Template:Primary sources

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"Template:Primary source" redirects here. For the template that tags inline statements, see Template:Primary source inline.

{{Primary sources|date=December 2025}}

• This template will categorize tagged articles into Category:Articles lacking reliable references.
• 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 or replace it with a citation to a secondary source. There is no need to do so. Primary sources may be used on Wikipedia, 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. To tag an article as lacking independent reliable sources, use the template {{third-party}} instead.

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 tag a specific section use:

{{Primary sources|section}}

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.

You can use |talk= to specify a section header on the talk page.

If you use {{BLP primary sources}} (which is a wrapper for {{Primary sources}} with the BLP=yes parameter), 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=December 2025}} and {{Primary sources|date=December 2025|section}} will produce the same result.

Examples

{{primary sources|date=December 2025}}

For Biographies of Living Persons:

{{BLP primary sources|date=December 2025}}

Redirects

Aliases include:

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

Aliases

• {{BLP primary sources}} – this template with |BLP=yes

See also

• Primary source templates:
  • {{Primary source inline}} – inline with text, to object to the inappropriate use of a primary source (regardless of whether the primary source is independent of the subject)
• Third-party source templates:
  • {{Third-party}}
  • {{Third-party inline}} – inline with text, to request an independent source
• Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary and secondary sources
• Wikipedia:Secondary does not mean independent
• Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup
• Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. Click here to see a monthly parameter usage report for this template based on this TemplateData.

TemplateData for 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 Wikipedia, but they need to be handled with care.

Template parameters

This template prefers inline formatting of parameters.

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Focus	1	Indicate if the focus is a particular section; not including this parameter implies the entire 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

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.