Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Citation needed

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to Wikipedia:Citation needed. Mr.Z-man 01:14, 13 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Citation needed (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Almost all of the sources are WP:PRIMARY, coming from Wikipedia itself. Of those that aren't:

• ScienceBlogs makes no mention of [citation needed] outside using it in the title.
• Grist.org only passingly mentions the xkcd comic in an article suggesting that people fact-check a debate. It literally just says "citation needed" after a sentence, with a link to said comic and that's it.
• The Globe and Mail dedicates only one sentence to the xkcd comic.
• The Variety source dedicates one sentence to a sign reading "citation needed" at a rally, but says nothing about it being a Wikipedia catch phrase.
• The Deutsche Welle source doesn't mention "citation needed" at all, but only shows it in a picture.
• The New York Times source only mentions it in passing, too.

And the last two sources are just works named after "citation needed".

In short, [citation needed] does not seem to be notable on its own. All of the sources mentioning it do so only in passing, or only as a "hey, look, we can use Wikipedia terminology!" way on an article that says nothing else about [citation needed] itself. Some of this may be merge-able to Wikipedia, but most of it doesn't have much use. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 09:59, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment So... ^{[citation needed]} needs citations? Haha. Sorry.182.55.86.32 (talk) 12:05, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:06, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Internet-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:06, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per nom. --Vanquisher.UA^(talk) 20:53, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete – Per nominator. Those sources aren't enough. Google news just shows articles using it, but not saying anything about it. (Well, expect for the couple that were about Citation the racehorse.) Egsan Bacon (talk) 06:47, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, good deal of coverage from multiple different secondary sources over time. — Cirt (talk) 10:11, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Did you even read my dissertation on how the various sources in the article clearly are not good coverage? Most of them don't even say anything about Wikipedia. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 11:07, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per Cirt. Sorry, Hammer, your essay is TL;DR. Bearian (talk) 17:51, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• So you're saying "keep" because you're too lazy to see my explanation that the sourcing in this article is terrible? Really damn helpful there. Come back when you can actually be arsed to !vote properly. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 18:57, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies for rushing through this AfD; I do deserve a trout slapping. In any case, Hammer, you are correct. Delete. The sources are very fleeting; there is not much of significant coverage of this topic outside of Wikipedia. I would agree, as noted below, to a redirect into a Wikipedia essay. Bearian (talk) 20:37, 10 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete wouldn't exist were it not for the meta aspect. Nominator has shown without a doubt that it does not meet notability standards. Inanygivenhole (talk) 07:46, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect to Wikipedia:Citation needed. Nice bit of sleuthing from TPH - I did my own search for sources and found only trivial mentions. However, the term is a valid one to put in the search box, newbies and visitors must do it all the time, and going to a redlink is going to make people think Wikipedia is broken. So for usability reasons, with a bit of WP:IAR thrown in the mix, it should go to the project page that people might well have wanted in the first place. Just for giggles, we could redirect to fact.... Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:48, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  Comment if I am not mistaken, mainspace->anything redirects are considered improper. Inanygivenhole (talk) 22:00, 10 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect per Ritchie333. Great compromise; I definitely agree something other than a redlink should come up when people search for the term. Simple_butpowerful 20:39, 10 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Addendum: The article's earliest edits were redirects to other relevant pages, for the purposes of removing the redlink, so it makes all the more sense to redirect. Simple_butpowerful 20:47, 10 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge and redirect to Wikipedia:Citation needed. "Citation needed" is a bona fide meme, according to Know Your Meme. It's a nice history, but I wouldn't consider the site a reliable source. The meme has lead to the phenomenon of Wikiffiti--citation needed stickers being placed on dubious public assertions--as reported in Make, The Boston Globe, reason.com, and boston.com. There is also a book with this title. Together, these sources show that the [Citation needed] is verifiable in reliable sources, but not enough are both reliable and in-depth to pass notability per WP:GNG. But the topic warrants a merge into the main article on this topic, per WP:PRESERVE and WP:ATD-M. I agree with Ritchie333 that Wikipedia:Citation needed is both the best article at WP on this topic and the most useful target for our users. --Mark viking (talk) 21:29, 10 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Is there a precedent for article space-to-Wikipedia space redirects? I can't think of any off the top of my head. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 08:02, 11 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See Category:Redirects to project space for a big list of them, for example, HotCat. --Mark viking (talk) 09:23, 11 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Maybe keep? Perhaps. Articles of this sort generally leave me feeling a bit uneasy as it feels a lot like navel gazing, however a search of Google scholar suggests there are sources out there about the subject. I can't see many of them, but of the ones I can read, they treat the subject as a mechanism of Wikipedia rather than "a slogan for denouncing implausible or unsubstantiated claims" in pop culture [1] [2]. Though I can't see this paper, I suspect it might be useful and given the fact it was delivered at WikiSym 2012 if some enterprising editor wants to get in touch with the authors they may be able to talk themselves into a free copy. The material is relevant to reliability of Wikipedia so alternatively the article could be merged there. Nev1 (talk) 15:54, 11 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete The sources found by Nev1 barely mention "citation needed". Anyway, this is just another non-notable term - the only difference is that Wikipedia uses it, and gasp - we're Wikipedia too! Perhaps redirect to Reliability of Wikipedia. A redirect to template space or Wikipedia space would violate CNR rules. Taylor Trescott - ^{my talk} + _{my edits} 19:46, 11 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Rules, schmules. The page gets 1500 hits a month. That's a lot of redlinks. This is one of the unusual cases where redirecting from article to project space is okay, because it's a widely used search term, and it would benefit the usability of the encyclopaedia to ignore any policy restricting that. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:40, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.