Editing Project:Observatory Users Manual (section)

====== Double-check links in Article Drafts======
Always test your links and fix any broken ones before finalizing any page Draft. Ask your editor for help if needed. ''(See: [[Project:Observatory Users Manual#Links|“Links” in the Glossary]].)''
 
One common issue with links is if you accidentally used internal links instead of external links (easy to do, especially if you copy-pasted without converting to wikitext first). If when you click a link in an Article Draft, the result is a prompt to create a new page on the Observatory or an error message, that usually means it was accidentally formatted as an internal instead of an external link. Pay attention to if you used the single bracket <span style="color:#e83e8c;">[</span> (for external links; which you use for most links) versus double bracket <span style="color:#e83e8c;">[[</span> (internal links, only for pages on the Observatory or Wikipedia and its project sites) in “Source edit” mode, or click the link in “Visual edit” mode and see if it’s toggled to the wrong kind of link (internal when it should be external) and then change it to external and fix the URL to the desired result (you will probably have to remove '''<nowiki>https://observatory.wiki/</nowiki>''' and add in '''<nowiki>https://www</nowiki>.''' depending on what the original link was; make sure you copy from the URL bar for the correct page, since that’s easier than removing and replacing part of a URL—and '''always test the result again after you’ve clicked to Save that new link'''.
 
Note: This also applies to any text field in any namespace, not just Article pages but also in Guide pages, Author pages, Source pages, Classic pages, Area pages, and more.