Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context

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✔ This page documents an English Wikipedia style guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should follow, though it should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.
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Only make links that are relevant to the context.

  • Provide links that aid navigation and understanding.
  • Avoid obvious, redundant, and useless links.

It is counterproductive to hyperlink all possible words. This practice is known as "overlinking".[1] A high density of links can draw attention away from the high-value links that readers would benefit from following. (Example: Lucy went to the store.) Redundant links clutter up the page and make future maintenance harder. A link is analogous to a cross-reference in a print medium. Imagine if every second word in an encyclopedia article were followed by "(see:)". The links should not be so numerous as to make the article harder to read.

It is not always an easy call. Linking to the number three from triangle may be helpful, while linking to the number six from Six O'Clock News would not be.

This page is in dynamic tension with the general rule to build the web. See the talk page for additional considerations.

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Manual of Style and its subpages
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Contents

[edit] What generally should not be linked

In general, do not create links to:

  • Plain English words, including common units of measurement[2].
  • Subsidiary topics that result in red links (links that go nowhere) to articles that will never be created, such as the names of book chapters.
  • The same link multiple times, because redundant links clutter up the page and make future maintenance harder. It is not uncommon to repeat a link that had last appeared much earlier in the article, but there is hardly ever a reason to link the same term twice in the same section. (Table entries are an exception to this; in general each row of a table should be able to stand on its own).
  • Individual words when a phrase has its own article. For example, link to "the flag of Tokelau" instead of "the flag of Tokelau". Such a link is more likely to be interesting and helpful to the user, and almost certainly contains links to the more general terms, in this case, "flag" and "Tokelau".
  • A page that redirects back to the page the link is on. These circular redirects are frustrating to readers.
  • Words in a disambiguation entry other than to the disambiguation target itself. The general rule is "one link per entry" on a disambiguation page; additional links tend to confuse the reader.

[edit] What generally should be linked

In general, do create links to:

  • Relevant connections to the subject of another article that will help readers to understand the current article more fully (see the example below). This can include people, events and topics that already have an article or that clearly deserve one, as long as the link is relevant to the article in question.
  • References to a page with more information, e.g. "Relevant background can be found in Fourier series." Linking items in a list of examples makes them easier to reference as well.
  • Technical terms, unless they are fully defined in the article and do not have their own separate article. Sometimes the most appropriate link is an interwiki link to Wiktionary.
  • Word usage that may be confusing to a non-native speaker (or in another dialect). If the word would not be translated in context with an ordinary foreign language dictionary, consider linking to an article or Wiktionary entry to help foreign language readers, especially translators. Check the link for disambiguation, and link to the specific item.
  • Geographic place names, since many places have similar names, and many readers may be from a distant place. Link to the most specific available article, or create a stub or redirect if the place deserves a new article (check similar nearby places for naming conventions and category tags).

[edit] Other considerations

[edit] Link density

Aim for a consistent link density. Do not link eight words in one sentence and then none in the rest of the article. The introduction of the article may require modification of this rule. For general interest articles, where the links are of the "see also" or "for more information" type, it may be better to not link in the summary, deferring the link until the term is defined later in the article. Numerous links in the summary of an article may cause users to jump elsewhere rather than read the whole summary. For technical articles, where terms in the summary may be uncommon or unusual, and linking is necessary to facilitate understanding, it is permissible and may even be necessary to have a high link density in the introduction.

Excessive links make an article difficult to read. For example, see this archival version of Mean Red Spiders, as compared to this acceptable version.

[edit] Subsections

In general, try not to link to subsections, as the reader will arrive mid-article without context. However, sometimes there is a relevant discussion in a subsection that should be linked to. The format for a subsection link is [[Article#Section|name of link]]. For example, to link to the "Culture" subsection of the Oman article, type [[Oman#Culture|culture of Oman]]. When you name a piped link, think about what the reader will believe the link is about; in this example, the piped section-link should not be named "Oman", because the reader will think that link goes to the general article on Oman.

[edit] Quotations

Many editors choose to avoid making links within quotations, instead placing links in the surrounding text of the article wherever possible. Do not link or update the formatting of dates inside quotations.

[edit] Dates

Because of the date preference formatting MediaWiki software feature, how to link and when to link dates cannot be treated independently one from the other.

Details about when and how to link dates can be found in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Autoformatting and linking. An overview of the most frequently occurring cases:

  • Dates when they contain a day, month, and year — [[25 March]] [[2004]] — or day and month — [[February 10]] — should be linked for date preference formatting.
  • Stand alone months and days of the week should generally not be linked. Stand alone years do not need to be linked but some users prefer it, and some users prefer to link (with a piped link) to articles formatted as "year in subject" such as 1441 in art, 1982 in film, and 18th century in United States history.
  • Wikipedia has articles on days of the year, years, decades, centuries and millennia. As a general rule of thumb, link to one of these pages only if it is likely to deepen readers' understanding of a topic. Piped links to pages that are more focused on a topic are possible (1997), but cannot be used in full dates, where they break the date-linking function.
  • Dates in section headers should generally not be linked.

[edit] Titles

"As a general rule, do not put links in the bold reiteration of the title in the article's lead sentence or any section title." (from Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Article titles)

[edit] Disambiguation pages

"Don't wikilink any other words in the line, unless they may be essential to help the reader determine where they might find the information." (from Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Individual entries)

[edit] Example

In the article on Supply and demand, you should:

  • almost certainly link microeconomic theory and general equilibrium as these are technical terms that many readers are unlikely to understand at first sight;
  • consider linking price and goods, which, although common words, have technical dimensions that are relevant to the article and that link to explanations that are specifically in relation to supply and demand;
  • probably not link to the "United States" because that is a very large article with no particular connection to supply and demand.
  • definitely not link "potato", because it is a common term with no particular relationship to the article on Supply and demand, beyond its arbitrary use as an example of traded goods in that article.

[edit] Example of overlinking

An extreme example of overlinking can be found at an old version of the article on Hyperlinks.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Dvorak, John C.. "Missing Links", PC Magazine, April 2002. 
  2. ^ Examples of common measurements include:
    • units of time (millisecond, second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year)
    • metric units of mass (milligram, gram, kilogram), length (millimetre, centimetre, metre, kilometre), area (mm², etc.) and volume (millilitre, litre, mm³, etc.)
    • some imperial and US units such as inch, foot, yard, mile, etc.
    • combinations of the above (e.g. m/s, ft/s).
    • links may sometimes be helpful where there is ambiguity in the measurement system (such as Troy weight vs Avoirdupois weight) but only if the distinction is relevant.

[edit] See also