Wikipedia:Avoid self-references:
- This is the guideline for Wikipedia self-references. For the guideline on autobiographies, see Wikipedia:Autobiography. For self-published sources, see Wikipedia:V#SELF
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This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia's free content is reused in many places, online and off. Do not assume that the reader is reading Wikipedia, or indeed any website. Articles may refer to themselves, but they shouldn't refer to Wikipedia in a non-neutral fashion except under special circumstances. |
This guideline is about self-references, and specifies which types of self-references should be avoided and which kinds are acceptable.
[edit] Avoid referring to "Wikipedia"
Avoid self-references within Wikipedia articles to the Wikipedia project, such as:
- This Wikipedia article discusses ...
- Free content projects, such as this website ...
- While Wikipedia is not a dictionary, ... (in an article about a certain term)
- Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers (see Wikipedia:Spoiler warning)
- Edit this page ...
Such self-references are entirely acceptable on talk pages or in the Wikipedia namespace, but they are inappropriate in articles for two reasons. First, they distract from the topic at hand: articles are about their respective subjects, and are not about Wikipedia. Second, self-references limit the use of Wikipedia as an open source encyclopedia suitable for forking, as permitted by our license. The goal of Wikipedia is to create an encyclopedia, not merely to perpetuate itself, so the articles produced should be useful even outside the context of the project used to create them. This means that while articles may refer to themselves, they should not refer to "Wikipedia" or to the Wikipedia project as a whole (e.g. "this website").
[edit] Think about print
Don't forget, we want to make the creation of a print version of Wikipedia as easy as possible, so try to use terms such as "this article" as opposed to "this website", and certainly don't use terms such as "click here" (which make no sense when using a screen reader, for instance). You may also find it helpful to imagine you're reading the article in another encyclopedia.
[edit] Community and website feature references
While we're often inclined to mention the Wikipedia community that we are all part of, as well as the website features we use in creating the articles, these confuse readers of derivative works. Unless substantially part of the article topic, do not refer to the fact that the page can be edited or any Wikipedia project page or process, specialized Wikipedia jargon (e.g. "POV" in place of "biased"), or any MediaWiki interface link in the sidebar or along the top of the screen. Articles are part of an encyclopedia, not part of the Wikipedia project being used to create them. However, there are exceptions. An article which is still in its initial development or under dispute often will include {{stub}}, {{npov}}, {{refimprove}}, or other maintenance tags to help editors further develop the article, and the text in these templates include self-references.
[edit] Neutral self-references are acceptable
References which exist in a way which assumes the reader is using an encyclopedia without reference to the specific encyclopedia (Wikipedia), or the manner of access (online), are acceptable. For instance, the article on Kobe Bryant's accuser, before her identification, said that "Due to concerns over privacy the name of the alleged victim is not being included in this article or at this time." That is a reference which makes sense on a mirror or a fork, makes sense in print, and makes sense in a copy of Wikipedia which contains only the article space. A more common example is the disambiguation message This article is about X. For Y, see Z. and all of the "See also" links.
[edit] Writing about Wikipedia itself
- See also: Wikipedia:About
Wikipedia can, of course, write about Wikipedia, but context is important. If you read about Shakespeare's works, you are not interested in reading about Wikipedia's policies or conventions. If, however, you read about online communities, the article may well discuss Wikipedia as an example, in a neutral tone, without specifically implying that the article in question is being read on — or is a part of — Wikipedia. If, in this framework, you link from an article to a specific Wikipedia page, use external link style so the link will make sense in any context.
The following are some examples where such links can be useful:
[edit] Articles are about their subjects
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so our articles are about their subjects; they are not about the articles themselves. Articles in main namespace may discuss topics passing Wikipedia's notability guidelines exclusively. Lists of Wikipedia articles belong in Wikipedia:Portal namespace, as discussing Wikipedia contents.
If publicity regarding an article is significant enough to be included in Wikipedia, the information would not be included in that article unless it was relevant to the topic of the article itself. For example, a discussion of Stephen Colbert's call for vandalism of the Elephant article might be appropriate for the articles on The Colbert Report or Wikipedia, but not for the article on elephants—the incident, although widely publicized, had nothing to do with the actual animal. Protests regarding depictions of Muhammad in Wikipedia's Muhammad article are not addressed at Muhammad (the article on the prophet) but at Depictions of Muhammad under a "recent controversies" section. Nonetheless protests about the depictions of Muhammad in the Depictions of Muhammad article might be addressed there if notable.
When a notable person, especially a writer or media personality, mentions Wikipedia, there may be a temptation to add any such mention to their Wikipedia article. However, to avoid self reference, this needs to be balanced with its importance in their overall body of work. For example, a radio host mentioning on one show that he read his Wikipedia biography is not a very important event in his overall career. A rare exception to this is, for example, the article on John Seigenthaler, Sr., because the media attention surrounding his Wikipedia entry is now a notable event in his public life.
[edit] In the Template and Category namespaces
Limited use of self-references are sometimes found in the Template namespace and the Category namespace, such as with disambiguation and stub notices. Expanding this to other areas is not encouraged due to the need of third party users to either delete those templates or modify them to remove the Wikipedia references.
When forced to use templates like this, you should use them in a way such that the article still makes sense when the template is removed, in order to facilitate automated removal.
Wikipedia project coordination pages should be under Category:Wikipedia administration, not in categories which contain main-namespace articles by topic. (A small number of articles about Wikipedia are in the mainstream categories, and this is OK.) User pages may be categorized under Category:Wikipedians, but not under Category:People.
[edit] Examples of self-references as defined by this guideline
The following is a list of self-references in Wikipedia's main namespace that are not encyclopedia-neutral. They should at least be acknowledged or marked as self-references but not necessarily be deleted as they serve their purpose here on Wikipedia.
- Referring to "Wikipedia"
- The word "Wikipedia" anywhere in an article, unless used where Wikipedia is actually the immediate subject of discussion in the prose.
- Any link in an article in the main namespace that links to one in the Wikipedia namespace. Such links are self-referential because the pages they link to have "Wikipedia" in their titles. This applies even if the link is a piped link.
- Any redirect page in the main namespace that redirects to one in the Wikipedia namespace.
- Categories that self-reference
- Use of templates in the article namespace that self-reference because they link to articles in the user, talk, special, or Wikipedia namespaces.
Mark Twain probably said it best: "Every generalization is dangerous, especially this one."
[edit] Self-reference tools
The self-reference template Template:Selfref provides a way to contain all the self-references as tags. This gives the ability to programmatically remove all such references or transform them into external links. Thus, the end product can have all of its self-references removed automatically for users such as forks and mirrors.
In cases where a Wikipedia page should be mentioned on Wikipedia itself (for instance, at Wikipedia), and this link should be kept on mirrors, the format {{srlink|link}} can be used to write the link as external rather than internal, to prevent it breaking in mirrors. For instance: Main Page as opposed to Main Page:
{{srlink|Main Page}} as opposed to [[Main Page]]
[edit] See also
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