I think it's a HORRIBLE idea!!!!! There are far too many articles with no references. This would be everywhere. RickK --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Search presents - Jib Jab's 'Second Term'

David Gerard wrote: This particular tag seems a little redundant, because the presence or absence of references is pretty obvious when one is looking at an article. If the purpose of the tag to build up a category of articles for bored WPians to fix up, why not just add a simple "[[Category:Add references]]" to the bottom of the article? Not in readers' faces, still allows building up of the list to work on. Or we could borrow the strategy of the recently-successful untagged images project, and use tools to build up a mega-list of articles missing "References"/"External links"/"Further readings" sections. All those US cities should just be able to have a boilerplate cite of the US census, etc. Seeing a lot of unsourced articles listed together should help inspire new techniques for efficient referencing too, just as the tagging project engendered a number of useful new image tags that have replaced the mishmash of license statements that people used to use. Stan

slimvirgin(a)gmail.com (slimvirgin(a)gmail.com) [050128 21:18]: Ooh, I didn't know about that. Nice one. - d.

David, I see no reason not to put {{Cite Sources}} on the article itself. There's no point in putting it on the Talk page because it's not the Talk page that needs the references. ;-) Like the neutrality tag, it's a warning to the reader, in this case that the article has not been properly sourced. I think either that one or your {{unreferenced}} tag would be a good thing to use on some articles. Yes, I can think of quite a few. ;-) Sarah On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 22:06:13 +1100, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

Yes, I agree. In fact, given how many articles don't have sources, it might make more sense to create a {{Sources have been cited}} tag. ;-) Sarah On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 11:18:45 +0000, Zoney <zoney.ie(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Zoney (zoney.ie(a)gmail.com) [050128 22:18]: I'm struck by how many articles have *no* sources. That's what this is for. I see there is also [[Template:Unsourced]], which is probably the same thing. Except that contains the following text: This article lacks references. Members of WikiProject Fact and Reference Check and the Forum for Encyclopedic Standards are working to correct this problem. Please help Wikipedia become more credible and useful by adding sources. To me, that seems to say "go away, we have a special group to fix it, not you." Or, at best, "don't bother, someone else will do it." Is there any good reason to keep that second sentence at all? More words on a tag muffle the point. - d.

nas ral (jewishneoconipod(a)gmail.com) [050128 23:12]: Oh, definitely. It's also in a subcat of [[:Category:Wikipedia maintenance]]. I see that {{unsourced}} isn't actually used *anywhere*. Johnleemk put {{unreferenced}} on [[cyanide]] - which is a pretty nice, well-written article that would be on its way to feature material if it had references and pictures! I put it on [[Enronomics]], which is more the sort of article I was first thinking of. I also put it on [[electromagnetically magnetically induced transparancy]], though that's a stub already so it's probably redundent. (Though that raises the question: what does a stub need *first*: references or more text? Both, obviously, but pick one.) - d.

Charles Podles (charles.podles(a)gmail.com) [050129 01:39]: Excellent point. Though a stub with {{unrefenced}} *and* {{stub}} looks a little overwhemled and may not have the desired effect, i.e. suggesting someone fix it. - d.

--- slimvirgin(a)gmail.com wrote: The talk page is where editors interested in the article hang out. While the *great majority* of people visiting the article are readers only. Thus putting such a message on talk pages is directing the message to the group of people most likely able to fix the issue. This is not the same as an {{NPOV}} tag - which is both a call to arms for editors and a warning to readers. An {{unreferenced}} tag is just a call to arms for editors - the article itself is much more likely than not to contain as accurate of info as any other encyclopedia even without references (and every encyclopedia I've ever used does not have references anyway). Don't get me wrong - I think that references are very important. But instead of adding a tag for something that is obvious to anybody looking at the article, why don't people find references that can be used to confirm at least some of the information in articles? Developing those skills are much more important than encouraging the mindless adding of tags. -- mav __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com