The following event is now closed.Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made onWikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced articles.

Welcome to theWikiProject Unreferenced Articles June 2025 backlog drive! When the drive began, there wereapproximately 58,500 articles tagged as entirely without references on Wikipedia. By the end of the drive, we reached49,028, a net decrease of9,509 and surpassing our goal of gettingunder 50,000.

Reducing the number of unsourced articles improves the quality of Wikipedia as a whole, verifying accurate information in articles and helping to remove the inaccurate.

To participate: (§ Detailed instructions)

1. Find anunreferenced article. These can be found in the backlog ofarticles tagged as unreferenced.
2. Add at least oneinline citation of areliable source to the article, then accurately update its tags.
3. Include#JUN25 in the edit summary (once per article) to have your contributions counted in this drive. Theremust not be any immediately preceding characters before the hashtag.^[a]

Reviewers will check submissions. 1 point will be awarded for adding references, and 0.5 points for each review. Mass deletion or tag removals are strictlyprohibited.

The referencing portion of the drive ran from June 1, 00:00 UTC until July 1, 23:59 UTC.Only submissions made in this period will be counted. The review period of the drive extendeduntil July 7, 23:59 UTC to allow time for additional reviews.

For advice on adding references, read the§ Tips on this page and the helpful guide atWikipedia:Citing sources, or ask at theWikiProject Unreferenced Articles talk page.

If you have questions or concerns about the drive, please use thebacklog drive talk page or contact the organizers,Kazamzam,Cielquiparle andARandomName123. For technical issues, contactDreamRimmer, who is providing technical support for this drive.

1. 1 point for adding at least oneinline citation from areliable source to an unreferenced article, usually tagged with{{Unreferenced}} or{{BLP unsourced}}. Untagged, but unreferenced articles are also acceptable.
   • No points for simply listing references in a section.
   • To keep this drive focused,no points for adding additional citations to one article, though editors are encouraged to do so whenever possible.
   • Primary sources are permitted so long as they are only used to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts. Please seeWP:PRIMARY.
   • If the article is not fully supported by the new reference,add {{citation needed}} as needed.
2. 0.5 points for reviewing submissions of the drive. See more at/Reviews.
   • The point is less because reviewing submissions is easier than finding reliable sources. Nevertheless, reviewers have an extremely important job of verifying submissions and require a high level of trust.
3. No points for deleting an article via AfD,PROD orblank and redirect. (Seethis discussion)
4. All citing contributions without#JUN25 in theedit summarywillnot be counted. Theremust not be any immediately preceding characters before the hashtag.^[a]
   • If making multiple edits to an article,include #JUN25 in only one edit summary.
   • If the editor forgets to put that summary, they may add it retroactively using adummy edit.
5. Problematic behaviors are grounds towards disqualification andblocks. Examples are:
   • Spamming articles to AfD/PROD/blank and redirect
   • Mass-removal of{{Unreferenced}}
   • Adding fake references and content
   • Being disruptive by being uncivil, wikilawyering, etc.

Remember to tag your edit summary with#JUN25, both to advertise the event and tally the points later usingm:Hashtags

Find an article inCategory:Articles lacking sources(credits toUser:Ajpolino andUser:Ipigott). Here are some ways to search:

• Bysearch term: go to thesearch bar and type[search term] incategory:"All articles lacking sources".
• ByWikiProject: go toBambot's WikiProject Cleanup Listings, find the project name and click "by cat", then scroll to find the category "Cites no sources".
• Byarticle topic: use the navbox onCategory:Articles lacking sources, or searcharticletopic:[topic] incategory:"All articles lacking sources".
• Bycategory: useWP:PetScan to find the intersection between "All articles lacking sources" and a chosen category by entering both in "Categories" on separate lines, without the "Category:" part.
• Bypopularity: see§ Popular articles

Then, find a reliable source.

• Familiarize yourself withreliable sources on Wikipedia.
• For tips, see§ Some tricks and§ Determining what sources are usable.

Ifat least one reliable source is found, follow these steps:

1. Cite it inline. Be sure to include all the needed citation data including the title, date, and author/publisher (seeWP:CITE). Page numbers andISBN are strongly recommended wherever present. Place the citationafter the punctuation, with no space.
2. Add{{reflist}} and ==References== if not yet present (seeMOS:ORDER).
3. Remove{{Unreferenced}} or{{BLP unsourced}}. It is recommended to replace it with{{More citations needed}} if large parts of the article are still unreferenced, or add{{cn}} to short chunks of text.
4. Add an edit summary including#JUN25. Do thisonly once per article, even if you make multiple edits.

Ifno reliable source can found with the best of your effort, according toWP:BEFORE, there are a few options:

• PROD the article if it is obvious that the article should be deleted.
• AFD the article if it isnot obvious that the article should be deleted.
• Merge discussion andredirect the article if the article has some useful content but it is not notable.
• Make a new thread atWikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced articles if you are unsure.

Update this page

Goal: Bring the backlog down to below 50,000.

Progress Chart

Date	Participants	Articles	Change since previous day	Change since beginning
1 June 2025	103	58,537	—	—
2 June 2025	112	58,061	476	476
3 June 2025	117	57,635	426	902
4 June 2025	119	57,118	517	1419
5 June 2025	119	56,770	348	1767
6 June 2025	121	56,407	363	2130
7 June 2025	123	56,144	263	2393
8 June 2025	124	55,889	255	2648
9 June 2025	124	55,581	308	2956
10 June 2025	127	55,343	238	3194
11 June 2025	128	55,070	273	3467
12 June 2025	131	54,764	306	3773
13 June 2025	132	54,482	282	4055
14 June 2025	134	54,266	216	4271
15 June 2025	134	54,024	242	4513
16 June 2025	135	53,588	436	4949
17 June 2025	136	53,423	165	5114
18 June 2025	136	53,233	190	5304
19 June 2025	136	53,023	210	5514
20 June 2025	136	52,789	234	5748
21 June 2025	136	52,616	173	5921
22 June 2025	136	52,361	255	6176
23 June 2025	137	52,200	161	6337
24 June 2025	139	51,935	265	6602
25 June 2025	140	51,749	186	6788
26 June 2025	140	51,400	349	7137
27 June 2025	140	51,099	301	7438
28 June 2025	141	50,861	238	7676
29 June 2025	143	50,461	400	8076
30 June 2025	143	50,059	402	8478
1 July 2025	143	49,344	715	9193
2 July 2025	143	49,028	316	9509

• 8 June 2025: August 2009, the oldest category at start of drive, is completed
• 10 June 2025: Added citations to more than 3,000 articles
• 12 June 2025: Total number of unreferenced articles below 55,000
• 16 June 2025: Total number of unreferenced articles below 54,000
• 17 June 2025: September 2009, the second oldest category at the start, is cleared
• 20 June 2025: Total number of unreferenced articles below 53,000
• 21 June 2025: November 2009, the fourth oldest category at the start, is cleared
• 24 June 2025: Total number of unreferenced articles below 52,000
• 28 June 2025: Total number of unreferenced articles below 51,000
• 30 June 2025: Total number of unreferenced articles below 50,000
• 1 July 2025: September 2019 is cleared, bringing the total of completed categories to five

Last updated July 09, 2025, 00:31 UTC

All participants with experience in citing sources are encouraged to perform reviews. Reviewers will be awarded0.5 points for each review.A tool is available to locate unreviewed submissions and simplify wikitext formatting.

Even if we are just citing one source for an article, that source must be chosencarefully. That source needs to:

• verify information in the article
• bereliable enough to be trusted

This is a lot to take in. And worse, sometimes you won't be able to find a source that meets these criteria! It can be very hard to determine whether you should go forward to cite the article or ask for its deletion, even for experienced WikiGnomers, and sometimes you have to follow through with your gut feelings.

Some suitable sources may be found atWikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Resources orWikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources.

Examples of commonnot suitable sources include:

• Tabloids –Daily Mail,listicles atHindustan Times, etc.
• Blogs –Wordpress,Blogger, personal websites
• Wikipedia mirrors, substantially duplicating existing content
• Books not under editorial control, print-on-demand, or self-published from groups such as Lulu.com, AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Trafford Publishing, Xlibris, PediaPress, etc. (tip: search Wikipedia for the publisher's name)
• Websites made up ofuser-generated content such asIMDb,Goodreads andFandom

Searching for sources (detailed guide atWikipedia:Advanced source searching)

• The{{Unreferenced}} template placed at the top of unreferenced pages contains many search links pre-filled with the article topic (and configured to exclude other Wikipedia articles).
• On Google and some other search engines:
  • Use "" (double quotes) to search for the term exactly. This means that "pinnochio" should only show pages containing "pinnochio", notpinocchio (but note that sometimes quotes are disregarded and the wrong term is shown anyway).
  • Use - (dash) to exclude pages containing unwanted terms, e.g. -wikipedia.
• Some articles, especially for more general topics, might have sources available with slightly different wording, e.g. "basketweaving" vs "basket weaving", "basket weaver", etc.
• Search millions of old and new books at Google Books and Archive.org. For Archive.org, go tohttps://archive.org/search, click the search bar, then click the "search text contents"radio button to search inside over 10 million books.
• Access to some pay-walled content, including academic journals, Newspapers.com and ProQuest, is provided to editors viaThe Wikipedia Library.
• Check for sources in related articles on Wikipedia butdo not simply copy the reference. Only after you've checked that the source is reliable and does indeed verify the text, you may use the citation.

Reading and parsing sources

• Use the text searching feature to locate what you are looking for faster, such asCtrl+F on Windows or⌘ Cmd+F on macOS.
• Translation for reading:
  • You can use machine translation, either at a website or as built in to your web browser. However, these translations may be rough and should not be used indiscriminately in Wikipedia.
  • To translate text that cannot be copied, for example on Google Books, you can take a screenshot of a passage and upload the image to Google Translate.

Processing articles

• While you're there, you could expand the article with new information from your reliable sources, or clean up or tag other problems you find.
• Twinkle might be helpful for cleaning up article banners and nominating articles for deletion
• If you are familiar withAWB/JWB, you can use it to quickly add a "References" section and{{reflist}} template.

The articles below are some of the more popular pages on Wikipedia and thus might be easier to find sources for. They are queried frompage views analysis at Wikimedia Cloud Services (WMCS). Please remove entries once references have been added. This section will be updated regularly.

The articles below are all theunreferenced biographies of living people that arenot currently subject to adeletion process. Please remove entries once references have been added. This section will be updated regularly.

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