Help:Self link
 | This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus. |
| Linking and page manipulation |
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A self link is a link to the page on which the link appears. A self-link to a page appears as bold text when the article is viewed ("self-link feature"). Examples:
- [[Help:Self link]] gives Help:Self link
- [[Help:Self link|piped self link]] gives piped self link
A self-link to a section does not appear as bold text. Examples:
- [[#Self-link to a section|Self-link to a section]] gives Self-link to a section (recommended)
- [[Help:Self link#Self-link to a section]] gives Help:Self link#Self-link to a section (not recommended)
Self links are usually not recommended, except for:
- Within text that is transcluded between several pages
- Self-link to a section, without the page name
Self-link to a section
A link to a section of the same article, even from the same section, does not cause bold text and works as a normal link: Help:Self link#Self-link to a section. Such links should usually be written without the page name: #Self-link to a section, because this method does not cause the page to reload (if the reader initially arrived at the page via a redirect) and is thus more efficient. A useful application is links from article leads or overview sections to detail sections buried deeper in the same article. An automatically generated table of contents has links to sections on the page.
Indirect self links
An indirect self link is a link to a page that redirects back. In this case, the self-link feature does not work, even though the feature would be equally useful. This is demonstrated here:
When the prefix for the project itself is added (interwiki link style, but again linking to the page itself) the self-link feature does work. This is demonstrated here:
- [[w:Help:Self link]] gives w:Help:Self link
- [[en:Help:Self link]] gives en:Help:Self link
Related changes feature
A self link for use with the "Related changes" feature only works if the link is to an existing or non-existing section. If it cannot be made useful as a link to a section, use a piped link with a blank space as label, e.g. [[Wikipedia:Self link#x| ]], showing up as " ".
See also
- Navigation templates
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Self-references to avoid
- Template:No selflink (a method to avoid the bold text on self links)