Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Backlog drives/test backlog drive

Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2007 (Category does not exist or has been deleted due to completion of task.)
Started at 12 January 2024 with 102 articles. 0 left.

102 / 102 (100%)

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Note: The main aim of this backlog drive is to gain experience for organizing a much larger backlog drive in the future. Therefore, this backlog drive would target on Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2007‎, which by the time the backlog drive is launch has only 102 articles.

Discuss about this drive at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced articles

There is a very simple way to improve Wikipedia: add one inline citation to a reliable source to any article in the category above or if that is not possible, PROD or AFD it.

Fewer unsourced articles means the quality of Wikipedia as a whole increases. We need a lot of people to help with this monumental task. So leave your marks today!

If you needs tips or guides, you can take a look at § Tips or ask at the Wikiproject's talk page.

Progress Chart
Date	Participants	Articles	Change since previous day	Change since beginning
12 January 2024	2	102	—	—
13 January 2024	2	96	6	6
14 January 2024	2	88	8	14
20 January 2024	2	62	26	40

Detailed instructions

Find an article in Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2007‎.
Look for reliable sources using your favorite web search engine, Google Scholar, Google Books, etc.
- Tips: As a rule of thumb, blogs, editorials, tabloids, self-published books, e-commerce websites, and aggregated databases aren't reliable sources.

If one reliable source is found that verify a statement in the article:

Cite it inline. Please add all the needed metadata. For recent books, ISBN are strongly recommended.
Be careful about the citation's position in text. Use page numbers to be specific and {{cn}} to mark surrounding unsourced statements if needed.
(optional) Find more citations and cite them, too.
(recommended) Add {{More citations needed}} if large parts of the article is not cited OR add {{cn}} to short uncited text.
(optional, for web) Run IABot to archive the web citations, just in case the website is lost forever in the future.

If no reliable source can found with the best of your effort, there are a few options:

(preferred) Make a new thread and notify other fellow editors at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced articles.
PROD the article if it is immediately obvious that the article should be deleted.
AFD the article if it is not immediately obvious that the article should be deleted.

Remember to tag your edit summary with Add references during [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Test backlog drive]], both to advertise the event and tally the points later.

And of course, don't try to repeatedly doing anything stupid. Be careful with your edits and being receptive to others will help you to avoid these awkward situations. Repeated violations of the rules will disqualify the editor from the drive.

Barnstars

In the process of fabrication...

Members

User:Example (always watching...)
CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:37, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:30, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tally

CactiStaccingCrane – 1

Tips

Some tricks

Use "" (double quotes) to search for the term exactly. This means that "pinnochio" will only show up articles with words matched with "pinnochio", not pinocchio.
Use machine translation, either at a website or as built in to your web browser, for reading foreign article texts.
- For foreign texts on Google Books that their texts cannot be copied, take a screenshot, go to Google Translate and click on the "Images" button.
Twinkle might be helpful for cleaning up article banners.
While you're there, you could expand the article or clean up any other problems you see with it.
more?

General tips

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Resources for a list of potentially reliable sources.
Check Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources for some more reliable sources.

edit

Hints and tips

This is list of the main ideas to keep in mind when working on this project. For a more detailed, step-by-step guide see this how to guide.

General

This section advises on how deal with articles that have insufficient inline citations or general references, appearing in the ==Notes== or ==References== section or both, as described in the citing sources guideline.

In order to help people find this project, consider using an edit summary like the following: Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles; [[WP:URA|you can help!]]
If the article has no ==References== section
Add a ==References== section adding "{{Reflist}}" below will automatically generate the list of footnotes if they are used.

If a ==References== section already exists and it contains some general references add a ==Notes== section above the ==References== section and place within it a "{{Reflist}}" template.
If an article has no inline-citations in the body of the article or general-citations in a ==References== section, then attempt to locate and add a citations to the article. See if any of the entries in the ==Further reading== or ==External links== sections can be used as references. If so then follow the guidance in citing sources guideline and move them to the appropriate place. Otherwise attempt to locate and add inline citations to the article.
Be wary of circular referencing. There are many Wikipedia mirrors. In particular, Alphascript Publishing's books by Frederic P. Miller et al., Betascript Publishing, Icon Group International's "Webster's Quotations, Facts and Phrases" series, and Books, LLC all reuse Wikipedia content and appear in Google Books searches.
If you have been unable to add any inline-citations, and you think the article needs them or the article still lacks any general-references then add the {{unreferenced}} template. Either add it at the top of the article or directly above the {{reflist}} template. However if the article is a {{stub}}, there is no general consensus on whether adding an {{unreferenced}} template is appropriate, so discuss it on the talk page first to see if there is a local consensus to add it.
If the article has one inline-citation but is inadequately cited:
- add templates {{Refimprove}}, {{Primarysources}}, {{Onesource}} and {{rs}} as appropriate to put the article in Category:Articles lacking reliable references
- Templates {{Verify source}}, or {{Verify credibility}} tags to put the article in to Category:Wikipedia articles needing factual verification.
- If the reference is spam or completely unrelated, you may want to remove it and consider further action.

Check validity of articles

Check if the article qualifies for speedy deletion/prod/afd/merge/redirect, review the rules and nominate as appropriate.
If suspicious, check for possible copyright violation.
Consider using {{find}} to look for sources.
Validity related templates include {{citation style}}, {{OR}} and others from Category:Citation and verifiability maintenance templates