Wikipedia:Self link

Self links are listed on the maintenance page as if they were a Bad Thing which generally I guess they are. The relevant maintenance page simply says: The following pages contain a link to themselves, which they should not. However a number of pages contain deliberate self-links, for example List of group theory topics and List of musical topics. In these cases an author has left a note (on the page itself in the case of the former, and on the latter's Talk page) asking that the self-link not be removed, as it is needed to help with page or topic maintenance.

I feel that the current situation is a bit messy in that someone wanting to help by tidying up can accidentally thwart the plans of people who are trying to maintain a page or topic area. This happened just now at List of musical topics. Could we please have a clear policy on this? I would have thought it either needs to be that self-links are just not allowed, in which case maybe a clearer note on the maintenance page could clarify this (plus maybe something in the style manual etc somewhere??) or, if they are allowed (where they are a deliberate action of page maintainers and not just a mistake), this should be made clear on the maintenance page, in the same way that the spelling page tried to make it clear that not every apparent misspelling needs to be corrected - that there are in effect false positives too. Maybe there could even be a standard statement that people would be encouraged to use in that case - the List of group theory topics has a nice clear statement: Since the page is a maintenance page, the interested parties also want to know when changes are made to this list as well; so please do not remove the self-link.

Apologies if all this has already been covered 93 times in here or in an FAQ or something. Thanks, Nevilley 11:50 Dec 26, 2002 (UTC)

Normally a self-link is unconvenient for the user: a link promises related info, but all you get is the same again. However, I understand that it can be useful in connection with the use of Related changes (no need to check the history of the page itself additionally) and then the statement above is a good solution, especially because the self-link occurs in this statement itself only. It is clearer than in List of musical topics. - Patrick 12:23 Dec 26, 2002 (UTC)

A clear short version of the statement, best put at the end of the article, is also:

This [[...|self-link]] is for technical reasons (use of Related changes), please do not remove.

Patrick 12:58 Dec 26, 2002 (UTC)