Vorlage:Main

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Module:Main

When a Wikipedia article is large, it is often rewritten in summary style. This template is used after the heading of the summary, to link to the sub-article that has been (or will be) summarised. This template can also be used in the Category namespace.

This template can also be used in articles leads when an article is not the "main" article for its subject, but this is controversial. When there are multiple articles, distinct enough to warrant separate articles, but not enough to be very separate subjects. One to be the main article describing the topic, and the others avoiding unnecessary duplication of the main article. A good example would be geography articles where two terms have somewhat different meanings or "contexts", but refer to roughly the same geographic area, e.g. Balkans and Southeast Europe. The Balkans article is the main article, the Southeast Europe article doesn't try to be a duplicate of the Balkans article by having much info on History, natural resources, etc., it leaves that to the Balkans article. This can be thought of as a halfway point between having fully separate articles, and having a redirect.

Its usage should be restricted to the purposes described above. This template is not to be used as a substitute for inline links or as a "see". The latter includes e.g. when a section has a title that happens to have a main article, but the section actually refers to a specific aspect of the article at hand. In Phthalate, for example, the template under the section Endocrine disruptor should not be Main: Endocrine disruptor, because the section specifically deals with phtalate as an endocrine disruptor and not endocrine disruptors in general.

Usage

Basic usage

{{main|page}}

All parameters

{{main
| page1 | page2 | page3 | ...
| l1 = label1 | l2 = label2 | l3 = label3 | ...
| selfref = yes
}}

Parameters

1, 2, 3, ... - the pages to link to. If no page names are specified, the current page name is used instead (without the namespace prefix). Categories and files are automatically escaped with the colon trick, and links to sections are automatically formatted as page § section, rather than the MediaWiki default of page#section.
l1, l2, l3, ...; optional labels for each of the pages to link to (this is for articles where a piped link would be used). Note that the extra parameters use a lower case 'L', for example, l1, not 11.
selfref - if set to "yes", "y", "true" or "1", adds the CSS class "selfref". This is used to denote self-references to Wikipedia. See Template:Selfref for more information.

Examples

{{main|WLAN}} →
{{main|WLAN#Section}} →
{{main|WLAN#Section|l1=Custom section label}} →
{{main|WLAN|Mail|MSOPB}} →
{{main|WLAN|l1=Custom label 1|Mail|l2=Custom label 2}} →

Hatnote templates

For the full editing guideline on hatnotes, see Wikipedia:Hatnote.

Generic

{{Hatnote|CUSTOM TEXT}} →

{{Hatnote|For other senses of this term, see [[SITENAME]]}} →

If a hatnote link leads to a disambiguation page without providing the "(disambiguation)" parameter, this parameter must be added manually. This indicates that the disambiguation link is intentional, and not an error (see WP:INTDABLINK for details):

{{Hatnote|For other senses of this term, see [[Page (disambiguation){{!}}Page]]}} →

Other uses of the same title

"This page is about … For other uses …"

{{About}} is the main template for noting other uses.

Note. When used in main namespace, the word "page" in the following hatnotes is replaced by "article".

{{About|WLAN}} →
{{About|Mail||WLAN}} (When the disambiguation page has a different name – Note the empty second parameter) →
{{About|USE1|USE2|WLAN}} (When there is only one other use) →
{{About|USE1|USE2|WLAN|and|Mail}} (Two pages for USE2) →
{{About|USE1|USE2|WLAN#SUBSECTION{{!}}eduroam}} (Using the {{!}} magic word to give the link a different title) →
{{About|USE1|USE2|WLAN|USE3|Mail|USE4|Netzwerkspeicher|USE5|MSOPB}} (When there are up to four other uses – You should generally create a disambiguation page at this point) →
{{About|USE1|USE2|WLAN|USE3|Mail|other uses}} (When there are several standard other uses and also a disambiguation page with default name – Note that the last page name is not specified) →
{{About|USE1|USE2|WLAN|USE3|Mail|other uses|Netzwerkspeicher}} (When there are several standard other uses and also a disambiguation page with non-default name) →
{{About|USE1|USE2|WLAN|USE3|Mail|other uses|Netzwerkspeicher|and}} →
{{About||USE2|WLAN|USE3|Mail|other uses}} (When you don't need to state the focus of this article/page – Note the empty first parameter) →
{{About|||WLAN|and|Mail}} →

Note: {{for||WLAN|Mail}} produces the same result.

{{About|USE1|section=yes}} →

Note: this hatnote says "section", instead of "article" or "page".

"For …, see …"

{{For}} can be used instead of {{About}} so as not to display: This page is about USE1. but still specify a specific other use. This effect can also be achieved by using an empty first parameter in {{About}} as in:

For example: {{for|OTHER TOPIC|PAGE1}} is the same as {{About||OTHER TOPIC|PAGE1}} (note the empty first parameter).

However, it is somewhat clearer when using the {{For}} template, since the word "about" does not appear in the statement.

{{For|OTHER TOPIC}} →
{{For|OTHER TOPIC|WLAN}} →
{{For|OTHER TOPIC|WLAN|Mail}} →
{{For|OTHER TOPIC|WLAN|Mail|Netzwerkspeicher}} →
{{For||WLAN|Mail}} →

"… redirects here. For other uses, see …"

{{Redirect|REDIRECT}} →
{{Redirect|REDIRECT||WLAN}} →
{{Redirect|REDIRECT|USE1|WLAN}} →
{{Redirect|REDIRECT|USE1|WLAN|USE2|Mail}} →
{{Redirect|REDIRECT|USE1|WLAN|USE2|Mail|USE3|Netzwerkspeicher}} →
{{Redirect|REDIRECT|USE1|WLAN|and|Mail}} →
{{Redirect|REDIRECT|USE1|WLAN|USE2|Mail|and|Netzwerkspeicher}} →

To specify the text following "redirects here.":
{{Redirect3|REDIRECT|TEXT}} →

Distinguish

"Not to be confused with …"

{{Distinguish|WLAN}} →
{{Distinguish|WLAN|Mail|Netzwerkspeicher|MSOPB}} →

Wikipedia self-reference

{{Selfref|ANYTEXT}} →

Notes

These templates are used in thousands of articles; therefore, changing the syntax could break thousands of articles. If you wish to create or edit a disambiguation or redirection template, first ask yourself the following questions:

Do I really need a new template for this? Will it likely be used on any other articles or should I just use {{Hatnote}} instead? Before creating a new template, see the template namespace guideline.
If I change the parameters around on an existing template, do I know what the result will be? Will it break existing uses of the template and if so, can I fix all of the errors? Before making any changes, see Template sandbox and test cases.