Category talk:Articles lacking sources

message: Shouldn't this be :Category:Articles that lack sources? "Which" should be preceded by a comma... ugen64 03:44, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, indeed it should. See Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language/FAQs for an explanation of "which" and "that". Zeromacnoo 17:10, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Question

message: How do you remove an article from this category once references have been added?--shtove 09:28, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Decategorisation 

message: Has anyone given thought to renaming this category? I noticed that our featured article today (Lothal) has lots of footnotes sprinkled throughout, but at the bottom of the page is "Articles lacking sources". It doesn't "lack sources" - it would simply be even better if a source was found for a particular statement.
Suggestions:
*Articles needing more sources
*Articles with unsourced statements
Stevage 08:11, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was thinking along the same lines as you were and was trying to come up with a good category name when I found your comment. So I stole :Category:Articles with unsourced statements :) Articles that contain  (or its many redirects) now point to :Category:Articles with unsourced statements, while those containing  (or its many redirects) continue pointing to this category. —Seqsea (talk) 05:28, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Renaming category

message: All material is cited from Dr Koshoos papers, which are referenced. There is no original research. Why say it is lacking sources?
: The question is, rather- why are you asking *here* rather than at the article's discussion page?
: → P.MacUidhir (t) (c)  22:31, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Canna 'Roi Humbert' 

message: I have just started getting involved in this project and would like to know where I can read up on a Definition of sources as I feel some articles have been unfairly targeted, two very different examples are Anal Sex which was brimming with references I left an entry on the talk page asking for feedback. The other was List of congenital disorders which has been listed since December 2005 I simply removed that and gave my reasons on the talk page, which in a nutshell are that in a list of that nature all the citations to establish it on that list should be in the article. It seems that some articles are targeted simply because the sources are provided but not numbered under the reference section, which means the tagger has seen what appears to be an unvalidated statement and simply tagged it because of the editing style. I have a preference for numbered references as it makes it easier to do follow up research, however both styles are acceptable--Matt 12:17, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  References v  See also and External links 

message: I am probably going to be sorry I brought this up,(deep breath) ok, here goes.  It would seem kind of pointless to use  for article with absolutely no references and  or  for those that are poorly sourced if they all place article in the same category.  As it happens  puts articles into Category:Articles lacking reliable references, so perhaps Category:Articles lacking sources should be limited to  and everything else like  should go to Category:Articles lacking reliable references.  Jeepday (talk) 13:23, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I too noticed this. The category tag at the bottom seems to imply that the references already provided within the article are unreliable - which is absolutely not automatically the case, or the intent of the template! MadMaxDog 10:50, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I made this comment on Template_talk:Unreferenced#Category:Articles_lacking_sources also which lead to a discussion at Template_talk:Unreferenced#Project_Proposal which lead to the project Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles.  We made changes, and have a new project with the goal to ensure that articles meet at least the barest minimum of verifiability, by including at least one reference.  Articles templates are changed to ,  and  as appropriate to put the article in :Category:Articles lacking reliable references. Jeepday (talk) 12:28, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Category:Articles lacking sources

message: This category is outrageous and ridiculous as a category that goes on article pages.  It totally clutters up the category space, and thus detracts attention from the categories that relate to the subject of the article, rather than to the state of the article.  In general, I think that categories in the main space should relate only to the subject of the article, but this particular group of categories is really bad, especially since one message seems to add two or three categories to the thing.  "Arizona" is not an "Article lacking sources".  It is a state of the United States.  The Wikipedia article about Arizona is the article lacking sources, and any categories relating to wikipedia articles, rather than to their subjects, ought to be in talk space.  In general, the existence of messages on the article itself makes sense, since it warns the reader about potential problems with the article, but that's no reason to put a category there.  And this particular message, even, is highly dubious - look at the absurd number of articles in these categories.  Almost every article that's not a featured article could be put in these categories.  What's the point? john k 17:57, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: puts articles in this category so that editors working projects like Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles and Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check can find the articles and clean them up so that all the information in the article is verified.  An article does not have to be FA quality to be referenced, A stub like Yelm-Tenino Trail can be short and well referenced.  You may also notice that there are three sentences directly under the edit box where a an editor enters text the second is "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable", all editors are encouraged to remove articles from the category Articles lacking sources, by first adding references or removing unreferenced text then removing the tag.  I do hear what your saying, and maybe the solution is to make clean up categories hidden so they don't display on the article, and or only display on the talk page. You could make the argument that clean up categories are generally only followed from the wikipedia space rather then the main space, so there is no need to offer them as paths from the article.    Jeepday (talk) 23:21, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course you are right that I was exaggerating.  Nonetheless, I do continue to think that this category is too large to be of much use.  But that wasn't really my main point.  If people want to have categories like this, that's fine.  They just shouldn't be on the main article space - they ought to be on the talk page.  Categories which are useful for readers ought to be in main space.  Categories which are useful for editors ought to be in talk space. It is arguably useful to the reader to be reminded that an article isn't referenced.  It is not useful to the reader for the article to be in an "unreferenced articles category - that is entirely for editors.  The main name space ought to be for the convenience of readers, not editors. john k 00:11, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree with you about your two main points, this category would do better if it was listed on the talk page (or not at all) and that the template should (arguably) be on the article (main space).  I think if you proposed that the category not post in the main space, by whatever method is technically possible and still allows the category to populate so it can be worked, you would find support.  The category is large but is not to large to be useful as evidenced by the many articles that are clean up daily.  Are you up to doing the research to see what is possible?  Jeepday (talk) 01:57, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

text: The project Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles is working with the goal to ensure that articles meet at least the barest minimum of verifiability, by including at least one reference The project began on 16 May, 2007 working on articles in :Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2005.  In less then one month it cleared 6 months of backlog and since May 26, 2007 has helped to clear 18% of :Category:Articles lacking sources from June 2006.  There are also projects working from Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check with more robust goals.  The back log for working  is about a year.  Please join us at Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles or one of the other projects at Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check.   Jeepday (talk) 12:56, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Even in the first flush of enthusiasm things are moving at a pace which supports the assumption that this backlog will never be cleared. There needs to be a complete rethink to enable resources to be deployed to the more important articles. Spraying these unreferenced tag over hundreds of thousands of articles just isn't worthwhile. Perebourne 16:04, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Do you have a suggestion (that is compatible with Wikipedia policy)? Jeepday (talk) 01:38, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: First, I'd move all the categories to the talk page, where they won't get in the way of navigation. Secondly, once on the talk pages (not before, or the clutter will get even worse), they could be subdivided by topic, by country, by era etc. Then a facility to sort by number of edits and/or number of incoming links and/or article rating could be added to the software. With these two features combined, it would be possible for editors to focus on the highest profile articles in each field. Perebourne 11:40, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Moving this (and other project categories) to talk (or hiding them on the article) has been mentioned here before.  I am not aware of any opposition to making that change.  Would you like to lead the drive to make it happen? Jeepday (talk) 14:37, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I guess I'll be the first to voice opposition. Articles without any sources are the worst sort of articles on Wikipedia. When the  tag is at the very top of the article, everyone knows that the article should not be trusted at all, that the content may not be encyclopedic, that it may be original research, that it may be factually wrong in obvious or non-obvious ways, ... and that the bad article is not in any way a representation of what Wikipedia should be because the article does not comply with the most basic Wikipedia policies. The tag will also encourage people who are knowledgable enough to add sources to the article.   — Chris Capoccia  T⁄C 20:35, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  I really really hate this category 

message: There's a proposal to slightly change the Unreferenced template, so that when people use
, it will do the same thing as , adding an article to :Category:Articles needing additional references rather than :Category:Articles lacking sources. Discussion here: Template_talk:Unreferenced#Section_parameter, proposal here: Template_talk:Unreferenced#Section_parameter:_specific_proposal. -Agyle 23:59, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Slight change to Unreferenced template being discussed

message: There is an ongoing discussion at CSD about :Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot) which is a bot-created category for all articles lacking sources (criteria here).  It seems to indicate that the 104k or so articles listed there are not included in this category structure.  Since User:Erik9bot is not going to be doing any more, and User:Rich Farmbrough is currently going through it, I would wonder about renaming it to :Category:Articles lacking sources (bot identified) or something similar and incorporating it into this general project. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:38, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Since User:Rich Farmbrough is working through them, and has reduced their number from 140,000+ to around 104,000, I propose to let him work undisturbed. No need to change the name of this category. Debresser (talk) 13:18, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bot-created category 

message: Can we please find a way to group the articles by type (i.e. articles about songs, articles about individual sports, etc.)? We should still keep date sorting intact, but make a separate subcategory for these categories. Once we do that we should make a bot that will categorize articles based on the categories it already has and/or based on manually input relationships between names and subjects (i.e. If the title has the word "Football" in it, then it probably has something to do with sports). This way, people who are good at finding sources for a particular subject (i.e. Sports) can do so without having to root around through the 280,000 other unreferenced articles. I've noticed a few subject-based subcategories have popped up, but these are mostly set up by individual WikiProjects, and as a result are not nearly comprehensive enough. We need a separate standardized subcategory that is at least partially added to by bot.--vgmddg (look | talk | do) 19:34, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Group Articles by Type 

message: Maybe I'm alone here, but I have come across articles that are virtually impossible to find a reference for. There are some articles about subjects that no third party has written a report, news article or book about. Sometimes I just leave it and move on, but I feel a bit guilty about it. But seeing some of these go back to 2006, it's likely they haven't been moved off the list because there are just no references. Just because someone wrote about something at WP doesn't translate into a guaranteed availability of refs. --THE FOUNDERS INTENT PRAISE  14:26, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: This is not the best place to raise such a question. Try the Village Pump. You might also want to look at WP:PROD which provides a mechanism for dealing with such articles. Note that one reason for deletion is "Articles for which thorough attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed".--agr (talk) 15:47, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: There are so many places to bring this up it's hard to know which is the best. --THE FOUNDERS INTENT PRAISE  16:10, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Unreferenceable articles

message: Hello! I've done a scan of all pages in :Category:Articles lacking sources and it's subcats that have  in them. There are a little over 25k articles in that list. It may be worth a quick look to see if the unreferenced tag is still needed on these articles. (Note: This does require a human eye, rather than a bot, as sometimes there is a  even when there are no references.) This list is at User:Avicennasis/reports/unref
Hopefully this is helpful. If you have any comments/suggestions, let me know. Avicennasis  @ 22:43, 10 Adar I 5771 / 14 February 2011 (UTC)
:Yea, I've been poking my nose in there from time to time looking to see if anything can be improved.  A good time-waster if nothing else.  :)   ArcAngel   (talk) ) 06:57, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Possibly Referenced Articles

message: Hello, I've made a proposal, essentially that the software would prompt you to add your source before it lets you save an article in mainspace. Please consider offering feedback at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 24#Changes to article creation. Thanks, Boleyn (talk) 15:00, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: New proposal

message: What do people think of the idea of moving the monthly subcategories (like :Category:Articles lacking sources from September 2017‎) under a new :Category:Articles lacking sources by date (or "…by month") subcategory, and the subject-area subcategories (like :Category:Unreferenced album articles, etc.) under a new :Category:Articles lacking sources by subject (or "…by topic")? As can be seen in the category itself, the list of monthly subcats will continue to grow without bound, while the subject-area subcats will be relegated to a less and less noticeable position—especially as the number of monthly subcats nears 200, which will start to push the subject subcats completely off the page [behind a "(next page)" link]. In contrast, having a very small number of direct subcats will make them all equally noticeable "forever". Comments? - dcljr (talk) 20:14, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split off monthly subcats and subject subcats 

message: Hi all, the discussion here may be of interest to anyone watching this page. Cheers! Ajpolino (talk) 17:45, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussion of interest - Bot proposal