Help:Self link
 | This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus. |
| Linking and page manipulation |
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A self link is a link to the page on which the link appears. A self-link to a page appears as bold text when the article is viewed ("self-link feature"). Examples:
- [[Help:Self link]] gives Help:Self link
- [[Help:Self link|piped self link]] gives piped self link
A self-link to a section does not appear as bold text. Examples:
- [[#Self-link to a section|Self-link to a section]] gives Self-link to a section (recommended)
- [[Help:Self link#Self-link to a section]] gives Help:Self link#Self-link to a section (not recommended)
Self links are usually not recommended, except for:
- Within text that is transcluded between several pages
- Self-link to a section, without the page name
Self-link to a section
The quick brown fox jmy name is john williams im a slaveyfthggggfvyh thumb
Indirect self links
An indirect self link is a link to a page that redirects back. In this case, the self-link feature does not work, even though the feature would be equally useful. This is demonstrated here:
When the prefix for the project itself is added (interwiki link style, but again linking to the page itself) the self-link feature does work. This is demonstrated here:
- [[w:Help:Self link]] gives w:Help:Self link
- [[en:Help:Self link]] gives en:Help:Self link
Related changes feature
A self link for use with the "Related changes" feature only works if the link is to an existing or non-existing section. If it cannot be made useful as a link to a section, use a piped link with a blank space as label, e.g. [[Wikipedia:Self link#x| ]], showing up as " ".
See also
- Navigation template
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Self-references to avoid
- Template:No selflink (a method to avoid the bold text on self links)