Template talk:Unreferenced

RFC: Add {{find sources}} to this template

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

No concensus.Status-quo remains in effect.Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 14:42, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

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In 2010, an RFC at Template talk:Refimprove (archive link) was used as a reason to remove the addition of a {{find sources}} style text in this template. The question of this RFC is: Should this template include {{find sources}} or a text similar to {{find sources}}? (test example: Template:Unreferenced/sandbox) Regards SoWhy 13:05, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

• RfCbot invitee - Support. This seems like a pretty straightforward and logical inclusion. VanIsaac_WS^cont 05:32, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
• Support - we should always try to make it easier to improve the wiki. Cabayi (talk) 08:21, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose for the same reasons as before. Also it is instruction creep making what is already a bloated template even larger. Readers come to read the subject matter of the topic they are interested in. The do not come to an article expecting to find information at the top of the page about things not directly related to the subject. As a warning this template is of use to readers it tells them that the content may not be based on reliable secondary sources, but the rest of it is maintenance information only of interest to those who wish to edit the page. Maintenance information should be placed on the talk page (which is why we have a talk page for each article), not in article space. -- PBS (talk) 08:51, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as per PBS – information about improving Wikipedia belongs on the talk page. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:28, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
• Support as proposer because they make it easier for new and experienced editors alike to find sources easily. Even back then, some people in that RFC advocated adding a finding sources text to this template but those voices went unheard. I don't think the oppose arguments are necessarily correct: "Bloating" and "confusion" can be addressed by making the links collapsible so only people who are interested in fixing the problem will see them (example: User:SoWhy/Template:Unreferenced example (someone with better coding skills can probably create a better one but the idea is clear)). The idea that talk pages should be used instead is a nice one in theory, however, most taggers do not create/tag the talk page with such links and the proposed addition would make it easier for all interested editors to quickly remedy problems without having to first create a talk page and adding a template to it. Plenty of templates - including this one - already contain maintenance information (here it's a link to Help:Maintenance template removal) without it ever being considered a problem. Making it harder to improve the wiki seems against our basic principles. Regards SoWhy 10:03, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

  The previous RfC was 13 to 2 in favour of not adding external links to this template. "however, most taggers do not create/tag the talk page with such links. The point of placing this warning on the talk page is a heads up for readers not a how to manual entry for editors. Maintenance advise should be placed on talk pages. When I place this tag in an article I am doing so primarily to warn readers. If I wanted to tell editors how to use Google search I would do so on the talk page. @User:SoWhy What do you think talk pages are there for? -- PBS (talk) 10:33, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

  The previous RfC was for another template, not this one (and vote counting is not a valid way to determine consensus anyway). The idea of the {{find sources}} template is to give editors quick access to common searches, i.e. make it easier for them to improve the article. I am pretty sure most talk pages of articles tagged with this template do not contain a Find sources template, so even if it were the correct place to add them, the fact is that they don't exist and it amounts to unnecessary duplication of work if we force editors willing to fix things to check the talk page first, add a template there and then use that template instead of just using the template we already have in the article (which, as I pointed out above, can be modified to not be visible to casual readers). Regards SoWhy 10:50, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

• Comment see WP:ELNO points 1 and 9 Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article." and more specifically "Any search results pages, such as links to individual website searches, search engines, search aggregators, or RSS feeds." So adding this proposed extension is a direct contraction of those two point. Not to mention that external links in general should only appear in the standard appendix sections of an article not in body of the article (see WP:ELPOINTS no 2). -- PBS (talk) 10:33, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

  WP:ELNO is a guideline that governs the content in the body of an article, not inside maintenance templates. Maintenance templates are not considered part of the article, so guidelines that apply to articles do not apply to them (same goes for trans-namespace links for example that are allowed as a hatnote or in such templates but not in the article's text). Regards SoWhy 10:50, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose  The find sources template states, "This template should not be used in articles themselves - see Wikipedia:EL#Links normally to be avoided."  The idea that find sources is not ok in an article because it contains external links, but can be added through the back door of being a part of a maintenance template is not convincing, as the template is still adding external links to the article.
  This also has a problem already present at AfD of promoting a single commercial search engine, but the proposal here is putting this issue in front of our readers.
  Instead what is needed is a parameter to link to the discussion on the talk page.  Unscintillating (talk) 16:42, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

  You do realize that other templates such as {{notability}} contain such links already and have so for years? So the argument that external links in maintenance templates should be avoided at all costs clashes with the fact that we already use them in other templates (which in fact was the consensus of a 2013 TfD about this template, see Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2013 February 26#Template:Notability). So why are such links not okay in this template when there is clear consensus to have them in others. Regards SoWhy 13:04, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

  No I did not and the fact that someone ignored the prohibition in the guidelines and developed a new template to get around the script prohibition in the older template is typical of wack a rat that happens on Wikipedia. -- PBS (talk) 12:07, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

  Exactly, and the fact that a wrong approach has been taken elsewhere is not a reason to do so here too. Our main task is to serve readers, not editors; readers don't need to be told where to find sources. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:00, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Mobile

Unlike {{citation needed}}, this template isn't visible on mobile. Why is this? Hairy Dude (talk) 23:55, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

@Hairy Dude: It's built around the {{ambox}} template, which uses the metadata class. All objects belonging to that class are hidden on mobile (for example, most (if not all) of these). This has been the case for years: more at mw:Reading/Web/Projects/Mobile Page Issues. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:30, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 16 December 2018

Please change the |class = param to the following:

| class = tag-Unreferenced {{#if:{{{1|}}}| {{#ifeq:{{{1}}}|article| |tag-section}} | }}    <!-- Used by Twinkle -->

This will facilitate a new feature in Twinkle for removing existing maintenance tags. GitHub discussion. The idea is to have class tag-Unreferenced, but an additional tag-section if the template is not being used in context of the whole article, that is, if {{{1}}} is specified and its value is not "article". This behaviour has been tested.

The existing param was added by Ioeth for use within Twinkle only. SD0001 (talk) 07:54, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Not done for now See Template talk:More citations needed#Template-protected edit request on 16 December 2018 — JJMC89 (T·C) 08:21, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Articles tagged as unreferenced which aren't

Hello all,

A few weeks back I was going through the backlog of unreferenced articles and came across one which had the {{unreferenced}} tag on it but invoked {{cite web}} and therefore was clearly not unreferenced. I had a quick go at finding and fixing some of them but my queries weren't precise enough and generated a lot of false positives. I've spent a bit of time looking over the template transclusions and generated this which shows all the articles which do the same. I plan, of course, on correcting the tags, and I am probably going to use AutoWikiBrowser to do it, however, my only question is should I keep the date paramaters the same when converting these unreferenced tags to refimprove tags so they maintain their seniority? I am erring on that side but I thought I'd offer the community a chance to input.

Many thanks,

SITH (talk) 23:11, 30 December 2018 (UTC)