Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive ("See also")

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This is an archive of topics relating to the see also section

A lot of articles contain "See also" on the bottom linking some related topics. Some of these links are unnecessary, as they are already linked from within the article, but some are not. How should these be presented? In a similar way as the External links, as give below, or are there better ways?

See also (or Internal Links?)

Jeronimo

The most used style I have seen is simply;

See also: foobar

Which I don't have any issues with and would like to keep (otherwise we will have one hell of a time trying to establish anything else -- remember, above all else newbies copy the style they see and few bother visiting these help pages before diving-in).

Either way, there is no reason to have a see also that is already linked in the article. In fact, one of the main functions of the 'see also' section is to list things that probably should be discussed in the article but aren't yet mentioned. --mav

The "see also" section is usually just a list of 2-3 items. There's no need for a heading, and indeed, as mav says, the links are often subsequently integrated into the body text of the article. -- Tarquin

See also isn't just used to hold topics that should be in the article. It allows us to link to topics that don't quite fit into the article but are related in some fashion. For example, look atEncyclopedia. It has see also links to History of Science and Technology, Information and Library Science, and lexicography. These topics are relevent, but there's really no need to force them into the article simply to link to them.

Maveric has suggested a Related Articles sub-heading, which sounds better than See also. However, most encyclopedias use See also, and thus so will most contributors. I've always used a sub-heading for it to keep it consistent with External links sections, but I don't mind the simple table option. -- Stephen Gilbert 16:58 Dec 1, 2002 (UTC)

Well that is not entirely correct. Most encyclopedias use see alsos in parentheses inline with the text to accomplish the same function that our wiki links do. Our see alsos are simple lists after the body of the article that usually contain topics that can and should be mentioned in the body of the article. Your usage of see alsos is still a perfectly valid one but it should be under a correctly named heading such as Related Topics. See alsos would still be there to serve as a queue. However, there is some duplication and potential confusion with such a set-up -- there is often a real fuzzy line between whether a topic should be discussed in the body or if it is just of peripheral interest. I rarely use see alsos or headings like Related Topics since I try to mention and link relevant topics in the body as I go. But many others do and the dominant style is to have a no-frills horizontal vanilla list. I support this option because: 1) it is easier to implement since it is already the dominant usage and 2) vertical lists lead to massive amounts of white space. In more complete articles there is no reason to not also have a Related Topics section (heading and all). --mav 21:11 Dec 1, 2002 (UTC)
Well, the h2s are still damned big in my browsers despite changes, but I think that ==Internal Links== is more consistent and useful to the reader. Someone just moved the Gallic Wars out of Julius Caesar and it is as if the whole section (including one of my favorite sentences!) has dropped off the face of the earth. Much better to have an ==Internal Links== section for major associated articles, even if those articles are linked by a wiki link or a See also elsewhere in the article. Ortolan88 17:47 Dec 2, 2002 (UTC)


I like ==Related articles== much better than Internal Links. Flipping through a few encyclopedias, I see that most use "See also" within the article text, and then a list of related article follows the main article. -- Stephen Gilbert 17:30 Dec 14, 2002 (UTC)

Well, I liked Internal Links== cause it was parallel to External Links== and therefore more "hypertexty". By the same token, it is also more geeky, so maybe Related Articles== is better. Ortolan88 18:00 Dec 14, 2002 (UTC)

If we want Wikipedia to be widely used, we should avoid geekiness whenever possible. I think it's a turn off for the non-geeky (not that I know many non-geeky persons, but I've heard that they exist). -adam

See also links within paragraphs should be bold

I suggest a convention whereby explicit "see also" links to articles within a paragraph should be made bold. Example:

"Harry potter is a fictional character envisioned by J.K. Rowling when she was 17 years old (see Origins of Harry Potter).

Reasoning: Such links are different from regular links within an article in that they directly elaborate upon the content of or claim in a sentence or paragraph. They frequently are the result of discussions where it was argued that a specific section should be split off because it goes into too much detail. People frequently resort to awkward long sentences like "This issue is discussed further in ..." to highlight the importance of these links; it would be much easier to just make them stand out more by formatting them slightly differently.

Note: I do not propose to bold the see also texts at the bottom of articles, or disambiguation links, or anything else. Just the occasional see also that is thrown into the text.

If there are no objections, I will change the text accordingly. --Eloquence 19:06 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

If an individual author wants to do so on a particular page, fine, but in my opinion there should be no convention or even recommendation along the lines suggested. There are often enough distractions on a page as it is. In any case, this kind of change should definitely not be done by a robot. Peak 04:35, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

See also lists formatting options?

There exist a wide variety of formmating styles within Wikipedia articles for the presentation of "Ses also" lists. Can we get more detailed guidance in the Manual of Style about appropriate "See also" list formatting? I'm primarily concerned with the "See also" lists that end up at the end of an article. -- Bevo 11:23, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)


"See also:" formatting

Michael Shields just made me aware of the fact there are two different styles advised for formatting the "See also:" section. In Wikipedia:Manual of Style, a simple, unitalicised version is 'declared' the standard. While Wikipedia:Boilerplate text advises to italicise "See also:". We should definately have one standard. What are your preferrences? Why? What about bullet lists? (I don't like them but quite a few people use them) --snoyes 22:26, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Agree, we should probably standardize this. I like the bullets, both in lists and elsewhere. My preference for "see also;" is one of these:
but I'm easy - Marshman 02:31, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)
An example of what I meant when I said bullet list can be seen on Chinese written language. Every article in the "See also" list is a bullet point. --snoyes 03:34, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)
If there's only one or two items in see-alsos, there's no point to list-fy them. It looks ugly. --Menchi 03:48, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I don't see any reason for it to be different than the "External links" section, which has a subheading and a bullet list. That is what the manual of style already recomments for multi-section articles, but it says the section should be called "Related topics" instead of "See also". I'd probably suggest deprecating inline "See also" paragraphs in favor of using a "Related topics" section for all articles. --Michael Shields 05:25, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)
What do other encyclopedias do? If you'll notice, most of them have different styles of "See Also/Related topics" formats depending on the importance and length of articles. For example, in the World Book Encyclopedia, major articles have a full-blown Related Articles section with articles listed under appropriate subsections. In minor articles, related topics are listed inline in a separate paragraph as in "See also ..." --seav 05:32, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)
I would like to note that the style exemplified on Chinese written language is the most consistent one, with "external links", "references" and "see also" in similar formats. Also, it offers enough structure for the reader who wishes to look up something quickly. Whether it is called "related topics" or "see also" does not make much difference IMO, but it might be desirable to be keep this consistent throughout Wikipedia. Kosebamse 07:41, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I asked this question a while back here (can't find where it ended up now). Since then I have decided to use bullet lists on a separate section for See also to make stand out and uniform. I think it should be a separate section because it "moves" readers to a different page. Therefore you need the bullet list to make it look cleaner. Also, it should probably be near the end (the only thing I could see after it would be an External links section). Dori 07:58, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)
Personally, I prefer this:
See also: plant, tree
for short lists. For sections that have numerous entries (i.e. over four or five entries), I prefer the seperate section with a list afterwards. But I really don't like the latter "secion-ified" version—it's ugly and obstrusive. The only reason I use it is because with numerous entries, the former version looks worse. But I agree that the "see also" section—whatever the format—should appear directly before the External links section. If a See also item pertains to only one section of a very long article, however, it can appear at the end of that section. Just my $.02... :^) —Frecklefoot 17:36, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I confess I've personally slid towards using the sub-heading and bullet-points format even for just one entry on the list. My thinking has been that the format is more encouraging for others to add to the list, and is easier for the reader to grasp visually. But that is just me; I'm not bothered if someone reverts them. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick
I think it depends upon the number and the emphasis needed for the "See also's". My suggested style(s) (above) would be for one to several links. If the links are pretty significant and there are many of them (often the links are to rather dubious connections), then a bulleted list seems appropriate and most helpful to the user. Order at the bottom (IMHO) should be "See Also", External Links", "References" - Marshman 19:18, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Actually I would do References, See also, External links because the references are usually about the content (text) above and have nothing to do with the see also and external links (if you are including an external link about the references, it would probably go in the references section). That's what I've been doing anyway. Dori 23:35, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

(from Talk:Post-structuralism) I think using bulleted lists for "see also" links wastes screen space and requires too much scrolling. We could get a higher information density, which is almost always a good thing (see Edward Tufte's writing), by running them together in lines. Better to have one screenful of text hold more reference information whenever it can; this is wasting whitespace and not providing better readability. Commas don't provide enough separation in a line of links; how about slashes(/), pipes(|), or dashes(--)? I like dashes best, because they provide good spacing, e.g.

See also: Thing one -- Another reference -- A third reference

Rbellin 16:44, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The current "See also" Manual of Style entry works pretty well for Wikipedia, and in my opinion should NOT be changed to weaken its support for the list style, unless a majority of ALL active Wiki authors votes otherwise. Apart from the many merits of the list style that have been mentioned here and elsewhere, stability is also a significant consideration at this point. Certainly, any change that is likely to be undone again should be avoided.Peak 05:02, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I also stand against bulleted "see also" lists because they take up so much darn space. I don't even think they should be a separate header, like External links. Way, way down at the bottom under a horizontal rule:

See also: (Yes, bold!) Alphabetical order, with commas, yes!
Disambiguation: Galileo is also a satellite and a drink.

I realize this is terribly radical, and I know it's a lot of change, but I say we do it at 180,000 articles instead of at 1,000,000. :) jengod 20:51, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

See also discussion on Village Pump

Sometime back there was a discussion on the village pump on these issues :

  1. whether "See also" can use links already mentioned in the page. There are scenarios where duplicating links are helpful.
  2. what is the difference between "See also" and "Related pages" ? This page makes no attempt at distinguishing them.

There was no consensus and I'd think they're still open. Should the discussions be copied to over to here ? They're currently at Wikipedia:Village_pump/January_2004_archive_3#Wikipedia_guide_to_the_See_also_lists Jay 14:13, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

See also style

I'd like to get rid of ''See also:'' in favour of the ==See also== style. The current argument is that ''See also'' is for small articles with few headers. I argue that a ==See also== section looks just as good and is more consistent across articles. silsor 02:01, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)

I prefer having the option to use an single line ''See also'': style. I do think it looks better in short articles and when there is only a small number of items in the list. I don't feel especially strongly about it though, so if there is consensus to go the other way, then fine go ahead and knock yourselves out changing the format in all the articles that use it. And good luck trying to re-educate all the people accustomed to using it. Bkonrad | Talk 02:33, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I can't stand see also links being in a separate section, especially if there is only one of them. It seems like a waste of space. Angela. 02:37, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)
I agree, and I don't know why we can't have two conventions -- one for single items, one for multiple. This is common in many kinds of writing and scripting. Like for instance in AppleScript I can say in one line
     tell application "Netscape" to use protocol "CSOm" for protocol "mailto"
or I can do the style that you'd use for multiple actions
     tell application "Netscape"
          use protocol "CSOm" for protocol "mailto"
     end tell
And they mean exactly the same thing. (This BTW is the way to tell Netscape to keep its hands off mailto: links and let Eudora handle all the mail.) ;Bear 18:49, 2004 Apr 8 (UTC)

See also

I would like to suggest removing the following guidline:

do not add any links to the "See also" section that are already present in the text of the article

I think this is wrong for the following reasons:

  • It is difficult to maintain.
  • It is not really followed in practice.
  • It makes the see also section less useful. Sometimes a practical way to search for a page is to go to a related page and check the see also section. If this guideline were enforced, you would need to check the entire article.

Gadykozma 14:45, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm ambivalent. Maybe it would be good to just soften the language. Maurreen 15:33, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Gadykozma's first two points. On the final one, it really depends on the length of the article. If it's one or two paragraphs long, there's no need to put the links in the "See also". Where it's a long article, Gady's comment is certainly correct. Since there's no need for the Manual of Style to have softer language when the advice is "do what seems most useful/appropriate in the circumstances", I support Gady's proposal to remove the guideline. jguk 15:48, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I would guess that the original intent was that a "See also" section should be included only when there were useful links that could not be included easily in the text of the article. But it is more useful in long articles that the most useful links are together in one section. It could be changed to:

In short articles, do not add any links to the "See also" section that are already present in the text of the article.

A short article might be defined as an article entirely visible on a terminal without scrolling, but then that despends on the user's resolution settings. That's the best defence I can come up with to keeping this in some form. Unless someone has a better one and a different modification, I'd go with deleting it. Jallan 22:48, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I like this suggestion:

In short articles, do not add any links to the "See also" section that are already present in the text of the article.

Maurreen 17:21, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

First: Notice the also in "See also". Second:No one needs links made in the article body also in a "see also" section in an online article when computers have the capability of instantly searching through text. In windows try Ctrl-F. Hyacinth 03:04, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Duplicate links are sometimes useful in long, sectioned articles. I particularly find that the same topic is likely to occur in the lead paragraph but be fully treated in a much later section. In such cases a link in both places makes sense when the link is an important one. Also, in-text links may be applied to a different form when in text than those in the See also section (which should probably always contain the current proper name of the article linked to while a text reference may not.) There is a difference between a link casually appearing somewhere in the text and the same link appearing explicitly in a See also section as especially recommended. I take the "also" to as a recommendation that one should "also" check the other article(s), without indicating one way or the other whether a following reference is the only gateway to that other article in the article one is reading. I still prefer deletion, but very weakly. It would be nice to actually remove an instruction. But if kept as Maurreen wishes, I recommend shortening:

Again, do not add any links to the "See also" section that are already present in the text of the article. If you remove a redundant link from the See also section of an article, it may be an explicit cross reference (see below), so consider making the link in the main text bold instead.

to

In short articles and within sections of longer articles there should normally be no duplication of links: a particularly important link should be only in a See also section or in the main text in bold style, but not both.

Or even:

Avoid duplicating links in short articles or within sections of long articles. An especially important link can be emphasized by placing it within a See also section or by bolding it.

Jallan 03:31, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Those work for me. Maurreen04:25, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Don't like Jallan's first one. Am ok with nothing, slightly prefer Maurreen's suggestion, and could live with a slightly revised reversion of Jallan's second one ('bold' is not a verb, 'by putting it in bold font' is correct). jguk 06:41, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
In English adjectives and nouns are quite often quite acceptably used as verbs. Googling for the form bolding falls foul of the surname Bolding for obtaining counts, but bolded gets 128,800 hits. Common use of bold as a verb probably arises from computerized word processing. I expect it has gained hold within the last fifteen years. Merriam-Webster Unabridged does list a transitive verb bold, but claims it is obsolete. (The 1913 Webster accepts it as current.) It would appear that many dictionaries, as usual, lag a decade or more behind usage, quite understandibly. However the Canadian Oxford Dictionary released in 1999, which I often consult, states: bold adj., n., & v." and gives for the verb meaning under "v.tr.": "(also boldface) set in bold type." The entry boldface just redirects to bold. This use of bold as a verb is not marked as being a distinctive Canadian practice and I would be astonished to find that this usage was especially Canadian. That said, I don't care if the verb bold is paraphrased. Jallan 19:30, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I'm perfectly aware that every noun can be verbed, but why not go with Maurreen's version? It has the benefit of being shorter. jguk 20:14, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Just for clarification: None of the versions are mine. I was just agreeing with all of Jallan's versions, which were compromises with me, because I'd prefer not to delete the section. Maurreen 04:07, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
OK. I thought 'In short articles, do not add any links to the "See also" section that are already present in the text of the article.' was yours. Go with that if you object to deleting it. jguk 17:22, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
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