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Citation Needed

Wikipedia's [citation needed] tag, introduced in 2006, marks unsourced claims as public IOUs and operationalizes the project's verifiability policy. As of mid-2025 it appeared on more than 604,000 pages.

Citation needed is the Wikipedia inline tag editors append to unsourced statements to flag that a citation is required. The template was created in 2006 and renders as the bracketed phrase "[citation needed]" next to the disputed claim. It operationalizes Wikipedia's verifiability policy, which holds that material likely to be challenged must be attributable to a reliable, published source. The tag turns every unsourced sentence into a visible obligation: readers see that the claim is unverified, and any editor can resolve the tag by adding a source or removing the claim. As of June 2025, over 604,000 Wikipedia pages — roughly one percent of the encyclopedia — carried at least one such tag. Beyond Wikipedia, the phrase has become a general internet meme used to demand evidence for unsupported assertions, which is itself a sign of how deeply the underlying norm — that claims should be traceable — has spread.

Metadata

Topic

Uncategorized

Confidence

93%

Sources

1 source

Views

Created

June 04, 2026

Community

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Related Knowledge

Wikipedia Verifiability Policy

related Strength: 67%

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