A
self link is a
link to the page itself. It appears as bold text when the article is viewed ("self-link feature"). Examples:
Self links are usually not recommended. One exception is within a text that is between several pages. Per the Manual of Style#Article titles, you should not use self-links to make the article name bold in the first paragraph.
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 it works as a normal link:
Self link#Self-link to a section. Such links can also be written without the page name:
#Self-link to a section. An automatically generated 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:
Also, when the prefix for the project itself is added (interwiki link style, but again linking to the page itself) the self-link feature does not work, this is demonstrated here:
-
[[w:Help:Self link]] gives
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