Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Self-references to avoid

Is explaining terminology of the article permissible?

Can, or should, an article use phrasing such as "To simplify matters, the referents of wa and ga in this section are called the topic and subject respectively" (as seen in Japanese grammar)?

In other words, can an article decide or explain the terminology that the article will proceed to use thereafter?

Whether the answer is "yes/no/it depends", I'd propose that such an explanation should be added as a section in this "Manual of Style/Self-references" page. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 02:38, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

• Well, at MOS:CONVERSIONS the example is given that an article on American football should not tiresomely convert every measurement in yards to metric, but instead just explain in a note what a yard is and leave everything in yards. But then our article American football tiresomely converts everything from yards to meters, so go figure. Certainly there will be math articles that explain notational conventions (though I can't name any just now), but of course math articles take a somewhat unusual narrative approach ("Suppose that XYZ and ABC; then JKL must be ...").
  So in summary I don't really have an answer for you, other than to say I think some editors are much too huffy about the "presumption" of addressing the reader, and that you should just do what you think best and see how other editors respond. There's probably some hatnote template you're supposed to use for that, but if there is I can't find it. Maybe David Eppstein knows. EEng 21:03, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
  • I've definitely seen mathematics articles that say something similar about what convention they'll be following in situations where there is more than one reasonable choice — if this is something you care about, there's a new move-discussion at Talk:Trapezium and Trapezoid that you might want to participate in, without much need for mathematical expertise. But I don't know of any hatnotes for that purpose. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:12, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
• It's a very common thing in technical writing. I'd expect that many editors who know specialist subject material will use that style of specifying conventions practically by instinct. Thinking about sections and whole articles as structured prose with a logical flow of ideas, rather than as line-by-line pileups of facts, is a good thing that we should encourage. Moreover, it doesn't run into the problems that actually make self-references bad. It doesn't get in the way of reusing the content on another site, and it makes just as much sense when printed on paper as when read on a screen. XOR'easter (talk) 18:05, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Overall, this seems like an acceptable practice. Thanks for the community response! — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 00:53, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Discussion of allowing self-reference in list article criteria

I reverted the addition of an exception to WP:SELFREF for list article criteria, and have started a discussion here. Feel free to join the discussion! — hike395 (talk) 13:08, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

There is a new proposal on the table for resolving a contradiction between MOS:SELFREF and WP:SALLEAD. Please feel free to join in the discussion here. Thanks! — hike395 (talk) 11:56, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Referencing in-article images

At this revision of Judeo-Malay, a list of the numbers from 1 to 6 are given along with their romanized names in Judeo-Malay (along with a claim that they're also given in Malay, which they weren't, but I fixed that in a later revision). The list is introduced with "Below are the numbers of Judeo-Malay or Malay written in Hebrew characters by Rahamim Jacob Cohen." But the numbers "below" aren't written in Hebrew characters, their names are romanized. However, in the infobox is an image of the notebook page that is written in Hebrew characters and that is the source of the names that are romanized in the list.

My current revision is this. I've created a table and added the Standard Malay names of the numbers for comparison. The introduction is "Below are the numbers 1–6 in Judeo-Malay, transcribed from Cohen's notes, and in Standard Malay:". I'd like to specify that the numbers are romanized from the notebook page but I don't know how to reference it in a way that's in the spirit of avoiding self-references. I could write "romanized from the forms in Hebrew characters in the image in the infobox", but should the article give the an impression of being aware that is has an infobox?

I could remove the image from the infobox and put it in that section of the text. But then how would I refer to it? I can't write "the image to the right" because on a small mobile device it's going to be below, and I can't say "the image below" because on a desktop monitor it's probably going to be to the right. Largoplazo (talk) 22:10, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Postscript: I just found MOS:SEEIMAGE. It says "Don't refer to image orientation such as left, right, above, or below. Image placement varies with platform and screen size, especially mobile platforms, and is meaningless to screen readers. Instead, use captions to identify images." So it seems to be telling me I can't refer to it at all. The third sentence is weird, because, given the previous two sentences, I thought it was going to go on to advise as to handle a situation where one needs to refer to the contents of an image, but the sentence instead offers the platitude that's applicable in any circumstances, that images should have captions. Well, maybe it does help: I've now amplified the information given in the caption so that the reader has a chance of putting two and two together, in this revision. Largoplazo (talk) 22:14, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

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

I noticed that the subsection was added several years ago but I disagree with "Neutral cross-references (See also Cymric (cat). are permissible". In fact, I don't think they are ever permissible and are always better reworded. Are there any supporters? Iterresise (talk) 08:03, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't agree with you at all. We routinely use cross-references, especially between closely related articles that are the results of WP:LENGTH splits and WP:SUMMARYSTYLE treatment, and when two or more subjects can be considered aspects of the same topic but have their own separate articles. We've had hatnotes for this purpose since the earliest days of the project, and the less visually intrusive {{crossreference}} for the same purpose for many years. "I don't think they are ever permissible" is nonsense on its face, since there is no rule against them. By definition, everything compliant with policy is permissible, per WP:EDITING, other than things subject to a specific rule prohibiting them. I'm not sure what the mania is for trying to micromanage every single thing people do here, but it's poisononous. It's taken years to undo a lot of useless prescriptivistic nonsense, that had nothing to do with creating a better encyclopedia, injected into many MoS pages by someone now topic-banned from them, and the last thing we need is another to take their place.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:45, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

What I disagree with is "often". Iterresise (talk) 12:33, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, you haven't made any case for what's wrong with it. (And this does not seem to actually relate to your original opening statement, which was a claim that neutral cross-references are not "permissible" at all.) Anyway, it's routine for us to make edits like the one you provided a diff to, to moderate overly emphatic or prescriptive statements in MoS that do not need to be so absolute. (Many of them were injected several years ago by an editor who has since been topic-banned from MoS, and cleaning up after them has been a slow process.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:21, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

User:EEng: did you want to opine? I'm seeing some cases where a cross reference would make sense such as refering to "figure 1", "figure 2", etc. Iterresise (talk) 08:07, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I'll opine. My opinion is you better get over to WP:ANI#Iterresise's_MEATBOT_behavior_removing_template_from_articles,changing_DAB_page_layouts,_etc. and commit to undoing all these bullshit changes you've been making, or you're going to get blocked. EEng 11:11, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Memes related to Wikipedia

An example of a Doge meme related to Wikipedia

I've only seen reference to WP:SELFREF for the first time today in this edit on the article Doge (meme): [1]. As you can see, the edit removed this meme which mentioned the existence of Wikipedia, and replaced it with one that didn't.

I'm mostly just curious if the original image did fall under SELFREF and needed to be removed. A meme someone made related to Wikipedia still illustrates the point even if isn't being read on Wikipedia, and it did not encourage "readers to take an action on Wikipedia, such as editing the article". Was the original image problematic per this policy, and did it need to be removed? Pinging Belbury since they made they change, but obviously they agree with it or they wouldn't have made it, so I'm looking for other opinions. Damien Linnane (talk) 02:45, 4 December 2023 (UTC)