Wikipedia:Really old articles that shouldn't be deleted due to a lack of references
 | This is an essay on interpreting Wikipedia:BLPPROD and Wikipedia:BEFORE guidelines. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Exercise caution when deleting older articles as "unreferenced", as standards were lower when they were first created. If they can be improved, do so. Only delete if there is consensus that the topic of the article is not notable. |
Wikipedia is now 23 years old. During those years, Wikipedia's support for infrastructure has grown more sophisticated, and inclusion standards have grown more stringent.
Unreferenced articles on living individuals[edit]
For the last ten or twelve years one specific way Wikipedia's inclusion standards have grown more stringent is that articles on living people now require at least one good reference, as per WP:BLP. Articles on living people that lack even one good reference are subject to deletion. These articles are an exception to the requirement in WP:BEFORE, that imposes an obligation on nominators to perform a meaningful, effective web search, so they confirm or refute whether the article's topic was documented in reliable sources.
Note the advice in § Step zero.
History of referencing articles on Wikipedia[edit]
All Wikipedia articles that were started during Wikipedia's first seven years lacked modern references, because technical support for footnote style references, and the rarely used alternate reference styles, weren't introduced until 2006, and modern referencing took a year or two to be completely adopted.
Prior to modern referencing[edit]
Prior to the introduction of modern referencing, Wikipedia contributors provided reliable sources to articles through a combination of embedding bare URLs into the body of the article, and relying on the External links section.
Some contributors, upon coming across a very old article, written before Wikipedia had support for footnote-style references, and that never had the raw URLs it was written with updated to modern references, treat those articles as "unreferenced". Don't do this.
Articles that use an obsolete or deprecated reference style[edit]
A related and worse phenomenon is that some contributors who come across another one of those "unreferenced" articles, will nominate that article for deletion as such.
Again, don't do this. If the raw URLs can be considered as references, the article is not unreferenced, and is not eligible for deletion as unreferenced.
Step zero[edit]
When a contributor who knows that WP:BEFORE obliges them to confirm or refute the existence of reliable sources, before nominating an article for deletion. step zero should be to recognize that embedded raw URLs, and the article's external links are the first URLs they should review before deciding whether the article is really eligible for deletion.
Respect WP:NODEADLINE[edit]
WP:NODEADLINE is an argument often used in AfD to keep unimproved articles that have been tagged for improvement for a long time.
Recognize the value of the original contributors' efforts[edit]
Remember that those older articles represented a considerable effort on the part of their contributors. Those contributors may have since left the project, or passed away, but their effort still deserve respect, even if they don't live up to current standards. Don't be hasty. Their embedded raw URLs may be valid references. Turn them into modern-style references if you can.