Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Self-references to avoid

This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style.

Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page.

Shortcuts

This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia's free content is reused in many places: 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. A self-reference in an article usually mentions Wikipedia directly or tells readers to take an action on Wikipedia, such as editing the article.

Although self-references within Wikipedia articles to the Wikipedia project should usually be avoided, there are exceptions. Some examples of acceptable self-references are articles about Wikipedia, categories, and maintenance templates.

Types of self-reference

Note that ..., It is important to ..., What is ...?, Surprisingly ..., Of course ...

Avoid "breaking the fourth wall" to address readers directly in an unencyclopedic tone, either instructional or opinionated. This includes the pedagogical style of posing rhetorical questions to the reader (worst of all in headings). Neutral cross-references, e.g. (See also Cymric cat.), are permissible (and best done with the {{crossreference}} template), but are often best reworded (The Cymric cat is a recent breed developed from the Manx.).

Click here to see more (think about print)

Shortcut

WP:CLICKHERE

Although Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, articles should be written in a manner that facilitates transmission in other forms such as print, spoken word, and via a screen reader. So terms such as "this article" are preferable to "this webpage", and phrases like "click here" should be avoided. In determining what language is most suitable, it may be helpful to imagine writing the article for a print encyclopedia.

This article was criticized by ... (articles are about their subjects, not this website)

Shortcut

WP:SUBJECT

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

For example, a discussion of Stephen Colbert's call for vandalism of the Elephant article might be appropriately mentioned in the article on The Colbert Report, but not in the article on elephants, because elephants have nothing to do with Stephen Colbert. Protests regarding depictions of Muhammad in Wikipedia's Muhammad article are not addressed in that article (which is about the prophet Muhammad), but rather in the article Depictions of Muhammad.

A mention of Wikipedia by a notable person is unlikely to justify a mention in their Wikipedia article; such a mention would have to reflect its importance in the person's overall body of work. For example, a radio host mentioning that he read his Wikipedia biography is not normally an important event in his overall career. On the other hand, the media attention surrounding John Seigenthaler's Wikipedia entry is now a notable event in his public life.

In templates and categories

Self-references are sometimes found in the templates and the categories. Some of these are necessary or intrinsic to the purpose of the page, as with disambiguation information at the top of category pages and in {{stub}} templates, which encourage readers to edit the page. Unnecessary self-references are not encouraged in templates or categories, due to the need of third-party users to either delete those templates or modify them to remove the Wikipedia references. For example, all {{navbox}} templates should provide a list of related articles, but none of them should label these pages as "Wikipedia articles" or as "Related articles on this website".

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 in any of the subcategories under Category:People.

Self-reference tools

Shortcut

WP:ITSELF

The self-reference template, {{selfref}}, is used to mark pieces of text and links that wouldn't make sense on copies of Wikipedia. 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. This template is most often used as a hatnote template to help guide editors from an article to a related Wikipedia policy or guideline page in the Wikipedia project namespace.

Many hatnote templates that do contain helpful preset text and linking, such as {{for}} and {{about}}, support a |selfref= parameter that gives them the same functionality as {{Self reference}}, making them better options in most circumstances.

In cases where a Wikipedia page should link to 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: Wikipedia's Main Page (made by {{srlink|Main Page|Wikipedia's Main Page}}) as opposed to Wikipedia's Main Page ([[Main Page|Wikipedia's Main Page]]).