Template:By whom

Template documentation[view] [edit] [history] [purge]

Usage

You may append a date to the template in the following format:

• {{By whom|date=November 2024}}

An optional link to a discussion about the concern may be added using:

• {{By whom|section=Discussion about whom|date=November 2024}}

The section argument will be appended to a link to the associated talk page, and displayed as

For ease of use, the optional parameter can also be |talk= or |discuss=.

When to use

This tag is for placement after mention of a vague, third-party claim that is not sourced, such as "considered", "noted as", "nicknamed", "lauded as the world's ..." (best / largest / finest / etc.), "labeled", and the like.

Use this tag when no specific examples of identifiable individuals or groups are named who could be used to verify the statements or beliefs that appear in the tagged passage of the article.

Do not use this tag for material that is already supported by an inline citation. If you want to know who holds that view, all you have to do is look at the source named at the end of the sentence or paragraph. It is not necessary to inquire "By whom?" in that circumstance.

Alternatives

• Sometimes, the offending statement should be made more specific by using in-text attribution to identify particular individuals who hold this position, and then either supplied with an inline citation showing that this person or group holds this position, or tagged as needing citation.
• Extremely vague statements ("Alice Expert enjoys broad support") should normally be removed.
• Unsourced statements that say or imply something controversial about a living person should be removed immediately.
• Do not use this tag if naming the individuals who hold a position would be silly because of the number. Facts that are widely held should be asserted as simple facts. Do not use in-text attribution to imply that a widely held view is a minority position. Thus, we write simply that "the Earth is round", not "scientists like Suren Ayvazyan, Teki Biçoku, Donald Canfield, Ricardo Cirera, Hartley T. Ferrar, Nicolae Frolov, Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, Manuel Santillán (and about a million others) say that the Earth is round".

This tag will categorize tagged articles into Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases.

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData documentation for this template used by VisualEditor and other tools; see the monthly parameter usage report for this template.

TemplateData for By whom

Use this tag when no specific examples of identifiable individuals or groups are named who could be used to verify the statements or beliefs that appear in the tagged passage of the article. See [[WP:WEASEL]].

Template parameters

This template prefers inline formatting of parameters.

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Date	date	no description Auto value {{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}	Date	suggested
Section	section talk discuss	no description	Unknown	optional

See also

• {{Peacock}} – message-box noting that an article or section promotes the subject in a subjective manner
• {{Weasel}} – message-box noting that an article or section contains vague phrasing
• Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words
• Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup#Neutrality and factual accuracy, including boxes flagging weasel words, as well as inline templates such as {{When}}

Maintenance categories

• Category:Pages using by whom template with unknown parameters (0)

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:By whom/doc. (edit | history)
Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox (create | mirror) and testcases (create) pages.
Add categories to the /doc subpage. Subpages of this template.