Wikipedia:Current event templates

Summary

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Current and future event templates are designed to indicate that an article or a section is describing a current or future event, and to warn readers about the fast-changing or speculative nature of the article. Such articles usually contain sources to only breaking news reports, which often contain serious inaccuracies.

Current events edit

The main current event template is {{current}}. It adds the article into Category:Current events:

The current event template may be used to warn the editor or reader about the great flux of edits and the fast-changing state of the article, due to the fact that current events tend to get the most attention from editors. Wikipedia attracts numerous editors who want to update articles in real time immediately after breaking news reports are published. However, sources to breaking news reports often contain serious inaccuracies, and so the template can also draw attention to the need to add improved sources as soon as they become available. In such a case, the template is subject to removal when the event described is no longer receiving massive editing attention.

This template, and the topic-related templates listed below, are not meant to be generally disclaimers indicating that an article's contents may not be accurate, or to mark an article that merely has recent news articles about the topic (if it were, hundreds of thousands of articles would have these templates, with no informational consequence). Generally it is expected that these templates will appear on an article for less than a day, or occasionally longer, but not several weeks (see Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles for more information). If the article continues to have issues with sources, one of the templates listed Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles#Verifiability and sources should be used instead.

Other closely related templates include:

Tag Article message box that will be shown
{{Current related}}
links talk edit
{{In use}}
links talk edit

The current template also receives parameters; for example:

Code Result
{{current}}
{{current|section|date=March 2024}}
{{current||current election|date=March 2024}}

Topic related templates include:

Tag Article message box that will be shown
{{Current disaster}}
links talk edit
{{Current disaster list}}
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{{Current person}}
links talk edit
{{Recent death}}
links talk edit
{{Recent death presumed}}
links talk edit
{{Current spaceflight}}
links talk edit
{{Current sport}}
links talk edit
{{Current sport-related}}
links talk edit
{{Current sports transaction}}
links talk edit
{{Current weather event}}
links talk edit

Editnotice edit

Code Result
{{Current event editnotice|expiry={{subst:#time:Y-m-d|+ 2 weeks}}}}
links talk edit

Future events edit

Note that Wikipedia is not a crystal ball: Wikipedia is not a collection of unverifiable speculation. All articles about future events must be verifiable, and the subject matter must be of sufficiently wide interest that it would merit an article if the event had already occurred.

Consider using the {{Speculation}} template for articles that may violate WP:CRYSTAL:

See also edit

  • {{Current event editnotice}}, an editnotice for current event pages
  • Category:Temporal templates
  • Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources#Breaking news
  • Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles
  • Wikipedia:Template messages/General#Timing-related messages