Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup

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Shortcut: WP:WUAC

Welcome to WikiProject: Unreferenced Article Cleanup!

Did you know that, as of 2007-02-14, there were over 48,000 articles in Category:All articles lacking sources? As of December 1, 2008 there were over 154,000 articles in Category:All articles lacking sources.

This project will hopefully bring together editors to add references to these articles and by leaving a project banner on the talk page of articles we have cleaned up, others will follow suit.

Contents 1 Scope 2 Goals 3 Guidelines 4 Status 5 Where to Start 6 Hints and Tips 7 Project banner 8 Active members 9 Userbox 10 Invitation template 11 Successes 12 Related projects 13 See also

[edit] Scope

This project is aimed at any articles lacking sources. This includes, but is not limited to, all articles in Category:All articles lacking sources.

It is recommended that editors focus on smaller, stub-class articles, rather than already established pieces. This has several advantages:

• Providing references for a small article will encourage later stub-expanders to follow suit and cite their sources.
• It provides an opportunity to expand stub articles as part of the process
• It may take less than an hour to reference a stub article, whereas a larger article may take days.
• Faster "turn-around times" are encouraging for the editor, help prevent burn-out, and are good for the project.

This is not to discourage editors from pursuing larger articles, but it may be a good idea to form a taskforce with several editors for such a project.

[edit] Goals

The current primary goal of this project is to stop Category:All articles lacking sources from growing! This means referencing articles faster than they are added to the category. We need all the help we can get!

[edit] Guidelines

See </Guidelines>

[edit] Status

Number of articles improved by project users
385

[edit] Where to Start

The table below shows the number of unreferenced articles by month, it is recommended to work on the later articles as the chances are greater to influence more current editors if they see this projects banner on their articles talk page. The mostly recently tagged articles will not have dates and can be found in Category:Articles lacking sources which can also be access with the shortcut WP:ALS:

Number of Unreferenced Articles by Month

2006	# of Articles	2007	# of Articles	2008	# of Articles	2009	# of Articles
		January	2096	January	5150	January	6969
		February	2235	February	4629	February	5010
		March	2984	March	5634	March	7188
		April	2667	April	5264	April	5192
		May	2721	May	4477	May	6048
		June	2859	June	5526	June	5855
		July	2470	July	4607	July	705
August	153	August	3079	August	5171	August	0
September	547	September	2983	September	4230	September	0
October	1327	October	3505	October	5768	October	0
November	1370	November	4382	November	4493	November	0
December	2138	December	5030	December	5666	December	0

[edit] Hints and Tips

• If you feel you have fully referenced the article remove the {{unreferenced}} template.
• If there are still unreferenced sections of the article replace {{unreferenced}} with the {{refimprove}} template.
• Add a ==References== or ==Notes== section to the article with a {{reflist}} template below to automatically generate the list of footnotes
• Add the Project banner to the article's talk page
• Use the Wikipedia template filling web page to easily create a citation template from an ISBN or URL.
• Enable the RefTools gadget to make creating citation templates easy, go to MyPreferences/Gadgets and enable RefTools.
• Use the Web Cite Archive web page to automatically archive any URL that you use as a citation, then use the archiveurl and archivedate field in the {{cite web}} citation template to ensure that your citation will always be available.
• Google Books Advanced Search - Set the Search option to Limited preview and full view to remove the snippet view results.
• Google News Advanced Search
• Google News Archive Advanced Search - Set the Price option to No Price to remove the articles with prices.
• Many local public libraries offer online access using their library card number to various databases via providers like EBSCO which provides access to many journals and newspapers not available directly on the internet.
• Consider adding to your edit summary: References added as part of [[WP:WUAC|Wikiproject Unreferenced Article Cleanup]]!

[edit] Project banner

Unreferenced Article CleanupWikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Article CleanupTemplate:WikiProject Unreferenced Article CleanupUnreferenced Article Cleanup articles		WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup
	v • d • e This article was provided with references by a volunteer or taskforce from WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup on [[{{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}-{{subst:CURRENTMONTH}}-{{subst:CURRENTDAY2}}]]. If you edit this page, please build on the good work by citing your sources.

This banner is used to signify that an article has been provided with references by a member of this project. Unlike traditional project banners, this banner is to placed on the talk page after the improvements have been made. This will hopefully encourage others to follow suit when editing the article, and perhaps even join the project! The template should be placed in section 0 of the articles talk page after any project templates and before any threaded discussions.

Use the following code to place the banner on the article's talk page:

{{WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup|date=YYYY-MM-DD}}

The date field is optional, but should be included. For the chronically lazy, you may copy and paste this code to automatically produce the template with the current date inserted:

{{WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup|date={{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}-{{subst:CURRENTMONTH}}-{{subst:CURRENTDAY2}}}}

When this template is applied the article's talk page becomes a member of Category:WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup

[edit] Active members

Please sign your name here if you decide to help out!

1. Qarnos 08:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Douglike 15:07, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
3. Eagleplatinum 15:07, 04 April 2007 (UTC)
4. DesertAngel 02:18, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
5. --Mozillaman 13:50, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
6. brian stormen 19:11, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
7. Pinkadelica 02:27, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
8. Travellingcari 04:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
9. Scapler (talk) 17:23, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
10. Captain-tucker (talk) 02:08, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
11. GaryColemanFan (talk) 20:37, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
12. TALKIN PIE EATER REVIEW ME 02:26, 2 July 2008 (UTC) This should be fun!
13. OlEnglish (talk) 08:08, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
14.    Juthani1   ^tcs 15:10, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
15. mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 22:47, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
16. Fribbler (talk) 13:19, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
17. Tiger Khan (talk) 05:07, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
18. Whpq (talk) 21:50, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
19. Jack1956 (talk) 21:17, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
20. LakeAtNight (talk) 19:00, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
21. Offenbach (talk) 18:56, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
22. Dan, the CowMan (talk) 19:51, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
23. Rlendog (talk) 20:14, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
24. Gaia Octavia Agrippa ^Talk | _Sign 12:15, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
25. Xenovatis (talk) 12:31, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
26. --Zaher1988 · ^Talk 11:57, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
27. alchemagenta
28.  J L G 3 9 2 6  14:47, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
29. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 17:54, 23 January 2009 (UTC) So many articles... so little time.
30. ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 19:05, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
31. QFlux (talk) 03:10, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
32. pustelnik (talk) 25 April 2009 (UTC)
33. Discovered this project via the rescuing of Perth Leisure Pool. Jamie^☆S93 12:01, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
34. Arthree (talk) 06:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC) - Unreferenced articles make me cry...

[edit] Userbox

Add the following template code to your user page to display the above userbox:

{{Unreferenced Article Cleanup}}

Adding the above userbox will make you automatically a member of Category:WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup members.

[edit] Invitation template

If you would like to invite someone to join this project just place the following template code on their talk page:

{{WUAC Invite}}

Please accept this invite to join the Unreferenced Article Cleanup WikiProject, a WikiProject dedicated to decreasing the number of unreferenced articles on Wikipedia. As of December, 2008 there were over 154,000 unreferenced articles on Wikipedia, we need your help! Simply click here and sign your username to accept!

[edit] Successes

The following articles have been improved by this project:

• America's Funniest Home Videos
• Bananas (album)
• Battle of Yaunis Khan
• Black 'N Blue
• Bob Boudreaux
• Calling All Engines
• Earl J. Silbert
• Halmstad Castle
• Millersview, Texas
• Mirin
• O'Neill Sea Odyssey
• Thompson coupling
• Tony Davis Oklahoma City
• Paul Jaworski
• Yahoo! Time Capsule

[edit] Related projects

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Citation cleanup

[edit] See also

• Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles
• Wikipedia:Improving referencing efforts