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{{Author missing}} (or {{author?}} for short) is an inline cleanup template flagging a broken source citation that is missing author information (or at least the specified fact that author information is not available).

Usage

  • For all citations, append the tag to the end of the citation (usually just before the closing reference tag </ref>):
    {{author missing}}
  • In the occasional case of a partial name (e.g. just a family name, or some construction such as "Dr. Falstaff" or "Reagan and Parkes" or "VNEA" without the full information being provided in a "Notes", "References" or "Bibliography" section elsewhere on the page), you can change the displayed text to [author incomplete] using:
    {{author missing|partial=yes}}
    or
    {{author incomplete}}

How to fix the problem flagged by this template

Do not remove the template without fixing the problem one of the following ways.

  • If you know the author(s), fill in the needed information, and remove the template.
    For a template-formatted citation, there are three basic ways to do this:
    1. |last=Familyname|first=Given Name(s)
      or, for multiple authors:
    2. |last1=Familyname1 |first1=Given Name1(s) |last2=Familyname2 |first2=Given Name2(s), etc
      or for a committee, working group, etc., instead of individual author names:
    3. |author=Organizational author
    For a free-form citation:
    1. Just add the name(s) as appropriate to the format of the citation; or...
    2. Better yet, convert the entire citation to {{Cite journal}}, {{Cite news}} or some other {{Cite}}-series template, as appropriate for the work in question.
  • If you know that no author was specified by the original source, as in common in many newswires, explicitly state this with:
    1. |author=<!--none-->
      or for free-form citations:
    2. <!--No author specified by source.-->
    Do not use question marks.
    Do not just repeat the publisher, work (publication/site) name, or other field.
    Do not leave the information blank and untag it, or someone else will just come along later and flag this with {{author missing}} again! The citation templates know how to properly format a citation to something with no specified author (thus the HTML comment formatting above).
    Do not use |author=none
    Do not use |author=unknown, |author=not sure or anything else vague; any implication other than that the source itself did not specify an author is simply a signal to other editors to re-tag it with {{author missing}}.
  • If you don't know:
    Do not use question marks.
    1. Check the source, and add the necessary information, as above.
    If the source is a dead link, check archive.org for a backup copy (see your {{Citation}}/{{Cite}}-type template's documentation for use of |archiveurl= and |archivedate= parameters). If no archive copy is available, use {{dead link}} after the citation, but leave {{author missing}} as well.

See also

Source citation guidelines
Citation repair templates