Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/How to guide

This how to guide is a suggested outline of the steps to take with an article with an 'unreferenced' tag or an article that has inadequate inline citations or general references.

This is meant as a guide for editors starting out with this project and more experienced editors will probably want to apply their own methods according to their individual preferences and style.

General steps

 * 1) Read and understand the appropriate guidelines for WP:Identifying reliable sources and notability if you are not already familiar with them. Certain types of subject have specific guidelines, for example criminal acts.
 * 2) Read the article to attempt to get a basic understanding of the subject. It may help to have a background in the area.
 * 3) If article is not notable then discuss on the talk page of the article if this article should be nominated for deletion or speedy deletion.
 * 4) If the article is a content fork then propose a merger and that one of the pages becomes a redirect.

Adding a Reference section if none exists
If the article has no References section (see WP:FNNR)
 * Add a References section adding " " below will automatically generate the list of footnotes if they are used.
 * If References section already exists and it contains some general references add a Notes section above the References section and place within it a  "  " template.

Checking for references

 * 1) Verify that any inline citations or general references adequately support the contents of the article. To do this the sources must be relevant, reliable and  verifiable.
 * 2) If the article does not already have adequate general references in a References section or inline citations, then attempt to add some. If there are entries in a External links section or the Further reading section that can be used as general references or inline citations then move them up  either into the References section to become general references or use them as in inline citations. See below in the section "aids for finding sources" for some tips on where to find other sources.
 * 3) If after the last step, there are still no general references (entries in the References section) and no inline citions then either leave the existing  unreferenced on the article or add one.  You now have three choices:
 * 4) Go back to the top of this how to and repeat the process
 * 5) Ask for other editors opinion on what to do initially on the article's talk page and if that does not solve the problem at other suitable forum.
 * 6) Leave the article for other editors to deal with at some later date.
 * 7) If the article has one or more general references or inline citations and it has a unreferenced template remove the template.

Inadequate references

 * 1) If the article has one or more general references or inline citations but the sources for some or all of the text in the article is unclear use:
 * Templates Refimprove, Primarysources, Onesource and rs as appropriate to put the article in Category:Articles lacking reliable references
 * Template BLP sources to tag Biographies of Living Persons as appropriate to put the article in Category:BLP articles lacking sources
 * Templates Verify source, or Verify credibility tags to put the article in to Category:Wikipedia articles needing factual verification.
 * if the article has general references but the sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations, either add a No footnotes template or add citation needed templates where you think inline citations are needed.
 * 1) * Consider relabeling sections or moving and reformatting the references so they will be more recognizable as such.
 * 2) * If the original tag was incorrect, leave the original date when replacing it with a new tag.
 * 3) * If the reference is spam or completely unrelated, you may want to remove it and consider further action.

Copyright violations and plagiarism
If suspicious, check for possible copyright violation. Advise on how to recognise plagiarism can be found in the plagiarism guideline. To tag articles which have possible copyright infringements, for the attention of administrators, read the instructions on the Copyright problems noticeboard.

Aids for finding sources

 * Use a search engine. Consider using find to look for sources. To do this, add to your sandbox or other temporary edit space and preview, then follow the links to generate search in five of Google's search spaces. Check also for reasonable variations on the name of the subject.
 * Check the 'What links here' link on the article page to see if and relevant references were given in those articles.
 * Check the 'Other languages' links to see if references were given in the these versions of the article.

Other
In order to help people find this project, consider using an edit summary like the following:  Added references; you can help! 

If a reasonable search has turned up nothing remotely relating to the subject or the article otherwise obviously meets Criteria for deletion then consider proding the article. This should happen very rarely. Review WP:BEFORE before doing this.

If a reasonable search has turned up possible references but notability cannot be established, or the article otherwise seems to meet Criteria for deletion then consider either afding the article or proposing a merge with another article. This should happen in the minority of cases. Again, review WP:BEFORE before proposing AfD.

Keep in mind that the goal of this project is to provide the minimum required references for every article, not to do a full fact check. This is not to discourage people from doing a full fact check if they want to, but for this project the idea is to quickly find a reference and move on to the next article.

In some cases sources you turn up may conflict with the article content or even with each other. This does not necessarily imply that the content is incorrect since different authors may use different terminology or have different points of view. Again, it's not the goal of this project to resolve such issues but consider adding Disputed, Expert-subject or a similar tag to draw attention to the problem.

If the content of an article is simply too abstruse to understand and the references you find don't help to clarify the subject then don't hesitate to ask for help in the relevant project or portal page.

Follow up on proposed mergers and deletions at a later date. Consider adding such pages to your watch list, you can do this by pressing Alt + Shift + W or by clicking on the star at the top of the page.

Specific articles

 * BLPs
 * For new biographies of living persons created since March 2010 which have no references at all, you can add the Stick Prod tag: Prod blp; this tag works in a similar way to proding. Before adding the tag please check to see if any reliable sources exist. If no sources can be found then add the tag using the following code: