Welcome to WikiProject Citation cleanup. Some Wikipedians have formed this collaboration resource and group dedicated to improving the quality and consistency of
citations and
footnotes in Wikipedia. This page and its subpages contain their suggestions and various resources; it is hoped that this project will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians interested in the topic. If you would like to help, please
join the project, inquire on the
talk page and see the
to-do list below.
Goals
Standardising the use of citations by making all citations within the same article consistent with each other
If you see a link that shows up as
[1], try to convert it to show up with text (e.g.
Google).
Please note that Wikipedia's
style guideline on
embedded links says, "A
full citation is also required in a References section at the end of the article." If able, please provide this.
If you see a reference to a news article, it is helpful to link to an online-version of this article (typing the title of the article in the search engine is often sufficient).
Tagging articles
If you don't have time to fix citations/references at the moment, you can still help by tagging the article so that others can find and fix them.
Jeffq (
talk·contribs)
18:44, 19 March 2009 (UTC). Most of my non-trivial WP edits of late involve cleaning up, expanding, and formatting citations, including turning bare external links to proper references, usually whenever I read an article for other purposes.reply
James_Shelton32 (
talk·contribs) (Cleaned up some articles on historical trains in the south. Added references, based on notes in
Soil mesofauna) 14:28, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
Prime Lemur (
talk·contribs) Sometimes people misplace citations during copy-editing, others add great material, but sometimes leave spartan citations. Fixing it contributes to the enduring robustness of WP. Or I think so, anyway *wink*.
10:01, 14 December 2018 (UTC)reply
Smuckola (
talk·contribs) Seek and destroy all lack of citations and presence of non-template-formatted citations. Citations are the foundation of the encyclopedia. Please build automated tools to format and unify them all, such as
Citoid,
WP:REFILL, and wikidata.13:47, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
MonkeyStolen234 (
talk·contribs) I have been fighting through several pages to fix citations to the point of going to bed and dreaming of code every night for an entire week. I still love it, though.
17:55, 6 May 2019 (UTC)reply
Kaltenmeyer (
talk·contribs)
21:31, 9 August 2021 (UTC) Fixing dead urls with current URLs or archived URLs, fixing Wikipedia errors in footnotes, multiple citations with the same ref name; ref names not attached to any reference; duplicate names of authors; fixing bare URLs; moving references to the correct location in the articlereply
TsunTsky (
talk·contribs) 03:12 24 September, 2021 (UTC) Interested in Fixing up citation that are cited in incorrect or not recommedned forms
Apollo468 (
talk·contribs) 02:10 2 October, 2021 (UTC) Mostly focused on adding references for any pages - particularly music.
SidP (
talk·contribs)
17:12, 5 January 2022 (UTC) Fixing, completing and adding requested (or needed) references; I wish I'd known this group existed before! I've been doing this for so long, and just learned I was not following CITEVAR well. When adding additional data to references, I was often taking the time to use the ref template and was recently corrected (due to a revert which stung).reply
Sideswipe9th (
talk·contribs)
20:52, 4 June 2022 (UTC) I'm working my way through the bare URL backlog, but if you need an opinion on gender, sexuality, video games, science fiction, fantasy, or Disney feel free to ask.reply
BhamBoi (
talk·contribs) (I had NO IDEA there was a wikiProject for this! I've been doing this independently for a while (check my contribs), so I'm glad to have found a group of like-minded editors.)
03:39, 12 December 2022 (UTC)reply
I've rewritten the 2002-06 section and listed the references for them (from 600 words to 250). I'm not comfortable editing the actual page as I'd likely break the references as I kept just nine (but only their URL). Any recommendation for a next step?
ogenstein (
talk)
15:27, 14 May 2019 (UTC)reply
WebCite — tool to archive webpages to allow stable citation links.
Wikipedia template filling (was Diberri template builder) — given an ISBN, a PubMed PMID or PMCID, etc., output a citation which can be pasted into a Wikipedia article. Uses vauthors rather than first, last pairs.
Reference generator — generates wikicode for journals, webpages, and other commonly cited sources.
Citation bot — for finding and fixing citation errors, and adding missing data.
User:CitationTool — finds a different set of errors. Not currently working.
Wikicite — a free program that helps editors to properly reference their Wikipedia contributions using citation templates. It is written in Visual Basic .NET, making it suitable only for users with the .NET Framework installed on Windows, or, for other platforms, the Mono alternative framework.
OttoBib.com — a free tool to generate an alphabetized bibliography for books, using an input list of International Standard Book Number (ISBN) numbers, with output in MLA, APA, Chicago/Turabian, BibTeX, or Wikipedia format (also generates a permalink).
Cite.php — a MediaWiki extension that enables the use of <ref>.
Zotero allows you to find articles in Mozilla Firefox and easily paste them into Wikipedia as citation templates using Ctrl-Alt-C
Smith609's
Google Scholar interface lets you search for articles in Google Scholar and automatically produce an appropriate cite template.
User:Richiez tools to handle citations for a whole article at a time. Converts occurrences of {{pmid XXXX}} or {{isbn XXXX}} to properly formatted footnote or Harvard style references. Written in
Ruby and requires a working installation with basic libraries.
WikiProject Check Wikipedia produces a series of daily reports with checks on various wiki syntax elements. The reports on broken template syntax frequently list {{citation}} templates.
Automatic Referencing Assistant — The Automatic Referencing Assistant (ARA) is a script which aids users in correcting referencing errors. It notifies the user when the article being edited is missing the {{
Reflist}} template, has invalid or broken <ref></ref> tags, and many other small functions. Clicking a fix link will automatically add the necessary template or information to the correct location in the article.
WikiBlame - To find first entry of incorrect formating with broken reference names.
Welcome to WikiProject Citation cleanup. Some Wikipedians have formed this collaboration resource and group dedicated to improving the quality and consistency of
citations and
footnotes in Wikipedia. This page and its subpages contain their suggestions and various resources; it is hoped that this project will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians interested in the topic. If you would like to help, please
join the project, inquire on the
talk page and see the
to-do list below.
Goals
Standardising the use of citations by making all citations within the same article consistent with each other
If you see a link that shows up as
[1], try to convert it to show up with text (e.g.
Google).
Please note that Wikipedia's
style guideline on
embedded links says, "A
full citation is also required in a References section at the end of the article." If able, please provide this.
If you see a reference to a news article, it is helpful to link to an online-version of this article (typing the title of the article in the search engine is often sufficient).
Tagging articles
If you don't have time to fix citations/references at the moment, you can still help by tagging the article so that others can find and fix them.
Jeffq (
talk·contribs)
18:44, 19 March 2009 (UTC). Most of my non-trivial WP edits of late involve cleaning up, expanding, and formatting citations, including turning bare external links to proper references, usually whenever I read an article for other purposes.reply
James_Shelton32 (
talk·contribs) (Cleaned up some articles on historical trains in the south. Added references, based on notes in
Soil mesofauna) 14:28, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
Prime Lemur (
talk·contribs) Sometimes people misplace citations during copy-editing, others add great material, but sometimes leave spartan citations. Fixing it contributes to the enduring robustness of WP. Or I think so, anyway *wink*.
10:01, 14 December 2018 (UTC)reply
Smuckola (
talk·contribs) Seek and destroy all lack of citations and presence of non-template-formatted citations. Citations are the foundation of the encyclopedia. Please build automated tools to format and unify them all, such as
Citoid,
WP:REFILL, and wikidata.13:47, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
MonkeyStolen234 (
talk·contribs) I have been fighting through several pages to fix citations to the point of going to bed and dreaming of code every night for an entire week. I still love it, though.
17:55, 6 May 2019 (UTC)reply
Kaltenmeyer (
talk·contribs)
21:31, 9 August 2021 (UTC) Fixing dead urls with current URLs or archived URLs, fixing Wikipedia errors in footnotes, multiple citations with the same ref name; ref names not attached to any reference; duplicate names of authors; fixing bare URLs; moving references to the correct location in the articlereply
TsunTsky (
talk·contribs) 03:12 24 September, 2021 (UTC) Interested in Fixing up citation that are cited in incorrect or not recommedned forms
Apollo468 (
talk·contribs) 02:10 2 October, 2021 (UTC) Mostly focused on adding references for any pages - particularly music.
SidP (
talk·contribs)
17:12, 5 January 2022 (UTC) Fixing, completing and adding requested (or needed) references; I wish I'd known this group existed before! I've been doing this for so long, and just learned I was not following CITEVAR well. When adding additional data to references, I was often taking the time to use the ref template and was recently corrected (due to a revert which stung).reply
Sideswipe9th (
talk·contribs)
20:52, 4 June 2022 (UTC) I'm working my way through the bare URL backlog, but if you need an opinion on gender, sexuality, video games, science fiction, fantasy, or Disney feel free to ask.reply
BhamBoi (
talk·contribs) (I had NO IDEA there was a wikiProject for this! I've been doing this independently for a while (check my contribs), so I'm glad to have found a group of like-minded editors.)
03:39, 12 December 2022 (UTC)reply
I've rewritten the 2002-06 section and listed the references for them (from 600 words to 250). I'm not comfortable editing the actual page as I'd likely break the references as I kept just nine (but only their URL). Any recommendation for a next step?
ogenstein (
talk)
15:27, 14 May 2019 (UTC)reply
WebCite — tool to archive webpages to allow stable citation links.
Wikipedia template filling (was Diberri template builder) — given an ISBN, a PubMed PMID or PMCID, etc., output a citation which can be pasted into a Wikipedia article. Uses vauthors rather than first, last pairs.
Reference generator — generates wikicode for journals, webpages, and other commonly cited sources.
Citation bot — for finding and fixing citation errors, and adding missing data.
User:CitationTool — finds a different set of errors. Not currently working.
Wikicite — a free program that helps editors to properly reference their Wikipedia contributions using citation templates. It is written in Visual Basic .NET, making it suitable only for users with the .NET Framework installed on Windows, or, for other platforms, the Mono alternative framework.
OttoBib.com — a free tool to generate an alphabetized bibliography for books, using an input list of International Standard Book Number (ISBN) numbers, with output in MLA, APA, Chicago/Turabian, BibTeX, or Wikipedia format (also generates a permalink).
Cite.php — a MediaWiki extension that enables the use of <ref>.
Zotero allows you to find articles in Mozilla Firefox and easily paste them into Wikipedia as citation templates using Ctrl-Alt-C
Smith609's
Google Scholar interface lets you search for articles in Google Scholar and automatically produce an appropriate cite template.
User:Richiez tools to handle citations for a whole article at a time. Converts occurrences of {{pmid XXXX}} or {{isbn XXXX}} to properly formatted footnote or Harvard style references. Written in
Ruby and requires a working installation with basic libraries.
WikiProject Check Wikipedia produces a series of daily reports with checks on various wiki syntax elements. The reports on broken template syntax frequently list {{citation}} templates.
Automatic Referencing Assistant — The Automatic Referencing Assistant (ARA) is a script which aids users in correcting referencing errors. It notifies the user when the article being edited is missing the {{
Reflist}} template, has invalid or broken <ref></ref> tags, and many other small functions. Clicking a fix link will automatically add the necessary template or information to the correct location in the article.
WikiBlame - To find first entry of incorrect formating with broken reference names.