Bahaikipedia:Avoid self-references
From Bahaikipedia
- This is the guideline for Bahaikipedia self-references. For the guideline on autobiographies, see Bahaikipedia:Autobiography. For self-published sources, see Bahaikipedia:V#SELF
Avoid self-references within Bahaikipedia articles to the Bahaikipedia project, such as:
- This Bahaikipedia article discusses ...
- Free content projects, such as this website ...
- While Bahaikipedia is not a dictionary, ... (in an article about a certain term)
- Edit this page ...
Such self-references are entirely acceptable on talk pages or in the Bahaikipedia namespace, but they are inappropriate in articles for two reasons. The first is that self-references are often considered disruptive in an encyclopedia because they distract from the topic at hand. A secondary concern is that self-references limit the use of Bahaikipedia as an open source encyclopedia suitable for forking, as permitted by our license. Put simply, this policy is about remembering that the goal of Bahaikipedia is to create a Baha'i encyclopedia, not merely to perpetuate itself, so the articles produced should be useful even outside the context of the project used to create them.
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[edit] Think about print
Don't forget, we want to make the creation of a print version of Bahaikipedia as easy as possible, so try to use terms such as "this article" as opposed to "this website", and certainly don't use terms such as "click here" (which make no sense when using a screen reader, for instance). You may also find it helpful to imagine you're reading the article in another encyclopedia.
[edit] Community and website feature references
While we're often inclined to mention the Bahaikipedia community that we are all part of, as well as the website features we use in creating the articles, these confuse readers of derivative works. Unless substantially part of the article topic, do not refer to the fact that the page can be edited or any Bahaikipedia project page or process, specialized Bahaikipedia jargon (e.g. "POV" in place of "biased"), or any MediaWiki interface link in the sidebar or along the top of the screen. Articles are part of an encyclopedia, not part of the Bahaikipedia project being used to create them. However, there are exceptions. An article which is still in its initial development or under dispute often will include tags such as {{stub}}, and {{npov}} to help editors further develop the article, and the text in these templates include self-references.
[edit] Neutral references
References which exist in a way which assumes the reader is using an encyclopedia without reference to the specific encyclopedia (Bahaikipedia), or the manner of access (online), are acceptable. That is a reference which makes sense on a mirror or a fork, makes sense in print, and makes sense in a copy of Bahaikipedia which contains only the article space. A more common example is the disambiguation message This article is about X. For Y, see Z. and all of the "See also" links.
[edit] Articles are about their subjects
Bahaikipedia is an encyclopedia, so our articles are about their subjects; they are not about the articles themselves.
[edit] In the Template and Category namespaces
Limited use of self-references are sometimes found in the Template namespace and the Category namespace, such as with disambiguation and stub notices. Expanding this to other areas is not encouraged due to the need of third party users to either delete those templates or modify them to remove the Bahaikipedia references.
When forced to use templates like this, you should use them in a way such that the article still makes sense when the template is removed, in order to facilitate automated removal.
Wikipedia project coordination pages should be under Category:Bahaikipedia administration, not in categories which contain main-namespace articles by topic. (A small number of articles about Wikipedia are in the mainstream categories, and this is OK.) User pages may be categorized under Category:Bahaikipedians, but not under Category:People.
[edit] Examples of self-references
The following are some examples of self-references in Bahaikipedia's article namespace. They should at least be acknowledged or marked as self-references but not necessarily be deleted as they serve their purpose here on Bahaikipedia.
- Articles that self-reference
- Any article in the article namespace that links to one in the Bahaikipedia namespace
- Any article in the article namespace that redirects to one in the Bahaikipedia namespace (except the shortcuts in the "pseudo" B: namespace)
- Articles that mention or are named "article" rather than "topic" and may also refer to Bahaikipedia itself. For example, "List of articles" rather than "List of topics".
- Categories that self-reference
- Category:Bahaikipedia and its subcategories in the article namespace
- User categories such as Category:User en and Category:Bahaikipedians
- Use of templates in the article namespace that self-reference because they link to articles in the user, talk, or Bahaikipedia namespace or that are special articles.
- Various stub messages
- Template:NPOV
- Template:Disputed, Template:TotallyDisputed
- Template:Disambig (Also the text only makes sense online)
- Template:Fact
- Template:Uncategorized
- Template:Unreferenced
- Templates used to advertise sister projects and other versions of itself
[edit] Self-reference tools
The self-reference template Template:Selfref provide a way to contain all the self-references as tags. 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.
