Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Self-references to avoid/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

What is meant by "self-reference"?

So, by self-reference, you mean the word "Wikipedia"? That does seem like a good policy. What about links to Wikipedia subjects? Seems like those would break under forking, too.

Otherwise, this is just commonsense that nobody ever thought of. B-)

-- ESP 05:55 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

What kind of links do you mean? Links into the Wikipedia namespace? Yes, many of our policies are "common sense", but you wouldn't believe how useful it can be to point to common sense rule X and say "Look, this is one of our policies/guidelines. Please don't do that." --Eloquence 05:58 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I mean links into the Wikipedia namespace. Wikipedia:This is what I mean.

As for the common sense point: I was just being jokey. The idea is so good, it seems like common sense after it was proposed. But before you proposed it, I never would have thought of it. That's the best kind of idea -- original, but seems right on first reading. Kudos! -- ESP 06:08 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

So I assume this policy does not apply to disambiguation and the disambiguation pages boilerplate text?

Also how does it apply to stub boilerplate text? Are they still allowed because eventually the reference to Wikipedia will be removed? -- Popsracer 05:59 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

These kind of boilerplate texts will hopefully be transcluded dynamically when an article is assigned to one of the relevant categories. A category system is already in the works, where you will be able to say [[Category:Stub]] in an article, and it would only be natural to insert the respective notice when certain categories are selected. That would also make it much easier to update the texts.

In the meantime, we should change the existing boilerplate text to avoid at least using the Wikipedia name, although links into the Wikipedia: namespace should be OK. --Eloquence 06:02 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I agree, but User:Anthony DiPierro seems to object to links into the Wikipedia namespace, he often deletes these. Has there been a discussion elsewhere on this? --Patrick 01:01, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Boilerplate text is fine. Just keep it in the mediawiki: namespace and use msg:. Anthony DiPierro 01:41, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I thought that msg was for texts that are used more often. Is it also used for single occasions? If so, please do not delete links, but replace them. If not, please leave the links as they are. --Patrick 02:56, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

msg: is for texts used more often. That's what boilerplate text means. Anthony DiPierro 13:09, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

So, just because I'm a big booster, I want to give a devil's advocate question. To wit: the stated reason for avoiding self-references is to make it easier to fork Wikipedia. I ask: how important is it to make it _easy_ to fork Wikipedia? The Wikipedia:Wikipedia namespace links, standard boilerplate, etc., makes our work on the project easier. How much pain do we have to go to to make downstream modifiers' lives easier? -- ESP 06:11 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

While it is true that forks are not always desirable, these kind of self-references are problematic for all types of redistribution. Say you print out an article about Apocalypse Now for your school class -- now what exactly are your students supposed to do with a notice like "Wikipedia contains spoilers"? Of course we like to stick our name onto our work, but requiring credit, linking to the FDL etc. should be enough to accomplish this.

I do agree that we should not make our work more difficult, though. That's why I think links into the Wikipedia namespace in boilerplace text are OK. --Eloquence 06:14 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Fair enough! -- ESP 06:22 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Another question: what about the legal disclaimers, like not giving medical advice or legal advice? Do those fall under the boilerplate extension? Lastly, is there a technical solution for marking up "meta" information? For example, editorial comments, disclaimers, stub notices? -- ESP 06:22 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Well, it is debatable whether we should have such disclaimers (some users have strong aversions to them), but if we do want them, they are certainly similar in type to spoiler warnings etc., so linking to a page in the Wikipedia namespace that describes our position should be OK. No, there is no solution to markup such information, and what we really want is transclusion -- retrieve the text from another page, so that only a single page has to be updated. If we had this, we could even have self-references in these notices, as others could change them easily. --Eloquence 06:32 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

And another other question: what about references to the Talk: and User: namespaces? -- ESP 06:22 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Avoid if possible. Redirects to the user namespace are generally considered OK, but linking to the talk page should usually not be done -- that's what "Discuss this page" is for. --Eloquence 06:32 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Agreed. Links to "Talk" and "User" namespaces from the article namespace are almost always inappropriate. --Robert Merkel 11:44 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

This is a very misconceived rule IMO. It encourages the duplication of content in multiple articles, when a self-reference would refer people to the appropriate place. In practice, at worst this may mean that for some articles that forkers would have to edit them slightly to make them suitable as standalone pieces. Our first priority should be to build the best encyclopedia we can, and compromising that to make it marginally easier to fork seems a bad tradeoff. --Robert Merkel 11:39 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I should however add that it is not all that common for self-references to be the best way to handle things and that other methods of providing links to other articles are often a better idea. I just don't want to remove them from the quiver for the times when they are necessary. --Robert Merkel 11:43 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Um, are we talking about the same kind of "self-references"? I fail to see how avoiding unnecessary references to the Wikipedia project within articles encourages "duplication of content". --Eloquence 11:46 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Sorry, misread the proposed guideline. --Robert Merkel 15:34 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Now that I have a clue what I'm talking about (I hope)...Purely from a stylistic point of view, I think continually talking about yourself (on in this case your project) is offputting, so in practice I guess this rule makes sense.

Personally, I prefer

Wikipedia:contains spoilers to Warning: Spoilers follow
Wikipedia:This is a disambiguation page to This is a disambiguation page

it shows were the links lead and identify meta information. Even printed, it's probably understandable.-- User:Docu

Redirects from article namespace

Another question is, if we should remove redirects from the article namespace to the Wikipedia/User/talk namespaces or not. Often, they were created when moving articles there. -- User:Docu

BTW: User:Tim Starling created a list of references from the article namespace to user User:Tim Starling/Redirects from : to User: -- User:Docu

Are there exceptions to the rule of "avoid self-references" ? Is the mention of "wikipedia talk" on the VFD disambig page flouting policy ? Jay 18:00, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I suppose, but fixing disambiguation pages is probably even a lower priority than many others.

Name Wikipedia in template name

We could also avoid a template name like "In Wikipedia" and call it "In this project"; this is not needed for an uneditable copy (because not visible), but it might be better for a fork.--Patrick 14:45, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure this would help anything, as a separate project would most likely have a completely different set of pages in its project namespace, so it would have to edit this manually anyway. Something like Template:Stub, on the other hand, would be a more useful template to edit rather than remove. anthony (see warning)

I suppose I didn't think it all the way through when creating Template:In Wikipedia. As it is something someone would have to take out manually, it may or may not be worth fixing.

As it's probably better to avoid the word "Wikipedia" in article namespace, except for articles like "Wikipedia", we might change Template:In Wikipedia as well. -- User:Docu

Redirects from article namespace again

Should redirects from the article namespace be allowed to the Wikipedia/User namespaces? Same question was asked above without any response. Page in question is Wiki Canonization which redirects to Wikipedia:Canonicalization. Jay 21:06, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Redirects from article namespace to other namespaces should really be avoided and no new ones created. If a page has just been created in the wrong namespace, e.g. User talk Docu/Archive (instead of User talk:Docu/Archive), the redirect created through a move is usually deleted after a short time.

There is still a large number of redirects from article namespace to, e.g., user namespace ( User:Tim Starling/Redirects from : to User: from the time before namespaces were added. Some of the redirect to User: have already been deleted.

Wiki Canonization seems to date from that time as well. The page seems to have been copy-and-pasted to Wikipedia:Canonicalization rather than moved. The beginning of the pages history (until 17:25, 2002 May 21) is now at Wiki Canonization [1] and the rest Wikipedia:Canonicalization [2]. So even if we decide to delete the redirect, we want to move the page history into Wikipedia namespace first. --User:Docu

Self-referencing external links

I noticed that some new users make the mistake of using external links instead of wikilinks (like This instead of This). I made a list of possible such articles at User:Wmahan/Articles with self-references. Some of these might actually be valid external links (e.g. VFD), but any comments or help correcting them would be appreciated. Wmahan . 00:14, 2004 Sep 4 (UTC)

I'd keep the ones on Wikipedia, History of Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, etc. and remove the others (convert or move to talk (e.g. Warsaw (disambiguation)). -- User:Docu

Wikicode self-reference

I'm one of the designers of Wikicode, a proposed pseudocode standard for Wikipedia. One of the requirements I came up with was for the first prominent pseudocode sample in each article to include a link to Wikipedia: Wikicode, which describes some details of the pseudocode, for reference purposes, using the {{wikicode}} template. However, currently this template (Template: wikicode) contains text referring to Wikipedia. How should this be fixed? Derrick Coetzee 19:08, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It looks like someone simply dropped the word Wikipedia... this kinda works but has an odd sound to it ("for articles"... what articles?) I'd appreciate any other suggestions. Derrick Coetzee 03:06, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Translation, copyright, and citation

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

When I translate an article from a foreign-language Wikipedia (which I do a lot of) I routinely add a note in the references section such as, in the case of Colonel-General "This article draws heavily on the corresponding article in the German-language Wikipedia." In that particular case, the person who originally requested the translation on Wikipedia:Translation into English proceeded to comment out this acknowledgment describing it as "self-reference". I do not think it is self-reference in any disparaging sense, and I suspect it is necessary in order to properly comply with GFDL (and certainly with reasonable scholarly standards of acknowledgement) but perhaps I have misunderstood, so I am bringing the question here. As I see it:

The different-language Wikipedias do not constitute a single work. Therefore, my English-language article is a derivative work of the German-language article. I believe this is precisely the acknowledgment of authorship required under GFDL.
Separate from a legal matter, from a scholarly point of view these are two distinct works. I haven't bothered with strict formal citation of a particular version of the German-language article (perhaps I should) and I suppose that it is a little strange that as the two works evolve over time they could have acknowledgments to each other (not unknown in the academic world, either, but relatively unusual).

Anyway, I'd be very interested to hear from others on this: on the legal matter, I'd like in particular to hear from someone who better understands the legalities of complying with GFDL, not just someone with an opinion about how they'd like things to be. I'd also like to an explanation of how, if at all, this violates our rules on self-reference. I think it would be absurd if everyone in the world can cite the German-language Wikipedia... except other Wikipedias. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:45, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

It is a self-reference because you refer to "the corresponding article" on the German Wikipedia, implying that this article is on the English Wikipedia, which in redistributions may not be the case. Also consider article evolution over time. A better message would be to simply say "A previous version of this article was based on the German Wikipedia article whatever." Possibly, even include a full-URL link in your references section, so that redistributions that discard interlanguage links retain a link. Neither of these is self-reference, because you are citing Wikipedia in precisely the same manner as any other source. Derrick Coetzee 03:35, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I don't see how "corresponding article" (with a link) is self-reference, I've seen the same phrase used in referring to the "corresponding article" in the 1911 Britannica or the Catholic Encyclopedia. In any case, is this policy? Is it written down somewhere? or is it just your personal opinion on what would be right to do? -- Jmabel | Talk 04:04, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, this is just my opinion. I didn't think of that — maybe there is no reason not to say it exactly as you did and the other editor was overzealous. Consider visiting Wikipedia talk: Avoid self-references. Derrick Coetzee 06:29, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

End moved text

So, here I am. Is there already a standard on this of which I am unaware? If not, would someone like to propose one? -- Jmabel | Talk 20:26, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

I like Dcoetzee's suggestion above. However, see below for a challange to the whole point of "Avoid self-reference." JesseW 02:22, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I like the way Jmabel put it originally. +sj + 21:01, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wrong reason?

IMO the following argument is not convincing.

The main reason is that they complicate forking and the use of Wikipedia articles by others

I say they complicate the unattributed use. What's wrong in people knowing that this is Wikipedia's article, not of a random web-snatcher? Mikkalai 23:50, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I agree. Anyone want to defend this reason? JesseW 02:23, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It's not Wikipedia's article. It's my article (or whoever wrote it) which is being published by Wikipedia, as permitted under the terms of the GFDL. Wikipedia is no different from any "mirror" in this respect, except that Wikipedia is in many cases the initial publisher. — Kate Turner | Talk 02:26, 2004 Oct 21 (UTC)

Once published in wikipedia, it is no longer yours, since I've already replaced half of your contribution tomorrow. "Yours" is only in "history", and I doubt that it is mirrored. Mikkalai 02:58, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- To say it's "Wikipedia's" is misleading. Neither Wikipedia nor the Wikimedia Foundation owns any copyright on the work. It is not "Wikipedia's" in any sense other than Wikipedia hosts it (which doesn't grant any ownership: 'mirrors' host articles, too). All content I write is still mine. If you edit my content, you add your content (not Wikipedia's content) to mine. It's still yours and mine, not Wikipedia's. — Kate Turner | Talk 03:05, 2004 Oct 21 (UTC)

Additionally, whether or not it's "Wikipedia's," a link to a page like User:Jimbo Wales or Wikipedia:Stub doesn't make much sense in a mirror — either because they won't mirror those pages, or their project namespace isn't called "Wikipedia," or the information is related to editing which doesn't apply, and so on. When these links are either put into templates, or changed into external links (for example, the user page link on Jimmy Wales) it's much easier to remove irrelevant and misleading content. — Kate Turner | Talk 02:30, 2004 Oct 21 (UTC)

Your examples are cases of references to technical pages. Their usage is from the same basket as "hardcoded" links of beginner self-webmasters. Mikkalai 02:58, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- I don't think there's much difference. "This Wikipedia article is a stub" and "This article is a [[Wikipedia:Stub|stub]]" aren't very much different - both complicate forking and both are self-references. (However, the {{stub}} message is in a template which can be removed easily, so that particular example isn't a problem). — Kate Turner | Talk 03:05, 2004 Oct 21 (UTC)

So, again: I don't believe that main reason of using the "This Wikipedia article..." phrase is problems of use by others. I say, if these "others" disagree that it is a wikipedia article, then let them sweat a bit. Mikkalai 02:58, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This policy is misconceived

"Forking," given above as the basic justification for the ban on self-reference, is a term taken from the computer field. Normally, it refers to reuse of software code. In open-source software, self-reference (for example, to details of particular machines or installations) is a hindrance to legitimate reuse.

Scholarly content differs from software because its value consists of accuracy, not functionality. To help establish accuracy, scholars cite their sources. Any Web site that uses Wikipedia material without saying where it is from (and this practice is pervasive) is engaged in rotten scholarship--in fact, in plagiarism.

It follows that any passage in a Wikipedia article that says it is a Wikipedia article can only be to the good, since it helps reveal bad scholarship on the part of others. If others won't cite the Wikipedia as source, let us in effect do it for them.

In conclusion: the software analogy is a false analogy. Software can be anonymously reused because it is self-verifying--you just check if the program works. Scholarship cannot be anonymously reused, because that breaks the chain of citation on which its quality depends.

Thanks for listening, Opus33 16:50, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi Opus, leaving context-sensitive self-references in articles does little to help others properly cite their sources. When a lawyer uses a segment from a Wikipedia article in a court case, or a company uses a few pages of a wikipedia seires in a business plan, or a travel guide uses a few passages from a Wikibook to illustrate a specialized point, they should be able to do so without worrying about subtle notes which will make no sense to someone who is not browsing the WP website. +sj + 21:15, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There are hosts of other "subtle notes" that lose their sense when taken out of context. Brainless reuse should be punished as well. Mikkalai 22:56, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikicode

This was removed as a self-reference without explanation. Looking at what links here, there are a number of links from the article space to this Wikipedia space page. anthony 警告 21:03, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It contains one link into the Wikipedia namespace, but it is very important and has been explained at Wikipedia: Wikicode and Wikipedia: Wikicode/Specification. Basically, the point is to have a link to a project page where people can read about the syntax and semantics of the pseudocode, in case there's anything they don't understand. I removed the explicit reference in the text to Wikipedia; I thought this was the cause for concern. Derrick Coetzee 20:42, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

OK. I've added it to the list with all the others. This is ok, right? anthony 警告 21:37, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Okay, sorry for the confusion. Thanks. Derrick Coetzee 21:53, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Community and website feature references

I added the section "Community and website feature references" to try to explain some of the finer points that people seem to be missing. I hope it is in keeping with the spirit of the policy. Many people think "avoid self-reference" merely means "don't say Wikipedia", which is obviously an oversimplification. I invite any disagreement about this new content. Deco 04:25, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. JesseW 08:35, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Template Self-Reference Avoidance Causes Technical Problems

I was recently browsing the category of NPOV disputes and I found it quite funny that the Talk Page for Fascism and Communism was listed on the category (talk pages shouldn't be subject to NPOV, should they? =P). Apparently, the template for NPOV dispute was moved by someone citing Avoid self-references to the talk page. According to this page, yeah, that technically would be correct. But it breaks the automatic generation of the NPOV disputes.

Furthermore, many of these templates are being put on the main articles, not the talk pages. The de-facto policy is to, actually, put the stub mark on the actual article, not the talk page. When people start arguing about whether or not the controversial tag should be put on the talk or the main article page, it's a needless argument (I saw this in Talk:Atheism. In short, this policy about templates is bloated and is near impossible to pull off, because of people's perceptions about these tags.

In that case, perhaps this page causes more problems than it causes when it starts talking about templates. Obviously you shouldn't say "This Wikipedia article discusses" inside an article, but if you consider the templates, I think this policy should be amended. But due to the self-referential nature of most templates, I think the only possible solution is to delete those clauses. Ambush Commander 21:20, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

EDIT: I just reread the clause, and realized that it discouraged moving those templates around. Maybe we should just make that more clear (because if people are citing this policy to move tags around then it certainly isn't clear enough)? Ambush Commander 21:22, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

Templates are the main exception to the rule, as this page mentions a couple times. We don't want too many templates with self-reference, but quite a few are useful, and it's easy to eliminate them if necessary in great swaths by modifying the templates. Also, "in-development" pages are pretty much exempt from the rule, as in the case of stubs. Also, self-reference on talk pages and project pages is totally okay. Feel free to edit to make these points clearer if you wish. Deco 03:33, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Note that categories have to be linked like images. You have just (accidentally) added this talk page to the category. I fixed it. Deco 02:37, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Links from the main namespace to the Wikipedia namespace

We have Template:In Wikipedia and the more versatile Template:Sr for links from the main namespace to e.g. the Wikipedia namespace. It seems these are acceptable in templates because for mirrors and forks they cause no inconvenience, mirrors and forks can simply blank the template. However, for unclear reasons Netoholic is against such links, with or without this template, see Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Sr and e.g. Mapquest. Any thoughts?--Patrick 09:43, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

I've added instructions for use at Template talk:Sr. A template like this is pretty useless without an explanation. Hopefully, that will help settle the matter. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:26, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

Excellent!--Patrick 21:53, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

PMID

What is to be done with PMID (which contains the text: For information on using PMIDs in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:PMID.)? Removing the offending text entirely seems a bit harsh. — Itai (f&t) 23:45, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Also, does this apply to Stub (disambiguation)? In other words, just how standard a policy is this - should I remove on sight, no questions asked, or are there any limitations? — Itai (f&t) 12:44, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

See the immediate preceding discussion here. It is precisely about templates for handling this sort of thing. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:02, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

I used Template:In Wikipedia in PMID, but it doesn't work for Stub (disambiguation) (on account of the brackets). This could be solved if Template:In Wikipedia were to receive a parameter. (When will we finally have default values for parameters?) — Itai (f&t) 17:17, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia usage template

I have created template:project usage as an addition to template:selfref, for the specific purpose of usage conventions within Wikipedia. See natural number and billion for examples; there are probably many others where it should be added. Fredrik | talk 15:22, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I really do not like this template or concept. The point is to avoid self-references, not make them pretty or add them into articles to point out stylistic peculiarities of Wikipedia. -- Netoholic @ 17:48, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

I am fully aware of the problem with self-references. However, some conventions need to be understood not only by editors but also by readers. The two examples above provide disambiguation, they are not referring to Wikipedia arbitrarily. Providing explanations in the articles about the terms in question is the best solution by far. Fredrik | talk 20:13, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think this is totally okay as long as it's only used where we already have links to project pages in the article namespace. We definitely don't want to add any more, just keep the ones people have gotten used to. Deco 02:35, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've addressed all objections in an overhaul of this template. It no longer refers to Wikipedia, and its documentation specifically forbids linking across namespaces. — Xiong 熊 talk * 14:48, 2005 May 1 (UTC)

Too broad a policy?

One of the trigonometry articles contains this:

Many fields make use of trigonometry in a more advanced way than can be discussed in this brief article

It says "many fields", and an introductory textbook in any of those fields can be hundreds of pages long, so of course what it says remains true even if that Wikipedia article grows to the equivalent of 100 pages long. Do the reasons for objecting to self-reference in Wikipedia articles apply to the statement above? Someone has objected to this particular self-reference on the article's discussion page. See uses of trigonometry (currently undergoing a bit of an edit war, so maybe this won't be in the current version when you look). Michael Hardy 01:25, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

This is not a self-reference at all, in the sense of this rule. It is perfectly okay for the material to refer to the fact that it is in an encyclopedia having articles. The important thing is that it does not assume it is in Wikipedia, or make assumptions that the user is reading it on our website. A rule of thumb is, if it still makes sense if it's printed out and given to someone who's never heard of Wikipedia, it's fine.

An entirely separate issue is how well a fact ages. For example, to say "New York City has 8 million people" is not only lacking a clear source but unlikely to remain accurate indefinitely. Better is to say, "according to the 2000 U.S. census, New York City has over 8 million people". On the other hand, such context is sometimes elided in the interest of brevity. In your case, I would first attempt to edit out the source of conflict with something like "Many fields use trigonometry in advanced ways not discussed in this article." You may also wish to see Wikipedia:Article size, which discusses our current guidelines regarding article length (although these may change). Deco 05:38, 2 May 2005 (UTC)