Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Self-references to avoid
Avoid self-references within Wikipedia articles to the Wikipedia project, such as:
- This Wikipedia article discusses ...
- Open 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 for alternative text)
Such self-references are entirely acceptable on talk pages or in the Wikipedia namespace, but they are inappropriate in articles. There are two significant reasons for this. One is that these references complicate forking and the use of Wikipedia articles by others, which our license explicitly allows. The other is that many people find such self-references unprofessional in an encyclopedia and will consider this to be poor writing.
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 Wikipedia page outside the main namespace, use external link style to allow the link to work also in a site with a copy of the main namespace content.
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. In particular, do not refer to the fact that the page can be edited, do not refer to any Wikipedia project page or process, do not use specialized Wikipedia jargon, and do not refer to any link in the sidebar or along the top of the screen, such as the talk page, What links here, or history.
However, there are exceptions to this. In particular, an article which is still in its initial development or under dispute often will include tags such as {{stub}}, {{npov}}, and {{expansion}} to help editors further develop the article, and the text in these templates include self-references. Try, however, to limit such self-references to templates.
Neutral references
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 says 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 disambig message This article is about X. For Y, see Z. and all of the See Also links.
In the template space
Limited use of self-references are sometimes found in the Template 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.
List of self-references
The following is a list of self-references in Wikipedia's article namespace. They all consist of templates used in articles. It is almost surely not complete, but if you see something missing please add it.
- Template:Stub
- Template:NPOV, Template:long NPOV
- Template:VFD, Template:vfd, Template:VfD
- Template:Wikiquote (this is not a self-reference, per se, but it promotes Wikiquote to a certain level of prominence which makes little sense outside of Wikipedia)
- Template:Merge, Template:Mergefrom
The following are self-references due to linkage to the Wikipedia namespace.
- template:disambig (Also the text only makes sense online)
- Template:wikicode
- Template:wrongtitle