Fix an article that has been flagged with a “Needs Citation” tag.
Many Indigenous author articles on Wikipedia get flagged for issues with citations and notability. Wikipedia strives to be an authoritative encyclopedia and has strict requirements about all information in an article needing reliable sources. They have put together a list of sources showing which ones are reliable, debated, and unreliable. They have also put together a list of external websites that should not (or only on specific circumstances) be linked to in an article. Wikipedia prefers sources which are:
- Published
- Academic/Peer Reviewed
- Secondary sources (not from Publisher or personal website. These are fine for facts/quotes, but to be used sparingly)
However, Indigenous writer representation in Wikipedia-approved reliable sources is very limited and finding those citations in Wikipedia-approved locations requires a bit of extra work to find. On Indigenous writer Wikipedia pages you will often find a citation flag (like the image below).
Instructions
Find an author whose article has a “needs citation” flag.
- Do some research to find an appropriate source for that statement. Previous HIW participants, as well as some authors, have found and submitted research resources that can be used to edit the authors on our list. Check the author’s talk page or the HIW Start Your Research page to see if research resources have been included.
- Edit the page and find the end of the sentence where the citation applies.
- In the editing bar, click the icon for “Cite”
- Paste a link for automatic citation, or enter the citation information in manually.
- Generate the citation, then Insert.
- Publish Changes.
Complete this Activity
After you have added a citation to the author page, let us know by tweeting out the Author page and the new citation source using the hashtag #HonouringIndigenousWriters.
Image Attribution: Featured photo by Liam Desic on Unsplash