 | This template should always be substituted (i.e., use {{subst:Leadcite comment}}). |
How to use
editThis comment can be substituted into the lead section of articles that follow MOS:LEADCITE and omit citations, to avoid erroneously placed {{citation needed}} tags.
The text that is added is as follows:
<!--No citations are required in the article lead per [[MOS:LEADCITE]], as long as the content is cited in the article body, as it should be. Do not add missing-citation tags like {{cn}} to the lead. If necessary, {{not verified in body}} can be used, or the content removed.-->
When to use
edit- MOS:LEADCITE does not prohibit the use of inline citations in any article, so don't use this unless you're certain that there is a current consensus against adding citations to the lead of that particular article.
- You are discouraged from adding this template to articles about Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons, because the BLP policy requires unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons to be removed immediately. While keeping citations out of lead sections is perfectly acceptable practice in many types of articles, insisting on this for BLP articles would just invite errors, such as well-meaning editors removing claims from lead sections because they do not see or realize the claim is sourced, just not where it appears, but much later, in the main body of the article.
Articles using this
editAn "insource" search, such as this one, can be used to find most of the pages where this hidden message has been placed.
The very first version of the template used a slightly different phrasing of the above search phrase, but there are no remaining usages of that version.
As of 12 May 2024[update], it is used in 86 articles (not counting possible custom variations).