One of the most helpful shortcuts one can learn in linking to articles is the so-called "pipe trick". By placing a pipe (|) after certain strings of text, one can eliminate the need to type huge amounts of replacement text. For example, if the name of an episode of is shared with a person, place or thing in the Xiaolin Showdown Universe, then it will be "disambiguated" with the parenthetical "(episode)". Chucky Choo (character) refers to the character, whereas (TV story) links to the page about the episode. Generally, when writing a sentence about the TV story, one doesn't want "(TV story)" to appear in the body of text. To get rid of it, one must enter some replacement text separated by the full article name by a pipe (|}. The long way of doing that is:
| Code | Notes | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| [[Chucky Choo (episode)|Chucky Choo]] | Gets rid of (episode) the long way | Chucky Choo |
| [[Chucky Choo (episode)|]] | The short-cut for the above | Chucky Choo |
| [[Xiaolinpedia:WIKIFY|WIKIFY]] | The long way to get rid of Namespace: | WIKIFY |
| [[Xiaolinpedia:WIKIFY|]] | The short-cut for the above | WIKIFY |
| ''[[wikipedia:Xiaolin Showdown|Xiaolin Showdown]]'' | The long way to link to a Wikipedia article | Xiaolin Showdown |
| ''[[wikipedia:Xiaolin Showdown (video game)|]]'' | Pipe trick simultaneously truncates the back and front of the string | Xiaolin Showdown |
Note that the pipe trick won't be detectable if you edit this page and look at how this chart is set up. It actually converts what you type into the long form, after you press "save page".
When you might not want to do the pipe trick[]
If the actual name of a thing includes a parenthetical, you wouldn't want to do a pipe trick because it will exclude the parenthetical. Use the "long way" in this case.
When the pipe trick doesn't work[]
There are instances when the pipe trick doesn't work, and you have to revert to the "long way". The most common area in which it fails is when trying to make a link within a <ref> tag. The other major area is when placed within using a variable within a parser function. This last case is really of concern only to advanced users.