Wikipedia:WikiProject Citation cleanup



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
 * Ensuring that no citations are broken at any time
 * Preserving citations by archiving them with archive.today and the Wayback Machine

Scope

 * Any article that uses footnotes. For unreferenced or under referenced articles, see Unreferenced Articles

Guidelines

 * If you see a link that shows up as, 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.
 * All articles with broken or outdated citations: Pages are currently added to this category by Cite web and Cite news if they use incorrect syntax. You can also tag articles with dead links by using citations broken (to tag an entire article or section) or dead link (to tag an individual link).
 * Articles lacking in-text citations: This category is filled by the No footnotes template
 * Citation style: Use the Citation style tag to put articles in this category.
 * Articles with unsourced statements: use Fact
 * Articles needing page number citations: use page number
 * Articles needing more detailed references: Use specify, to add an article to this category.
 * Articles lacking reliable references: use Primarysources or rs.
 * Articles needing additional references: use Refimprove, Refimprovesect and Unreferencedsection.

Examples

 * Example

Participants
Please feel free to add yourself here, and to indicate any areas of particular interest.

Please note that it is " " not " " and five tildes to add the date, not four.
 * 18:26, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
 * 04:31, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 06:47, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 13:56, 30 September 2007 (UTC) I mostly do link rot clean up or cleanup after a bot does link rot clean up (i.e. Missing authors, titles, and dates).
 * 20:38, 1 November 2007 (UTC). Fixing citation style consistency.
 * 01:37, 2 December 2007 (UTC) (I have been adding and checking citations before this WikiProject came into light, and I'd be happy to be affiliated with it.)
 * 12:55, 31 December 2007 (UTC) As with Jw21, I've been doing this often, and I'm glad to join up.
 * 1) I'm interested in working on citation style consistency, and increasing reliable sources 17:44, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 02:20, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
 * 03:30, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * 03:46, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * 04:52, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) I hit "Random Article" and if whatever comes up needs work, I do it. 00:27, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * 04:16, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * 04:26, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * 02:28, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
 * 12:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * 21:32, 3 December 2008 (UTC) - I also go for random articles and format into cite. I'll also hit big-ticket pages and fix their references as well.
 * 1) Always checking and adding citations. 23:19, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * 16:56, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * 22:02, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
 * 03:24, 21 February 2009 (UTC) I have been doing it already, mainly in birds.
 * 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.
 * 11:37, 29 April 2009 (UTC)There are a number of Australian Schools articles that could use some citations.
 * 04:11, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 19:15, 30 May 2009 (UTC), unhealthily obsessed with checking footnotes and references.
 * 02:54, 26 September 2009 (UTC), have been checking and correcting citations for quite a while.
 * 03:59, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
 * 01:32, 28 December 2009 (UTC), I've fixed citation styles in Wikipedia for years.
 * 13:20, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * 13:54, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
 * 16:29, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * 14:37, 8 June 2010 (UTC) PMID etc. → cite journal
 * 02:23, 2 November 2010 (UTC) - I commonly open "Random article", fix any citations, and then walk down the wikilinks looking for more citations to fix.
 * 09:51, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 13:42, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 14:46, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
 * 02:26, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) I don't have a lot of time to fix references, but have been tagging a lot and decided to join up.  And it's good to be #41 on the list, I used to have a cat named 41. — Bill W. (Talk) (Contrib)  –  29 July 2024,  (UTC) 19:24, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * 2) Tagging, finding sources (I love to google). 22:31, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
 * 3) I look at everything, Whatever article need me I would be there as protector of that article, love Wikipedia, love project Peace. -- 18:53, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * 4) kawaii♥bot (talk) 09:35, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
 * 15:13, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
 * 1)  - I have been fixing citations for months using Twinkle. 20:02, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * 2) - journal, medical, and scientific citations. - 06:59, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
 * 3) - I have recently joined Wikipedia, and want to make a difference in the way articles are presented.
 * 23:18, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
 * 00:07, 25 February 2013 (UTC) - I tend to look in history-related articles, mostly Philippine but others too
 * 1)  (I am interested in working on computer related wikis) 16:30, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
 * 2)  (I am interested in working on science related wikis) - 16:00, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
 * 3)  I have been working through Category:Articles needing link rot cleanup - 16:45, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
 * 4)  21:24, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
 * 5)  20:50 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * 6)  (Science, Medicine, Skepticism) 12:23, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
 * 7)  16:45, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
 * 8)  10:30, 10 October 2013
 * 9)  09:22, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
 * 10)  00:12, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
 * 11)  20:20, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * 12)  11:42, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * 13)  (I am interested in unifying citation style with cite, particularly on physics articles) 20:32, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
 * 14)  I have been cleaning up references and using citation templates for WP:MED for quite some time. Did not know that a separate WikiProject existed for this 17:46, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
 * 15)  I've been doing this informally for a while. Might as well make it official. 21:32, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
 * 09:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
 * 19:16, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
 * 18:02, 16 February 2014 (UTC) Help with broken reference names
 * 07:40, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * 03:53, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) Lloydsilver (talk) 22:57, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * 12:50, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
 * 16:51, 12 November 2014 (UTC) - We need to clear those backlogs!
 * 16:06, 15 November 2014 (UTC) There is no scope to my interests in fixing citations, I have been doing it on my own and was happy to find this Wikiproject.
 * 12:16, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * 10:53, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * 13:00, 7 February 2015 (UTC)
 * 06:54, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
 * 1) Olivettilly (talk) 00:24, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 2) Ouanor (talk) 13:10, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 3) Hampton11235 (talk) 15:23, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 4) (Already correcting the wrong citations I see on article. Didn't know that their is a project. Its good to be here.) 07:10, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 5) (I am interested in working on fixing missing "|title=" fields in citations.) 03:24, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * 6) (I am interested in assisting librarians, college students, and faculty members with finding references for articles) 00:44, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
 * 7) (Interested in the concept of improving Wikipedia's authority by doing citation cleanup work. Excelsior!) 16:44, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
 * 8) (working on name error backlog) 22:14, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
 * 9) (cleaning up bare references) 11:28, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * 10) (Cleaning up bare references, primarily on Musical Articles.) 20:19, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * 06:00, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
 * 18:32, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * 1) (Cleaned up some articles on historical trains in the south.  Added references, based on notes in Soil mesofauna)  14:28, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
 * 2)  13:52, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
 * 3) I am interested in fixing citation errors. 15:45, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
 * 4) (I love combating link rot!) 02:29, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * 05:48, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * 19:25, 3 May 2018 (UTC) been doing it for years some one just linked to the page.
 * 23:13, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
 * 21:51, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * 16:47, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
 * 21:14, 25 November 2018 (UTC) ( i correct bare references in templates since 6 months)
 * 1) I love cleaning 23:59, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
 * 2) 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)
 * 3) 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)
 * 4) I love verifying citations. See talk. -- 17:33, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
 * 10:05, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
 * 1) —Love fixing weird citations. New, big fan of Harvard references.—22:23, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
 * 18:54, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
 * 1) I combat against link rot. 09:01, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
 * 2:11, 23 April 2019
 * 05:12, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
 * 1) 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)
 * 2) I have been fixing link-only citation already. Thought I might aswell join the club! 21:28, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
 * 12:17, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
 * 19:32, 9 August 2019 (UTC) - will probably focus on cleaning up bare URLs
 * 1)  02:53, 13 August 2019 (UTC) -- technical fixes (bare URLs, dead links, book details, etc.)
 * 2)  verifying citations, moving them to what they actually verifiy, fixing bare URLs and dead links, etc. 04:58, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
 * 3)  22:11, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
 * 4)  06:39, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
 * 5)  03:34, 17 March 2020 (UTC) I have been going through the huge backlog of Category:Pages with broken reference names, but definitely can't do it alone
 * 6)  08:49, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
 * 7)  12:16, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
 * 8)  18:37, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
 * 9)  Ms4263nyu (talk) 07:47, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
 * 10)  I feel like the "Quote" field for references is severely underused on Wikipedia! It's so useful. 15:01, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
 * 11)  08:47, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * 12)  I convert bare URLs to citation templates either by using WP:REFILL or manually, add OCLC #s where applicable, & link unlinked shortened footnotes & the like to full citation templates. 20:11, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
 * 13) Hello world 6 (talk) 00:12, 17 July 2020 (UTC) I have recently started playing Citation Hunt and feel that I should join this WikiProject to help.
 * 14) Ds2320 (talk) 21:50, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
 * 15) Thunderbotz (talk) 08:17, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
 * 16)  17:54, 21 August 2020 (UTC) -- enlisting to help with Category:Pages with broken reference names
 * 17)  I enjoy adding what I read to here or just increasing citations for pages that lack references
 * 18)  14:59, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * 19)  01:12, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * 20)  14:45, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * 21)  03:12, 10 December 2020 (UTC)  I enjoy fixing doi's and links
 * 22)  17:28, 8 January 2021 (UTC) I started with converting bare URLs and now expanded to all sorts of maintenance tasks.
 * 23)  13:46, 7 March 2021 (UTC) I mainly convert bare URLs.
 * 24)  08:47, 20 April 2021 (UTC) I mainly add archive url's and organise citations accordingly.
 * 25)  02:21, 21 April 2021 (UTC) Mostly fixing bare URLs
 * 4:41, 6 May 2021 (UTC) Completing as much as possible all existing references I come across.
 * 1)  14:37, 22 June 2021 (UTC). Mainly focused on bare URLs and plain text citations and converting them into CS1, on random articles I encounter while on research.
 * 2)  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 article
 * 3)  03:12 24 September, 2021 (UTC) Interested in Fixing up citation that are cited in incorrect or not recommedned forms
 * 4)  02:10 2 October, 2021 (UTC) Mostly focused on adding references for any pages - particularly music.
 * 5)   20:17, 20 December 2021 (UTC) Fixing and completing existing references as much as I can.
 * 6)  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).
 * 7)  14:24, 21 February 2022 (UTC) For now I'm mostly fixing bare urls, and replacing dead links.
 * 8)  23:18, 18 March 2022 (UTC) CITATION FIXER!!!
 * 9)  13:14, 1 April 2022 (UTC) addition and modification of references to military weapons articles.
 * 10)  00:31, 9 May 2022 (UTC) I've been fixing articles on any of the pages that appear on Category:CS1_maintenance or Category:CS1_maintenance.
 * 11)  08:53, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * 12)  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.
 * 13) Sportsfangnome (talk) 03:17, 19 July 2022 (UTC)  I mainly do American sports.
 * 14)  01:13, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
 * 15) Rabbe Quiz (talk) 20:26, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
 * 16)  (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)
 * 17)  Bare URLs is something I have been working on 03:16, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * 18)  I like cleaning refs so why not?
 * 19)  23:37, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
 * 20)  Bare URLs. 11:33, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
 * 21)  02:17, 25 June 2023 (UTC) Bare URLs are my mortal enemy.
 * 22)  19:28, 14 July 2023 (UTC) I enjoy cleaning up bare references.
 * 23)  23:16, 17 July 2023 (UTC) I eat bare URLs for breakfast (among other things)
 * 24)  22:58, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
 * 25)  17:36, 3 September 2023 (UTC) Enjoy cleaning up citations, especially bare URLs.
 * 26)  22:35, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
 * 27)  20:58, 5 December 2023 (UTC) I've been working on scientific journal cites for a while now, especially ones with naked DOIs.
 * 28)  23:27, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 29)  19:52, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * 30)  01:54, 20 March 2024 (UTC) I fix bare URLs and citations
 * 31)  07:42, 29 March 2024 (UTC) Mostly fixing bare URLs and other citation errors
 * 32)  19:22, 5 May 2024 (UTC) Like improving citation (from news/web).
 * 33)  (This user finds joy in editing the wikitext of citations and removing errors.) 22:54, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * 34)  (I'm mostly interested in combatting link rot and adding archive links when needed.) 17:40, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * 35)  22:43, 1 June 2024 (UTC) I'm having a good time picking off bare URLs c:
 * 36)  07:01, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * 37)  17:51, 6 June 2024 (UTC) I always fix citation formatting when I see it so better add myself to the list!
 * 38)  18:33, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
 * 39)  07:50, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
 * 1)  (This user finds joy in editing the wikitext of citations and removing errors.) 22:54, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * 2)  (I'm mostly interested in combatting link rot and adding archive links when needed.) 17:40, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * 3)  22:43, 1 June 2024 (UTC) I'm having a good time picking off bare URLs c:
 * 4)  07:01, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * 5)  17:51, 6 June 2024 (UTC) I always fix citation formatting when I see it so better add myself to the list!
 * 6)  18:33, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
 * 7)  07:50, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Userbox and topicon
Note: If you are a participant, then you may wish to add User WikiProject Citation cleanup to your userpage. Those who prefer topicons can use WikiProject Citation cleanup topicon instead.

Collaboration and review

 * Peer review
 * Assessment
 * Hair Peace Salon an article about a Belarusian band has over 300 references and is currently being edited by one particular user who is not aware of WP:REFBOMB. A relevant cleanup issue was raised at WP:CLEAN by, I am duplicating it here to raise the awareness about this article. -- Bbarmadillo (talk) 09:45, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I will assist if this team decides to take action. Note that the article's creator may react unfavorably. ---  DOOMSDAYER 520 (Talk&#124;Contribs) 12:27, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
 * 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)
 * Good grief. This is far and away the worst case of WP:REFBOMB I've ever seen. I'm not even kidding when I say it might be worth it to just completely undo all of Pr12402's edits to the article. For crying out loud, the article on the American Civil War has fewer references.  TheTechnician27  (Talk page)  07:36, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Good grief. This is far and away the worst case of WP:REFBOMB I've ever seen. I'm not even kidding when I say it might be worth it to just completely undo all of Pr12402's edits to the article. For crying out loud, the article on the American Civil War has fewer references.  TheTechnician27  (Talk page)  07:36, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Citation templates

 * citation style
 * nofootnotes
 * Citation
 * cite book
 * cite court (Court Case)
 * cite encyclopedia
 * cite episode (Television or radio episode)
 * cite journal
 * cite conference
 * cite mailing list
 * cite map
 * cite news
 * cite newsgroup
 * cite paper (Papers, theses, dissertations)
 * cite press release
 * cite video
 * cite web

Article tagging templates

 * citations broken or dead link
 * nofootnote
 * Citation style
 * Fact
 * Cleanup-bare URLs
 * page number
 * specify
 * Primarysources
 * rs
 * Refimprove
 * Refimprovesect
 * Unreferencedsection

Subpages

 * List of

Tools

 * Citoid – use in the visual editor to quickly "Convert" a bare URL into a citation template.
 * refill - Edits bare references - adds title/dates etc. to bare references.
 * Google book tool Converts bare url into cite book format.
 * RefScript
 * Universal reference formatter for journal article citations.
 * 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.
 * 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 or  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  template, has invalid or broken   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.

Related projects

 * WikiProject Fact and Reference Check
 * WikiProject Unreferenced Articles
 * WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors
 * Cleanup