Template:Find sources documentation

This template produces a series of links to various search interfaces to help find additional reference material for articles. This template should not be used in articles themselves - see Wikipedia:EL#Links normally to be avoided.

Usage

{{{{{template}}}}}

{{{{{template}}}|Albert Einstein}}

Parameters

The first parameter is the main search term, which will be treated as a literal string if multi-part (e.g. Albert Einstein will be searched as the single string "Albert Einstein" not "Albert" and "Einstein" separately).

Optional subsequent parameters (up to 4) are additional search terms. They can be enclosed in double quotation marks, preceded by an unspaced - (hyphen) to exclude them from the search results, or both (e.g. -"Marilyn Monroe" to exclude matches containing the phrase "Marilyn Monroe", but not either name by itself, from the search results). You do not need to add -wikipedia, as the template automatically does this for you. Also, there is no need to add words in plural form unless irregular, as the search interface will match (for example) billiards as well given a search term of billiard.

If no parameters are given, the name of the current subpage is used as the search string. If the current subpage has a disambiguator in parentheses, e.g. Happy Birthday (Stevie Wonder song), then the main part of the page name will be quoted and the disambiguation text will follow, like "Happy Birthday" Stevie Wonder song. You can specify that another title be used by using the title parameter.

How this works

Template:Find sources dynamically selects a list of relevant search links based on the WikiProjects listed on an article's talk page. The default search link array is {{find general sources}}. A full list of domain-specific link groups are available in the see also section of this document.

Domain links override

Template:Find sources respects the domain (aka search-domain) parameter (e.g. domain=general), which can be set by editors in {{talk header}} or {{find sources}} to override the automated selection.

Search engines

The template includes links to the following search engines: {{{linkDescriptions}}}

Examples

• Default search:

{{{{{template}}}}}

produces:

{{ {{{template}}} }}

• Simple search:

{{{{{template}}}|Albert Einstein}}

produces:

{{ {{{template}}}|Albert Einstein}}

• Complex search:

{{{{{template}}}|Albert Einstein|physics OR cosmology|-"Marilyn Monroe"|relativity|science}}

produces:

{{ {{{template}}}|Albert Einstein|physics OR cosmology|-"Marilyn Monroe"|relativity|science}}

(Note that Google and many other search engines use capitalized boolean operators "OR" and "AND".)

• Custom title search:

{{{{{template}}}|title=Happy Birthday (Stevie Wonder song)}}

produces:

{{ {{{template}}}|title=Happy Birthday (Stevie Wonder song)}}

See also

Topic templates

Domain-specific implementations of {{Find sources}}:

Find sources templates

Topic	Template	Module	Display Box
General sources	{{Find general sources}}	config	{{General sources notice}}
└ General sources (mainspace)	{{Find sources mainspace}}	config
Biographical	{{Find biographical sources}}		{{biographical sources notice}}
Medical	{{Find medical sources}}	config	{{medical sources notice}}
└ Medical (mainspace)	{{Find medical sources mainspace}}	config
Video games	{{Find video game sources}}	config

Additional resources

• {{Refideas}} - template to include links to possible sources
• {{Search}} - the original search template on which this template was based
• {{Search for}} - a multi-purpose search engine sidebar
• {{Reliable sources for medical articles}}
• Help:Find sources
• Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup/Verifiability and sources
• Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Search links

Template documentation

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