 | This is an explanatory essay about Wikipedia:Good article criteria. This page provides additional information about concepts in the page(s) it supplements. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. |
 | This page in a nutshell: A good article should not contain any claims that a competent editor could, reasonably and in good faith, tag with {{citation needed}}. |
Wikipedia:Good article criteria and Wikipedia:Did you know/Guidelines refer to "content that could reasonably be challenged". This concept is in some ways similar to Wikipedia:Verifiability's concept of "likely to be challenged", but is a fair bit broader. That is to say, some things that are not "likely to be challenged" may still "reasonably be challenged". "Likely to be challenged" means a greater-than-50-percent chance of an editor requesting a citation in good faith, and is a rough proxy for whether a given claim is at all controversial.[a] "Could reasonably be challenged" means that, were an editor to request a citation, this would be a reasonable exercise of editorial discretion, rather than pedantry or bureaucracy. This is more a definition of exclusion: It applies to all but the most obvious claims.
The "could reasonably be challenged" rule only ever supplements other citation rules. The minimum referencing requirements must always be met, as must specialty requirements such as those regarding living people and those regarding biomedical topics.
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