![](https://web.archive.org/web/20210610131244im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/Citation-needed.svg/220px-Citation-needed.svg.png)
"[Citation needed]" is a tag 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 in Wikipedia and has become a general Internet meme. On the English Wikipedia, the display effect looks like this: [citation needed]
Usage in Wikipedia
By Wikipedia policy, editors should add citations for content, to ensure accuracy and neutrality, and to avoid original research.[2] The citation needed tag is used to mark statements that lack such citations.[1] As of February 2019, there were more than 350,000 pages on Wikipedia containing the tag.[1]
Usage outside Wikipedia
In 2008, Matt Mechtley created stickers with "[citation needed]", encouraging people to stick them on advertisements.[3]
![](https://web.archive.org/web/20210610131244im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Wpisavalidsource_%2B_citation_needed.jpg/220px-Wpisavalidsource_%2B_citation_needed.jpg)
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. Some participants held placards with "[citation needed]".[4]
References
- ^ a b c Redi, Miriam; Fetahu, Besnik; Morgan, Jonathan; Taraborelli, Dario (13 May 2019). "Citation Needed: A Taxonomy and Algorithmic Assessment of Wikipedia's Verifiability". WWW '19. San Francisco, CA, USA: Association for Computing Machinery: 1567–1578. doi:10.1145/3308558.3313618. ISBN 978-1-4503-6674-8. Cite journal requires
|journal=
(help) - ^ 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 [Nara Women's University Sociological Studies] (in Japanese). 奈良女子大学社会学研究会 [Nara Women's University Sociological Study Group] (17): 133–151. ISSN 1340-4032.
- ^ Joshua Glenn (2008-01-02). "[citation needed]". Boston.com. Archived from the original on 2018-07-27. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
- ^ Ted Johnson (2010-11-01). "Satirical rally calls for sanity and/or fear". Variety. Archived from the original on 2010-11-16. Retrieved 2018-07-27.