 | This template is used on approximately 355,000 pages, or roughly 1% of all pages. To avoid major disruption and server load, any changes should be tested in the template's /sandboxor/testcases subpages, or in your own user subpage. The tested changes can be added to this page in a single edit. Consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them. |
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When a Wikipedia article is large, it is often written in summary style. This template is used after the heading of the summary, to link to the subtopic article that has been summarized. For Category namespace, please use {{Cat main}} instead.
Use of this template should be restricted to the purposes described above. It is not to be used as a substitute for inline links or {{Further}} template. The latter is used when the section expounds a specific aspect of the topic instead of summarizing its article. For example, in phthalate, the template under the "Endocrine disruptor" section should notbe{{Main|Endocrine disruptor}}, because the section specifically deals with phthalate as an endocrine disruptor and not endocrine disruptors in general.
This template should also not be used in lead sections. A lead section is always a summary of its own article, not any other; as such, the only appropriate target for a {{Main}} link in the lead section would be the article itself, which is not useful.
{{Main|page}}{{Main|page1|page2|page3| ... |l1 = label1|l2 = label2|l3 = label3| ... |selfref = yes}}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, ... orlabel 1, label 2, label 3, ... – 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 L1.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. This is only necessary in articles and other content (e.g. templates) that will appear in articles, and need not be added for uses of this template on Wikipedia: namespace pages.TemplateData for Main
This template is used after the heading of a section, to link to a sub-article (or sub-articles) that is entirely about the topic of the section. The template will display, in italics, "Main article: Article 1, Article 2 and Article 3"
| Parameter | Description | Type | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Page 1 | 1 | The name of the first page that you want to link to. If this is not specified, the current page name (with no namespace prefix) is used instead. | Page name | required |
| Page 2 | 2 | The name of the second page that you want to link to. | Page name | optional |
| Page 3 | 3 | The name of the third page that you want to link to. More pages can be added using the parameters "4", "5", etc. | Page name | optional |
| Label 1 | l1 label 1 | What the first linked page is to be displayed as. | String | optional |
| Label 2 | l2 label 2 | What the second linked page is to be displayed as. | String | optional |
| Label 3 | l3 label 3 | What the third linked page is to be displayed as. Other labels can be added by using increasing numbers (starting with "l4" for page 4) as parameter names. | String | optional |
| Self reference | selfref | Set to "yes" if the template is a self-reference to Wikipedia that would not make sense on mirrors or forks of the Wikipedia site. | Boolean | optional |
{{Main}} → Error: no page names specified (help).{{Main|Article}} → {{Main|Article#Section title}} → {{Main|Article#Section|l1=Custom section label}} → {{Main|Article1|Article2|Article3}} →
{{Main|Article1|l1=Custom label 1|Article2|l2=Custom label 2}} → {{Main|(15760) 1992 QB1|l1={{mp|(15760) 1992 QB|1}}}} → If the name of the first page that you want to link to is not specified, the current page name (with no namespace prefix) is used instead:
No errors can be displayed due to the illegal usage of parameters or other usages (i.e. the first parameter can be omitted, other parameters can be used even if the first one is empty (and automatically filled with the current page name (with no namespace prefix)), equals sign can be used as one of the parameters, and template can be used by direct call to the module (using "#invoke")). This is not the case for {{see also}}, for example.
