Editing Encyclopedia:Citing sources (section)

====Wikidata====
{{hatnote|See also the template {{tl|cite Q}}.  For adding sources to Wikidata itself, see [[Wikipedia:How to add sources to Wikidata]].}} 
Wikidata is largely user-generated, and articles should not directly cite Wikidata as a source (just as it would be inappropriate to cite other Wikipedias' articles as sources). 

But Wikidata's statements can be directly transcluded into articles; this is usually done to provide external links or infobox data. For example, more than two million external links from Wikidata are shown through the {{tl|Authority control}} template. There has been controversy over the use of Wikidata in the English Wikipedia due to vandalism and its own sourcing. While there is no consensus on whether information from Wikidata should be used at all, there is general agreement that any Wikidata statements that are transcluded need to be just as – or more – reliable compared to Wikipedia content. As such, [[Module:WikidataIB]] and some related modules and templates filter Wikidata statements not supported by a reference by default; however, other modules and templates, such as [[Module:Wikidata]], do not.

To transclude an item from Wikidata, the [[d:Wikidata:Glossary#QID|QID (Q number)]] of an item in Wikidata needs to be known. QID can by found by searching for an item by the name or [[Digital object identifier|DOI]] in Wikidata. A book, a journal article, a musical recording, sheet music or any other item can be represented by a structured item in Wikidata.

The {{tl|Cite Q}} template can be used to cite works whose metadata is held in Wikidata, provided the cited work meets Wikipedia's standards. As of December 2020, {{tlx|Cite Q}} does not support "last, first" or Vancouver-style author name lists, so it should not be used in articles in which "last, first" or Vancouver-style author names are the [[WP:CITEVAR|dominant citation style]].