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 Beta Wikipedia:Subst.
• There is currently no consensus on where on the article to place templates such as this.

Usage

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 the date parameter is omitted, a bot will add it later.

If you pass in a |BLP= parameter (with the value yes), it indicates that the article is a biography of a living person, and also sorts the article into subcategories of Category:BLP articles lacking sources. This serves to indicate a problem with the policy on self-published sources in biographies of living persons.

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

Examples

{{Primary sources|BLP=yes|date=January 2011}}

Redirects

Aliases include:

• {{Primary}}
• {{Primary source}}
• {{Primary Sources}}
• {{Primarysource}}
• {{Primarysources}}
• {{PrimarySources}}

• {{Reliable sources}}
• {{Reliable-sources}}
• {{Reliablesources}}

• {{Affiliated sources}}

Aliases

1. {{BLP primary sources}} - this template with BLP=yes

See also

• Primary source templates
  • {{Primary source claim}} — inline with text, to object to the inappropriate use of a primary source (regardless of whether the primary source is independent of the subject)
  • {{Religious text primary}} — message box analogous to this one, but for religious texts in particular
• Third-party source templates
  • {{Third-party sources}} — To request WP:Independent sources (regardless of whether they are primary or secondary sources)
  • {{Third-party-inline}} — Inline with text, to request an independent source
• {{Unreliable sources}} — Dependence on unreliable sources
• {{One source}} — Dependence on a single source
• {{Unreferenced}} — No sources at all
• Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary and secondary sources
• Wikipedia:Secondary does not mean independent
• Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup
• Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles

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.