Wikipedia:Verifiable, not cited
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The key to Wikipedia:Verifiability is whether another person is able to verify that at least one reliable source has previously published each claim made in an article. All content must be verifiable, but all content does not necessarily need to followed by an inline citation.[1]
As of 2024, the English Wikipedia does not require, and has never required, an inline citation for all material. Uncited does not mean unverifiable.
Content is verifiable if
[edit]Content is verifiable if, using all the means at the disposal of an educated and dedicated person, the content in question can be found in a source that Wikipedia editors deem to be reliable for that claim.
Consider a claim such as "Queen Victoria reigned for more than 60 years."
The status of this claim is:
Verifiable: if you visited your favorite library or used your favorite web search engine and found websites, books or other sources that both contain the information that is reported in the article, and that are considered reliable for that information.- Cited: if an inline citation was provided to a reputable history book that gives the dates of her reign.
- Verified: if someone found that history book, found the page about how long Victoria reigned, and decided that the Wikipedia article fairly represented the information in the cited source.
Failed verification: if the article contains a citation to a reputable scientific source that provides very interesting information about the role of certain chemicals in manufacturing latex paint, but which does not mention Queen Victoria at all.
Content is not verifiable if
[edit]- The cited source is not Wikipedia:Published or accessible to any other people, and, after a fair effort has been made, there is no reason to believe that other reliable sources exist.
- Nobody, even if heedless of the cost of finding and accessing reliable sources, can actually find a copy of the cited sources (this is called a ghost citation), and, after a fair effort has been made, there is no reason to believe that other reliable sources exist. Large language models often "hallucinate" ghost citations; see WP:LLM and WP:fictitious references.
- The claim cannot be found in any sources at all.
- The claim can only be found in unreliable sources.
- The claim can only be found in sources that cite Wikipedia as their source for the information. (This is the WP:CIRCULAR sourcing problem.)
- The claim can only be found in sources that postdate the appearance of that information in the Wikipedia article, and therefore which might have copied that information from Wikipedia. (See Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia.)