Latest comment: 3 months ago5 comments3 people in discussion
So far, I have only see sources from English Wikipedia and Chinese Wikiedia, while other languages (such as Vietnamese or Trukish) do have similar lists about reliability of the sources (D:Q59821108). Maybe we should add these sources as well. Saimmx (talk) 06:16, 17 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
We'd certainly like to support lists from more languages! We can use help is migrating perennial sources lists to our sources structure, similar to enRSP and zhRSP. But we should also first determine which perennial sources lists are appropriate to include. The Turkish RSP seems to be marked as a draft page, and their reliable sources noticeboard seems to have been shut down, so I'm doubtful that we can lean on it as a representative list for source reliability. Vietnamese RSP looks better, except most of the "generally reliable" sources have no linked discussions (perhaps it's considered "common knowledge" that those are generally reliable). ~SuperHamsterTalkContribs06:45, 17 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
After taking a look, it looks like Persian, French, Russian, and Vietnamese have actived RSPs and RSNs, while the French RSP do not use the icon system, and reliable sources are not discussed in the Vietnamese RSN.
Some languages have activated RSN, but no activated RSP. such as Indonesian (while their RSN is active, it does not always reflect on their RSP). German Wikipedia has an active RSN, but no RSP there.
Inactived RSNs with some useful info include Swedish and Turkish. Swedish RSP looks interesting - they have an RSP but don't have an RSN. They discuss reliability on every page.
Sorry for the wait! I just noticed that neither I nor @SuperHamster have replied to this comment since September.Since this is neither English nor Chinese, we also need to think about how we can maintain the list after the initial import given the language barrier, in addition to the point SuperHamster raised: whether the original list is actively maintained, and whether we can reasonably rely on it as a representative list for reliability.I think the French and Russian RSPs are good candidates to import, though each has its own difficulties:
Latest comment: 3 months ago8 comments3 people in discussion
At present, the tag reads: "This source is a news article from a reputable news organization."
The problem is that a statement of reputability flies in the face of consensus in some cases. Wouldn't it be just as accurate and far more neutral to simply state, "This source is an article from a news organization" and leave it at that? - Amigao (talk) 18:53, 30 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Amigao: What about this? This is a list of reputable news websites that Wikipedia considers generally or situationally reliable, except when covering political topics or topics involving conflicts of interest. (from the lead sentence of Cite Unseen/sources/news) The deal is that, we have a separate category "tabloids" for tabloid journalism, and they are supposed to be mutually exclusive. SuperGrey (talk) 03:33, 31 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Well, we also have the reassuring Generally Reliable green icon, right? As long as it's evaluated on RSP (or any other projects' source lists), it will have a green checkmark. SuperGrey (talk) 16:41, 31 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
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@Amigao and SuperGrey: When Cite Unseen was first developed (2019), it focused more on the nature and medium of sources and did not have the reliability icons that it does now. The news icon was described early on as "traditional reputable news sources", which served as a signal of both type and reliability. In late 2020, RSP reliability icons were introduced, but the "reputable" part of the news category stayed, perhaps with a mix of intention but also status quo. With our reliability categories expanded, I do think it makes sense to "decouple" reliability from the news category a bit, and let Wikipedia reliability ratings do the talking.
Here's my suggestion (let me know what you think): "Journalistic reporting from an outlet whose primary purpose includes reporting on current/recent events, under an editorial process."
My intention with the above is to basically capture "real" news organizations, from local newspapers to international outlets, while avoiding publications that may report current events but lack the organizational structure we expect of reliable news organizations (thinking Substacks, pink-slime, etc.)
If we go that route, I'm wondering how to approach category overlaps. For example, state-controlled news media currently gets the "state media" and potentially "marginally reliable" or "generally unreliable" icons. Would we also want to put the news icon in there? Or perhaps we only show the news icon when other icons are not present?
Based on how the "news" category is used in practice, I support the revised framing "Journalistic reporting from an outlet ...". It does not need to be mutually exclusive with "government" or reliability markers. Maintaining multiple mutually exclusive lists will be tiring, and we already treat "tabloids" as mutually exclusive with "news". These are my suggestions. Best, SuperGrey (talk) 10:07, 16 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Agreed, I think it'd be a good category to have. There are also sites out there that publish entirely AI-generated content with no human oversight (often pretending to be " news") that could also fit in this category (NewsGuard, for example, has a list, albeit it is not publicly available).
@SuperHamster: See lead sentence: This is a list of websites, pages, and link patterns associated with unedited AI-generated content, including pages that publish substantial AI-generated material without human editorial oversight and URLs tagged with AI-referrer parameters (for example, utm_source=chatgpt.com). (Cite Unseen/sources/aiGenerated). Is this good, or need rephrasing? SuperGrey (talk) 22:32, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
And the icon tooltip: This source is associated with unedited AI-generated content. It may be a website that publishes substantial AI-generated material without human editorial oversight, or a source link tagged with AI-referrer parameters.SuperGrey (talk) 23:52, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Worked with User:SuperGrey and we now have two new categories deployed (and the start of our own little army of bot icons!)
AI generated: Sources associated with unedited AI-generated content. It may be a website that publishes substantial AI-generated material without human editorial oversight.
AI referred: Sources with a URL that contains AI/LLM tracking parameters (such as utm_source=chatgpt.com) indicating that it was copied from an AI assistant. The associated text may have also been AI-generated, and the source may or may not corroborate the given statements.
Now, If a source is rated in multiple languages, when we view an article in a language version of Wikipedia, Cite Unseen will only show the rating in the source list of that language, but not also showing ratings in other languages. For example, when an article cites Wenweipo, I can only see it is marginally reliable when reading in Chinese Wikipedia, and is deprecated when reading in English Wikipedia. However, if I view the article in Cantonese Wikipedia, I can see both ratings for the cited source. Therefore, what I want is a customization that even if a source is already rated in the language version of Wikipedia that I am reading, I can still see the ratings in other languages. @SuperGrey and SuperHamster for discussion. Royal Sailor (talk) 07:56, 3 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
.cite-unseen-icons currently has padding-right: 5px to separate Cite Unseen icons from the text content of the citation. However, when there are no icons present, it still adds 5px padding at the start, which means the text looks slightly indented (example screenshot from en:Zi (film)). This occurs in both the citation popup and the reflist at the end of the article.
This is a nitpicky thing, but I would like to suggest the padding be hidden when the icon container is empty so the text properly aligns. Here is one way you could do it:
I'm not sure why, but the way they format their citations doesn't seem to work with cite unseen. I'm on V22, and can send screenshots if necessary. I get the same on fawiki iirc; the icons don't appear next to the citations, and at the top of the reflist it says something like "total 77 citations, 3 no consensus, 5 unknown links" and just doesn't list the other categories. lp0 on fire()11:50, 28 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Simplest and most beneficial way is to just ask frwiki to generate COinS in fr:Module:Biblio. They don't need to implement a whole COinS system; just the basic metadata. For example, this is a CS1 Citation on enwiki (taken from en:Barack Obama):
<spanclass="reference-text"><citeid="CITEREFIsidore2010"class="citation news cs1">Isidore, Chris (January 29, 2010). <arel="nofollow"class="external text"href="https://money.cnn.com/2010/01/29/news/economy/gdp/index.htm">"Best economic growth in six years"</a>. CNN. <arel="nofollow"class="external text"href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100420161722/http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/29/news/economy/gdp/index.htm">Archived</a> from the original on April 20, 2010<spanclass="reference-accessdate">. Retrieved <spanclass="nowrap">April 18,</span> 2010</span>.</cite><spantitle="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Best+economic+growth+in+six+years&rft.date=2010-01-29&rft.aulast=Isidore&rft.aufirst=Chris&rft_id=https%3A%2F%2Fmoney.cnn.com%2F2010%2F01%2F29%2Fnews%2Feconomy%2Fgdp%2Findex.htm&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3ABarack+Obama"class="Z3988"></span></span>
There is this <span> that contains a long string of text--called COinS--sitting next to the <cite>. The COinS text can be decoded into this, basically a set of key-value pairs separated by &:
ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Best economic growth in six years&rft.date=2010-01-29&rft.aulast=Isidore&rft.aufirst=Chris&rft_id=https://money.cnn.com/2010/01/29/news/economy/gdp/index.htm&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Barack Obama
By the way, I'm going to create a half-baked backup implementation for frwiki. Not as reliable as COinS-augmented solutions though. SuperGrey (talk) 06:30, 1 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
@PeriodicEditor: Interesting idea. Do you see mirrors cited enough to warrant adding a whole new category? We could alternatively add mirrors alongside wikipedia.org's appearance in the "editable" and "generally unreliable" categories (a mirror is not editable of course, but still the same source under the hood). ~SuperHamsterTalkContribs19:12, 19 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
I don't see them much, but it would be useful to get a simple way of finding any mirrors. I agree that it would make sense to put in editable. Thanks PeriodicEditor (talk) 16:50, 20 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
@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: 18 days 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.
SuperGrey (talk) 12:03, 3 February 2026 (UTC)
AI generated: Sources associated with unedited AI-generated content. It may be a website that publishes substantial AI-generated material without human editorial oversight.
AI referred: Sources with a URL that contains AI/LLM tracking parameters (such as .svg){kind=icon}
.svg){kind=icon}
Done. Added to the latest patch. SuperGrey (talk) 22:22, 6 February 2026 (UTC)
.png)
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