@Royiswariii: Both SuperGrey and Royal Sailor are pretty quick about approving updates to our source lists. Usually within a few days, if not sooner. Is there an update you've made that you're not seeing reflected?
Also note, Cite Unseen caches source categorization data in your browser for 24 hours, so even once a categorization list is updated and approved, it can take up to a day to see the update. ~SuperHamsterTalkContribs19:16, 19 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
It's Done now. Some of the sources are not included since we need more discussion on our WikiProject. But, all of the source which editors are agree on the reliability for now.
Also, may I ask, how do you add the magazines and e-magazines added as books? I can't find where to add sources for magazines and e-magazines or is it automatically detected? Royiswariii (talk) 11:50, 22 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for your great contributions! 🎉 About the magazines -- if they have news coverage, you can add them to Cite Unseen/sources/news; there are already lots of magazines in this category. And, your guess is correct -- the "books" icon is auto-detected when they are cited through {{Cite book}} or {{Cite journal}}; the icon can also be tagged manually (Cite Unseen/sources/books), but the manual tagging is reserved for digital books/journals and academic libraries and not for general magazines. SuperGrey (talk) 00:39, 23 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
We started looking into this and noticed that the unreliable icon appears on the citation on English Wikipedia, but not here on Meta-Wiki or Chinese Wikipedia. We realized that on the English Wikipedia, the COinS data that we parse includes two URLs (both the archive.org link + Amazon), while the other wikis only include archive.org. We'll see how we can better handle these cases. ~SuperHamsterTalkContribs06:23, 12 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
We have fixed this issue in the latest Version 2.2.3. Specifically, there is a new exclude parameter added in {{CULink}} that accepts subdomains to be excluded from the original domain-based ruleset. Currently, we have whitelisted the ASIN links in all amazon.com rules. {{CULink|url=amazon.com |exclude=amazon.com/dp }}SuperGrey (talk) 20:05, 28 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
That thought blows my mind. If there is any source that would generally be rated reliable, that one, before all others, is as basic as it gets. -- Valjean (talk) 02:36, 5 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Our reliability icons are always concensus-based icons -- this will not change. For those "clearly reliable" sources, if you encounter them in the future, either you directly add them to NPPSG, then come back here to modify the enNPPSG/2; or just withstand that it will not be marked, but from your heart you (and everyone else) acknowledge its reliability. From my limited understanding of the NPPSG policy, you are allowed to directly add a "clearly reliable" source there without an RSN discussion. SuperGrey (talk) 00:03, 6 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
By the way, I have to reflect that it is my fault to start a thread on RSN when RSN is not needed; nor is it appropriate to mention RSP as RSP is already way too bloated and they have policy to not add "clearly reliable" sources there. I should be more careful to learn more about the policies before engaging in enwp. SuperGrey (talk) 00:08, 6 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
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FYI, I just realized that this might not be obvious to someone for whom English language and culture is not their first or primary thing in life. When an American says "Merriam-Webster", they are most likely referring to its primary product, which is the main American dictionary, known as Webster's Dictionary. It is what tells us what words mean, IOW it is the ultimate RS for American English. In England it is Oxford Dictionary of English and Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford also publishes an American language version, New Oxford American Dictionary. These are all authoritative English language dictionaries and are all considered extremely RS. They should all be added here at Cite Unseen. -- Valjean (talk) 02:07, 6 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Cool. Done: I added oed.com, oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com to enNPPSG/2 after I updated en:WP:NPPSG. Feel free to update the source pages when you encounter more of them. Thanks! SuperGrey (talk) 05:44, 6 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Just to add for the record and future reference (mostly just repeating what's been discussed above): we currently do not categorize sources by reliability on our own, even when blatantly obvious. We're a technical tool with the goal of surfacing reliability categorizations that Wikipedians have determined through consensus, and we probably do not want to be another hub for reliability discussions to take place (that's what the reliability noticeboard and WikiProjects are for). We want provenance for every reliability categorization we add, to be able to say "this source was deemed (un)reliable by X project/community", and not just "we figured it ourselves". Even for obvious categorizations, I think we open a can of worms if we start classifying source reliability ourselves. As discussed above, the most straightforward approach to get "obvious" domains added to Cite Unseen is to get it added to one of the WikiProject lists (whether NPP or one of the topical WikiProjects), where other editors are also watching and helping make reliability determinations. And from there we can add it to Cite Unseen. ~SuperHamsterTalkContribs20:17, 6 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
I don't think IAR applies. As SuperHamster has said, Cite Unseen is just a tool that collects and reflects what the community agreed with, and maybe show user perference. It should not replace community discussions. Saimmx (talk) 18:22, 8 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Can we edit on en:WP:RSN or en:WP:NPPSG, declearing that Merriam-Webster is reliable without discussion, with a comment that it applies en:WP:IAR or en:WP:SNOW? If the answer is yes, then maybe we can add it here as well. If no, I don't think we can add it here by IAR, too. Saimmx (talk) 18:36, 8 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
I generally agree. This was just such a fundamental case (nothing spoken or written in English matters at all without a dictionary to tell us what the words mean) that, if there were a situation where IAR would apply, this would be it. The fact that we can even write and discuss is related to the meanings and spellings of words. That's pretty basic, like "the sky is blue". There is an a priori assumption that it deserves a green RS checkmark. -- Valjean (talk) 19:50, 8 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
I am not sure what you are agree with. I will assume that you are answering my "Can we edit" question with a "yes". While it makes sense in your logic, I still questioned on it - I am unsure the English community, but if anyone edit on en:WP:RSN or en:WP:NPPSG in such manner, I will revert it, so my answer is a "No". Saimmx (talk) 06:38, 9 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 months ago5 comments4 people in discussion
I had a talk with Repakr, administrator of Ukrainian Wikipedia, who had proposed RSP before but failed for some reasons. When discussing how they evacuate sources, I noticed that almost all Wikimedia projects do have "MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist". It leads me to a question - how do we add blacklisted sources? Do we need to see blacklisted URLs on RSP or some similar projects, or is the "MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist" all we need?
Hello. @SuperGrey should see this very soon. I can offer an answer to the inclusion of Ukrainian sources on Unseen. Presently, the English Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia and Russian Wikipedia are included. To the best of my knowledge, specific language projects are added if those projects have processes that work by consensus. Different projects have varying levels of criteria to establish what makes a specific source reliable or otherwise. 11WB (talk) 15:06, 21 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
My initial thought is that including all the sources on any wiki's MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist is excessive. Links on a Spam-blacklist are blocked from being added to Wikipedia, and many of the URLs on the spam blacklist are blatant attempts at spam and not what editors are typically trying to cite in the first place. The English Wikipedia alone has over 6,000 items on its spam blacklist, so added that to Cite Unseen would be a lot of overhead with little impact.
Right now, Cite Unseen's blacklist category is for sources that are marked as blacklisted on RSP (or other similar reliability list). These are typically sources that editors have regularly tried to cite in the past (and as a result, have resulted in enough discussion to warrant blacklisting and adding to RSP, typically for their unreliability). If a source is blacklisted on the Ukrainian Wikipedia's MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist for similar reasons (commonly attempted to be cited, discussed, deemed unreliable), then perhaps we can add it to Cite Unseen (though I think it's preferred to see it on a separate reliability list like RSP). But ultimately I don't think we should be wholly importing the Spam-blacklist lists. I'll leave it to SuperGrey to leave his thoughts as well. ~SuperHamsterTalkContribs15:26, 21 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
I agree with SuperHamster. Like 11WB said, Spam-blacklists of many Wikipedia languages other than English, often don't really record logs or discussion links. Some don't even have RFC involved. If we were really motivated to import Spam-blacklists, I would assume that only that of the most maintained/tracked languages -- coincidently, those would most probably have their RSP lists. I would really love to see the Ukrainian Wikipedia to build their RSP list and maintain a consensus-based source evaluation process. Don't give up yet, dear Ukrainian admin. I cheer for ya. SuperGrey (talk) 10:13, 22 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Cite unseen causes errors with indented source/bibliography entries. I cannot upload a screenshot as this page seems to think that I am not logged in when doing so. Pietrus1 (talk) 03:25, 7 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Can you give us the links of affected pages? I would like to investigate further, but I haven't been able to reproduce the issue. SuperGrey (talk) 09:00, 7 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm getting the error across all pages. I've realized that the issue was not as bad as I originally believed (many were dark mode errors). But there does seem to be some odd issues occurring for me with indentation with a few sources. Pietrus1 (talk) 09:19, 7 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Some of them were, but others were seemingly not appearing at all. I will try playing around with enabling darkmode in various ways. Currently I just enable darkmode via the enwiki preference. Pietrus1 (talk) 10:02, 7 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Screenshot of English Wikipedia article "Imjin War" on 2026-05-07 (Official Dark Mode)I assume you were using Dark Reader or some other dark mode extensions. We have supported the official Dark Mode in the Wikipedia's Appearance settings, and that is the only dark mode we will consider supporting. SuperGrey (talk) 09:27, 7 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Interesting. The extension shows up as disabled. I'm thinking that might have been the issue above also. Icons that are simply black still display text when hovered over and can be viewed by changing display settings, but a few still did not show up. Pietrus1 (talk) 09:59, 7 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
After some testing, I have discovered what the issue was. It was caused by the "Core styling for dark mode" gadget in wikipedia preferences, I believe. It seems that turning on that gadget seems to override the general dark mode compatibility (and thus without turning up contrast, many icons are not visible) and make a select few icons disappear completely. This seems to come on by default when I enable dark mode in vector 2010.
Latest comment: 2 months ago6 comments2 people in discussion
It seems quite strange to me that most scientific articles are classified as "government" sources solely because they contain links to PubMed (PMID) or PubMed Central (PMC). At the same time, they receive a good score regardless of which journal they come from or what the actual quality of the article is. In reality, most of these articles have nothing to do with the government, nor have they been evaluated in any meaningful way. Would it be possible to disable PMID/PMC analysis and stop categorizing sources on that basis? Wostr (talk) 12:17, 15 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Hmmm. This seems to be a tricky problem because rule-based whitelists did not work. Let me investigate it a bit. Sorry for the late reply and thank you for your patience! SuperGrey (talk) 07:37, 18 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I've noticed that when an LCCN identifier is added to a citation template, Cite Unseen marks it as a government source, likely because the template links to lccn.loc.gov. The Library of Congress is just a library, and is not associated with any books that have an LCCN outside of owning a copy, and assigning those books an LCCN. An example of where you can see this is on en:Park, Washington#Sources. Only the two sources with an LCCN are marked as government. If it's possible to exclude lccn.loc.gov specifically from marking sources as government that'd be great. Feedmepaperr (talk) 02:58, 18 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the feedback. I have replaced the rule criterion with "URL String" instead of "URL" for archive.org/details/muzikmagazine. SuperGrey (talk) 02:18, 25 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support for grammatical pluralization in localized strings
The tool currently displays stats at the top of the reference list (e.g., "total X citations, Y unknown links"). However, the localized strings do not account for linguistic pluralization rules.
For instance, in the Polish localization, a hardcoded singular/plural split (or complete lack of pluralization) results in ungrammatical outputs such as "5 książki" instead of "5 książek" (5 books) or "7 cytowania" instead of "7 cytowań" (7 citations). Polish (along with many other Slavic or complex language groups) requires a multi-form plural structure based on the cardinal number (https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/48/supplemental/language_plural_rules.html):
Form 1 (Ends in 1): 1 cytowanie
Form 2 (Ends in 2-4, except 12-14): 2, 3, 4 cytowania
Form 3 (Ends in 5-9, 0, or 11-14): 5, 7, 12 cytowań
Could we implement a proper pluralization mechanism for localization strings? MediaWiki handles this natively via {{PLURAL:}} in wikitext, or we could handle it via a native JavaScript plural rules mapping (like Intl.PluralRules) within the gadget initialization code to support more complex languages properly. Wcalenieja (talk) 21:11, 6 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Wcalenieja: Thank you for the suggestion (and that's quite the plural structure!). We'll do it all in our code via Intl.PluralRules. I've started working on this, and we should have an update ready soon. ~SuperHamsterTalkContribs06:38, 8 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Hey @SuperHamster, I have a quick question: have these changes been implemented yet? If so, there are still some strings that need to be pluralized in certain languages, including Polish, such as: all category names (advocacy, AI-generated, AI-referred, and so on, all of them) and filters active.
Similarly, the string <locale> Wikipedia (local) (e.g., polski Wikipedia (lokalnie)) needs to be corrected. In this case, the correct form should be "polska Wikipedia" (or "polskiej Wikipedii") – a new string would need to be added to the translation where the local name is specified. Also, please change the string Local wiki settings override global settings. to (Local wiki settings override global settings.), since not all languages place a period inside the parentheses; some, such as Polish, place it after the closing parenthesis.
Additionally, there is a string concatenation issue with how the count is displayed. It looks like the system is reusing the same {{PLURAL}} block for both the total count and the "Showing X of Y citations" message. UI string concatenation breaks localization here. In Polish, the word for "citations" changes completely depending on whether it stands alone or follows the word "of" (z). To fix this, Showing X of Y citations must be a single, unified string with two variables, rather than reusing a shared plural block. It should look like this in the code: Showing $1 of $2 citations -> which allows us to translate it cleanly in Polish using the second variable ($2) for the plural logic: Wyświetlono $1 z $2 {{PLURAL:$2|cytowania|cytowań|cytowań}}
Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Do we know how many people are using this tool? (Not that I think it's realistic to just have this data, but of particular interest are their permissions and contribution counts) Is there any way to use this more safely (without copy pasting the entire code and inexplicably getting a syntax error in line 689)? Would this work:
Am I just paranoid and we are all just one interface admin away from everything being thrust into chaos anyway, so none of this here really matters?
Also, if my "method" above works, should this be encouraged for all scripts one wishes to import? The gigantic red box warning you about the risks, should probably have some risk mitigation advice, no? (other than "just go ask people to read the code for you") Karsenat(she/her) (talk) 14:41, 16 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Karsenat: Last I checked, around a thousand editors are using Cite Unseen (this is across Meta and the various language Wikipedias, through user script installation + via gadget on the ZH and PL Wikipedias). And yes, user scripts are...quite scary, almost comically so, given they're arbitrary JavaScript scripts with minimal guardrails, able to be created and shared by anyone. It's up to each editor to decide which scripts to install and which users to trust. Since Cite Unseen lives under my username, you basically have to trust me (+ all the interface administrators who can edit any script) to not be hacked and not turn malicious one day. All of this is not too far off of what we see with browser extensions or software development at large, with projects blindly downloading dependencies and updates to those dependencies...and of course, there have been many incidents in those spaces.
This setup isn't specific to Cite Unseen. This is how all user scripts across Wikipedia/Wikimedia work. EN Wikipedia has a most-imported scripts list and some of the most popular scripts are used by thousands of editors (so Cite Unseen is up there, but not nearly the biggest attack vector in terms of number of users).
You may have heard about the recent incident where someone with elevated permissions automatically installed a malicious user script that went haywire. There are ongoing discussions about how to make the world of user scripts more secure. I think there are some easier wins, like requiring user script maintainers with X number of users to have 2FA. I think a good future would be for a setup similar to browser extensions, where users are notified about updates to scripts, can review changelogs, approve/deny the update, etc. Or having popular user scripts somehow only be able to be updated automatically based on version control, where updates go through some sort of approval process.
Yes, loading in a specific revision does work, and is a good option. I would not call that too paranoid. But you'd be pretty unique, since most users (myself included) import scripts without specifying revisions. It's not a bad idea to encourage more users to use that approach...but I think most will opt for convenience when they can. ~SuperHamsterTalkContribs16:11, 16 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Consensus-curated sources' list on french Wikipedia
Hello. Thanks for this tool !
I just want to let you know that our consensus-curated evaluation of sources on frWP is on this page : fr:Wikipédia:Observatoire des sources. The entries are added after discussions on the related talkpage.
If that could help... Available also to help translate if needed. — L'embellie@07:53, 22 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Hello @SuperGrey. I've added and categorized the sources from ODS to the page. It was a bit laborious but I think it's correctly done as for now. Since we don't really have a firm "deprecated" category on frWP like @Chaotic Enby told me (sorry for another ping again^^), I've put there the sources that are explicitly stated to be avoided but are not blacklisted. I will continue to maintain the page as much as I can and look at the other source lists also. — L'embellie@00:13, 4 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 day ago3 comments2 people in discussion
The student publications/university pages are on the database to my knowledge. This is the best image I could find that is already uploaded to Commons. It is in theming with the other non-reliability rating specific categorisation images. (Thanks to @Clovermoss for their assistance in adding URLs.) 11WB (talk) 01:18, 2 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 day ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I suggest adding class="noprint" to the Cite Unseen dashboard and icon.
Currently, when a page is printed or saved as a PDF, these UI elements are included in the output. Since they are only useful on-screen, adding noprint would prevent them from appearing in exported PDFs. Thanks! Kcx36 (talk) 18:42, 17 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 day ago4 comments2 people in discussion
@SuperHamster: I think it would be good to have a "religious publication" category. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses have a bunch of affiliated publications that are published by the organization itself. People who are not from specific religious backgrounds are unlikely to recognize that these are not independent sources at a glance and that seems like a good use case for inclusion with Cite Unseen. Thoughts? Clovermoss (talk) 05:15, 19 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
To be really clear, this is not me suggesting that otherwise reliable sources geared towards a specific religious audience should be listed (example). A list like this would specifically be for ones that are institutionally connected with a specific religion. This would mostly be websites, but would also mix other source types like magazines and books. I have lots of ideas for what could be included on a sourcelist like this, I just want permission and some logistical advice (unless you have immediate concerns). Clovermoss (talk) 05:24, 19 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Clovermoss: Thanks for the suggestion! We can definitely consider it. Also letting you know I've moved this from Talk:Cite Unseen/Suggestions to this talk page, since a new category is a bigger consideration (the suggestions talk page is just for suggesting specific sites be added to existing categories). Best, ~SuperHamsterTalkContribs07:36, 19 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
@SuperHamster: Thanks for moving it to the right place and explaining why the difference in venue matters. Keep me updated on the outcome of the bigger consideration. I'd really like to work on this sourcelist if it gets created. Clovermoss (talk) 13:48, 19 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Just a heads up for folks watching, there is progress being made by Chaotic Enby (thank you!) on incorporating updated Cite Unseen icons into the Codex design sysytem. See this Phabricator ticket. If you're interested, please take a look and feel free to leave feedback (ideally in the Phabricator ticket, but can post here instead if you don't have access). Thanks, ~SuperHamsterTalkContribs07:39, 19 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
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