Template:Self-published/doc/details

Template documentation

The documentation snippet below is transcluded by both Template:Self-published/doc and Template:User-generated/doc. The redlinks in it will not be redlinks when viewed in those two contexts.

This template will categorize tagged articles into Category:Articles lacking reliable references.

• This template is a self-reference.
• Please do not subst: this template.

Usage

Please try to improve the article, e.g. by looking for better sources to cite, before adding this template, and discuss the matter on the talk page. If the problem is not widespread, consider instead using inline templates, {{Self-published/doc source}} if only one citation is problematic, or {{Self-published/doc inline}} for particular statements with more than one such citation.

The simplest way to add this template to an article is to copy and paste {{Self-published/doc|date=December 2024}} at the top of the article. To flag only an affected section, use {{Self-published/doc|section|date=December 2024}}.

Use a more appropriate template for articles that have different sourcing problems or have neutrality problems.

Technical details

This template has two optional fields.

The first permits the user to specify what needs to be cited. For instance, if the entire article needs to be cited, a user would enter {{Self-published/doc|article}}; but should the user wish to be more specific on which section of the article needs to be cited, then the user could enter {{Self-published/doc|section called "Childhood"}}. Leaving the parameter undefined is acceptable, as it will print out the default text "article or section."

The second field is a date parameter, entered as |date=December 2024. Adding this sorts the article into subcategories of Category:Articles lacking reliable references, allowing the oldest problems to be identified and dealt with first. If the date parameter is omitted, a bot will add it later.

Note that order does not matter with respect to the above optional parameters. Both {{Self-published/doc|section|date=December 2024}} and {{Self-published/doc|date=December 2024|section}} will produce the same result.