Template:Primary sources

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• This template will categorize tagged articles into Category:Articles lacking reliable references.
• This template is a self-reference, and thus is not appropriate for subst.
• There is currently no consensus on where on the article to place templates such as this.

When to use

Use this template to "tag" information or analysis that you believe is improperly or unnecessarily supported by a primary source, so that other editors can see whether this use is appropriate and/or replace it with a citation to a stronger, secondary source. Primary sources may be used on Festipedia, but they need to be handled with care.

"Primary source" does not mean that the author is too closely affiliated with the subject. As a general rule, primary sources include all scientific journal articles about experiments, as well as news reports and other documents dating from around the time of an event.

How to use

This template also has several optional fields.

If you pass in an unnamed parameter, it specifies which part of the article inappropriately relies solely on primary sources. By default, the entire article needs third-party sources, i.e. it's equivalent to:

{{Primary sources|article}}

To be more specific on which section of the article needs third-party sources, use:

{{Primary sources|section about the childhood}}

This would show up as:

If you pass in a |date= parameter (month year), it sorts the article into subcategories of Category:Articles lacking reliable references and out of the parent category. This in turn allows the oldest problems to be identified and dealt with first.

If you pass in a |BLP= parameter set to yes, it indicates that the article is a BLP|biography of a living person, and also sorts the article into subcategories of Category:BLP articles lacking sources.

Note that order does not matter with respect to the above optional parameters. Both {{Primary sources|section|date=February 2025}} and {{Primary sources|date=February 2025|section}} will produce the same result.

Examples

{{Primary sources|date=February 2025}}

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData documentation for this template used by VisualEditor and other tools.

Primary sources

Use this template to _tag_ information or analysis that you believe is improperly or unnecessarily supported by a primary source, so that other editors can see whether this use is appropriate and/or replace it with a citation to a stronger, secondary source. Primary sources may be used on Festipedia, but they need to be handled with care.

Template parameters[Manage TemplateData]

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Date	date	Month and year when template was applied Default	String	optional
Focus	1	Indicate if the focus is a particular section; not including this parameter implies the entire article Default	String	optional

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:Primary sources/doc. (edit | history)
Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox (create | mirror) and testcases (create) pages.
Add categories to the /doc subpage. Subpages of this template.