Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Backlog drives/June 2025

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

Welcome to the WikiProject Unreferenced Articles June 2025 backlog drive! When the drive began, there were approximately 58,500 articles tagged as entirely without references on Wikipedia. By the end of the drive, we reached 49,028, a net decrease of 9,509 and surpassing our goal of getting under 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 an unreferenced article. These can be found in the backlog of articles tagged as unreferenced.
  2. Add at least one inline citation of a reliable 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. There must not be any immediately preceding characters before the hashtag.

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 strictly prohibited.

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 extended until July 7, 23:59 UTC to allow time for additional reviews.

Where to get help

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, Kazamzam, Cielquiparle and ARandomName123. For technical issues, contact DreamRimmer, who is providing technical support for this drive.

Rules

  1. 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.
  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 or blank and redirect. (See this discussion)
  4. All citing contributions without #JUN25 in the edit summary will not be counted. There must not be any immediately preceding characters before the hashtag.
    • 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 a dummy edit.
  5. Problematic behaviors are grounds towards disqualification and blocks. Examples are:

Detailed instructions

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

Then, find a reliable source.

If at 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 (see WP:CITE). Page numbers and ISBN are strongly recommended wherever present. Place the citation after the punctuation, with no space.
  2. Add {{reflist}} and ==References== if not yet present (see MOS: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 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:

Progress

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

Milestones

  • 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

Oldest backlogs

Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2009
Started at June 1, 2025 with 7,760 articles. 2 left.
7,758 / 7,760 (100%)

Category:Articles lacking sources from January 2010 (Category does not exist or has been deleted due to completion of task.)
Started at June 1, 2025 with 132 articles. 0 left.
132 / 132 (100%)

Category:Articles lacking sources from February 2010 (Category does not exist or has been deleted due to completion of task.)
Started at June 8, 2025 with 249 articles. 0 left.
249 / 249 (100%)

Category:Articles lacking sources from March 2010 (Category does not exist or has been deleted due to completion of task.)
Started at June 17, 2025 with 304 articles. 0 left.
304 / 304 (100%)

Category:Articles lacking sources from April 2010 (Category does not exist or has been deleted due to completion of task.)
Started at June 17, 2025 with 206 articles. 0 left.
206 / 206 (100%)

Category:Articles lacking sources from May 2010 (Category does not exist or has been deleted due to completion of task.)
Started at June 21, 2025 with 141 articles. 0 left.
141 / 141 (100%)

Smallest backlogs

Category:Articles lacking sources from June 2024 (Category does not exist or has been deleted due to completion of task.)
Started at June 27, 2025 with 62 articles. 0 left.
62 / 62 (100%)

Category:Articles lacking sources from February 2023 (Category does not exist or has been deleted due to completion of task.)
Started at June 27, 2025 with 98 articles. 0 left.
98 / 98 (100%)

Category:Articles lacking sources from April 2011 (Category does not exist or has been deleted due to completion of task.)
Started at July 1, 2025 with 100 articles. 0 left.
100 / 100 (100%)

Leaderboard

Last updated July 09, 2025, 00:31 UTC

Rank User Tally References Reviews Total
1 JTtheOG Tally 1236 161.0 1397.0
2 Frost Tally 1039 22.5 1061.5
3 Davidindia Tally 468 186.5 650.5
4 Lulusword Tally 437 24.0 461.0
5 Luis7M Tally 436 23.5 415.5
6 Nayyn Tally 377 0.0 377.0
7 Cielquiparle Tally 365 10.5 374.5
8 Silver seren Tally 375 0.5 362.5
9 AwerDiWeGo Tally 359 0.0 359.0
10 KhoaNguyen1 Tally 303 40.0 340.0
11 Liandrei Tally 334 4.0 338.0
12 Secretlondon Tally 253 2.5 255.5
13 Local Internet User Tally 192 10.0 202.0
14 Cdjp1 Tally 76 63.0 139.0
15 Toweli Tally 138 0.0 138.0
16 The joy of all things Tally 129 6.0 135.0
17 DeemDeem52 Tally 118 1.0 119.0
18 Suonii180 Tally 93 18.5 111.5
19 Itzcuauhtli11 Tally 92 17.5 109.5
20 Yiosie2356 Tally 106 0.0 106.0
21 Golem08 Tally 90 11.0 101.0
22 FictionWitch Tally 99 0.0 99.0
23 Bearian Tally 90 0.0 90.0
24 Coeusin Tally 86 0.0 85.0
25 Sleepytimecat Tally 83 2.0 85.0
26 R0paire-wiki Tally 83 0.0 82.0
27 Suriname0 Tally 78 0.0 76.0
28 ARandomName123 Tally 66 9.5 75.5
29 Coldupnorth Tally 58 0.0 58.0
30 MrLinkinPark333 Tally 50 5.0 55.0
30 Sam Sailor Tally 55 0.0 55.0
32 Lenticel Tally 54 0.0 54.0
33 Cakelot1 Tally 52 0.0 52.0
34 D-Flo27 Tally 51 0.0 51.0
35 Nick Number Tally 50 0.0 50.0
35 Penny Richards Tally 50 0.0 50.0
37 Smallangryplanet Tally 48 0.0 48.0
38 Vegantics Tally 47 0.0 47.0
39 ProtoKiwi Tally 45 0.0 45.0
40 Visviva Tally 44 0.0 44.0
41 SunloungerFrog Tally 42 0.0 42.0
42 Opm581 Tally 30 8.0 38.0
43 Engineerchange Tally 37 0.0 37.0
43 Dougal18 Tally 37 0.0 37.0
45 Mmemaigret Tally 36 0.0 36.0
46 Spiderpig662 Tally 29 6.0 35.0
46 Wizardman Tally 35 0.0 35.0
48 PamD Tally 33 0.0 33.0
49 TheSlumPanda Tally 32 0.0 30.0
50 1AmNobody24 Tally 27 3.0 30.0
51 Giuliotf Tally 29 0.0 29.0
52 Feralcateater000 Tally 28 0.0 28.0
52 Voorts Tally 21 7.0 28.0
54 NorthernWinds Tally 27 0.0 21.0
54 Lollipoplollipoplollipop Tally 18 9.0 27.0
54 Yaaaaargh! Tally 27 0.0 25.0
57 Grumpylawnchair Tally 24 0.0 24.0
57 Itdoesntmatteranymore Tally 24 0.0 24.0
59 Sariel Xilo Tally 23 0.0 23.0
60 Jengod Tally 22 0.0 22.0
61 Pasados Tally 21 0.0 21.0
61 TheLiteraryLoon Tally 21 0.0 21.0
63 Victuallers Tally 20 0.0 16.0
64 Paprikaiser Tally 18 0.0 17.0
65 1ctinus Tally 16 0.0 16.0
65 Hog Farm Tally 16 0.0 16.0
67 GranCavallo Tally 14 0.0 14.0
67 Moriwen Tally 14 0.0 14.0
69 HouseBlaster Tally 13 0.0 13.0
69 Ethmostigmus Tally 13 0.0 13.0
69 Garsh2 Tally 13 0.0 12.0
69 Ayji Tally 13 0.0 13.0
73 BaduFerreira Tally 12 0.0 12.0
74 CosXZ Tally 11 0.0 11.0
74 Aaron Liu Tally 2 9.0 11.0
74 DanGFSouza Tally 11 0.0 11.0
77 Pragmatic Puffin Tally 9 1.5 10.5
78 Mrfoogles Tally 10 0.0 10.0
78 Spookyaki Tally 10 0.0 10.0
78 Gobonobo Tally 10 0.0 10.0
81 Valorrr Tally 8 1.5 9.5
82 Fade258 Tally 9 0.0 9.0
82 RandomMainstream Tally 9 0.0 7.0
84 Kmccook Tally 8 0.0 8.0
85 MainlyTwelve Tally 7 0.0 7.0
85 Suntooooth Tally 7 0.0 7.0
85 ForsythiaJo Tally 7 0.0 7.0
88 AllCatsAreGrey Tally 3 3.5 6.5
89 Bo-3903 Tally 6 0.0 3.0
89 Hhmontanac Tally 6 0.0 6.0
91 Turtlecrown Tally 5 0.0 5.0
91 Quxyz Tally 5 0.0 4.0
91 ClaudineChionh Tally 5 0.0 5.0
91 Econterms Tally 5 0.0 5.0
95 Kazamzam Tally 4 0.0 4.0
95 Mox Eden Tally 4 0.0 4.0
95 Samoht27 Tally 4 0.0 1.0
95 Ivebeenhacked Tally 4 0.0 2.0
95 Meanderingbartender Tally 4 0.0 4.0
95 Geneseditor14454 Tally 4 0.0 4.0
101 CanonNi Tally 3 0.0 3.0
101 Clarityfiend Tally 3 0.0 3.0
101 Wh67890 Tally 3 0.0 2.0
101 Whisperjanes Tally 3 0.0 3.0
101 Longestview Tally 3 0.0 3.0
106 Voidxor Tally 2 0.5 1.5
107 TrademarkedTWOrantula Tally 2 0.0 2.0
107 Whpq Tally 2 0.0 2.0
107 History6042 Tally 2 0.0 2.0
107 Ajeeshkumar4u Tally 2 0.0 2.0
107 Mellk Tally 2 0.0 2.0
107 Yoblyblob Tally 2 0.0 2.0
113 DandelionAndBurdock Tally 1 0.0 1.0
113 Imperatorhobbes Tally 1 0.0 1.0
113 Goldsztajn Tally 1 0.0 1.0
113 Scaledish Tally 1 0.0 1.0
113 Muirjohnnyes Tally 1 0.0 1.0
- Floating Orb Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- CycoMa2 Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- Hwqaksd Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- Yue Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- GraziePrego Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- GOAT Bones231012 Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- PacificDepths Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- VastV0idInSpace0 Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- Calmkelp Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- WilliamMarkRock Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- Timur9008 Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- Riley1012 Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- Demt1298 Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- Endrabcwizart Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- Mooonswimmer Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- Poiuytrewq09876 Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- Destinyokhiria Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- Nnev66 Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- Triptothecottage Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- Merlinderhindergrinder Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- Thefallguy2025 Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- JavaHurricane Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- Carlodivarga-s Tally 0 0.0 0.0
- Mrkoco77 Tally 0 0.0 0.0
Total 9201 667.5 9868.5

Participants

Reviews

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

Determining what sources are usable

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:

Some tricks

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.

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

Unreferenced biographies

The articles below are all the unreferenced biographies of living people that are not currently subject to a deletion process. Please remove entries once references have been added. This section will be updated regularly.

Badges

Notes

  1. 1 2 See phab:T270992 and phab:T262234. Ex. "#JUN25", and "add a ref #JUN25" are fine, but "add a ref#JUN25" and [[WP:JUN25|#JUN25]] are not.