Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Self-references to avoid

Note that ..., It is important to ..., Surprisingly ..., Of course ...

I noticed that the subsection was added several years ago but I disagree with "Neutral cross-references (See also Cymric (cat). are permissible". In fact, I don't think they are ever permissible and are always better reworded. Are there any supporters? Iterresise (talk) 08:03, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't agree with you at all. We routinely use cross-references, especially between closely related articles that are the results of WP:LENGTH splits and WP:SUMMARYSTYLE treatment, and when two or more subjects can be considered aspects of the same topic but have their own separate articles. We've had hatnotes for this purpose since the earliest days of the project, and the less visually intrusive {{crossreference}} for the same purpose for many years. "I don't think they are ever permissible" is nonsense on its face, since there is no rule against them. By definition, everything compliant with policy is permissible, per WP:EDITING, other than things subject to a specific rule prohibiting them. I'm not sure what the mania is for trying to micromanage every single thing people do here, but it's poisononous. It's taken years to undo a lot of useless prescriptivistic nonsense, that had nothing to do with creating a better encyclopedia, injected into many MoS pages by someone now topic-banned from them, and the last thing we need is another to take their place.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:45, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

What I disagree with is "often". Iterresise (talk) 12:33, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, you haven't made any case for what's wrong with it. (And this does not seem to actually relate to your original opening statement, which was a claim that neutral cross-references are not "permissible" at all.) Anyway, it's routine for us to make edits like the one you provided a diff to, to moderate overly emphatic or prescriptive statements in MoS that do not need to be so absolute. (Many of them were injected several years ago by an editor who has since been topic-banned from MoS, and cleaning up after them has been a slow process.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:21, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

User:EEng: did you want to opine? I'm seeing some cases where a cross reference would make sense such as refering to "figure 1", "figure 2", etc. Iterresise (talk) 08:07, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I'll opine. My opinion is you better get over to WP:ANI#Iterresise's_MEATBOT_behavior_removing_template_from_articles,changing_DAB_page_layouts,_etc. and commit to undoing all these bullshit changes you've been making, or you're going to get blocked. EEng 11:11, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Memes related to Wikipedia

An example of a Doge meme related to Wikipedia

I've only seen reference to WP:SELFREF for the first time today in this edit on the article Doge (meme): [1]. As you can see, the edit removed this meme which mentioned the existence of Wikipedia, and replaced it with one that didn't.

I'm mostly just curious if the original image did fall under SELFREF and needed to be removed. A meme someone made related to Wikipedia still illustrates the point even if isn't being read on Wikipedia, and it did not encourage "readers to take an action on Wikipedia, such as editing the article". Was the original image problematic per this policy, and did it need to be removed? Pinging Belbury since they made they change, but obviously they agree with it or they wouldn't have made it, so I'm looking for other opinions. Damien Linnane (talk) 02:45, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I was being guided by the policy's observations that Mentioning the Wikipedia community, or website features, can confuse readers of derived works and that specialized Wikipedia jargon should be avoided.

The average Wikipedia reader, unfamiliar with policy terminology, probably wouldn't see why the dog would be thinking "such neutral". And a person unfamiliar with the concept of Wikipedia, encountering this image in a derived work, would only have a general, speculative sense that words like "edit" and "article" were probably references to whatever Wikipedia was.

A simpler non-Wikipedia concept (I went with "snow") has neither of those issues, and also works in derived contexts that lack a caption. Belbury (talk) 10:23, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

The image did not violate this guideline. This guideline is about self-references and specifies which types of self-references should be avoided and which kinds are acceptable. Such images are not listed as "should be avoided". Nothing about this image would confuse readers of a WP:REUSE of our article somewhere else, since readers of it would already be aware of Wikipedia's existence, and even if the rare case someone wasn't, the image still illustrates what a Doge meme is. (And it doesn't have WP-specific jargon in it like "RfA" or "WP:BLP1E" in it, anyway). Lolcat has had a similar meme-pic in it pretty much the entire time the article has existed, and you'd meet a lot of resistance removing it. That said, the image that does have a WP joke in it is not neccessarily better than the replacement; which image to use is up to editorial consensus at the article talk page (where I would be in favor of the snow one, as funnier, more typical, and more understandable by more people). But "per MOS:SELFREF" isn't a valid argument in such a discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:21, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Thanks, that's what I thought. I wasn't fussed about the removal itself because the replacement is indeed probably a better example, but the argument itself for it's removal struck me as wrong. Lolcat has several images, and in that same token I was going to move the Doge Wiki image further down the article, but I wanted to check first if that was a MOS:SELFREF issue. Damien Linnane (talk) 23:44, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Coverage/treatment of a Subject by Wikipedia

If an article's coverage in Wikipedia becomes a topic of media attention (say it is very short / long / negative / laudatory, and this is described in some punditry or RS as having a significant impact on the subject or a specific event related to it): to what extent should that be mentioned in the article?

A recent example is the ADL article, which at one point had a long section with 4 subsections on every step of the RSP reassessment, discussion closure, media coverage, response, and meta-response. At that point editors looking at the size of the subsection added mention of it to the lede. The possibilities for recursion are endless. – SJ + 17:28, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

"Notable"

A number of Wikipedia pages include lists of article links with section headings reading "Notable [stuff]". I have generally removed these as an ASR issue, because "notable" is a Wikipedia-internal term of art, and is being used in that specific sense (rather than in the general dictionary-definition sense). However, as far as I can tell, this specific usage has never been discussed here. I think we should discourage such usage of "notable" in articles; if the list content is being restricted to notable entries due to a guideline such as WP:LISTPEOPLE, this can be noted in a hidden note at the top of the list, and it doesn't conflate the Wikipedia concept of notability with the word's casual use as a synonym for noteworthy or interesting. Chubbles (talk) 04:35, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't disagree with you. We should use "noted", the ordinary English word. Largoplazo (talk) 11:53, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm wondering if language to that effect should be added to this guideline. Perhaps something like: List articles should not be sectioned or led by the phrase "notable [items]", nor should text explaining that the list is limited to notable items or items with Wikipedia entries be present at the top of the list. Notable is a specific Wikipedia term of art which, in this context, is used differently than its general meaning of "interesting or noteworthy in some way". If a list's content is being restricted to notable entries due to a guideline such as WP:LISTPEOPLE, this can be mentioned in a hidden note at the top of the list, or an alternate phrase such as "noted [items]" can be used. I imagine this would need to be implemented as prelude to any mass change, especially one that would be tool-assisted; there are many pages that use this particular type of self-reference. Chubbles (talk) 05:56, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Sledgehammer for a walnut. If you want to say something about noted being the right word instead of notable (in any context, not just lists), maybe. There's no need for all that verbiage, and you absolutely should abandon right now any notion of going on a mass fixit campaign. This is simply not important enough, and you'll piss people off. EEng 10:09, 25 September 2024 (UTC)