wikishia:Manual of Style/Linking
This page is a part of the manual of style of Wikishia, regarding the concept of "linking" in WikiShia articles. The links between the articles are what make WikiShia a wiki, and help the readers to know about related concepts to an article and navigate through the articles and find more information whenever needed.
How to Add Links
If you see a word or phrase in an article that a reader might need more information about, you can simply link that word or phrase to any other page in WikiShia. By using double brackets (i.e [[*]]) around a word or phrase it would be linked to a page in WikiShia with a same title.
for example, [[Imam 'Ali (a)]] is the first [[Imam]] of Shia. renders: Imam 'Ali (a) is the first Imam of Shia.
Red Links
When linking a word or phrase, if the target page doesn't exist, this would make a red link. Red links are used when we know for sure that a page about the term will be created soon in WikiShia. This could help WikiShia not to stop expanding, but red links should not be used so much. Make red links only when you are sure that:
- the link will turn to a blue link soon (for example when there is an article in Farsi WikiShia for the term)
- you cannot replace the red link with some explanation (sometimes the explanation does not remove the need for linking)
- you cannot replace the red link with a blue link to a section in another article
- ...
Linking a word or phrase to a page with a different title
There might be times when we need to link a word or phrase to a page with a different title. This could be done with pipelines within the code of the link. The first part within the brackets would be the link target, and the part after the pipeline would be the linked word or phrase in the text.
For example, [[Lady Fatima (a)|Prophet's daughter]] would link the phrase Prophet's daughter to the page Lady Fatima (a).
Linking to a Category
Linking a word or phrase to a category is just like linking to any other pages in WikiShia, with only one deference; when linking to a category is important to put a colon (:) at the beginning, otherwise the whole linked phrase would be hidden in the text. For example:
[[:category:Name of the category|text]]
Do not link to categories unless it's absolutely necessary.
Underlinking
If an article has not enough links to another articles and page in WikiShia, please improve that article by adding more links. But, if by any reason, you cannot do that, please let the others know about the problem, by adding the code {{Underlinked}} at the top of the page, which would show the message below, to next visitors of that page:
 | This article needs more links to other articles to help integrate it into the encyclopedia. |
Overlinking
As much as linking makes good connections between the articles and helps the reader to know more about the concepts, overlinking in an article would make the links useless. The best practice about linking in an article is to link only when you believe that the link is needed to aid understanding of the article and it would be clicked on by significant number of readers. Otherwise, making a new link would be useless.
Places Where Linking is not Acceptable
- Direct quotes (verses, narrations, etc.)
- References