This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
From the Village pump - to be refactored
It has been to some extent, a practice of some builders of the Wikipedia that articles should appear magically, out of thin air, as works which are somewhat complete. See stubs for the comment that "A stub on Wikipedia is a very short article, generally of one paragraph or less. Most Wikipedians hate stubs, which is undeserved". This practice is harmful in part for the following reasons:
Prompted by the delete mentioned in User_talk:JamesDay, which seems to have deleted something which was of use - though for reasons the people doing the deleting probably weren't aware of. Hence this post. Please consider changing a page to a valid stub or listing it for deletion if you don't trust that someone who says they have created a page for a purpose will complete the stated purpose and produce a viable page within seven days. Otherwise you're getting in the way of building articles, not helping by cleaning up permanently blank things.
I don't much like building in talk but it's the best cooperative building place short of the main article... unless someone has a better idea for a location than the user pages of multiple contributors, which will also keep the page evolution with the page which is being built? JamesDay 03:05, 17 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I support allowing people to create their stubs from scratch. I'd suggest a simple modificiation of deletion policy to add "don't delete pages (or list them on VfD) that are younger than an hour, except for vandalism". Martin 08:34, 17 Sep 2003 (UTC)
This is kind of a bunch of nonsense. There is a clear line between what is a stub, what is vandalism, etc. Clearly no stub should just contain a line that says this is a stub. It can have nothing in the body except langalinks for all I care. <rant> But to suggest--as Chadloder did on my talk, that seeding an article with a sentence or a paragraph is somehow a crime to be punished is a complete load of crap. The problem again is related to the m:academic standards kick -- a variant, actually -- the m:anal perfectionism trip, which is essentially a call for increased quality of articles from people who themselves cant write such articles. We do what we can-- a stub if its interesting can become an article quickly-- others will remain stubs for a hundred and twenty seven years, simply because noone has been interested enough to finish it. Remember children -- the problem with stubs isnt that they exist-- its that the gripey people who happen to look at them dont know what to add to them, or are too lazy to research it. 戴眩sv 08:50, Sep 17, 2003 (UTC) </rant>
Regarding forgetting to come back to articles: the way I found this 8 hour old article was by looking through Special:Newpages. 50 entries on Special:Newpages takes you back about 2-4 hours. I often look back over the last 200 or so new articles. Personally I find weeding is much more productive in that area -- there's still plenty of wikification, stub warnings, VFD listings, etc. to do, but you don't have to put up with the constant edit conflicts you get when you edit in the top ~30 entries of RC. -- Tim Starling 01:53, Sep 18, 2003 (UTC)
Is it fair to write that the primary reason for wanting to delete in hours rather than weeks is the technical issue of how to find the pages if the creator doesn't have good intent? Any other reasons or is this just that technical one causing people to assume ill intent because of the overhead of waiting to find out if it was? Given the technical issues, I don't see a lot of point in one hour rather than ten minutes - one hour won't gain much for a deliberate work in progress.
Any comments on changing the delete guidance to include this as a possible course of action:
'If an article is short or empty, consider forming an opinion on whether the creator is intending to expand the work within a few days or a week. If yes, consider making the insufficient article a stub and possibly listing in VfD. If there is an explicit statement that the creator has deliberately created it as a work in progress, that strongly suggests interrupted or cooperative work, so good intent and a stub without VfD is preferred.'
What changes, if any, to Wikipedia:Blankpages and Wikipedia:Short articles would be needed to make this a non-issue and assume goodwill in all cases? JamesDay 09:03, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Okay, I'm still confused: What exactly is the relationship between, and the policy regarding linking between the Wikipedia and the Wiktionary. I saw several red links edited into Wiktionary links, at which point...I became confused. My basic question is which is preferable, if there is a definition on Wiktionary, but no article on Wikipedia, should we leave a red link or link to Wiktionary (and perhaps add to the requested list)? Thanks in advance for any help/clarification/sympathetic nods, Paige 21:17, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
From the Village pump - to be refactored
It has been to some extent, a practice of some builders of the Wikipedia that articles should appear magically, out of thin air, as works which are somewhat complete. See stubs for the comment that "A stub on Wikipedia is a very short article, generally of one paragraph or less. Most Wikipedians hate stubs, which is undeserved". This practice is harmful in part for the following reasons:
Prompted by the delete mentioned in User_talk:JamesDay, which seems to have deleted something which was of use - though for reasons the people doing the deleting probably weren't aware of. Hence this post. Please consider changing a page to a valid stub or listing it for deletion if you don't trust that someone who says they have created a page for a purpose will complete the stated purpose and produce a viable page within seven days. Otherwise you're getting in the way of building articles, not helping by cleaning up permanently blank things.
I don't much like building in talk but it's the best cooperative building place short of the main article... unless someone has a better idea for a location than the user pages of multiple contributors, which will also keep the page evolution with the page which is being built? JamesDay 03:05, 17 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I support allowing people to create their stubs from scratch. I'd suggest a simple modificiation of deletion policy to add "don't delete pages (or list them on VfD) that are younger than an hour, except for vandalism". Martin 08:34, 17 Sep 2003 (UTC)
This is kind of a bunch of nonsense. There is a clear line between what is a stub, what is vandalism, etc. Clearly no stub should just contain a line that says this is a stub. It can have nothing in the body except langalinks for all I care. <rant> But to suggest--as Chadloder did on my talk, that seeding an article with a sentence or a paragraph is somehow a crime to be punished is a complete load of crap. The problem again is related to the m:academic standards kick -- a variant, actually -- the m:anal perfectionism trip, which is essentially a call for increased quality of articles from people who themselves cant write such articles. We do what we can-- a stub if its interesting can become an article quickly-- others will remain stubs for a hundred and twenty seven years, simply because noone has been interested enough to finish it. Remember children -- the problem with stubs isnt that they exist-- its that the gripey people who happen to look at them dont know what to add to them, or are too lazy to research it. 戴眩sv 08:50, Sep 17, 2003 (UTC) </rant>
Regarding forgetting to come back to articles: the way I found this 8 hour old article was by looking through Special:Newpages. 50 entries on Special:Newpages takes you back about 2-4 hours. I often look back over the last 200 or so new articles. Personally I find weeding is much more productive in that area -- there's still plenty of wikification, stub warnings, VFD listings, etc. to do, but you don't have to put up with the constant edit conflicts you get when you edit in the top ~30 entries of RC. -- Tim Starling 01:53, Sep 18, 2003 (UTC)
Is it fair to write that the primary reason for wanting to delete in hours rather than weeks is the technical issue of how to find the pages if the creator doesn't have good intent? Any other reasons or is this just that technical one causing people to assume ill intent because of the overhead of waiting to find out if it was? Given the technical issues, I don't see a lot of point in one hour rather than ten minutes - one hour won't gain much for a deliberate work in progress.
Any comments on changing the delete guidance to include this as a possible course of action:
'If an article is short or empty, consider forming an opinion on whether the creator is intending to expand the work within a few days or a week. If yes, consider making the insufficient article a stub and possibly listing in VfD. If there is an explicit statement that the creator has deliberately created it as a work in progress, that strongly suggests interrupted or cooperative work, so good intent and a stub without VfD is preferred.'
What changes, if any, to Wikipedia:Blankpages and Wikipedia:Short articles would be needed to make this a non-issue and assume goodwill in all cases? JamesDay 09:03, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Okay, I'm still confused: What exactly is the relationship between, and the policy regarding linking between the Wikipedia and the Wiktionary. I saw several red links edited into Wiktionary links, at which point...I became confused. My basic question is which is preferable, if there is a definition on Wiktionary, but no article on Wikipedia, should we leave a red link or link to Wiktionary (and perhaps add to the requested list)? Thanks in advance for any help/clarification/sympathetic nods, Paige 21:17, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)