Template:User-generated/doc

This template is for when multiple sources used in an article are user-generated content. User-generated means that the source was written and published by random members of the public (e.g., another wiki, a reader-editable database like IMDb, an Internet forum, a Usenet newsgroup or  Internet mailing list, etc.), rather than by separate authors and formal publishers (e.g., news media websites or traditional book publishing). User-generated content is a form of self-published source, and these are usually not permissible as citation on Wikipedia.


 * This template is a self-reference.
 * Please do not subst: this template.

Usage
Please try to improve the article, e.g. by looking for better sources to cite, before adding this template, and discuss the matter on the talk page. If the problem is not widespread, consider instead using inline templates, if only one citation is problematic, or  for particular statements with more than one such citation.

The simplest way to add this template to an article is to copy and paste at the top of the article. To flag only an affected section, use.

Use a more appropriate template for articles that have different sourcing problems or have neutrality problems.

Technical details
This template has two optional fields.

The first permits the user to specify what needs to be cited. For instance, if the entire article needs to be cited, a user would enter ; but should the user wish to be more specific on which section of the article needs to be cited, then the user could enter. Leaving the parameter undefined is acceptable, as it will print out the default text "article or section."

The second field is a date parameter, entered as August 2024. Adding this sorts the article into subcategories of Category:Articles lacking reliable references, allowing the oldest problems to be identified and dealt with first. If the date parameter is omitted, a bot will add it later.

Note that order does not matter with respect to the above optional parameters. Both and  will produce the same result.