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Wikipedia:Teahouse/Host lounge/How-to guides/Link guide

< Wikipedia:Teahouse | Host lounge | How-to guides

This guide explores how to explain Wiki links, interwiki links, and external link usage.

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A wikilink is a link that is included within the article and links to another Wikipedia article. You'll often see these as blue links in articles. Red links mean that an article doesn't exist and needs to be created.

How do I add a link in my article to another article?

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To add a basic link to another article, put two sets of brackets ("[[" and "]]") around the word or phrase you want to link. For example, if you want to add a link to the word "Wikipedia", it would look like this: [[Wikipedia]]. Another type of link is the "piped link". With the use of a separating pipe (the "|" character below the backspace button) you can make a link say one phrase, but go somewhere to another target. If you want to link to "Wikipedia", but have your link say "The Free Encyclopedia", your piped link would look like [[Wikipedia|The Free Encyclopedia]] and would come out like this: The Free Encyclopedia.

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An external link is a link that goes to another website and relates to the subject focus of the article it is being linked from.

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External links can be added to relevant articles as needed. Not every website that has ever existed needs to be added, but, important links like the official website for the article subject (i.e. a town's government website, a musicians website) should be added. If you think that the link you're wanting to add is important enough to help readers learn more about the subject, then go for it! Here is how you can do it:

1. On the article page, go to the "External links" section of the article. If the article does not have a section called that, you have to add it.
  • To add the External links section, simply click the "edit" link at the top of the page. Next, scroll down and just after the reference section (hopefully it exists!) type:
    ==External links==
    and then underneath that you can add your link. Before you do that, it's probably best to save your work. Scroll down to the "Edit summary" section of the page and type "Added External links section," to the summary section. Click "Show preview" to catch a preview of your work, and if it looks correct, click "Save page."
2. Once you find the External links section, click the "edit" button for that section (just to the right on the same line as "External links.").
3. Add your link by typing: *Wikipedia's official website Instead of using the Wikipedia web address, replace it with the address you want to add. Make sure there is a space, and then replace "Wikipedia's official website," with the name of the website you are adding. Add a "]" after that and then click the "show preview" button towards the bottom.
4. If your addition looks correct, great work! Simply add in the edit summary "added an external link," and click save!
-- Trevj (talk) 09:26, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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Another user accused me of spam? Why and how can I avoid being called that?

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An interwiki link is generally used to describe linking a Wikipedia article to another sister project, such as linking a word on an article to its definition on Wiktionary.

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  • Trevj's reply:
  • Use the prefix markup [[wikt:, e.g. [[wikt:chain]] will display as wikt:chain. To suppress display of the prefix, use the pipe character "trick" after the destination article name, i.e. [[wikt:chain|]] will display as chain.
    • To link to a foreign language definition, use the appropriate additional prefix, e.g. [[wikt:fr:lier]] to give wikt:fr:lier. (Note that use of the pipe trick only suppresses one prefix, in which case a fully piped link can be used, i.e. [[wikt:fr:lier|lier]] to give lier.)
    • Further information about linking to other Wikimedia projects is at Help:Interwiki linking.

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How do I add a link to another language's article on the same topic?

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Generally, you don't have to link to another language's wikipedia article if the name is identical as a bot will do it automatically. If there is a difference in the name, such that a bot might not understand the two articles are the same, you'll use a similar format style as linking to another Wikimedia project (such as the Wikitionary example above). Here's the "how to". Go to the bottom of the article page. Add two square brackets, then add the language's abbreviation (such as en is the abbreviation for the English language, fr is the abbreviation for the French language, and de is the abbreviation for the German language). Add the symbol for colon, then add the name of the article in the other language. Add two closing square brackets. Here's how it will look: 

[[language code:Title]]

Further information about linking to other language articles can be found at Help:Interlanguage links.

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