Wikipedia talk:Avoid self-references/Archive

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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

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

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.
You might be interested in Talk:vfd
BTW we fixed most of the stub boilerplate texts. -- User:Docu
Yes, I fixed it. anthony (see warning) 22:45, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I think the VfD page is a good example were the self reference should stay. It is an important term here that needs explanation. Wikipedia would not be any harder to duplicate, if vfd explained that there is a certain on-line encyclopedia were these letters have a special meaning.

In the page Talk:VFD I have written more fully why this one should stay.Sander123 11:06, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

As long as the link is an external link, rather than a link to another namespace, it doesn't violate this policy. If you use a direct link there is a problem with duplication, because many duplicates exclude the Wikipedia namespace. anthony (see warning)

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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)

The Wikipedia:Avoid self-references guideline sucks

This Wikipedia:Avoid self-references guideline about self-references sucks. It really sucks. Wikipedia should be able to talk about itself if necessary. If other Web sites copy the articles of Wikipedia, and if they don't have different namespaces like Wikipedia, then it's the problem of those Web sites if they have broken hyperlinks that originally were between namespaces. Why should we Wikipedia users care about other Web sites' problems? If someone wants to read Wikipedia content, they can just go to Wikipedia, even if the content can be copied for free. 2004-12-29T22:45Z 19:07, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

A quick question: would you consider it appropriate for, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica to refer to its own editorial board in the middle of an article, or to use itself as an example in topics like book, CD-ROM, or website; or perhaps if Encarta always referenced the most relevant Microsoft product on every page - wouldn't that seem a bit unprofessional and unnecessarily biased? One reason to care how content will seem when copied is to take "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" out of the context of "Wikipedia, the online project" and concentrate on what an encyclopedia should actually contain; who knows, one day we might be our own mirror - in print, on official CD-ROMs, or who knows what else. While the policy can be frustrating, I think in most situations it does encourage practice which improves the policy of the encyclopedic content - which is what we're all here for, after all. - IMSoP 12:11, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

On the self-reference article...

Quote from the Wikipedia 'Avoid self-references' text:

'many people find such self-references unprofessional'

Quote from 'Avoid Weasel Terms' article

'Who says that? You? Me? When did they say it? How many people think that? What kind of people think that? Where are they? What kind of bias do they have?'

It is a project page, not an article.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley talk contrib 15:38, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

User Categorisation no Selfreference but Community building

  • While I don't specifically support the Project Wikipedia:User categorisation that converts Wikipedia:Wikipedians and its sublists to User Categories, it is unfair to blame it as unnecessary self-reference. The page Wikipedia:Wikipedians was one of hte first pages on Wikipedia and it is absolutely necessary for Wikipedia and Wikipedia Community building. Wanting to remove that is subversive and directed against Wikipedia. The reasons for this attempt are highly suspicious:

" One is that these references complicate forking and the use of Wikipedia articles by others, ..." - While that may be true, it is not the main goal of Wikipedia. Wikipedia must be useful for their creators and The Wikipedia Community in the first place and not for people who earn money by using our work for free. Deleting Category:Wikipedians is as ridiculous as trying to delete the Wikipedia:Community Portal.

Again here should rulethe principle: function before style. You cannot delete important functions that make working on Wikipedia possible merely to make lokk it better on foreign websites. It is their job to program a converter or a Wikipedia bot to change the appearence to their likin as long as it conforms to the Wikipedia copy guidelines. From Wikipedia:Avoid_self-references: "so the articles produced should be useful even outside the context of the project to create it."

Again you want to rip out functionality this time a feature that is essential for the readers of Wikipedia simply to make it look "better", imean better on pages I never heared of ? I think this page Wikipedia:Avoid self-references has once started as a reasonable advice, but it needs a serious cutdown to the basics: 1. Do not brag how great Wikipedia is in every article. Enough. The latest changes in this advice are contraproductive. --Davion 21:15, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Just ask yourself a simple test question: Would this supposed self-reference item be appropriate in insert your name here's Encyclopaedia? If I were to make my own fork or mirror, I would removed everything that references Wikipedia itself because it does not seem appropriate in my own encyclopaedia. The items such as user categories will not necessarily be deleted immediately because they serve a great purppose but is something to be marked as self-reference to be made aware of. -- Zondor 05:20, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

That question has little to do with establishing what is or isn't a self-reference: rather, it would tell us what's meta-content of various kinds. In most cases that's implied by the namespace, but in the case of categories, obviously there's a single namespace, used equally for articles, user pages, etc. One could add a tag saying "this is a category of wikipedia project pages": but equally, that's pretty evident simply by looking at what's in the category.
If there really has to be a template for this, it should avoid the terminology of "self-references", and it should not be subst'd -- otherwise we simply end up with another piece of freeform text which is made more difficult to update, and is less convenient for the cited purpose of automatic non-mirroring. But I'm not convinced they shouldn't simply all be removed. Alai 17:56, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Possible bot

The following remark was made on the project page, but is clearly talk-page stuff. I've moved it here.

[Begin moved material]
Looking through WP:RFD, there are many votes for deletion of redirects to the wikipedia namespace to avoid self-references. Perhaps there can be a bot to search for redirects from the main to the wikipedia namespace and to delete them. There could be other combinations as well between various namespaces. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zondor (talk • contribs) 6 Nov 2005.
[End moved material]

"Work in progress" messages

Some editors put "t.b.d." placeholders, or "needs work" comments in an article. After a couple of years of editing articles, my sense is that it's a guideline if not a policy that such statements do not belong. There are a few article maintenance templates that are sometimes appropriate, but my impression is that it is highly preferable to avoid such self-references in favor of less obtrusive techniques for making omissions explicit. Am I right? Is there a better place than Wikipedia:Avoid self-references to direct an editor's attention when this convention is not followed? 66.167.139.76 23:52, 13 November 2005 (UTC).

Monobook

Monobook currently redirects to Help:User style. Can that be right? A redirect out of encyclopedia space? (I don't watchlist this page, so if you need to ask me something, please use my user talk page. Thanks.) -- Jmabel | Talk 22:36, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

No, it's not right, now fixed. Rich Farmbrough 20:28 1 March 2006 (UTC).

Articles about Wikipedia

The policy makes an exception that

Wikipedia can, of course, write about Wikipedia

We therefore have a bunch of articles about Wikipedia and assorted things, such as critics, people, etc. I'm not commenting on the quality of those articles here. However, I think the existence of those articles was a mistake. I feel that having articles about Wikipedia etc is tasteless, and is a violation (in spirit) of WP:AUTO. It also causes odd effects, in that some articles now mention that the person responsible attempted to edit their article.

I'm therefore tossing the idea into the wind, that this exception should be removed, and consequently Wikipedia and all associated articles should be either deleted or moved to another namespace. Wikipedia should totally ignore the existence of itself. I would be interested to hear considered thoughts on this. Morwen - Talk 02:05, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

There's certainly room for improvement in this area, but Wikipedia is clearly notable; failing to acknowledge its existence would cause more problems than we have now. Consider, for instance, the hypothetical List of websites by Alexa rank:
...
22. somewebsite.com
23. <There is no website with this rank. Do not ever speak of this again.>
24. someotherwebsite.net
...
This will only become a bigger issue as (I hope) Wikipedia becomes more prominent. We wouldn't want to get into a 1984-ish scenario where certain things are written out of existence. ("In 2015, a study showed that Britannica was trailing behind <redacted> in quality" or "<redacted>, the creator of the popular encyclopedia <redacted>, was awarded the Nobel peace prize", while unlikely at the moment, may at some point be appropriate statements to include). —Kirill Lokshin 03:30, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I still have working on Wikipedia:Autobiography on my to-do list. One of the things that it doesn't say, which it should in my view, is that the acceptable way to write about onesself (and indeed one's relatives, one's company, one's school, one's web site, and so forth) is to use and to cite third-party sources, independent of onesself (and one's company/school/web site), exclusively. (Doing so works in practice.) By this standard, it is acceptable to construct a Wikipedia article about Wikipedia as long as it is entirely constructed from sources other than Wikipedia itself. There are a lot of such sources cited in Wikipedia.

    Also note that verifiability involves verification by reference to published sources, not verification by repeating the original research. If the only way to verify that someone edited xyr own article is to laboriously trudge through the edit history to check that the relevant edit exists, then that is original research that does not belong in Wikipedia. If, however, that fact has been reported and discussed by a reliable source independent of Wikipedia, then it is fair game for inclusion.

    The point of the sentence fragment that you quote is that this guideline is nothing at all to do with the concerns of autobiography, but rather to do with the concerns of mirroring Wikipedia, and that therefore this discussion belongs on another talk page. ☺ Uncle G 04:09, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia clearly satisfies our criteria for notability. Some of the more specific Wikipedia-related topics may not, but VfD is the Court of Notability, and hopefully they'll decide in an objective manner. Considering that we have articles about esoteric Pokemon and individual episodes of the Simpsons, I think we can tolerate discussion of the biggest encyclopedia in the world. Deco 04:21, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Explain this please

this edit doesn't make sense to me. How is it self-referencial for the article to have a link to the philosophy portal? Please defend this edit or it will be reverted Argyrios 01:04, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion that editor was mistaken. Wikiproject Philosophy is part of the project, not the encyclopedia, but the Philosophy Portal is part of the encyclopedia. Ergo a link to it is okay. Deco 04:17, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

An exception to the self-reference rule?

If anyone is familiar with the JT LeRoy hoax, that will help understand the background of my question.

The issue is this:

A few weeks ago a New York Times story pretty much settled a debate regarding the true identity of an author named JT LeRoy by offering strong evidence to suggest that the author is indeed another author, Laura Albert.

Before this story broke, there was some doubt but nothing conclusive. A lot going on in the LeRoy article's Talk page and one of the editors made the claim that he or she was, in fact, LeRoy's assistant and claimed to have spoken with him in person and at length on the phone. When the Times article broke, it became pretty clear that the claims this editor made about the author's identity could not have been accurate, and in all probability this person was either an agent of the author, or even the author herself (given her penchant for using false identity).

I believe this to be both noteworthy and encylopedic because it outlines what I think will become a bigger issue, down the road, and that is the issue of Wikipedia itself becoming an occasional front, by interested parties, in the battle over public opinion.

So I added a section about this (and would like to expand), however I am caught at the rule of avoiding self-reference.

self referential link [3] was turned into a Special page.
self referential links [4] [5]

These self-refs are dealt with in two different ways. Comments?

It's not a self-reference when you write about Wikipedia where it's actually relevant to the subject, i.e. things like "xyz stated in a now famous interview that Wikipedia was..." as opposed to "Websites such as the one you're viewing". —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 21:27, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
I tend to agree but I wasn't sure if the consensus is 100%. There was some argument in the discussion pages of the above articles.
However, it hasn't really been established what to do with the Wikipedia page once it has become a reference. If its an archive, do we move it to Special:? Do we lock it from editing? Do we do nothing?Yeago 21:32, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
We'll just have to wait and see, when it becomes a big enough deal, I guess. =)Yeago 22:46, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Refer to it with http:/en. reference, include last accessed date and all that jazz. Rich Farmbrough 20:31 1 March 2006 (UTC).

Let's put more emphasis on acceptable cases

Currently, if one reads this guideline carefully, one can understand that it is acceptable to write about Wikipedia in a variety of circumstances. I think this should be made more clear to the casual reader. I propose adding a list of positive examples after the second full paragraph, which currently reads, "Wikipedia can, of course, write about Wikipedia, but context is important..., use external link style to allow the link to work also in a site with a copy of the main namespace content." Examples:

I think this would make this guideline more beneficial to the project. Johntex\talk 04:17, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Definitely a good idea (seeing as some people misinterpret the meaning of the guideline on this talk page). Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley talk contrib 15:50, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Simple question

Just wondering what people think about:

  • Considered by many an archaic term, quackery is most often used to denote the peddling of the "cure-alls" described above.

It referes to information under a different level 1 heading. Is that okay in regards to selfref policy? It seems to me like it's an accident waiting to happen, when someone moves the original text. ॐ Metta Bubble puff 06:47, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Someone working with this policy might want to check...

Someone working with this policy might want to check the note at the top of Systemic bias. I'm not sure whether it is good, bad, or indifferent. - Jmabel | Talk 05:03, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Self-referential content

Is there any rule about content that refers to itself? Not referring to Wikipedia, but referring to itself. I think it's inappropriate, as it could lead to confusion, could be "broken" by other editors who don't understand the example, etc. Examples of typography, code, and so on should be explicit and separate from the text of the article. Some examples:

  • Justification (typesetting) The following paragraph is justified.
  • Literate programming "This whole article is, in fact, a simple program that can be run using the example literate interpreter on the interpreter page."
  • Interpreter (computing) "There is a program to try with this interpreter, on the Literate programming article. If you want to do so you must save the interpreter as INTERP.BAS and then save the Literate programming article as TESTPROG.TXT in the same folder."
  • Dash "In North American usage—and also in old British usage—an em dash is never surrounded by spaces. In contrast, the modern practice in many other parts of the English-speaking world and in journalistic style is to separate the dash from its surrounding words when used parenthetically, by using spaces — or hair spaces (U+200A). Some writers eschew the use of the em dash – instead, they replace it with the shorter en dash – which is then also surrounded by spaces or hair spaces; this "space, en dash, space" sequence is also the predominant style in German typography."
  • Quotation mark 'Curved and straight quotes are also sometimes referred to as “smart quotes” and "dumb quotes" respectively;' — Omegatron 23:27, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
There is no rule against this. I don't think there should be. Often, self-referential content is a more effective way of conveying information. Obviously, you need to be cautious in cases where it depends on aspects of formatting that won't be universally displayed, but that doesn't invalid the basic idea. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:13, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Could there be some template to warn other editors? Runcorn 17:23, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Why? Just make a rule against it. — Omegatron 17:34, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
You don't think such things can sometimes add to the article? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:42, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I just think they are better set apart from the text.
For instance, instead of demonstrating two different styles of typography in a single sentence of the article text itself, demonstrate it with some floating framed passages of text. One would have a passage of text with one typography style, and another would have the same passage of text with the other typography style. Then you have two copies and you can compare them to each other.
Instead of saying "This whole article is, in fact, a simple program that can be run using the example literate interpreter," set aside that section of the text inside a box, and don't refer to the article that contains it. Use an example that people might actually use. "This is an example of a simple program in a literate programming language". No one is going to write a literate program with the area of a circle and the area of a rectangle, but put the rest of an encyclopedia article in the comments. The program is out of place for an encyclopedia article and the rest of the article would be out of place in a real-life program. In fact, maybe I'll demonstrate what I'm thinking of in that article... — Omegatron 03:12, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Can we please add something about this to the page? I'm still seeing examples. Self-referential content is bad, and serves no purpose that self-contained examples can't serve better. It's not clear to people who don't speak English, for instance, making it more difficult to translate. Some examples don't translate well to other media, like paper, PDAs, cell phones, screen readers, etc. There's no reason for it. — Omegatron 02:36, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

User Categories in Articles

Hi - I need some clarification. Should links to categories that are lists of users subcategories of Category:Wikipedians be included in the main Article space?

Dispute details. It seems clear to me that a reference to a category that contains lists of wikipedians (links to the User space) is a self-reference that should be removed. Yesterday, I happened upon the Louisville, Kentucky article to do some research - noticed the link in the see also section and removed it. User:Stevietheman has reverted the change twice - with comments "(rv to last edit by Stevietheman; the "metadata" is staying)" and "(rv; it's staying)." I brought the issue up on the talk page and the only other editor to comment agreed that it should not be in the article space. I have removed it again, and linked to it on the talk page instead.

Am I correct here that this is a self-reference that should NOT be in the article space - it seems stupid to edit war about something like this so I am going to abandon my attempts to follow the style guide here for a bit, but think that some clarification from an admin could be helpful in resolving the issue. Thx in adv Trödel 16:09, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

You are correct. I'll check out the talk page. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 06:15, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Without regards to this individual dispute over such an innocuous entry (obviously, I wasn't as interested in warring over this as Trodel was--I dropped it after the second revert), I would like to see if it is possible to "legislate" exceptions to this guideline. It would seem natural to link to a category/list of Wikipedians in a polity from an article about that polity. Yes, it's not specific to the article content, but I would call it one of those "Wikipedia-related general interest article add-ons", kind of like how the Louisville, Kentucky exhibits a star for its FA status.
I am not expecting to determine the consensus right here, but I'm just asking if it is reasonable to pursue a campaign to see what the true Wikipedia consensus would be on this issue. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 04:32, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
You can always try. See Wikipedia:How to create policy. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 06:44, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
But here I doubt it will work. I strongly suspect there will be consensus against it. TheGrappler 16:04, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
I would think that linking this sort of thing from the talk page would be much more appropriate. - Jmabel | Talk 23:36, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Jmabel; such links referring to the Wikipedia-related nature of something should be on the talk page. --ais523 11:20, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Avoid self-references in categories?

Many WikiProjects have "staked their claim" in category space, by sticking their templates in Category: pages. That is blatantly self-referential. Others stick to putting the templates in Category talk: pages. I think this is far better. However, I don't want to go on a burst of sticking templates from Category: to Category talk: unless I see guidance that WP:ASR actually applies to category pages as well as articles, and the guidelines do not make it clear! Does anybody know if there is previous consensus on this? TheGrappler 16:04, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Just coincidentally came to this page with a similar issue; I found are a number of projectspace pages in Category:Wikipedia stubs, which seemingly should solely contain mainspace articles about Wikipedia. The question at hand is simply whether the Category namespace is part of the encyclopedic content. Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes seems to speak as if it is. More input on this matter would be appreciated. ~ PseudoSudo 08:03, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I think that's a useful point. CLS does indicate we should these as encyclopedic content, in a different way to Portals, for instance. TheGrappler 17:31, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Basically categories should not mix links to different namespaces. So there should be no articles in the Category:Wikipedia stubs but those should be sorted as outlined in the Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting. Since there is no other functionality like categories for other namespaces, the best we can do is make sure that links don't cross namespaces. --Trödel 21:42, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

The further question is whether the text on a Category: page should cross-link. Keeping the contents of a category split between namespaces is clearly a good idea, but should a wikiproject notice be placed on the Category: or Category talk: page? I'd suggest the latter but the former seems more common. TheGrappler 22:49, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I think that the introduction text of a category (that references articles) should not have any cross-links - and any advertisement of a wikiproject related to that category should go on the talk page - but I don't know if there is any documented standard. That seems in keeping with the general goals of ASR. --Trödel 04:39, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
For the purpose of ASR, I would consider categories to be just like articles. This makes sense to me because they're a navigation aid used to travel between articles, not unlike a list or disambiguation page. Deco 23:00, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with Trödel and Deco. I think any project notices should go on the Category's Talk page, not on the category page itself.

Are links to categories self-references?

It is sometimes appropriate to link to a category in a see also, like "Category:Works by Albert Camus". However, this seems to be a borderline self-reference, especially if accompanied by text like "See all Camus' works by browsing the category Category:Works by Albert Camus". What do others think? Stevage 07:40, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

No more than referring to another article is. TheGrappler 11:22, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
Hrmmm, unsure. I would say it's okay to link it, but don't refer to "browsing the category" and don't imply that it's a comprehensive list. For example, a better link might read Articles about works by Albert Camus, or something like that. Deco 11:25, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
To clarify my comment: there is no guarantee that somebody who is reproducing an article is reproducing all of WP's content, so a "see also" link to an article is effectively self-referential to an extent. (Having said that, I've seen "see also" red links before! But this is no guarantee that a reuser will want them!) The particular problem here is that not all reusers also copy across the category system. My suggestion, as a compromise in the spirit of ASR, would be: put it in the see also section so the link can be trimmed without any harm being done, rather than putting it in the main article text where it would change things significantly if it were removed. Does that sound sensible? TheGrappler 21:34, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't think we should worry about the repusers. They can take any portion of WP and there is no guarantee they will even take the whole article space. Johntex\talk 22:45, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
This is my feeling also. I just thought it was worth mentioning that things are a matter of degree here, and this degree seems fine to me! TheGrappler 13:04, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
As long as the category contains a list of articles - it is not a self reference. However, a link to Category:Wikipedians is since it contains links to non-article space pages. --Trödel 22:11, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
Excellent point! TheGrappler 13:04, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
It would be nice to have a standard naming convention for categories. "Articles about..." seems workable. Where would such a thing go? Stevage 17:37, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Where do Wiki* self-references go in articles?

Is there a policy on where {{Wikiquote}}, {{Wikibooks}}, etc. templates should be within an article? I saw a page with three of them together in the "External links" section. At the very least it looked poor. This is also not what I think of as an "external" link. Thoughts? Gimmetrow 00:56, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. That's where they usually go... - Jmabel | Talk 06:35, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Links to other (minor) Wikipedias

Would someone who has been more active than me with the "Avoid self-references" issue please have a look at the Padania article? In the Languages section are a bunch of links to eight minor-language Wikipedias. The presentation seems to me to suggest falsely that they would be links to English-language articles on the languages themselves. Thought? Comments? Suggestions? - Jmabel | Talk 21:22, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Resolved. - Jmabel | Talk 06:31, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I can see the reason for this style guide, but...

It is, in some knowledge domains, quite dysfunctional. Consider complex, advanced technology. People who write about this for a living -- I used to, long ago -- will tell you that you have to go from the known to the unknown. OK? So what's known to 100% of your audience in Wikipedia? Answer: Some of the technical details of the way Wikipedia works. And this knowledge can fruitfully serve as a bridge to deeper understanding.

Case in point: Please visit Pseudonymity, which I personally think is one of the finest articles to be found in our project. The language is unusually crisp and precise. A Wikipedia example is used to introduce what would undoubtedly be, for most readers, an unfamiliar concept.

And a user who's read this policy statement proposes to delete half the article! (See the talk page.)

OK, if you must, change "Wikipedia" to "a public Wiki site." Fine. You're introducing a small but undeniable barrier to understanding, but if it is really so important, do it. Just don't delete half the page. Please? Bryan 03:30, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Do remember that part of the purpose of writing a free content encyclopedia is that the material should be usable elsewhere. And, when reused, we cannot presume that any portion of the readership has so much as heard of Wikipedia. - Jmabel | Talk 06:46, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
The article seems to be fine to me at the moment; it's fine for an article to mention Wikipedia, it just shouldn't:
  • assume that its content is on Wikipedia, or
  • break links when mirrored.
The reference in the article to WP:BITE has now been {{srlink}}ed, so external links won't break, and the mentions of Wikipedia carry enough context and would make sense, for instance, at http://www.answers.com/Pseudonymity (which hadn't updated with the srlink last time I looked, and dealt with the selfref by delinking it; the srlink would serve their site better). So the article seems fully ASR-compliant to me now. --ais523 11:49, 26 August 2006 (UTC)


COME ON!

Retards are looking up Wikipedia on Wikipedia. Why not let the retards know they're on Wikipedia? Urban Dictionary tells the retards THEY'RE on Urban Dictionary! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.205.129.86 (talk • contribs) 29 August 2006.

Query

Is it OK for Deletion (a dab page) to link to Wikipedia:Deletion policy? >Radiant< 20:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

My general impression is that it's favored. I personally don't like it and think it kind of goes against this guideline, but others apparently feel its usefulness for the confused outweighs this. In theory, reusers could remove all this kind of thing if they're kept nicely wrapped in {{selfref}}. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:41, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Archive This is an archive of past discussions. 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.
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