Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Self-references to avoid: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 03:06, 2 January 2025

Latest revision as of 14:37, 26 August 2025

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{{redirect|WP:SELF}}

{{style-guideline|MOS:SELFREF|WP:ASR|WP:SRTA|WP:SELF|type=style guideline}}

{{guideline in a nutshell|Wikipedia's [[free content]] is reused in many places: do not assume that the reader is reading Wikipedia, or indeed any website. Articles may refer to themselves, but they shouldn't refer to Wikipedia in a non-neutral fashion except under special circumstances.}}

{{style}}

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===''This article was criticized by ...'' (articles are about their subjects, not this website)===

{{See also|WPWikipedia:Navel-gazing}}

{{anchor|Articles are about their subjects}}

{{Shortcut|WP:SUBJECT}}

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A mention of Wikipedia by a notable person is unlikely to justify a mention in their Wikipedia article; such a mention would have to reflect its [[WP:DUE|importance in the person's overall body of work]]. For example, a radio host mentioning that he read his Wikipedia biography is not normally an important event in his overall career. On the other hand, the media attention surrounding [[John Seigenthaler#Wikipedia biography incident|John Seigenthaler]]'s Wikipedia entry became [[Wikipedia Seigenthaler biography incident|significant]] in his public life.

If it may be helpful to the community to link to [[WP:press coverage|press coverage]] about an article, this can be done in the article's talk page using the [[Template:Press|<nowiki>{{Press}}</nowiki>]] banner template.

==In templates and categories {{anchor|In the Template and Category namespaces}}==

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The self-reference template, {{tlx|selfref}}, is used to mark pieces of text and links that wouldn't make sense on copies of Wikipedia. This gives the ability to programmatically remove all such references or transform them into external links. Thus, the end product can have all of its self-references removed automatically for users, such as forks and mirrors. This template is most often used as a [[Wikipedia:Hatnote|hatnote template]] to help guide editors from an article to a related Wikipedia policy or guideline page in the [[Wikipedia:Project namespace|Wikipedia project namespace]].

Many hatnote templates that ''do'' contain helpful preset text and linking, such as {{ttlx|for}} and {{ttlx|about}}, support a {{para|selfref}} parameter that gives them the same functionality as <code>{{tlf|Self referenceselfref}}</code>, making them better options in most circumstances.

In cases where a Wikipedia page should link to Wikipedia itself (for instance, at [[Wikipedia]]) and this link should be kept on mirrors, the format {{tlx|srlink|link}} can be used to write the link as external, rather than internal when outside of Wikipedia, to prevent it breaking in mirrors. For instance: {{srlink|Main Page|Wikipedia's Main Page}} (made by <code><nowiki>{{srlink|Main Page|Wikipedia's Main Page}}</nowiki></code>) as opposed to [[Main Page|Wikipedia's Main Page]] (<code><nowiki>[[Main Page|Wikipedia's Main Page]]</nowiki></code>).