Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Backlog drives/March 2026
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Welcome to the WikiProject Unreferenced Articles March 2026 backlog drive! On the first day of the drive, there were 67,172 articles in the total unreferenced article backlog, including 39,358 articles tagged as entirely without references on Wikipedia.
Our goals for this drive are fourfold:
- Add inline citations to at least 6,000 unreferenced articles
- Bring the total backlog to below 60,000 articles
- Clear the backlog of unreferenced biographies of living persons completely
- Finally clear the Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2009 backlog!
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)
- Find an unreferenced article. These can be found in the backlog of articles tagged as unreferenced.
- Add to the article at least one inline citation of a reliable source which verifies information in the article, then accurately update its tags.
- Remember to tag your edit summary with MAR26 once per article to tally the points later; [[WP:MAR26]] helps to advertise the event as well.[a]
The referencing portion of the drive will run from March 1, 00:00 UTC until April 1, 23:59 UTC. Only submissions made in this period will be counted. The review period of the drive extends until April 7, 23:59 UTC to allow time for additional reviews.
Where to get help
[edit]For advice on adding references, read the § Tips on this page and the helpful guide at Wikipedia:Citing sources, or ask at the WikiProject Unreferenced Articles talk page.
If you have questions or concerns about the drive, please use the backlog drive talk page or contact the organizers, Cielquiparle, ARandomName123, and SunloungerFrog. For technical issues, contact DreamRimmer, who is providing technical support for this drive.
Rules
[edit]- 1 point for adding at least one inline citation from a reliable 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 see WP:PRIMARY.
- If the article is not fully supported by the new reference, add {{citation needed}} as needed.
- 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.
- No points for deleting an article via AfD, PROD or blank and redirect. (See this discussion)
- All citing contributions without
MAR26in the edit summary will not be counted.[a]- If making multiple edits to an article, include "MAR26" in only one edit summary.
- If the editor forgets to put that summary, they may add it retroactively using a dummy edit.
- Problematic behaviors are grounds towards disqualification and blocks. 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.
Detailed instructions
[edit]Find an article in Category:Articles lacking sources (credits to User:Ajpolino and User:Ipigott). Here are some ways to search:
- By search term: go to the search bar and type
[search term] incategory:"All articles lacking sources". - By WikiProject: go to Bambot's WikiProject Cleanup Listings, find the project name and click "by cat", then scroll to find the category "Cites no sources".
- By article topic: use the navbox on Category:Articles lacking sources, or search
articletopic:[topic] incategory:"All articles lacking sources". - By category: use WP: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.
- By popularity: see § Popular articles
- By category or WikiProject, and popularity: For tips on how to use Petscan to filter by category or WikiProject (with handy examples and pre-canned queries) – and even organize the output by popularity (or other criteria), please check out this user-friendly guide.
Then, find a reliable source.
- Familiarize yourself with reliable sources on Wikipedia.
- For tips, see § Some tricks and § Determining what sources are usable.
If at least one reliable source is found, follow these steps:
- Cite it inline. Be sure to include all the needed citation data including the title, date, and author/publisher (see WP:CITE). Page numbers and ISBN are strongly recommended wherever present. Place the citation after the punctuation, with no space.
- Add {{reflist}} and ==References== if not yet present (see MOS:ORDER).
- 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.
- Add an edit summary including "
MAR26". Do this only once per article, even if you make multiple edits.
If no reliable source can found with the best of your effort, according to WP:BEFORE, there are a few options:
- PROD the article if it is obvious that the article should be deleted.
- AFD the article if it is not obvious that the article should be deleted.
- Merge discussion and redirect the article if the article has some useful content but it is not notable.
- Make a new thread at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced articles if you are unsure.
Progress
[edit]
Goals:
- Add inline citations to at least 6,000 unreferenced articles
- Bring the total backlog to below 60,000 articles
- Clear the backlog of unreferenced biographies of living persons completely
- Finally clear Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2009!
| Date | Participants | Total
articles |
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 March 2026 | 130 | 67,172 | — | — |
| 2 March 2026 | 134 | 66,666 |  506
|
506
|
| 3 March 2026 | 137 | 66,252 | 414
|
920
|
| 4 March 2026 | 140 | 65,802 | 450
|
1370
|
| 5 March 2026 | 144 | 65,393 | 409
|
1779
|
| Date | Participants | Tagged
articles |
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 March 2026 | 130 | 39,467 | — | — |
| 2 March 2026 | 134 | 39,011 | 456
|
456
|
| 3 March 2026 | 137 | 38,630 | 381
|
837
|
| 4 March 2026 | 140 | 38,198 | 432
|
1269
|
| 5 March 2026 | 144 | 37,839 | 359
|
1628
|
Milestones
[edit]- 2 March 2026: Total backlog below 67,000 articles
- 3 March 2026: Added citations to 1,000 articles
- 4 March 2026: Total backlog below 66,000 articles
- 4 March 2026: Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2009 below 600 articles
Oldest backlogs
[edit]Cleared backlogs
|
|---|
|
Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2009
|
209 / 765 (27%)
|
|
Category:Articles lacking sources from April 2010
|
3 / 7 (43%)
|
|
Category:Articles lacking sources from June 2010
|
21 / 39 (54%)
|
Leaderboard
[edit]Last updated March 05, 2026, 01:14 UTC
Participants
[edit]Reviews
[edit]All participants with experience in citing sources are encouraged to perform reviews. Reviewers will be awarded 0.5 points for each review. A tool is available to locate unreviewed submissions and simplify wikitext formatting.
Tips
[edit]Determining what sources are usable
[edit]Even if we are just citing one source for an article, that source must be chosen carefully. That source needs to:
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 at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Resources or Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources.
Examples of common not suitable sources include:
- Tabloids – Daily Mail, listicles at Hindustan 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 of user-generated content such as IMDb, Goodreads and Fandom
Some tricks
[edit]Searching for sources (detailed guide at Wikipedia: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", not pinocchio (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 to https://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 via The Wikipedia Library.
- Check for sources in related articles on Wikipedia but do 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 as Ctrl+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 with AWB/JWB, you can use it to quickly add a "References" section and {{reflist}} template.
Popular articles
[edit]The articles below are some of the more popular unreferenced articles that are tagged with {{Expand language}} - so there may be easy-to-nab sources in the corresponding foreign language article. They are taken from Massviews analysis at Wikimedia Cloud Services (WMCS). Please remove entries once references have been added. This section will be updated regularly.
- Assistant commissioner of police
- B-Robo Kabutack
- Political criticism
- Task Force Barker
- Astro Ceria
- Rex Catholicissimus
- Dongtan, Hwaseong
- Prince Karl Alfred of Liechtenstein
- Toei Fushigi Comedy Series
- Column generation
- 81-740/741
- BVG Class D
- San Pietro in Banchi, Genoa
- Anton Aloys, Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen
- Alexander Stewart, Duke of Rothesay
- Ernest Augustus II, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
- Mausu Promotion
- 81-720/721
- Eastern Broadcasting Company
- Kanmon Bridge
- Standesamt
- Bavaria-Straubing
- Caldas de Monchique
- Commission des Sciences et des Arts
- BVG Class A
- BVG Class C
- Trégor
- A5 highway (Lithuania)
- Dziwna
- Bundesautobahn 555
- Anthony I, Count of Ligny
- Schwyzerörgeli
- Llargues
- Familiada
- Kōshien (series)
- Île de Ré bridge
- R256 highway (Russia)
- DR2900 series
- Baia Domizia
- Beira Baixa Province
- Lilienstein
- Alto Alentejo Province
- Sachsenhausen (Oranienburg)
- Romanian animation
- Berestove
Unreferenced biographies
[edit]The articles below are all of the remaining unreferenced biographies of living people on Wikipedia. Please remove entries once references have been added. This section will be updated regularly.
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