SMcCandlish, why would uses of this template to link other article material be considered unprintworthy Wikipedia self-references? What I read from Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Self-references to avoid is that articles should not say, "For more information, see the Wikipedia article on Foo." But it should be fine to use, "See also Foo." The MOS page (probably updated later than the template documentation) actually recommends using this template for these permissible cases, which are not considered self-references. --Paul_012 (talk) 17:50, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
((main))
, navbars, categories, GA/FA badges, protection notices, cleanup/dispute templates, etc., are all unprintworthy (explicitly or by cascade). If you generate a printed version of the article (through our feature for that, not just from doing File > Print from your browser) these features should not appear in the end result (unless you force them to by turning off "Hide interface elements"). When you do "See also [[Foo]]
" in an article, that is a reference to other content somewhere else that is not part of the article content and which will not make sense or be usable if the article content is reused in some other context, like as part of a book chapter. By contrast, a "See [[#FOO|FOO]], below
" is in the same article's content and is printworthy, and this is why this template supports |selfref=n
AKA |printworthy=y
AKA |unprintworthy=n
. I'm glad you raised this question, though. I had not looked at the "Print/export: Print page" output in a long time, and I can see something right up top – the "(Wikidata · Import · Edit and import)" stuff that's part of the short description output – that has been improperly made printworthy but should not be. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 19:30, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
((Further))
) are unprintworthy, as trans-article cross-references; they're all produced by the template/module for hatnotes, which uses the hatnote
class, one of several for unprintworthiness. As for "See also" as a section, it probably should be treated as unprintworthy, but I don't know if we have code in place doing this already. It probably could be done, since that is one of the few sections with an invariant name (the other being "Further reading", which properly should have complete enough references they could be of use to a paper [or otherwise off-site] reader, and so is arguably printworthy). Like everything else on WP, the printworthiness systemics are something built over time and probably perpetually incomplete. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:29, 20 May 2020 (UTC)