Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 12, 2026

Citation needed

The tag "[citation needed]" is added by Wikipedia editors to unsourced statements in articles requesting citations to be added. The phrase is reflective of the policies of verifiability and original research on Wikipedia and has become a general Internet meme.

Last revised
Jun 12, 2026
Read time
≈ 3 min
Length
790 w
Citations
20
Source
Wikipedia ↗
Example of "citation needed" in an English Wikipedia article
The citation needed template in a previous version of the English Wikipedia's article about the mushroom source ↗

The tag "[citation needed]" (stylized as "[citation needed]") is 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 original research on Wikipedia and has become a general Internet meme.2

Usage on Wikipedia

The tag was first used on Wikipedia in 2006,2 and its template created by user Ta bu shi da yu.3 According to Wikipedia's policy, editors should add citations for content, to ensure accuracy and neutrality, and to avoid original research.4 The citation needed tag is used to mark statements that lack such citations.1 Wikipedia editors may use tools like Citation Hunt to address these uncited statements.5 As of June 2025, there were more than 604,000 pages on Wikipedia (or roughly 1% of all pages) containing at least one instance of the tag.1 Users who click the tag will be directed to pages about Wikipedia's verifiability policy and its application using the tag.6

A parody of the tag, [cetacean needed], is used for missing images on Wikipedia's list of cetaceans page.78

Usage outside Wikipedia

xkcd comic "Wikipedian Protestor": as a politician addresses a crowd, a protestor within the crowd holds up a sign reading "[CITATION NEEDED]".
A 2007 xkcd comic by Randall Munroe featuring a protester with a "[citation needed]" placard source ↗
Photograph of a protestor in a crowd holding up a poster reading "*CITATION NEEDED!"
Poster at the 2017 March for Science source ↗

In 2008, Matt Mechtley created stickers with "[citation needed]", encouraging people to stick them on advertisements.9

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., where some participants held placards with "[citation needed]".10

American cartoonist Randall Munroe has frequently used "[citation needed]" tags for humorous commentary in his writings, including in his 2014 book What If?.111213

The podcast "Citations Needed" is a Webby-nominated14 media criticism podcast, hosted by journalists Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson to explore the intersection of media, PR, and power.15

Wikipedian Molly White publishes a newsletter covering the cryptocurrency and technology industries called Citation Needed.1617

References

References

  1. Redi, Miriam; Fetahu, Besnik; Morgan, Jonathan; Taraborelli, Dario (May 13, 2019). "Citation Needed: A Taxonomy and Algorithmic Assessment of Wikipedia's Verifiability". The World Wide Web Conference. WWW '19. San Francisco, CA, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 1567–1578. arXiv:1902.11116. doi:10.1145/3308558.3313618. ISBN 978-1-4503-6674-8. S2CID 67856117.
  2. McDowell, Zachary J.; Vetter, Matthew A. (2022). "What Counts as Information: The Construction of Reliability and Verifability". Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality. Routledge, Taylor & Francis. p. 34. doi:10.4324/9781003094081. hdl:20.500.12657/50520. ISBN 978-1-000-47427-5.
  3. Ta bu shi da yu (June 15, 2005). "Template:Citation needed". English Wikipedia. Retrieved March 23, 2025.
  4. 栗岡 幹英 [Masahide Kurioka] (March 1, 2010). "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) (17). 奈良女子大学社会学研究会 [Nara Women's University Sociological Study Group]: 133–151. ISSN 1340-4032.
  5. McDowell, Zachary; Vetter, Matthew (2022). Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality. New York: Routledge. p. 33-34. ISBN 978-0-367-55571-9.
  6. McDowell, Zachary J.; Vetter, Matthew A. (July 2020). "It Takes a Village to Combat a Fake News Army: Wikipedia's Community and Policies for Information Literacy". Social Media + Society. 6 (3) 2056305120937309. doi:10.1177/2056305120937309. ISSN 2056-3051. S2CID 222110748.
  7. Helm, R. R. (November 10, 2015). "Awesome nerd joke hidden in Wikipedia's "List of Cetaceans" | Deep Sea News". Retrieved August 5, 2025.
  8. "List of cetaceans", Wikipedia, May 18, 2026, retrieved May 20, 2026
  9. Glenn, Joshua (January 2, 2008). "[citation needed]". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on July 27, 2018. Retrieved July 27, 2018.
  10. Johnson, Ted (November 1, 2010). "Satirical rally calls for sanity and/or fear". Variety. Archived from the original on November 16, 2010. Retrieved July 27, 2018.
  11. Munroe, Randall (2014). What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Hachette UK. ISBN 9780544272644. Retrieved June 15, 2021.
  12. Hill, Kyle (September 2, 2014). "Review: XKCD's What If?". Nerdist. Archived from the original on July 13, 2021. Retrieved July 12, 2021.
  13. Poole, Steven (September 19, 2019). "Book Review: 'What If' by Randall Munroe". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved July 12, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  14. "Podcast | Citations Needed". Nima Shirazi. Retrieved November 8, 2024.
  15. Groundwater, Colin (April 29, 2020). "The Best Podcasts to Listen to in Self-Isolation". GQ. Archived from the original on April 30, 2020. Retrieved November 8, 2024.
  16. White, Molly (November 10, 2023). "Laser eyes". Citation Needed. No. 43. Retrieved June 4, 2025.
  17. Cohn, Cindy; Kelly, Jason (May 21, 2025). "Love the Internet Before You Hate On It". How to Fix the Internet. Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved June 4, 2025.
External links