Citation needed explained

The tag "[citation needed]" is added by Wikipedia editors to unsourced statements in articles requesting citations to be added.[1] The phrase is reflective of the policies of verifiability and no original research on Wikipedia and has become a general Internet meme.[2]

Usage on Wikipedia

The tag was first used on Wikipedia in 2006, and its template created by user Ta bu shi da yu. By Wikipedia policy, editors should add citations for content, to ensure accuracy and neutrality, and to avoid original research.[3] The on needed tag is used to mark statements that lack such citations., there were more than 539,000 pages on Wikipedia (or roughly 1% of all pages) containing at least one instance of the tag. Users who click the tag will be directed to pages about Wikipedia's verifiability policy and its application using the tag.[4]

Usage outside Wikipedia

In 2008, Matt Mechtley created stickers with "[{{not a typo|citati}}on needed]", encouraging people to stick them on advertisements.[5]

In 2010, American television hosts Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert led the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where some participants held placards with "[{{not a typo|citati}}on needed]".[6]

Randall Munroe has frequently used "[{{not a typo|citati}}on needed]" tags for humorous commentary in his writings, including in his 2014 book What If?.[7] [8] [9]

Youtuber Tom Scott and The Technical Difficulties used "[citation needed]" as the title for a Wikipedia-based gameshow that ran from 2014 to 2018.

Notes and References

  1. Book: Redi . Miriam . The World Wide Web Conference . Fetahu . Besnik . Morgan . Jonathan . Taraborelli . Dario . Citation Needed: A Taxonomy and Algorithmic Assessment of Wikipedia's Verifiability . 13 May 2019 . Association for Computing Machinery . 978-1-4503-6674-8 . WWW '19 . San Francisco, CA, USA . 1567–1578 . 10.1145/3308558.3313618 . 67856117.
  2. Book: McDowell . Zachary J. . Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality . Vetter . Matthew A. . 2022 . Routledge, Taylor & Francis . 978-1-000-47427-5 . 34 . English . What Counts as Information: The Construction of Reliability and Verifability . 10.4324/9781003094081 . free. 20.500.12657/50520 .
  3. 栗岡 幹英 [Masahide Kurioka]. 2010-03-01. インターネットは言論の公共圏たりうるか：ブログとウィキペディアの内容分析. Can the Internet be the Public Sphere of Discourse? : Contents Analysis of Blog and Wikipedia. 奈良女子大学社会学論集 [<nowiki />Nara Women's University Sociological Studies]. ja. 奈良女子大学社会学研究会 [Nara Women's University Sociological Study Group]. 17. 133–151. 1340-4032.
  4. McDowell . Zachary J. . Vetter . Matthew A. . July 2020 . It Takes a Village to Combat a Fake News Army: Wikipedia's Community and Policies for Information Literacy . Social Media + Society . en . 6 . 3 . 10.1177/2056305120937309 . 222110748 . 2056-3051. free .
  5. Web site: [citation needed]]. Joshua. Glenn. 2008-01-02. The Boston Globe. https://web.archive.org/web/20180727132135/http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2008/01/citation_needed.html. 2018-07-27. live. 2018-07-27.
  6. News: Satirical rally calls for sanity and/or fear. Ted. Johnson. 2010-11-01. Variety. 2018-07-27. https://web.archive.org/web/20101116073656/https://variety.com/article/VR1118026656. 2010-11-16.
  7. Book: Munroe, Randall. What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Hachette UK. 2014. 9780544272644. 2021-06-15.
  8. Web site: Hill . Kyle . 2014-09-02 . Review: XKCD's What If? . 2021-07-12 . Nerdist.
  9. Web site: Poole . Steven . 2019-09-19 . Book Review: 'What If' by Randall Munroe . 2021-07-12 . The Wall Street Journal.

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