This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | → | Archive 10 |
When fact is compared with other minor "touch" templates, I can see that the fact template is the only one having the "[" and "]" brackets also having a "link", turning out as blue, and other similar templates have brackets without a link, and are black.
I'm not requesting an edit for this template yet, since I think this would need a concensus. Would it be better to "link" the brackets from other similar templates too, or should the brackets be unlinked from this template? Either way, the style of these templates would improve the cosmetic looks these templates have.
I've altered the code of this template to show brackets as black:
<includeonly>{{#if:{{NAMESPACE}}||{{#if:{{{date|}}}|[[Category:Articles with unsourced statements since {{{date}}}]]|[[Category:Articles with unsourced statements]]}}[[Category:All articles with unsourced statements]]}}</includeonly><sup class="noprint Template-Fact">[[[Wikipedia:Citing sources|<span title="This claim needs references to reliable sources {{#if:{{{date|}}}| since {{{date}}}|}}" style="white-space: nowrap;">''citation needed''</span>]]]</sup>
Which would show up as:
Unlike as:
Compared to the other inline tags, it's like a perfect look. Comments? ~Iceshark7 23:45, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
I was bold and converted this template to call Template:Fix-inline. Pretty much all other inline templates of this type have been using that format for weeks now without issue (see [1]). Primary purpose is to allow standardization of how these templates are displayed, formatted, called, et cetera.
As a 'side effect' this returns the outer brackets to unlinked black as requested immediately above, in at least two other comments further up this page, and by the consensus in the discussion on the same topic at the Wikiproject page. I kept the 'Template-Fact' class since there are apparently some javascripts and/or other options which key off it, but all the other templates of this sort except NCite (which is a near copy of Fact and has the same Template-Fact class) use an 'Inline-Template' class.
If there's some reason not to include this template in with the others for consistency we can revert, but overall I think it will be better for everyone if we can make changes to just one template when there are decisions to adjust the formatting of these inline notices. -- CBD 16:08, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
I wonder if anything speaks against using the template included in <ref>{{fact}}</ref> tags. It seems to me that it would still work to draw attention to a need for a citation, but would simultaneously work as a reference placeholder which needs to be filled. I got the idea because I believe that References sections are still widely underappreciated as individual and very important sections. There are still far too many articles with unformatted in-line external links, many ref sections are a gigantic mess. — [ aldebaer] 15:47, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Why is this template called "fact"? It doesn't seem to make much sense. -- Smjg 01:30, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
(They all redirect to template:fact)
Can't we delete some? What if everyone created there own redirect? Chaos! I like the {{ wtf}} one. - Rocket000 04:30, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
/doc
'd and which aren't. —
SMcCandlish [
talk] [
cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:04, 3 December 2007 (UTC)Kim van der Linde wrote:
Jimbo Wales wrote:
Go for it!
--Jimbo Source
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
Jimbo Wales wrote:
In general, I find the {{fact}} tagging to be overdone in Wikipedia. A better option is to nuke the unsourced material. Sometimes {{fact}} is warranted, I don't mean that it is always a bad idea. But it is overdone.
I very often see completely preposterous claims tagged with {{fact}}, usually because an editor is being excessively cautious. Be bold. :)
--Jimbo Source
Currently, there are some quotations from Jimbo on this talk page. His opinions are interesting, but I don't think it's appropriate to place one user's opinion in a place separate from the opinions of other users, as if his opinion were more important. I think Jimbo's opinions should be placed under a section on this page, or an essay should be created for them, so they don't get archived. A.Z. 02:40, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
Currently, if this template is used at the end of a paragraph, it eats the space separating the paragraph from the following paragraph. E.g.,
A paragraph.{{fact|date=October 2007}} Another paragraph.
is displayed as:
A paragraph.[citation needed]Another paragraph.
Is someone able to fix this? — GrantNeufeld 14:08, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
{{ editprotected}}
Considering the thousands of transclusions of this template, the link on the "citation needed" text could go somewhere a bit more targeted, by explaining everything the clicker might want to know. To that end, I've created Wikipedia:Citation needed. Please improve that page as necessary, and if consensus agrees, update the template to link there rather than directly to Wikipedia:Citing sources. Stevage 03:06, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
On the article about
West Germany, it appears that a call to {{
fact}} is causing the article to be included in
Category:Articles with unsourced statements since September 2,007. The template is called in the article as {{Fact|date=September 2007}}
. I don't see a reason for the extra comma within the template code, and it's apparent that there isn't a comma in the template call either.
Slambo
(Speak) 11:07, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
Occasionally I had run into the so-called "citation tag spam" issue, where users - acting in good or bad faith - will go over an article and tag every paragraph, sentence, or sometimes even parts of sentences with this template. With dozens of such templates, the articles are quite uglified. Now, I agree that sometimes it is helpful - for example, if the article is in review and editors have asked which controversial facts need inline citations. Sometimes it can be too much, for example in articles were a more general {{ unreferenced}} or {{ refimprove}} is needed. Do we have something discussing how not to abuse this template? An essay, perhaps? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 21:47, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
After going through Special:Wantedcategories, I noticed that a number of them were suggested as a result of people incorrectly using the date parameter. I think it would be a good idea to create a category for these articles. It wouldn't be too hard to implement if using the ifexist parser function, and would make it easier to fix them. Harryboyles 05:16, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
What do people think of stealing the sexy design of the french {{
référence nécessaire}}
and using it here? It allows a chunk of text to be highlighted in relation to the citation-needed tag, but could be used without an argument and would display like ours does. Anyone?
Arbeit Sockenpuppe (
talk) 19:28, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
This template causes horizontal scrollbars on so many pages it's ridiculous. See, for example, The Statue of Liberty in popular culture#In television and film. Can something can be done about it? I'm no expert in HTML but surely this is bad form? --— Hugh 01:54, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
I do not think that "Fact" is the best name for this template. When I first ran across it, I thought it meant the item had been proven fact, when what it really means is that the factuality of the statement requires citation as it is dubious or not common knowledge. -- Jolliette Alice Bessette, -- 10:40, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
{{fact?}}
. As for renaming the template, it's pretty unlikely. The template is transcluded thousands of times in tousands of articles. Many bots and other software assume that the main template is {{
fact}}. Not to mention that many editors have the syntax nailed down in their memories, making it much harder to change. If you wish to tag sentences in articles, you can use the aliases {{
cn}} and {{
Citation needed}}, which might be easier.
Harryboyles 11:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Should {{subst:fact-now}}
be recommended on the documentation page as the best choice since it is simpler and more sure than {{fact|date=June 2024}}
and will have less edits in the history that {{fact}}
?
209.244.43.122 (
talk) 22:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Increasingly I have run into situation where a well-referenced article has a completly unreferenced map, with npov/OR issues that arise from that situation. While we can tag map captions with {{ fact}}, it would be better if we had a dedicated template for it - along the line this map does not provide any references or sources. There should be also a more general template to be slapped at the image page itself (often located on Commons). Comments? PS. Example of a large and completely unreferenced map.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 23:13, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
It seems that articles with this tag no longer display the Category:Articles with unsourced statements as of ... link at the bottom with their other categories. Why is that? Is it a bug or an intentional change? If the former, can someone fix it? If the latter, can we change it back? — An gr If you've written a quality article... 17:15, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Fans of this template may be interested in this article from Reason magazine. 131.7.52.17 ( talk) 15:43, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
{{ editprotected}} The content of this template is highly mocked by sites like Encyclopedia Dramatica and Uncyclopedia, citation needed and also by what is mentioned in the source above. Please change it. Interactive Fiction Expert/ Talk to me 07:11, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
I may have missed it, but the template documentation Date parameter section is missing the actual "due by date" parameter! It seems to me that logic suggests a " parameter" needs both a start date, and an end date. Without the end date, the later extremity of the definition becomes potentially infinite. I think it would be nice to know that the content associated with the {{fact}} can eventually be deleted if no citation had been forthcoming. Naturally the community will need to reach consensus on what that time period may be...-- mrg3105 ( comms) ♠♥♦♣ 13:43, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
It seems that this template can cause a line to fail to wrap in certain circumstances. This example emerged in historical revisionism before with line wrap problem for the first line "Historical revisionism has both a legitimate academic use and a pejorative...", after without citation needed and line wapping fixed. -- Philip Baird Shearer ( talk) 18:31, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
This section left out Seattle Slew as a triple crown winner. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.206.40.85 ( talk) 02:05, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
This is ungrammatical... Is a simple addition to the end of the tag the only way to give the date? Waltham, The Duke of 20:44, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. I'd go with "This claim was tagged as needing references to reliable sources in xxxxx" or "In xxxxxx, this claim was tagged as needing a reference from a reliable source", which is much easier to comprehend and dispenses with an unneccesary plural to-boot. -- Dweller ( talk) 10:25, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
Hmm. I think that grammatical horror is generated by a Bot, not by this template. -- Dweller ( talk) 12:56, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
This template is permanently protected, but doesn't have the appropriate padlock icon (see, for example, Template:Failed_verification). Just indulging my inner pedant - if any administrators are feeling bored, they might like to add it :) Orpheus ( talk) 15:24, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Not sure if this is the same glitch as that reported on 6th May (above), but see the VP -- Dweller ( talk) 10:19, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
Why does Wikipedia have this template? It seems illogical to me. I see these tags everywhere, and the majority of the time I wonder how the statements they follow are allowed to persist. My instinct is to delete them, but I am afraid of violating some rule. When the rules get in the way of the mission, red flags should go up. If the goal is factual accuracy, then when inaccurate or unverified content is found it should be hastily deleted. What purpose does it serve to leave dubious content, other than to avoid edit wars? That seems to me to be the real purpose of this template.
If this template were done away with, and all additions to the encyclopedia were required to be properly sourced from the moment of addition, the articles would be both more accurate and more concise. As it stands, they seem to have a tendency to become bloated and infested with "citation needed" tags; this decreases both the readability and the trustworthiness of the encyclopedia.
This template facilitates the intentional insertion of patent nonsense by editors who know that policy protects their "contributions" from deletion. For the common reader, a citation tag is probably seen as a mild annoyance rather than the ominous warning that it should be. If they absorb the misinformation in spite of those tags, which at least some (if not most) of them will, then Wikipedia has done them a disservice--one that could have been avoided by simply demanding verifiable content to begin with.
Quality over quantity should be the guiding principle of an encyclopedia. I tend to think the opposite is in effect here. Jdtapaboc ( talk) 13:47, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
The French equivalent is "Modèle:Référence nécessaire", not the currently linked "Modèle:Citation nécessaire". The latter is only for the case when a fact's accuracy is not in question but other wikipedians would like to know the source so that they can also look their for additional info/context. -- Gronky ( talk) 01:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
For example,
[[A]]{{fact}} [[B]]
will display as
A citation needed B
rather than
A citation needed B
as expected,
[3] but only in the article, Talk, or Template namespaces. The culprit seems to be
this diff, the category link that ends up at the end of the paragraph causes the parser to lose the paragraph break. One possible fix is to simply move the new code to elsewhere in the template where other text or html (comments, unfortunately, don't seem to count) is generated. If nothing else, a ZWNJ
[4] or a <nowiki/>
[5] at the end of the template is sufficient to fix it. Any comments before I make a {{
editprotected}} request?
Anomie
⚔ 01:53, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
{{
editprotected}}
this version will address the immediate problem here. I would like to point some things out though, that we should deal with as soon as possible.
We need to either merge these changes back into {{ fix}} someway, or we might as well not use fix at all if we don't. Please discuss. -- TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 20:10, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
It has been suggested that I bring the larger issue of tagging to this discussion page to discuss my views and perhaps seek a bettter consensus on how we use each of the two tags mentioned in the header. In a number of articles, I have noticed a lot of unreferenced information showing up in essentially the same paragraphs and sections. Sometimes its just in a single section, but more often, the unreferenced stuff is throughout the article. I tag each instance of unreferenced info, and someone complains that it makes the article look "ugly".
The reason I use statement specific 'cn' tags is to allow for a pinpointing of the info that needs citation. I equate it with a big, messy garage. Somethings in the garage are as they should be, while others need to be sorted, referenced or tossed out. If I am new to this garage and am told that there is junk in there needing to be referenced, I am not going to know where to look. If, however, someone says that all of the specifically-marked boxes need to be referenced the job a lot easier. This specificity of targeting the comments needing citation allow the user to not feel overwhelmed, and they can focus on citing the specifically-tagged info, and not have to sort through the entire section or article. More general referencing tags go forever without being resolved. Note how quickly someone gets all up in arms over the individual tags. They get the editors' attention. Perhaps, rather than complaining that they are ugly or whatnot, maybe roll up your sleeves and find the references requested, instead of simply complaining it, or sweeping the uncited info under the proverbial rug by grouping them all under the vague section or article 'unreferenced' tag. Additionally, to those arguments that complain about the targeted tags being ugly I say this: we aren't looking for pretty, we are looking for encyclopedic. You can have both, but you cannot have pretty at the expense of encyclopedic. - Arcayne (cast a spell) 20:48, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
It has been suggested that I bring the larger issue of tagging to this discussion page to discuss my views and perhaps seek a bettter consensus on how we use each of the two tags mentioned in the header. In a number of articles, I have noticed a lot of unreferenced information showing up in essentially the same paragraphs and sections. Sometimes its just in a single section, but more often, the unreferenced stuff is throughout the article. I tag each instance of unreferenced info, and someone complains that it makes the article look "ugly".
The reason I use statement specific 'cn' tags is to allow for a pinpointing of the info that needs citation. I equate it with a big, messy garage. Somethings in the garage are as they should be, while others need to be sorted, referenced or tossed out. If I am new to this garage and am told that there is junk in there needing to be referenced, I am not going to know where to look. If, however, someone says that all of the specifically-marked boxes need to be referenced the job a lot easier. This specificity of targeting the comments needing citation allow the user to not feel overwhelmed, and they can focus on citing the specifically-tagged info, and not have to sort through the entire section or article. More general referencing tags go forever without being resolved. Note how quickly someone gets all up in arms over the individual tags. They get the editors' attention. Perhaps, rather than complaining that they are ugly or whatnot, maybe roll up your sleeves and find the references requested, instead of simply complaining it, or sweeping the uncited info under the proverbial rug by grouping them all under the vague section or article 'unreferenced' tag. Additionally, to those arguments that complain about the targeted tags being ugly I say this: we aren't looking for pretty, we are looking for encyclopedic. You can have both, but you cannot have pretty at the expense of encyclopedic. - Arcayne (cast a spell) 20:48, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | → | Archive 10 |
When fact is compared with other minor "touch" templates, I can see that the fact template is the only one having the "[" and "]" brackets also having a "link", turning out as blue, and other similar templates have brackets without a link, and are black.
I'm not requesting an edit for this template yet, since I think this would need a concensus. Would it be better to "link" the brackets from other similar templates too, or should the brackets be unlinked from this template? Either way, the style of these templates would improve the cosmetic looks these templates have.
I've altered the code of this template to show brackets as black:
<includeonly>{{#if:{{NAMESPACE}}||{{#if:{{{date|}}}|[[Category:Articles with unsourced statements since {{{date}}}]]|[[Category:Articles with unsourced statements]]}}[[Category:All articles with unsourced statements]]}}</includeonly><sup class="noprint Template-Fact">[[[Wikipedia:Citing sources|<span title="This claim needs references to reliable sources {{#if:{{{date|}}}| since {{{date}}}|}}" style="white-space: nowrap;">''citation needed''</span>]]]</sup>
Which would show up as:
Unlike as:
Compared to the other inline tags, it's like a perfect look. Comments? ~Iceshark7 23:45, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
I was bold and converted this template to call Template:Fix-inline. Pretty much all other inline templates of this type have been using that format for weeks now without issue (see [1]). Primary purpose is to allow standardization of how these templates are displayed, formatted, called, et cetera.
As a 'side effect' this returns the outer brackets to unlinked black as requested immediately above, in at least two other comments further up this page, and by the consensus in the discussion on the same topic at the Wikiproject page. I kept the 'Template-Fact' class since there are apparently some javascripts and/or other options which key off it, but all the other templates of this sort except NCite (which is a near copy of Fact and has the same Template-Fact class) use an 'Inline-Template' class.
If there's some reason not to include this template in with the others for consistency we can revert, but overall I think it will be better for everyone if we can make changes to just one template when there are decisions to adjust the formatting of these inline notices. -- CBD 16:08, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
I wonder if anything speaks against using the template included in <ref>{{fact}}</ref> tags. It seems to me that it would still work to draw attention to a need for a citation, but would simultaneously work as a reference placeholder which needs to be filled. I got the idea because I believe that References sections are still widely underappreciated as individual and very important sections. There are still far too many articles with unformatted in-line external links, many ref sections are a gigantic mess. — [ aldebaer] 15:47, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Why is this template called "fact"? It doesn't seem to make much sense. -- Smjg 01:30, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
(They all redirect to template:fact)
Can't we delete some? What if everyone created there own redirect? Chaos! I like the {{ wtf}} one. - Rocket000 04:30, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
/doc
'd and which aren't. —
SMcCandlish [
talk] [
cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:04, 3 December 2007 (UTC)Kim van der Linde wrote:
Jimbo Wales wrote:
Go for it!
--Jimbo Source
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
Jimbo Wales wrote:
In general, I find the {{fact}} tagging to be overdone in Wikipedia. A better option is to nuke the unsourced material. Sometimes {{fact}} is warranted, I don't mean that it is always a bad idea. But it is overdone.
I very often see completely preposterous claims tagged with {{fact}}, usually because an editor is being excessively cautious. Be bold. :)
--Jimbo Source
Currently, there are some quotations from Jimbo on this talk page. His opinions are interesting, but I don't think it's appropriate to place one user's opinion in a place separate from the opinions of other users, as if his opinion were more important. I think Jimbo's opinions should be placed under a section on this page, or an essay should be created for them, so they don't get archived. A.Z. 02:40, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
Currently, if this template is used at the end of a paragraph, it eats the space separating the paragraph from the following paragraph. E.g.,
A paragraph.{{fact|date=October 2007}} Another paragraph.
is displayed as:
A paragraph.[citation needed]Another paragraph.
Is someone able to fix this? — GrantNeufeld 14:08, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
{{ editprotected}}
Considering the thousands of transclusions of this template, the link on the "citation needed" text could go somewhere a bit more targeted, by explaining everything the clicker might want to know. To that end, I've created Wikipedia:Citation needed. Please improve that page as necessary, and if consensus agrees, update the template to link there rather than directly to Wikipedia:Citing sources. Stevage 03:06, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
On the article about
West Germany, it appears that a call to {{
fact}} is causing the article to be included in
Category:Articles with unsourced statements since September 2,007. The template is called in the article as {{Fact|date=September 2007}}
. I don't see a reason for the extra comma within the template code, and it's apparent that there isn't a comma in the template call either.
Slambo
(Speak) 11:07, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
Occasionally I had run into the so-called "citation tag spam" issue, where users - acting in good or bad faith - will go over an article and tag every paragraph, sentence, or sometimes even parts of sentences with this template. With dozens of such templates, the articles are quite uglified. Now, I agree that sometimes it is helpful - for example, if the article is in review and editors have asked which controversial facts need inline citations. Sometimes it can be too much, for example in articles were a more general {{ unreferenced}} or {{ refimprove}} is needed. Do we have something discussing how not to abuse this template? An essay, perhaps? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 21:47, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
After going through Special:Wantedcategories, I noticed that a number of them were suggested as a result of people incorrectly using the date parameter. I think it would be a good idea to create a category for these articles. It wouldn't be too hard to implement if using the ifexist parser function, and would make it easier to fix them. Harryboyles 05:16, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
What do people think of stealing the sexy design of the french {{
référence nécessaire}}
and using it here? It allows a chunk of text to be highlighted in relation to the citation-needed tag, but could be used without an argument and would display like ours does. Anyone?
Arbeit Sockenpuppe (
talk) 19:28, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
This template causes horizontal scrollbars on so many pages it's ridiculous. See, for example, The Statue of Liberty in popular culture#In television and film. Can something can be done about it? I'm no expert in HTML but surely this is bad form? --— Hugh 01:54, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
I do not think that "Fact" is the best name for this template. When I first ran across it, I thought it meant the item had been proven fact, when what it really means is that the factuality of the statement requires citation as it is dubious or not common knowledge. -- Jolliette Alice Bessette, -- 10:40, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
{{fact?}}
. As for renaming the template, it's pretty unlikely. The template is transcluded thousands of times in tousands of articles. Many bots and other software assume that the main template is {{
fact}}. Not to mention that many editors have the syntax nailed down in their memories, making it much harder to change. If you wish to tag sentences in articles, you can use the aliases {{
cn}} and {{
Citation needed}}, which might be easier.
Harryboyles 11:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Should {{subst:fact-now}}
be recommended on the documentation page as the best choice since it is simpler and more sure than {{fact|date=June 2024}}
and will have less edits in the history that {{fact}}
?
209.244.43.122 (
talk) 22:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Increasingly I have run into situation where a well-referenced article has a completly unreferenced map, with npov/OR issues that arise from that situation. While we can tag map captions with {{ fact}}, it would be better if we had a dedicated template for it - along the line this map does not provide any references or sources. There should be also a more general template to be slapped at the image page itself (often located on Commons). Comments? PS. Example of a large and completely unreferenced map.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 23:13, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
It seems that articles with this tag no longer display the Category:Articles with unsourced statements as of ... link at the bottom with their other categories. Why is that? Is it a bug or an intentional change? If the former, can someone fix it? If the latter, can we change it back? — An gr If you've written a quality article... 17:15, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Fans of this template may be interested in this article from Reason magazine. 131.7.52.17 ( talk) 15:43, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
{{ editprotected}} The content of this template is highly mocked by sites like Encyclopedia Dramatica and Uncyclopedia, citation needed and also by what is mentioned in the source above. Please change it. Interactive Fiction Expert/ Talk to me 07:11, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
I may have missed it, but the template documentation Date parameter section is missing the actual "due by date" parameter! It seems to me that logic suggests a " parameter" needs both a start date, and an end date. Without the end date, the later extremity of the definition becomes potentially infinite. I think it would be nice to know that the content associated with the {{fact}} can eventually be deleted if no citation had been forthcoming. Naturally the community will need to reach consensus on what that time period may be...-- mrg3105 ( comms) ♠♥♦♣ 13:43, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
It seems that this template can cause a line to fail to wrap in certain circumstances. This example emerged in historical revisionism before with line wrap problem for the first line "Historical revisionism has both a legitimate academic use and a pejorative...", after without citation needed and line wapping fixed. -- Philip Baird Shearer ( talk) 18:31, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
This section left out Seattle Slew as a triple crown winner. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.206.40.85 ( talk) 02:05, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
This is ungrammatical... Is a simple addition to the end of the tag the only way to give the date? Waltham, The Duke of 20:44, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. I'd go with "This claim was tagged as needing references to reliable sources in xxxxx" or "In xxxxxx, this claim was tagged as needing a reference from a reliable source", which is much easier to comprehend and dispenses with an unneccesary plural to-boot. -- Dweller ( talk) 10:25, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
Hmm. I think that grammatical horror is generated by a Bot, not by this template. -- Dweller ( talk) 12:56, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
This template is permanently protected, but doesn't have the appropriate padlock icon (see, for example, Template:Failed_verification). Just indulging my inner pedant - if any administrators are feeling bored, they might like to add it :) Orpheus ( talk) 15:24, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Not sure if this is the same glitch as that reported on 6th May (above), but see the VP -- Dweller ( talk) 10:19, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
Why does Wikipedia have this template? It seems illogical to me. I see these tags everywhere, and the majority of the time I wonder how the statements they follow are allowed to persist. My instinct is to delete them, but I am afraid of violating some rule. When the rules get in the way of the mission, red flags should go up. If the goal is factual accuracy, then when inaccurate or unverified content is found it should be hastily deleted. What purpose does it serve to leave dubious content, other than to avoid edit wars? That seems to me to be the real purpose of this template.
If this template were done away with, and all additions to the encyclopedia were required to be properly sourced from the moment of addition, the articles would be both more accurate and more concise. As it stands, they seem to have a tendency to become bloated and infested with "citation needed" tags; this decreases both the readability and the trustworthiness of the encyclopedia.
This template facilitates the intentional insertion of patent nonsense by editors who know that policy protects their "contributions" from deletion. For the common reader, a citation tag is probably seen as a mild annoyance rather than the ominous warning that it should be. If they absorb the misinformation in spite of those tags, which at least some (if not most) of them will, then Wikipedia has done them a disservice--one that could have been avoided by simply demanding verifiable content to begin with.
Quality over quantity should be the guiding principle of an encyclopedia. I tend to think the opposite is in effect here. Jdtapaboc ( talk) 13:47, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
The French equivalent is "Modèle:Référence nécessaire", not the currently linked "Modèle:Citation nécessaire". The latter is only for the case when a fact's accuracy is not in question but other wikipedians would like to know the source so that they can also look their for additional info/context. -- Gronky ( talk) 01:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
For example,
[[A]]{{fact}} [[B]]
will display as
A citation needed B
rather than
A citation needed B
as expected,
[3] but only in the article, Talk, or Template namespaces. The culprit seems to be
this diff, the category link that ends up at the end of the paragraph causes the parser to lose the paragraph break. One possible fix is to simply move the new code to elsewhere in the template where other text or html (comments, unfortunately, don't seem to count) is generated. If nothing else, a ZWNJ
[4] or a <nowiki/>
[5] at the end of the template is sufficient to fix it. Any comments before I make a {{
editprotected}} request?
Anomie
⚔ 01:53, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
{{
editprotected}}
this version will address the immediate problem here. I would like to point some things out though, that we should deal with as soon as possible.
We need to either merge these changes back into {{ fix}} someway, or we might as well not use fix at all if we don't. Please discuss. -- TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 20:10, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
It has been suggested that I bring the larger issue of tagging to this discussion page to discuss my views and perhaps seek a bettter consensus on how we use each of the two tags mentioned in the header. In a number of articles, I have noticed a lot of unreferenced information showing up in essentially the same paragraphs and sections. Sometimes its just in a single section, but more often, the unreferenced stuff is throughout the article. I tag each instance of unreferenced info, and someone complains that it makes the article look "ugly".
The reason I use statement specific 'cn' tags is to allow for a pinpointing of the info that needs citation. I equate it with a big, messy garage. Somethings in the garage are as they should be, while others need to be sorted, referenced or tossed out. If I am new to this garage and am told that there is junk in there needing to be referenced, I am not going to know where to look. If, however, someone says that all of the specifically-marked boxes need to be referenced the job a lot easier. This specificity of targeting the comments needing citation allow the user to not feel overwhelmed, and they can focus on citing the specifically-tagged info, and not have to sort through the entire section or article. More general referencing tags go forever without being resolved. Note how quickly someone gets all up in arms over the individual tags. They get the editors' attention. Perhaps, rather than complaining that they are ugly or whatnot, maybe roll up your sleeves and find the references requested, instead of simply complaining it, or sweeping the uncited info under the proverbial rug by grouping them all under the vague section or article 'unreferenced' tag. Additionally, to those arguments that complain about the targeted tags being ugly I say this: we aren't looking for pretty, we are looking for encyclopedic. You can have both, but you cannot have pretty at the expense of encyclopedic. - Arcayne (cast a spell) 20:48, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
It has been suggested that I bring the larger issue of tagging to this discussion page to discuss my views and perhaps seek a bettter consensus on how we use each of the two tags mentioned in the header. In a number of articles, I have noticed a lot of unreferenced information showing up in essentially the same paragraphs and sections. Sometimes its just in a single section, but more often, the unreferenced stuff is throughout the article. I tag each instance of unreferenced info, and someone complains that it makes the article look "ugly".
The reason I use statement specific 'cn' tags is to allow for a pinpointing of the info that needs citation. I equate it with a big, messy garage. Somethings in the garage are as they should be, while others need to be sorted, referenced or tossed out. If I am new to this garage and am told that there is junk in there needing to be referenced, I am not going to know where to look. If, however, someone says that all of the specifically-marked boxes need to be referenced the job a lot easier. This specificity of targeting the comments needing citation allow the user to not feel overwhelmed, and they can focus on citing the specifically-tagged info, and not have to sort through the entire section or article. More general referencing tags go forever without being resolved. Note how quickly someone gets all up in arms over the individual tags. They get the editors' attention. Perhaps, rather than complaining that they are ugly or whatnot, maybe roll up your sleeves and find the references requested, instead of simply complaining it, or sweeping the uncited info under the proverbial rug by grouping them all under the vague section or article 'unreferenced' tag. Additionally, to those arguments that complain about the targeted tags being ugly I say this: we aren't looking for pretty, we are looking for encyclopedic. You can have both, but you cannot have pretty at the expense of encyclopedic. - Arcayne (cast a spell) 20:48, 18 June 2008 (UTC)