WikiChem:Avoid self-references

This guideline is about self-references and specifies which types of self-references should be avoided and which kinds are acceptable.

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)

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").

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.

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 mention 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 that 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.

Neutral self-references are acceptable

References that exist in a way that assumes the reader is using an encyclopedia, without reference to the specific encyclopedia (Wikipedia) or the manner of access (online), are acceptable. For instance, in the article on the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case, before the alleged victim's identification, it 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 that makes sense on mirrors and forks and 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.

Writing about Wikipedia itself

See also: Wikipedia:About

Of course, Wikipedians can write about Wikipedia, but context is important. If you are reading about Shakespeare's works, you would not be interested in Wikipedia's policies or conventions. However, if 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. In this framework, if 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 examples show where such links can be useful:

• Articles where Wikipedia played a major role in the subject of the article, for example: Seigenthaler incident
• Articles about prominent people involved in Wikipedia, for example: Jimmy Wales
• Articles about Wikipedia
• Articles where Wikipedia is illustrative of the subject, for example: virtual community and encyclopedia

Articles are about their subjects

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so its articles are about their subjects; they are not about the articles themselves (even if an article itself becomes famous, it should not report this about itself).

If publicity regarding an article is significant enough to be included in Wikipedia, that information would not be included in the article, unless it is 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, because the media attention surrounding his Wikipedia entry is now a notable event in his public life.

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 that 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.

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 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
  • Category:Wikipedia and its subcategories in the article namespace
  • User categories such as Category:User en and Category:Wikipedians
• Use of templates in the article namespace that self-reference, because they link to articles in the user, talk, special or Wikipedia namespaces.
  • Various stub messages
  • Template:POV
  • Template:Disputed, Template:Totally-disputed
  • Template:Afd, Template:Cfd, Template:Rfd
  • Template:Merge, Template:Mergeto, Template:Mergefrom
  • Template:Disambig (Also the text only makes sense online)
  • Template:Wrongtitle
  • Template:Fact
  • Template:Uncategorized
  • Template:Unreferenced
  • Templates used to advertise Wikimedia sister projects and other versions of itself
    • Template:InterWiki
    • Template:Wikiquote
    • Template:Wiktionary
    • Template:Wikibooks
    • Template:Wikisource
    • Template:Commons
    • Template:Wikinews
    • Template:Meta

Mark Twain probably said it best: "Every generalization is dangerous, especially this one."

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 when outside of Wikipedia, to prevent it breaking in mirrors. For instance: Template:Srlink as opposed to Main Page:

 {{srlink|Main Page||Wikipedia's Main Page}} as opposed to [[Main Page]]

See also

• Wikipedia:Cross-namespace redirects
• Click here
• Wikipedia:Move navigational lists to portal namespace - failed proposal