It should only be placed in citation templates that are missing a date but should have one because the source cited is not properly identified without it. For example, most books and non-news Web pages are only published with a year as the publication date, and shouldnot be tagged with this template. (See{{year missing}} for missing publication years).
{{Date missing}} (or{{date?}} for short) is an inline cleanup template flagging a broken source citation that is missing the date of publication of the cited source (or at least the specified fact that date is not available). "Date" here usually means "more information than just the year".
Many references are added with anaccess-date= but no publication date. This may be due to the use of citation tools that cannot identify a page's date, but of course theaccess-date= is always today. The lack of a publication date is clearly wrong, an error; but{{Citation}} documentation says clearly "Access dates are not required for links to published research papers, published books, or news articles with publication dates."
Do not place this template in anyCitation Style 1 citation's|date= parameters. All text in|date= parameters is made part of the citation'sCOinS metadata. The|date= parameters should include date data only.
For all free-form and{{cite xxx}}-type template references ({{cite web}},{{cite book}},{{citation}}, etc.), place{{date missing}} at the end of the citation, typically just before the ending</ref> tag
Month and year only (usually for magazines and journals)
|date=MonthnameYYYY
Or, if just a year would be more appropriate (e.g. for books and non-news websites), specify it using|year=:
|year=YYYY
This solution is mainly for cases where{{date missing}} was used improperly and{{year missing}} really should have been used. Some templates such as{{Cite journal}} and{{Cite news}} really do expect a|date= not|year= parameter for most applications.
Some publications use some other kind of date range, such as a season or whatever:
|date=Winter 2009/2010
|date=March/April, 2010
|date=1st Quarter, 2010
For a free-form citation:
Just add the date, as appropriate to the format of the citation; or...
Better yet, convert the entire citation to{{cite journal}},{{cite news}} or some other{{cite xxx}}-series template, as appropriate for the work in question.
If youknow that no date was specified by the original source, as is common on many non-news Web pages, you have several options, listed here in order of preference.
Use the copyright year (or year range) if one is specified, and use [square brackets] to specify that this is what it is:
|year=2006–2010 [copyright date]
If the template will break without using the|date= parameter, then go ahead:
|date=2006–2010 [copyright date]
Failing that, for anon-news source, use the page's last-modified date (use your browser's "get page info" type of command; for example it is "Tools > Page info" in Firefox on Windows); only use this date if it is plausible (many sites always show a very recent last-modified date because of dynamic content updating such as sidebar ads).
|date=23 March 2003 [last updated]
Use the format appropriate for the article and source/citation type.
This solution should never be used with news journalism, as it is closely tied an event's specific date, the accuracy of which is important for placing such a source in proper context.
Another option is an estimation, if you have reason to know approximately when something was published (i.e., you are better than guessing):
|date=ca. September 15, 2009
Finally, explicitly state that the year was unspecified if none of the above are practical (it will appear inside parentheses in most citation templates, but if it does not it should probably be put in [square brackets]):
|date=date unspecified
or
|date=[date unspecified]
For free-form citations:
No date specified.
Donot use question marks.
Donot just repeat the year if already given in a|year= parameter.
Donot leave the information blank and untag it, or someone else will just come along later and flag this with{{date missing}} again!
Donot use|date=none,|date=unknown or anything else vague; any implication other than thatthe source itself did not specify a date is simply a signal to other editors to re-tag it with{{date missing}}.
If youdon't know:
Check the source and add the necessary information, as above.
Donot use question marks.
If the source is a dead link, check archive.org for a backup copy (see your{{citation}}/{{cite xxx}}-type template's documentation for use of|archiveurl= and|archivedate= parameters). If no archive copy is available, use{{dead link}} after the citation, but leave{{date missing}} as well.
Use this inline template before a citation's </ref> tag to indicate that the citation is missing a full date where one is warranted. Not for use on events missing their date of occurrence; for this, use the template {{when}}.
Do not place this template in anyCitation Style 1 citation's
