioz. It tracks Category:Articles lacking in-text citations around 100,000. More precise in scope, recognizing the existence of external links but lacking footnotes (for those that have external links). It might be more acceptable when doing mass tagging. And it would spread the load so {{unreferenced}} doesn't suddenly get 100 of 200 thousand new entries. What do you think? -- GreenC 19:12, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

That sounds great! {{no footnotes}} for those with just ELs sounds uncontroversial to me... Ajpolino (talk) 00:46, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

GreenC, thanks for your work on this. I've gone through the ones on your lsit and added unref tags and am happy to help out if a full list is created. Boleyn (talk) 22:16, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

@Ajpolino, Boleyn, and Hut 8.5: The noref bot has been improved and expanded. User:GreenC/data/noref has the results. (Please do not modify the test result articles as they will be used at WP:BOTREQ to demonstrate what it does). It is filtering out "List of" and "<year> in .." articles because they create too many context-sensitive decisions the bot can't resolve. It is filtering out articles tagged as stubs because {{Unreferenced}} says "Consider not adding this template to very brief stubs" - this removes about 70% of the finds, but I think for now it's better to ignore stubs because it's still finding a lot to be tagged. It's extrapolating to about 130,000 to be tagged, assuming we want to tag all three categories via this bot. Thoughts? If you think this is a good design I can take it to BOTREQ (which may take a few months to secure permission). -- GreenC 15:56, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

GreenC, I spot checked a few and it looks great to me! I think having it tag all three categories you have marked is helpful (I assume it's the same tag of {{no footnotes}} both for ELs only and having a reference section at the end only?). I'd lightly prefer it also tag stubs, but as you point out there will be plenty of work to do with the run as is (in fact there's already plenty to do), so perhaps we can run on stubs in the future if we ever catch up on the non-stubs. Thanks again for your work on this! Merry Christmas! Ajpolino (talk) 17:57, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Ok great, thanks for the feedback. Your response will be helpful in getting bot approval. I thought with the stubs we can go back later since it's a huge number (2 to 3 times the size). It's also because {{Unreferenced}} says "Consider not adding this template to very brief stubs". Once this bot is approved and runs without too much issue it will pave the way for working on the stubs and other things currently filtered out. Merry Christmas, GreenC 18:27, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree, GreenC, it's a well thought out plan. No point in generating so many that the list is soon out of date. Boleyn (talk) 20:28, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

The BRFA has been filed at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/GreenC bot 7. -- GreenC 01:23, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

@Boleyn, Ajpolino, and Hut 8.5: Left the following message at the BRFA:

Please withdraw the BRFA. It is going to prove too controversial. Not that I agree (otherwise i wouldn't have made the BRFA) but there are evidently some old wounds in the community about tagging and this bot will reopen old battle scars. And there is more than 1 way to make use of the tool, it's purpose is to discover and identify potential candidate articles, information others can do with as they please. If there is support to re-open the BRFA it should go through VP or an RFC first.

I will find a way to post the list(s) of candidate articles discovered by the tool. -- GreenC 15:31, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

@GreenC: I've started a discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Bot_to_add_Template:Unreferenced_and_Template:No_footnotes_to_pages_(single_run). Hopefully that'll give some insight into controversy (or lack thereof). Thanks again for all of your work!! Ajpolino (talk) 17:22, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

@GreenC and Boleyn: Hey folks, looks like the discussion has slowed to a standstill at the village pump. I'd say there's clear consensus for adding the unreferenced tag to articles lacking sources. Opposition focused more on the no footnotes tags, and this is obviously a more complex and more contentious area. I'd be perfectly happy having the bot just run on unreferenced articles, where it seems to be less contentious. Thoughts from anyone else? Ajpolino (talk) 20:11, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

I'd would like to let this one run its natural course until someone unaffiliated closes it. One never knows, the close may support no footnotes. Also recall there are two types of no footnotes, those with an external link section only, and those with some sort of references/sources section. -- GreenC 22:19, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

One of this project's pages shows up in search results

I was searching on Bing.com for something, and one of the search results was the Mistagged articles cleanup page. I thought the backstage wiki pages were not indexed for search (or something like that). Maybe there's a tag or something missing on that one? Schazjmd (talk) 00:04, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

I think this is more a technical question for the guys at the Village Pump. I remember there being a no index function that can be added to pages but as you say background Wikipedia pages are not usually indexed. Mattg82 (talk) 15:58, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

I'll post it there, thanks @Mattg82:. Schazjmd (talk) 16:10, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!

A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.

– Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Go team (and bot run may finally be happening)

Hi all! I just wanted to point out that the backlog Category:All_articles_lacking_sources has been falling steadily by about 1,000 articles per month for the last year and a half. I'm not sure who all is chipping away at it, but A+ fantastic work! Just a note, a few thousand may be added in an upcoming month per this bot request but even with the bot test runs adding 2,000 articles to the category, the numbers have still been going down. So go team! Ajpolino (talk) 14:39, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Articles mistagged as unreferenced

Hi all. I'm no search expert, but I think(?) that this search gives all articles tagged as lacking sources but that also have a <ref> tag. There are currently 9,169 of them. These are probably the lowest hanging fruit, so any assistance going through and removing the {{unreferenced}} tag where appropriate would be great! Also I noticed from this list that {{Religious text primary}} also adds articles to the category Category:All articles lacking sources. I've started a discussion at that template's talk page proposing to change the template to discontinue that behavior. If no one objects I'll make the change in a few days. Thanks all! Happy editing! Ajpolino (talk) 18:05, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

@Ajpolino: wouldn't the existence of <ref></ref> mean the article is no longer unreferenced and the tag could be automatically removed? -- GreenC 01:43, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

@GreenC: Hmmm maybe. It certainly would be a big time saver if these 9,000 were checked automatically. The only benefit I can see of doing it manually is that a human editor can swap {{unreferenced}} for a more appropriate tag if necessary. Also I suppose theoretically, there could be some that have a ref tag but lack references, e.g. if some page said "The order of crysanthemum is a secret society of Dutch police canines."<ref>15 years as a police captain</ref>. But in the first 15 or so I've gone through, I've not seen any that fit that bill... I'll check 100 or so of them and let you know if they all seem straightforward. Thanks!! Ajpolino (talk) 15:09, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Ok. It's funny the previous bot will add about 10,000 new tags (it's almost done) and this process could remove about the same number. A wash. Given all the anxiety about flooding the system with tags. If you think it is OK I expect a BRFA would go much faster and easier for removing tags. It also could be something that runs on a regular basis automatically, once a month or something. -- GreenC 19:04, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

@GreenC: Hmmmm in the first 20 or so I've gone through, I've stumbled upon a few types of issues with automated removal. One at Party_leaders_of_the_United_States_Senate, where an editor used the <ref> tag to add explanatory notes (though that particular article has external links that could probably be converted into a reference). Another potential issue is seen at Ed_O'Neill and Coulomb's law (I already fixed Couloumb's law, so you'll have to go back an edit) where the {{unreferenced}} template was being used as a {{unreferenced section}} template by passing a parameter that changed the template text, and so the intended behavior is to categorize into Category:All articles needing additional references instead of Category:All articles lacking sources. For these, the fix is to swap the parameter (as I did at Coulomb's law) or swap the template. That said, about 75% of the ones I've seen so far are straightforward removals of the template. So right now it looks like automated removal might make a mess. But manual removal is going to take a long long time. So let me go through some more and think about if there's a clever way to cut this backlog. Thanks again for all of your help and time on this!! Very much appreciated! Ajpolino (talk) 20:54, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

It could require an external link inside the ref to count as a ref. It could skip if the template contains the string "section". -- GreenC 23:51, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

@Ajpolino: I'm no search expert either, but search hits from {{unreferenced|section|date=MONTH YEAR}} and {{unreferenced section|date=MONTH YEAR}} could be excluded by searching for unreferenced|date: incategory:All_articles_lacking_sources insource:ref insource:/\<ref/ insource:"unreferenced/\|date". That, however, leaves the little challenge that {{unreferenced}} has 33 aliases, and articles where these are in use will not be included in the search result. Best, Sam Sailor 20:48, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

References for [Year] articles

Hey all. Does anyone know if there has ever been discussion on whether YEAR articles should have references? As lists of wikilinks they seems like more of navigational aids for browsing than content articles. And presumably the fact in the YEAR article (date of birth, date of death, date of event) is already cited at the linked article. About 600 year articles are tagged as unreferenced. Is there any sense in adding references to them (or better yet, has this already been discussed)? Thanks. Ajpolino (talk) 22:33, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Just a follow-up in case anyone is interested. Asked at WT:YEARS. Seems like folks feel entries should be referenced in year articles. So that's a problem for another day. Happy editing! Ajpolino (talk) 16:19, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

mistagged Unreferenced articles update

Would anyone like to help finish off the Wikipedia:Mistagged unreferenced articles cleanup? There's currently approximately 1500 left to go. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 01:33, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Category:Articles lacking sources from June 2019

I have absolutely no clue what happened two months ago, but this category contains a list of 8,888 articles. That's absurdly huge! 1234 is the average number of articles in unreferenced monthly cleanup categories. Does anyone know why June 2019 was such an outlier? (Please ping response) –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 20:51, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

@MJL: Yep! GreenC put together a one-time bot run to tag non-stub non-lists without references (~10,000 in all). The BRFA is here and the discussion that led to it here. The good news is we're currently reducing the backlog by about 1,000 articles per month! The bad news is that means it'll still be years before we catch up. So any help would be greatly appreciated. Hope that answers your questions. Happy editing! Ajpolino (talk) 18:34, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

@Ajpolino: Ahhhh that makes sense! Thank you!! –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 22:32, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Discussion about WikiProjects at the Village Pump

For anyone interested there is a discussion about WikiProjects at the Village pump (and next thread down). Mattg82 (talk) 20:51, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

{{unreferenced2}}

FYI, Template:Unreferenced2 (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been nominated for deletion -- 65.92.246.43 (talk) 16:59, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

July 2007

I've been working on whittling down the July 2007 unreferenced page - less than 70 to go! I'm hoping to get that to under 50 by the end of the weekend. If anyone would like to help, it would be great to see that number turn to zero! Kazamzam (talk) 15:05, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Help request for Nizari Isma'ilism

Hello. I was wondering if someone in this wikiproject has the interest and time to help reference the article Nizari Isma'ilism. Thanks in advance.--Thinker78 (talk) 16:17, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Village pump policy discussion of interest

This discussion might be of interest to people interested in the improvement/sourcing of unsourced articles. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 12:52, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

@ONUnicorn: Thank you very much for sharing this. There has been a significant boost in activity for referencing articles in the January 2007 category already and I'm hopeful that it will continue. I'm wondering if there is a better way to publicize this and, ideally, galvanize more editors into action - if this were to be approved we would lose about 143,000 articles, many of which could be saved and referenced quite easily. Do you have any suggestions? - Kazamzam (talk) 19:03, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

I think it would be helpful to promote this project much more widely and try to revive it. It's marked as semi-active, which is sad -- it should be one of the encyclopedia's most active projects. Perhaps a drive, advertised on the Community Portal? If it were obvious that editors were working on the unsourced backlog in a coordinated fashion, there might be less anxiety resulting in Nuke 'Em All type proposals. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:08, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

I'd be up for that. One tactic which has been used in the past is to divide the backlog up into manageable chunks, e.g. the monthly categories. That way there would be noticeable progress towards regular goals. Hut 8.5 11:48, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

I put in a request to have the project featured in the Signpost (TBD on how much attention that will gather but it's better than nothing). The January 2007 category is coming along at an excellent clip - 140 articles cleared in 4 days - and we are actually under 143,000 articles for the first time I can remember! Potentially we could set up something like Asian Month but this is somewhat tedious work that needs to be done constantly and consistently, not just in a game-ified way. What I would really like, instead of draftifying unreferenced articles, would be for the NPP to PROD articles created without references. Kazamzam (talk) 12:43, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Signpost is a good idea. We could just mark the project as active again, as there seems to be a few editors interested.

I clicked through the June 2022 category yesterday to see what's coming through at the moment; most appeared not actually to be completely unsourced (external links, bibliographies, sourced only to company site, sources pulled from wikidata &c), though there were some with literally nothing. Most seem not to be coming out of NPP but older articles where an editor has stumbled across it, or is doing a systematic clear out of a category (eg Latvian settlements), or has decided a source is unreliable and removed it (eg baseball). There are lots of lists, too; there's no consensus on whether a list of bluelinks needs a source or not (see discussions passim at NPP & AfC).

Personally I'd prefer to work by topic, rather than strictly by date; I can usually source scientists, writers and classical musicians, and most things UK, but am lost on, say, baseballers. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:27, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

I haven't explored it thoroughly, but WikiProject cleanup listings seems like it might be useful. Here for example is a list of unreferenced articles on women writers last updated 31 May 2022. (Or, rather, a mixture of women writers and works by them). -- Visviva (talk) 01:53, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Visviva -- That looks useful, will investigate further. I think as long as the headline number is trending downwards we can feel like we're being successful, even if there are still remnants in Jan 2007. The NPP project has a bot-updated graph of total unpatrolled which is quite motivating; I wonder if we could replicate? Espresso Addict (talk) 04:47, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Gotta cite 'em all 2022 contest proposal

Hi everyone! I was poking around the Contest/Toolkit and was thinking that it would be a great way to start organizing a contest for later in the summer. We could also do an edit-a-thon but I think the nature of the project and how it's set up/divided by month is more conducive to the contest format. The Wikimedia foundation offers grants of up to 2,000 USD which would be a very attractive incentive (getting paid to edit Wikipedia? Incredible) which is potentially an option should we successfully apply. The two big issues will be advertising sufficiently in the lead-up and then monitoring to ensure that citations/references are reliable/adequate and are formatted correctly - this will require a decent handful of dedicated users. I've never organized any group activity on Wikipedia so I'm very excited/nervous about it. If anyone has experience and would like to participate, let's discuss! Kazamzam (talk) 16:42, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

January 2007 <100

Whoooo double digits. Also for anyone interested in biology, I went through the December 2009 category and found a ton of unreferenced genera/species pages, knocked those out pretty easily. It's coming along! Kazamzam (talk) 14:19, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Technical victory - the final article in January 2007 is tagged for deletion on 25 June and I suspect it will go through. I'm considering the category closed and moving on to the larger February 2007 with a 'once more unto the breach' sensibility. Kazamzam (talk) 12:44, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

when are we supposed to add the banner to a talk page?

I've been going through the unreferenced biology articles and adding references but often I only add one reference - is that enough of an improvement to add a banner to a talk page? Is two? I'm not all that used to Wikiprojects but I like the sense of accomplishment of adding a reference Feralcateater000 (talk) 02:53, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

• Hey Feralcateater000! The dopamine rush of accomplishment is very real. I personally have not used the banner on any of the talk pages for articles I’ve referenced, I prefer to leave a link to the project in my (admittedly canned) edit summary - I’m on mobile but you can check out my contribution history. Typically for articles where I’ve only added one reference but there are more needed I tack on the refimprov template and try to circle back if possible. Unless it’s a stub with little chance of expansion, I try to do two sources as a minimum in case one of them turns out to be a bust for some reason ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but potentially adding the banner might be a good way to drum up more interest and start getting through the backlog! Kazamzam (talk) 03:00, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
  • That's good to know. Thanks! I mostly edit on my laptop and find articles using the search by topic function to find unreferenced Biology articles... Feralcateater000 (talk)

December 2022 update

Hey all! I just did the monthly progress update - we cleared exactly 1,900 articles between November 4th and today! Whoo! The number of unreferenced articles in the oldest category, February 2007, decreased by more than 50%! All categories, except two (June 2009 and March 2017), decreased by at least one percentage point (I keep a private & mildly deranged spreadsheet for tracking purposes), which I count as a major accomplishment.

I am very excited at how much backlog as been sifted through since June of this year when we were at ~144,000 articles and discussing draftifying the lot of them. I know this project is kind of low-key and WikiGnome-ish, but if anyone is interested in doing some collaborative work, please feel free to ping me - it might be helpful for working on something like all the meridian articles in the December 2020 category. All the best, Kazamzam (talk) 22:45, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

January 2023 update

Happy New Year, URA participants! We hit the excellent milestone of finishing off February 2007 and clearing 1712 articles from the backlog. Great work and huge thanks to everyone who has participated in this. Private and mildly deranged spreadsheet for tracking purposes is going well, with all categories decreasing by at least one percentage point. Happy to share a copy if anyone is interested or similarly neurotic.

Low-hanging fruit: June 2007 - 24 articles left as of this writing. This is a decrease of over 66% since December, already a huge boost. March and April 2007 also decreased substantially (14 and 12 percent respectively), as did the newer category, November 2022 (9% - possible recentism bias? Discuss.). A possible larger goal/New Years resolution might be to fully clear out 2007 so we're only, uh, 15 years backlogged.

High-hanging fruit: December 2009, bugbear of my WikiDreams, dropped by another 277 articles - only 18,087 to go. I suspect this category will outlive me.

Open challenge: categories February and March 2018 both have exactly 480 articles as of this writing. If anyone would like to stake a claim to see which will decrease faster, there will be a valuable and coveted reward (picture of my cat, Jellybean, in a hat) for the victor.

Have a wonderful 2023 and happy editing. All the best, Kazamzam (talk) 00:16, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

I'd be interested in seeing the spreadsheet. Just picked this up again after a few months, mostly focusing on expanding sub-stubs. Gnomingstuff (talk) 19:34, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

@Gnomingstuff: - thank you so much for your interest! It's a link to a Google spreadsheet, any particular way you'd like to receive it? We can also take this up on your/my talk page to avoid spamming people. Kazamzam (talk) 18:20, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Request

The article Thomas Haughey has been under-referenced for 10 years. If someone has the interest to work on it that would be great! Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 01:09, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

April 2023 update

Hi URA peeps, hope everyone is doing well. March was very hectic for me so I didn't update the categories but, going through it today, we cleared 3045 articles in a two month period! Amazing!!

• Highlights: the top 3 categories from February to April were October 2007 (18.0%, 112 articles), March 2007 (15.5%, 114 articles), and August 2021 (10.5%, 134 articles).

• Low-hanging fruit: with 2006 in the bin, the smallest/oldest category is April 2007 with 87 articles left.

• High-hanging fruit: BFC (Big Friendly Category) December 2009 is a svelte 17,491 articles as of writing. There were 4 categories that did not cross the personal and arbitrary 1% threshold I set: January 2013, September 2013, February 2016, and June 2019. There are all very large and September '13 is mass-created geographical stubs from Kenya, in case that tickles anyone's interest.
• Proposal - much thanks to @Thinker78 for the edit request! I think this could be something really interesting that the WP could offer as an edit-service. I get great library access through work and would be more than happy to help out anyone looking for references who might need a hand. Any thoughts?
• Results: February 2018 beat March 2018 by 1 article (460 vs 461).
• New challenge: June 2018 and July 2018 are tied right now at 500 articles exactly. Same prize as above (picture of my cat, Jellybean, in a hat) to anyone interested.

Happy editing! All the best, Kazamzam (talk) 23:39, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

My pleasure! How can we use your library access? Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 20:59, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the update! I've mostly been working on the older categories. Keep thinking I'm running low on obviously expandable articles, keep finding more.... Gnomingstuff (talk) 02:03, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

2,000 banners!

Just noticed that we've broken 2,000 banners for unreferenced articles improved. Great milestone there -- but a lot of these are from 2010 or thereabouts, so let's fill it out with more recent work! Gnomingstuff (talk) 21:32, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Adding Template:Filter category by topic to category pages

I just came across {{Filter category by topic}} on Category:Articles lacking reliable references from December 2006 and other reliable reference cats. It seems so useful to have and allows referencers to find specific topics that they may be able to help with. Is there any reason why they haven't been added to other articles lacking cats? I went ahead and add it to Category:Articles lacking sources from March 2007 but thought a discussion should be done before adding it to more. Any thoughts? Meanderingbartender (talk) 23:56, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

• Hey @Meanderingbartender! Good question - this is already on the main Category:All articles lacking sources page which makes sense because there's so many so it's actually possible to divide into meaningful topics. March 2007 is quite small so I'm not sure how useful it would actually be, but for some of the bigger categories, i.e. December 2009, it could be helpful. The other concern I have is I've used that template for biology articles and whatever the search function is brings back some weird results, i.e. the first hit in the biology topic is Leader of the Opposition. Let me know what you think of this but I agree that being able to filter by topic to encourage participation is a great idea. Kazamzam (talk) 03:14, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks for replying. It's certainly an imprecise tool but I think it will be a bit helpful for those seeking out certain types of articles or avoiding others. I randomly look at the monthly pages and I didn't know the filter existed. It may have saved me some time clicking on certain subjects that I nothing about. I agree that it makes the most sense in bigger categories but I don't think it can hurt in smaller ones. Meanderingbartender (talk) 13:39, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

  A belated update here, as I finished adding Template:Filter category by topic to all categories in the backlog. In addition, I updated the "Random article" to a clickable button; and added the help information that I found in a few of the categories. Below, here is the wikicode for future categories.

{{align|center|{{resbox|'''{{large|{{Random page in category}}}}'''}}}}
{{Filter category by topic}}
*'''Please help improve an article in this category by adding [[WP:REFB|references]] to [[WP:Reliable sources|reliable sources]] that [[WP:V|verify]] content within the article. Once reliable sources references have been added the unreferenced tag can be removed.'''
 Done - This is my first visit here and to the Unref. wikiproject, so I'm hoping these updates will help reduce backlog. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 22:00, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

@JoeNMLC:Thanks for adding the filter and fixing the random page button! Meanderingbartender (talk) 15:38, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

June 2023 update

Hi party people! I think the bimonthly updates are a bit neater so I will stick with that going forward.

• Headline: As of today, we cleared 3138 articles in a two month period, even more than the last update! Wow! Please clap.

• Highlights: The top 3 categories from April to June were March 2007 (30.53%, 132 articles), April 2007 (23.81%, 48 articles), and September 2007 (6.76%, 138 articles).

• Low-hanging fruit: April 2007. It's ripe. Do it.

• High-hanging fruit: BFC (Big Friendly Category) December 2009 is a shapely 17,070 articles as of this writing. There were, to my personal shame, about 15 categories that did not cross the totally arbitrary 1% threshold I set for myself that no one else is aware of. Again, happy to share spreadsheet access if anyone wants to become a fellow bearer of the curse.
• Proposal - Our esteemed colleague @Meanderingbartender has discussed adding the topic boxes to larger monthly categories (December '09, May '19, June '19) to make it easier for editors to work on topics that interest them and drum up activity. I want to expand on that by saying it might be a good thing to have as a tab on the WikiProject page itself, alongside Mistagged articles, if anyone concurs.
• Results: June 2018 beat July 2018, 487 to 492.
• New challenge: To the Aries and Aries-aficionados among us, March/April 2021 and March/April 2022 are tied (608 and 405 respectively). Please consider competing in pairs and coming up with a ram-themed name if you are so interested. As always, the grand prize is a picture of my cat, Jellybean, in a hat.

I will also be stepping away from editing as the summer continues for my PhD comprehensive exams and will be fully unavailable for August. Have a lovely June, a fantastic Pride Month, and happy editing! Best, Kazamzam (talk) 22:03, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

@Kazamzam: Thanks for the continued updates. Good luck with your exams! Meanderingbartender (talk) 14:55, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Balanced conspiracy theory references requested

Hi all. I noticed the lead of the article conspiracy theory only focus on the negative aspects of it and doesn't even mention abuse of the term to quash dissent. If you have the time and interest, it would be great if you could find scholarly reliable sources or even general reliable sources that highlight the rationality of speculating in such a way that is called out as conspiracy theory inappropriately in efforts to quash dissent. Also about these efforts, such as the situation with the Covid 19 Lancet letter. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 22:26, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Progress section

Greetings, Today I added a new "Progress" section for this wikiproject's main page. It's modeled from WP:Orphan section "Step 1: Finding an orphaned article". Hoping the section will bring more visibility for the backlog, and may be helpful for people new to the Unreferenced WikiProject. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 15:19, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

@JoeNMLC: Hi, thank you for the update to the main page! It seems like the 'Progress' section overlaps quite a bit with the existing 'Tasks' section and, in my opinion, the main page is starting to look a little cluttered. What do you think of making this into a page alongside the Mistagged articles and Discussion pages?

Also in the 'Progress' section, I'm also not confident in this phrasing: 'This category contains early articles marked as unreferenced' - the date of the tag is just when it was tagged as unreferenced, whereas the article itself could be any age. I have seen articles from 2006 that have been tagged as unreferenced 10 or 15 years later because things slipped through the cracks.

We don't have a ton of activity in the project, unfortunately, but I hope that by discussing things like the layout, we can get more editor input and engagement. Let me know what you think and thank you SO MUCH for all your work in the March and April 2007 categories! Best, Kazamzam (talk) 15:54, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

September 2023 update

Hi party people! I hope everyone is doing well.

• Headline: The total number of articles tagged as unreferenced is below 120,000 for the first time since I have been keeping track. For perspective, there were 135,240 articles in November 2022. Incredible!! Once again, please clap.

• Highlights: March 2007 and April 2007 are dead and gone, with May 2007 at a trim 2 articles left. Huge congratulations and thanks to everyone for all the work and effort that went into this!

• Low-hanging fruit: May 2007 is the obvious one but don't sleep on August, September, and October 2007.

• High-hanging fruit: Everyone's favourite BFC (Big Friendly Category) December 2009 is a svelte 16,478 articles as of this writing - truly a grande dame. The September 2020 category is chock-full of stub articles on streams, rivers, and tributaries in Germany, many of which probably do not meet notability criteria and do not have their own independent articles on German-language WP. As discussed before, September 2013 is still riddled with mass-created stubs about settlements in eastern and sub-Saharan Africa.
• Proposal - Keeping track of articles that are significantly expanded by URA participants that lead to DYK nominations.
• Collaboration - Partnering with other WikiProject for articles where English-language references are likely to be thin on the ground, i.e. calling WP Germany to help on the September 2020 German rivers. Is anyone active in another WikiProject who would be interested in facilitating this?
• Results: March 2021 beat April 2021, 573 to 588 and March 2022 beat April 2022 381 to 389. Now that's what I call March Madness.
• New challenge: November and December 2013 are tied at 423 articles. How do these ties keep happening? Crazy. As always, if anyone would like to claim victory, the grand prize is a picture of my cat, Jellybean, in a hat.

Thanks to everyone for all the work for the past few months! Next update will be in November. Best, Kazamzam (talk) 16:48, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

---

@Kazamzam - Below I added a tip that is another time-saving option for adding citation to an unreferenced article. If it is not clear enough, feel free to update as this is first attempt.

If if okay, maybe this one can be moved somewhere onto the WP project page. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 02:37, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

WikiProject Stub improvement

I'm working on reviving Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub improvement, a maintenance WikiProject that will be looking at some of the same articles at this one. Just thought I'd leave a notice here in case anyone is interested. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 06:20, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Could the tagging bot be updated and run again?

I think it is great you guys have a bot to "tag non-stub non-lists without references". If I understand right it was last run in 2019. However since then it seems a lot of old articles have been manually tagged, which must have added up to a lot of editor time. I understand it is not worth the effort to try and automatically tag very peculiar cases, but could the bot be updated to automatically tag most of the old articles similar to those which have manually tagged in the past couple of years? Perhaps it could also be adjusted to tag stubs older than say a year, as I don't understand why unreferenced old stubs should not be tagged. Chidgk1 (talk) 19:11, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Village pump discussion of interest

Hi everyone - I'm trying to think of a punny group name for the URA but all I'm getting is Urinals (not ideal).

This discussion at the village pump (idea lab) about unreferenced articles is closed but seems very pertinent to us and I encourage anyone involved with this project to read it so we can discuss + it reminds me of this discussion from June 2022 (mentioned above on this talk page). Tl;dr, the "unreferenced" tag would act as a pseudo-prod tag where the creator would be notified and the newly tagged articles would have two weeks before it would be deleted, and/but this would not be applied retroactively. There have been tweaks on it, i.e. increasing the length of time to 30 days, bots to add ==References== sections, etc. As before, what I think we need is not deletion but more, more, more, and more editors in this project but I am interested in other URA members' perspectives. Thanks, Kazamzam (talk) 23:13, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

I have been participating intermittently in the recent VP discussion. My experience with attempting to source articles tagged as completely unsourced is that a large fraction are not unsourced at all, and the remainder that fall within my areas of competence (most things UK, classical music, buildings, literature, some science/medicine) are often very easy to source with the WL and generally pretty accurate. How one attracts other editors to doing this important task is a mystery to me. I have tried advertising some at Wikiprojects but I don't think it's had any effect. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:46, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

November 2023 update

Happy November, party people! I hope everyone is doing well.

• Headline: We have cleared 2970 articles between September and November. The total number of articles tagged as unreferenced is below 117,000 for the first time since I have been keeping track. For perspective, there were 135,240 articles in November 2022. That's a decrease of 18,242 articles in one year - a huge accomplishment!! (As always, please clap.) If we continue on this trajectory, we will be below 100,000 by this time next year.

• Highlights: August and September 2007 are at last in the dustbin of history where they belong.

• Low-hanging fruit: October 2007 is hovering at a tantalizing 106. If anyone has a passion for Sligo Intermediate Football Championships, have I got the category for you.

• High-hanging fruit: Everyone's favourite BFC (Big Friendly Category) December 2009 is a comely 16,017 articles as of this writing - fewer calories but just as much body as the original. September 2013 and 2020 continue to vex me with the piles of mass-created stubs that likely do not mean the general notability criteria. More worthwhile, June 2019 has hundreds and hundreds of unreferenced sports articles. Is anyone involved with WikiProject Sports and would be interested in taking a look?
• Proposal - If anyone is taking a batch of articles that do not meet criteria to keep to AfD or applying a lot of PRODs at once, please make a note of it here so that other URA volunteers can either endorse deletion/merging or pitch in to shape up the article (see the work on Kerry Corner with @Tutwakhamoe for what I humbly believe is a good example of this).
• Collaboration - Our editor in arms @Thebiguglyalien has revived Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub improvement. I think this would be an excellent opportunity to have a joint campaign (assuming someone over there knows how to put together a campaign); alternatively, I think getting a little profile in the Signpost about the (active) Wiki Fix-Up Projects (see the homepage for a list) would be a great boost for both projects' project-wide profiles.
• Results: November 2013 narrowly edged out December 2013, 405 to 407 articles. Happy Scorpio season to all those who observe.
• New challenge: No ties at this update but it would be great if someone could figure out how to put a date on all those 'undated' unreferenced tags - they are really cramping my spreadsheet style. If you can do this, you will be rewarded with a rare, highly coveted picture of my cat Jellybean in a Santa hat. Wowza.

Have a fantastic rest of the year - the next update will be in 2024! Happy editing Kazamzam (talk) 23:15, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Love it Kazamzam, thanks. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:28, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Challenge

Why do we still allow unreferenced articles to exist in 2024? Enough. I challenge myself to make Category:Articles lacking sources from January 2024 and onwards empty. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 04:46, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Greetings @CactiStaccingCrane - Thank you for doing this challenge. While the bulk of my wikipedia time is for WP:Orphan, I do like to visit this wikiproject from time-to-time.

• Within List of xxxx articles, these are generally easy to find & add sources, especially the older ones. Mainly because those lists have many wikilinked articles.

1. For a mix of old and newer articles: Category:All articles lacking sources, and select Li section
2. For old articles, Category:Articles lacking sources by month, and choose a specific month-year
3. With Petscan tool, filter for combined categories

Both WP Orphan and WP Unref project have a number of people working to tag articles, and fewer working to improve those tagged articles, hence the backlog. So thank you for helping. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 16:07, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

January 2024

Happy New Year, party people! I hope everyone is doing swimmingly.

• Headline: We cleared 2784 articles between November and January! It is a less than the 2970 articles cleared from September to November 2023 but I'm attributing that to decreased editing during the holidays. Nevertheless, please clap.)

• Highlights: October 2007 has decreased by 98.11%! What!

• Low-hanging fruit: November 2007 is hovering at an enticing 22 articles left. I don't know about you, but I'm feeling 22.
• Announcements: Editor-in-arms @Altamel will hopefully be doing the annual update of the historical data in mid-February. I think we can definitely kick October and November into the dustbin of history where they belong by then with concerted effort.

• High-hanging fruit: Everyone's favourite BFC (Big Friendly Category) December 2009 is a statuesque 15,516 articles as of this writing - family-friendly but built for speed. The other high-hanging fruit are what I'm calling the Frustrating Five (name open for revision): February 2016 (1046), April 2019 (1397), May 2019 (2500), June 2019 (5201), and September 2020 (1494). As always, they vex me. Furthermore, editor-in-arms @CactiStaccingCrane has already declared a mission to get January 2024 to zero and keep it there. Godspeed.
• Proposal - The Wikipedia:WikiProject Fungi/Lichen task force folks have a newsletter that gets sent out to the project members who opt in. Would anyone be interested in receiving something like this?
• Collaboration - Trying to figure out the aforementioned pitch for the Signpost, stay tuned.
• Results: Someone got rid of all the undated tags, wow! Ask and ye shall receive! There would be a photo but a) no one claimed sweet victory and b) my cat had to go to the vet today for stomach issues and I would feel bad tormenting Jellybean further.
• New challenge: July and August 2012 are tied for 599 articles. To make up for the lack of Santa!Jellybean, the grand prize for the next challenge is a picture of Jellybean in a St. Patrick's Day hat AND bowtie. Gadzooks. This is how you adjust for inflation, Jerome.

Have a fantastic start of the year - the next update will be in March! Happy editing! Kazamzam (talk) 23:15, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Technical error

Just a heads up here, our main page is bricked due to too many parser function (and template) calls – see WP:EXPENSIVE. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:53, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Now resolved. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 12:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)