Template:Self-published

Template documentation[view] [edit] [history] [purge]

Any breaking changes to this template, including moving it or nominating it for deletion, must be communicated in advance to Twinkle's users and maintainers at Wikipedia talk:Twinkle. The standard installation of Twinkle relies on this template. Thank you.

This template is for when multiple sources used in an article are self-published. Self-published means that the source was published by the person or organization that wrote it (e.g., a personal or corporate website, a print-to-order book, a company newsletter, a press release, a personally made YouTube video) rather than by a separate entity (e.g., news media website or traditional book publisher).

This template will categorize tagged articles into Category:Articles lacking reliable references.

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, {{Self-published source}} if only one citation is problematic, or {{Self-published inline}} for particular statements with more than one such citation.

The simplest way to add this template to an article is to copy and paste {{Self-published|date=September 2025}} at the top of the article. To flag only an affected section, use {{Self-published|section|date=September 2025}}.

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 {{Self-published|article}}; but should the user wish to be more specific on which section of the article needs to be cited, then the user could enter {{Self-published|section called "Childhood"}}. 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 |date=September 2025. 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 {{Self-published|section|date=September 2025}} and {{Self-published|date=September 2025|section}} will produce the same result.

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. See a monthly parameter usage report for Template:Self-published in articles based on its TemplateData.

TemplateData for Self-published

Use this template when multiple sources used in an article are self-published. Self-published means that the source was written and published by the same person or organization (e.g., a personal or corporate website, a print-to-order book, a company newsletter, a press release, a personally made YouTube video) rather than by separate authors and publishers (e.g., news media websites or traditional book publishing).

Template parameters[Edit template data]
This template prefers inline formatting of parameters.
Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Focus	`1`	Use if the focus is a particular section or paragraph Default article	String	optional
Month and year	`date`	Month and year when template was applied; if left blank, this will be filled by a bot Auto value `{{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}`	String	suggested
Talk	`talk`	Section name or full page and section of discussion Example Discussion section name	String	optional
Find	`find`	Search keywords for 'find sources' double-quoted (exact) search. May be one or more words. Leave empty to suppress 'find sources' output. Example Austen's early life	String	optional
Find2	`find2` `unquoted`	Search keywords for 'find sources' unquoted search.	String	optional

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:Self-published/doc.
Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox and testcases pages.
Add categories to the /doc subpage. Subpages of this template.

v t e Citation and verifiability article maintenance templates
Sourcing	{{Circular}} {{Dubious}} {{Excessive citations}} {{Further reading cleanup}} {{Independent sources}} {{More citations needed}} {{More citations needed section}} {{More footnotes needed}} {{No footnotes}} {{No reliable sources}} {{No significant coverage}} {{One source}} {{One source section}} {{Only primary sources}} {{NRIS only}} {{Primary sources}} {{Primary sources section}} {{Religious text primary}} {{Self-published}} {{Self-reference cleanup}} {{Self-sourcing examples}} {{Refexample section}} {{Sources exist}} {{Text-source}} {{Unreferenced}} {{Unreferenced section}} {{Unreferenced category}} {{Unreliable sources}} {{Unreliable sources section}} {{User-generated}}
BLP-specific	{{BLP unreferenced}} {{BLP unreferenced section}} {{BLP primary sources}} {{BLP self-published}} {{BLP sources}} {{BLP sources section}} {{BLP IMDb-only refimprove}} {{BLP IMDb refimprove}} {{BLP no footnotes}} {{BLP more footnotes needed}} {{BLP one source}}
Topic specific	{{Localist}} {{Media IMDb refimprove}} {{More medical citations needed}} {{More science citations needed}} {{Neologism}} {{Science review}} {{Unreferenced law}} {{Unreferenced medical section}}
Dispute-related	{{Cite check}} {{Cite check section}} {{Content}} {{Disputed}} {{Dispute about}} {{Disputed section}} {{Disputed chem}} {{Disputed list}} {{Disputed map}} {{Expert needed}} {{Hoax}} {{Original research}} {{Original research section}} {{Speculation}} {{Speculation section}} {{Synthesis}} {{Verifiability}} {{Verify sources}}
Citation improvements	{{Citation style}} {{Citations broken}} {{Cleanup bare URLs}} {{Format footnotes}} {{Full citations needed}} {{Ibid}} {{Page numbers improve}} {{Page numbers needed}} {{Parenthetical referencing}} {{Shallow references}}
General advice	Citing sources Reliable sources Maintenance template removal Citation needed Find sources Combining sources Referencing styles

Template:Self-published

Contents

Usage

Technical details

See also

TemplateData