The policy really needs to be decided. Anyone have any ideas? -- AllyUnion (talk) 05:29, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Please keep in mind:
Thanks. -- AllyUnion (talk) 01:49, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'm for keeping only the most most specific tags, and trying my darndest not to use more than one unless it's really, really necessary, like Interstate Commerce Commission. A structure should be set up via Category: hierarchies, as is done with {{sci-stub}} and everything under it. The need for more categories seems to come into focus gradually (I think we may need a geo-stub for geology, and maybe for biochemistry---and does anatomy go under medicine or biology? I have it under science right now), and others seem mightily specific or weird, like telecom and wireless.
This whole thing should be relatively fast-and-loose, but how it ultimately should take form should be determined by the people who actually fix stubs. Are any people here stub-hunters? grendel| khan 05:50, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)
I think that including zillions of stub categories on a page is just annoying. It would be better to just include one (maybe two) stub category, and any other categories on the page should be REAL categories. Once it is marked as a stub, it's obviously a stub. No need to pound that in harder. Does that make sense? -- ssd 07:25, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I can see a need, occasionally, to use two stub. For example, one of my main interests is Japanese literature. For most of the minor topics in that area, they probably need only a japan-stub. There are still, however, some major topics in Japanese literature that are still stubs, and those articles should probably get both a japan-stub and lit-stub. My personal opinion is that the stub messages should be moved to the talk pages, or, at the very least, if there are two stubs, to only have one on the main page, and the other on the talk page. gK ¿? 09:17, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
A maximum of two sounds sensible. More than that is just asking for trouble---we have the category system, which is well-developed, for that sort of thing. The only reason to categorize stubs in two categories is if we honestly can't figure out which will have the right contributors looking at it. It shouldn't be common---I've ended up using multiple tags in... one in fifty? one in a hundred? of the stubs I've categorized. One tag should be highly preferred, two when absolutely necessary, more than that never. These things aren't permanent, they're just a way of directing the articles to people who will write about them. grendel| khan 09:22, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)
How about editing {{Metastub}} to add a variable (or whatever it is called) for additional stub categories? so you could have {{Judaism-stub| extra = People stubs| extra = History stubs}} at Amram Gaon. This would allow an article to be listed in all the appropriate stub categories, while leaving only one main stub template visible (the "extra" would only add category links). -- Circeus 02:56, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)
Voting closed on 31 Jan 2005, 23:59 (UTC)
I'm tempted to say that 10 articles is too few. A new stub category shouldn't be necessary unless you have an existing stub category that is just too big (say, more than a few thousand). Of course, if a stub category starts with a hundred articles, and over time shrinks to 15, I wouldn't necessarily consider merging the category with another one. (It would be better to just finish writing the remaining articles and empty it instead of merging it.) -- ssd 07:28, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Stub categories are just more bogus stuff to remember. There shouldn't be more than a few of them, if that many. How about just using {{stub}} and regular categories. Then the software can automatically maintain stub lists for each of the regular categories, and add the article to the stub list when it sees the {{stub}} directive.
(From unsigned user: Phr)
Currently some categories are currently too big while some are too small. I feel that each category should ideally around 10 - 200 articles in size, as a convenient to-do list for different projects. Currently categories like compu-stubs, geo-stubs and bio-stubs are too big and need to be split into good subcategories, while categories like disney-stubs are too specific and could go somewhere else. I also think that for every stub category that is created there must be some sort of control for it like someone watching the category so the number of articles dosen't get too low or high. Norman Rogers\ talk 22:58, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Isn't 100 articles a bit high? It's very hard to get an idea if there are going to be as many as 100 articles without making the category and putting the articles into it. (Wikipedia and Google searches only get you so far.) Furthermore, a good deal of the existing categories have never had as many as 100 articles. I would say 40 or 50 would be a more reasonable limit, and more in keeping with current de facto standards. Also there are often categories that could and should have 100 or more articles, but it takes some serious detective work to find them.
The point, I thought, was to get these categories specific enough that someone with an interest in the subject area could go through them, looking for something to work on. - Aranel ("Sarah") 02:45, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
As the policy is not finalize, the only thing for policy and guidelines are at here: Wikipedia:Stub_categories#Stub_Category_Creation_Guidelines. Netoholic decided to change it from 10 to 100, and I only merely reflected that here on the policy page.
The basic idea is that one should not create a new category unless they really have to. One should only be creating a category to help cut down existing categories down to managable number of articles. We want to keep categories which are very broad in nature, so that even if they reach under the 100 article limit, they are kept in the event that article does not fall under existing subcategories. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:18, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
After thinking about it for a couple of days, I've started to wonder if the way that I have been handling Japanese literature stubs (labeling most stubs as a japan-stub, but a very few of the more "important" topics as both a japan-stub and a lit-stub) is the right way to go. Doing it that way is sort of like saying the minor Japanese literature articles are not really literature (even though I've seen the most trivial English-language fancruft marked as lit-stubs. At the same time that doing things that way may be a symptom of an unintentional systemic bias, it may also overemphasize the inherent Englishness of the Wikipedia by making the literature stubs category mostly English-language topics.
I now think that it may be much better to label all literature stubs as lit-stubs on their main page, and then add a geographic stub, such as the japan-stub, on the talk page when it is appropriate. Doing it this way would allow persons who are interested in literature in general to see the non-English-language literature stubs (and might get them interested in tackling a topic outside of their special interests) but still have the same articles listed in the Japanese stubs category (where, quite honestly, the people most likely to update and fix the stubbiness of an article will probably be looking).
Another example of this unintential bias in the Wikipedia is when I changed a bunch of the stub labels for Japanese TV stations and TV networks from the old {{msg:stub}} to japan-stubs. If I had labeled them as station-stubs, the articles might be easier to find for those people who have added nice infoboxes to many of the current station-stubs and would help give the Japanese TV station articles the same look-and-feel as the British and American station articles.
So my proposal is that most stubs and substubs should be converted to some general subject stub on their main page, and a geographic stub, when appropriate, should be added to the talk page. Also: for any articles currently labeled with a geographic stub that are not primarily about that geographic region in some way, the geographic stub should be moved to the talk page, and a more general subject stub added to the main page. gK ¿? 05:51, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
While we're on the subject, I've gots lots of stub problems. First is dissemination of information. When did we start getting these specific stubs? How does one know which ones are out there? First I stumbled upon one, then another one--I love them but I wish there were a Wikipedia news flash page where one could check in daily or weekly to see what's changed. The same thing happened with categories.
Second, I've been calling all my new short entries 'stubs'. At least one well-known Wikipedian out there disagrees, pointing out that ALL Wikipedia articles are candidates for expansion and so only entries that cannot possibly be considered articles--that is, a line or two, should be given a stub message. Others feel that these are 'sub-stubs'. I've seen articles with three or four paragraphs and a stub message, and articles of one paragraph without one.
So, we're talking about stub sorting and we haven't yet got the stub definition down pat.
Quill 22:57, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
See Template:Ling-stub, for linguistics stubs. It uses an image which is a linguistics-oriented depiction of the fact that the article is a stub (not a depiction of linguistics). This makes more sense to me. After all, everyone who's read the article knows it's about linguistics; the stub notice is to announce that it's a stub! I'm not sure how one would do that with most topics, though. (Perhaps for writer-stub or lit-stub one can use a pencil stub.) [[— msh210 01:32, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
AllyUnion (who, incidentally, has been doing a lot of great work — thanks, AU!) has added a rule to the policy page: get any new stub notice/category approved at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting before creating it. Was this policy decision discussed here? If so, I missed it. Is it in the history of this page, but erased from the current page? Perhaps I shoul check.... — msh210 17:03, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Fine, let's do that. — msh210 17:07, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to see if the number of stub categories can be reduced to 200. This is not an arbitrary number. It is the number that will display on one page so when I go to figure out what stub category to use I can see them all at once. Does this number sound attainable? RJFJR 02:20, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
I have been struck by the incompleteness of the stub-categorisation system in certain respects. While some the individual US state of Utah seem to have a bio-stub category of its own, whole regions of the world are without a non-geo stub category - so when there is a stub that relates to Norwegian culture or to a Georgian (Caucasus) politician or to a Serbian historical figure, there is no way to place them geographically (these are three real instances I have found in the past few days). I think that geographic sorting is very important, since people tend to be more expert and more interested in history, culture and politics by region. My suggestion: every region which has a geo-stub category but no non-geo-stub category should either (a) be given a non-geo-stub category as well, or (b) the geo-stub category should be extended to cover local topics not related to geography. How would this work? For example, with the Caucasus, either (a) there should be a {Caucasus-stub} category to form a pair with {Caucasus-geo-stub} or (b) we should be allowed to use {Caucasus-geo-stub} to cover non-geography issues (perhaps after a renaming). At the meoment it doesn't feel very consistent, a bit like we're saying "Sure, we acknowledge that there are places in the Caucasus, and that people might create stubs to describe them, but surely nobody would make a stub to describe what happens there(!)" These slightly far-flung places are likely to throw up stub topics precisely because people are unlikely to know enough about them to write a full-blown article. When I label a Caucasus politician stub as just a "politician-stub" then my heart sinks a little because I know that that is quite unlikely to actually speed up the stub being expanded. Labelling him as both a Caucasus-stub and Politician-stub might have more effect. In fact I think that geographical completeness is so important that for such categories the 100-minimum rule should be overruled. Does anybody else have any opinions? -- VivaEmilyDavies 00:29, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Having been largely responsible for the splitting up of geo-stub into its subcategories, I'd like to dip my oar in here. The geo-stubs are split the way they are to completely cover the entire planet, but to keep categories with a reasonable number of items (at least 50 - although some other people have created individual country stubs that are smaller). In the case of the US states, this was due to individual WikiProjects for those states. Some countries simply will never reach a required number of geo-stub articles. As far as country-stubs (non-geo) are concerned, they have been created only when there are sufficient articles to warrant them. They are more tricky than geo-stubs, because they exist not only in area but in time. By this I mean that a place in Austria today gets a Austria-geo-stub. An item relating to Austrian history, say, may also deal with Hungary, or Germany, or Croatia, or any of a number of other countries, due to the changes of country borders with time. Again, some people have created smaller categories for individual countries.
I wouldn't totally recommend a direct one-to-one mapping of country stubs and country geo stubs. The reason is that - particularly with small countries - there may be a strong preponderabce of one type of stub or the other. Pitcairn, for example has only got pitcairn-stub. The dozen or so items in there are overwhelmingly geo-stub items, but if you give them a separate category, you would have a ludicrously small number left in the main category (two, IIRC). On the other hand, Monaco-stub is on 40 items, of which only about three are geo-stubs. the reasons in both cases are obvious - Monaco is a densely populated tiny country. Lots of people, lots of history, but very little geography. Pitcairn has 50 people; it is geography and very little else. My suggestion is to keep the categories as they are, and continue to monitor the size of the multi-nation categories. If any of them get to the stage where individual countries can be split off, then that is the time to consider doing so (at the moment - as far as geo-stubs are concerned - Azerbaijan, French Polynesia and Trinidad & Tobago are close enough that if there were WikiProjects for them I would be proposing separate categories). If the number of stubs continues to grow, then most countries will eventually be candidates for separate geo and non-geo stubs, but until then there is no need to create extra stub categories just for the sake of it.
Grutness|
hello?
10:09, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I don't see a recommendation as to the placement of the stub message on a page in the pages related to policy for this Project (if I missed it, please point me at it and we can trim off this talk-page entry).
My thinking is to either a) add something to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Policy, but as a section called "Recommendations - Not Policy" or b) make a new very small page for "aesthetics of stubbing". Here's my suggested text, based on the previous discussion with an additional "clause":
In addition to this, maybe we can add to the policy page something like this:
Courtland 23:54, 2005 Mar 27 (UTC)
I sense there's been a fork - most of this stuff has been being discussed over at
Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Guidelines for the last couple of months. I only found out about this page here in the last 48 hours.
Grutness|
hello?
09:57, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
If what we've been working with for a while isn't policy, what is the stub-related policy(policies) and, after months now, is there any notion that there ever will be input into policy from this group?
Courtland 23:04, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)
Speak for yourself - several of us have been been following the "
Guidelines" as a policy!
Grutness|
hello?
10:11, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I've just had someone revert my link to Wikipedia:WikiProject Formula One in the {{ F1-stub}}, citing a prior, similar, revert by User:Rdsmith4 with the edit summary "WikiProject shouldn't be linked from the article namespace". Given that a ton of stubs have links to relevant WikiProjects (IMO, a good thing), and that I can't find any precedent here or at Wikipedia:WikiProject, I'm reverting, but I would like some clarification if there is anything wrong. [Crossposted to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject ] - SoM 15:46, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Has anyone heard of this guideline that WikiProjects should not be linked to from the article name space? I'm wondering if this is a being-bold effort on the part of Rdsmith4? Not a bad thing per se but I'd hate to see a layer of Wikipedia effectively hidden from view by the efforts of one or a small number of sensitive users. Courtland 12:49, 2005 May 24 (UTC)
You may want to take a look at this: Template:Forteana-stub -- Nabla 18:37, 2005 May 9 (UTC)
I moved this page to Wikipedia:Stub sorting guideline, but then decided that I don't know enough about stub sorting and moved it back. So, if this is a policy, it should be marked as such, if it is a guideline it should be renamed. Zocky 13:19, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
Doing double transclusion, as both MediaWiki m:developers User:Jamesday and User:Tim Starling have said, is a drain on system resources (for example, see what Jamesday says here). On the other hand, having some consistent guide to similar templates (such as the sister projects or the stub templates) is a good idea (you should have seen all the different designs for topic stubs before template:metastub and template:metapicstub were created). Whether this style guide is another template that is subst:'d when the new template is created, or copied-and-pasted is debatable. My own opinion is that the copy-and-paste method will mean that it will be much less likely to be used and be more likely to result in non-matching templates.
Another way to use design templates: Add some explanation text to the design template that will explain how it should be used, and prevent it from being used in double transclusion. For example: for the metastub template, the text might be something like:
After creation of each design template with the additional text, each one should then be protected from further modification. BlankVerse ∅ 10:58, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
This follows from Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#.5B.5BTemplate:Torture-stub.5D.5D and Wikipedia_talk:Stub_sorting_policy#Minimum_number_of_articles_in_a_stub_category and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria#.26.23123.3B.26.23123.3Btorture-stub.26.23125.3B.26.23125.3B
I don't want to revisit the matter of the threshold for stub count for the creation of a stub type. I think there's general consensus that a handful of stubs is not enough, that a hundred might be difficult to achieve for narrow topics of active and specific interest, and that WikiProjects are exempt from the threshold.
What I'm curious about is when a stub type is created that does not abide by the guideline and is subsequently found. Under what circumstances should this found stub type be preserved or deleted? The stub type in question at WP:TFD is {{ Torture-stub}}. As Grutness points out, this is a pre-existing stub type and is therefore not subject to the 100 article threshold for existence. However, it was created on 1 May by the user LevelCheck and began existence with a very few or no referring articles. Subsequently, the stub type was brought to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria as a potential type for deletion. Two things seem to have gone awry at this point. First, it was put up on WP:TFD without much discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria and second, it started to be used apparently under the (unwritten and doens't need to be written) guideline "if it exists, use it". Neither one of these things is bad in and of itself, but taken together they clash and the clash has gone to WP:TFD for resolution.
What I'm proposing is that we not automatically say "if it exists, use it". I do agree with the "if it passes below a stub count we would normally use as a threshold for making a stub type, don't delete it", but that wasn't the case here. I don't think I'd write this into the policy but would set it aside as "precedent based on policy" which could include a judgement on this particular issue as well as things related to the threshold stub count (100, 60, etc.) ... essentially a "common law" interpretation of the policy, which could sit on a page like Wikipedia:Stub_sorting_policy/Precedents.
Heading off some criticisms, I think this actually works against instruction creep and bureaucracy in that every tiny bit of circumstance isn't encoded in a rule set. Further, it would provide a body of interpretation to refer to in times of conflict when policy interpretations get heated.
Thanks for giving this a bit of thought.
Courtland 17:07, 2005 May 21 (UTC)
Excuse me for being pedantic, but since this page isn't actually policy, maybe it should be renamed to Wikipedia:Stub sorting guideline? R adiant _* 12:37, May 23, 2005 (UTC)
The policy really needs to be decided. Anyone have any ideas? -- AllyUnion (talk) 05:29, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Please keep in mind:
Thanks. -- AllyUnion (talk) 01:49, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'm for keeping only the most most specific tags, and trying my darndest not to use more than one unless it's really, really necessary, like Interstate Commerce Commission. A structure should be set up via Category: hierarchies, as is done with {{sci-stub}} and everything under it. The need for more categories seems to come into focus gradually (I think we may need a geo-stub for geology, and maybe for biochemistry---and does anatomy go under medicine or biology? I have it under science right now), and others seem mightily specific or weird, like telecom and wireless.
This whole thing should be relatively fast-and-loose, but how it ultimately should take form should be determined by the people who actually fix stubs. Are any people here stub-hunters? grendel| khan 05:50, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)
I think that including zillions of stub categories on a page is just annoying. It would be better to just include one (maybe two) stub category, and any other categories on the page should be REAL categories. Once it is marked as a stub, it's obviously a stub. No need to pound that in harder. Does that make sense? -- ssd 07:25, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I can see a need, occasionally, to use two stub. For example, one of my main interests is Japanese literature. For most of the minor topics in that area, they probably need only a japan-stub. There are still, however, some major topics in Japanese literature that are still stubs, and those articles should probably get both a japan-stub and lit-stub. My personal opinion is that the stub messages should be moved to the talk pages, or, at the very least, if there are two stubs, to only have one on the main page, and the other on the talk page. gK ¿? 09:17, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
A maximum of two sounds sensible. More than that is just asking for trouble---we have the category system, which is well-developed, for that sort of thing. The only reason to categorize stubs in two categories is if we honestly can't figure out which will have the right contributors looking at it. It shouldn't be common---I've ended up using multiple tags in... one in fifty? one in a hundred? of the stubs I've categorized. One tag should be highly preferred, two when absolutely necessary, more than that never. These things aren't permanent, they're just a way of directing the articles to people who will write about them. grendel| khan 09:22, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)
How about editing {{Metastub}} to add a variable (or whatever it is called) for additional stub categories? so you could have {{Judaism-stub| extra = People stubs| extra = History stubs}} at Amram Gaon. This would allow an article to be listed in all the appropriate stub categories, while leaving only one main stub template visible (the "extra" would only add category links). -- Circeus 02:56, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)
Voting closed on 31 Jan 2005, 23:59 (UTC)
I'm tempted to say that 10 articles is too few. A new stub category shouldn't be necessary unless you have an existing stub category that is just too big (say, more than a few thousand). Of course, if a stub category starts with a hundred articles, and over time shrinks to 15, I wouldn't necessarily consider merging the category with another one. (It would be better to just finish writing the remaining articles and empty it instead of merging it.) -- ssd 07:28, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Stub categories are just more bogus stuff to remember. There shouldn't be more than a few of them, if that many. How about just using {{stub}} and regular categories. Then the software can automatically maintain stub lists for each of the regular categories, and add the article to the stub list when it sees the {{stub}} directive.
(From unsigned user: Phr)
Currently some categories are currently too big while some are too small. I feel that each category should ideally around 10 - 200 articles in size, as a convenient to-do list for different projects. Currently categories like compu-stubs, geo-stubs and bio-stubs are too big and need to be split into good subcategories, while categories like disney-stubs are too specific and could go somewhere else. I also think that for every stub category that is created there must be some sort of control for it like someone watching the category so the number of articles dosen't get too low or high. Norman Rogers\ talk 22:58, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Isn't 100 articles a bit high? It's very hard to get an idea if there are going to be as many as 100 articles without making the category and putting the articles into it. (Wikipedia and Google searches only get you so far.) Furthermore, a good deal of the existing categories have never had as many as 100 articles. I would say 40 or 50 would be a more reasonable limit, and more in keeping with current de facto standards. Also there are often categories that could and should have 100 or more articles, but it takes some serious detective work to find them.
The point, I thought, was to get these categories specific enough that someone with an interest in the subject area could go through them, looking for something to work on. - Aranel ("Sarah") 02:45, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
As the policy is not finalize, the only thing for policy and guidelines are at here: Wikipedia:Stub_categories#Stub_Category_Creation_Guidelines. Netoholic decided to change it from 10 to 100, and I only merely reflected that here on the policy page.
The basic idea is that one should not create a new category unless they really have to. One should only be creating a category to help cut down existing categories down to managable number of articles. We want to keep categories which are very broad in nature, so that even if they reach under the 100 article limit, they are kept in the event that article does not fall under existing subcategories. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:18, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
After thinking about it for a couple of days, I've started to wonder if the way that I have been handling Japanese literature stubs (labeling most stubs as a japan-stub, but a very few of the more "important" topics as both a japan-stub and a lit-stub) is the right way to go. Doing it that way is sort of like saying the minor Japanese literature articles are not really literature (even though I've seen the most trivial English-language fancruft marked as lit-stubs. At the same time that doing things that way may be a symptom of an unintentional systemic bias, it may also overemphasize the inherent Englishness of the Wikipedia by making the literature stubs category mostly English-language topics.
I now think that it may be much better to label all literature stubs as lit-stubs on their main page, and then add a geographic stub, such as the japan-stub, on the talk page when it is appropriate. Doing it this way would allow persons who are interested in literature in general to see the non-English-language literature stubs (and might get them interested in tackling a topic outside of their special interests) but still have the same articles listed in the Japanese stubs category (where, quite honestly, the people most likely to update and fix the stubbiness of an article will probably be looking).
Another example of this unintential bias in the Wikipedia is when I changed a bunch of the stub labels for Japanese TV stations and TV networks from the old {{msg:stub}} to japan-stubs. If I had labeled them as station-stubs, the articles might be easier to find for those people who have added nice infoboxes to many of the current station-stubs and would help give the Japanese TV station articles the same look-and-feel as the British and American station articles.
So my proposal is that most stubs and substubs should be converted to some general subject stub on their main page, and a geographic stub, when appropriate, should be added to the talk page. Also: for any articles currently labeled with a geographic stub that are not primarily about that geographic region in some way, the geographic stub should be moved to the talk page, and a more general subject stub added to the main page. gK ¿? 05:51, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
While we're on the subject, I've gots lots of stub problems. First is dissemination of information. When did we start getting these specific stubs? How does one know which ones are out there? First I stumbled upon one, then another one--I love them but I wish there were a Wikipedia news flash page where one could check in daily or weekly to see what's changed. The same thing happened with categories.
Second, I've been calling all my new short entries 'stubs'. At least one well-known Wikipedian out there disagrees, pointing out that ALL Wikipedia articles are candidates for expansion and so only entries that cannot possibly be considered articles--that is, a line or two, should be given a stub message. Others feel that these are 'sub-stubs'. I've seen articles with three or four paragraphs and a stub message, and articles of one paragraph without one.
So, we're talking about stub sorting and we haven't yet got the stub definition down pat.
Quill 22:57, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
See Template:Ling-stub, for linguistics stubs. It uses an image which is a linguistics-oriented depiction of the fact that the article is a stub (not a depiction of linguistics). This makes more sense to me. After all, everyone who's read the article knows it's about linguistics; the stub notice is to announce that it's a stub! I'm not sure how one would do that with most topics, though. (Perhaps for writer-stub or lit-stub one can use a pencil stub.) [[— msh210 01:32, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
AllyUnion (who, incidentally, has been doing a lot of great work — thanks, AU!) has added a rule to the policy page: get any new stub notice/category approved at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting before creating it. Was this policy decision discussed here? If so, I missed it. Is it in the history of this page, but erased from the current page? Perhaps I shoul check.... — msh210 17:03, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Fine, let's do that. — msh210 17:07, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to see if the number of stub categories can be reduced to 200. This is not an arbitrary number. It is the number that will display on one page so when I go to figure out what stub category to use I can see them all at once. Does this number sound attainable? RJFJR 02:20, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
I have been struck by the incompleteness of the stub-categorisation system in certain respects. While some the individual US state of Utah seem to have a bio-stub category of its own, whole regions of the world are without a non-geo stub category - so when there is a stub that relates to Norwegian culture or to a Georgian (Caucasus) politician or to a Serbian historical figure, there is no way to place them geographically (these are three real instances I have found in the past few days). I think that geographic sorting is very important, since people tend to be more expert and more interested in history, culture and politics by region. My suggestion: every region which has a geo-stub category but no non-geo-stub category should either (a) be given a non-geo-stub category as well, or (b) the geo-stub category should be extended to cover local topics not related to geography. How would this work? For example, with the Caucasus, either (a) there should be a {Caucasus-stub} category to form a pair with {Caucasus-geo-stub} or (b) we should be allowed to use {Caucasus-geo-stub} to cover non-geography issues (perhaps after a renaming). At the meoment it doesn't feel very consistent, a bit like we're saying "Sure, we acknowledge that there are places in the Caucasus, and that people might create stubs to describe them, but surely nobody would make a stub to describe what happens there(!)" These slightly far-flung places are likely to throw up stub topics precisely because people are unlikely to know enough about them to write a full-blown article. When I label a Caucasus politician stub as just a "politician-stub" then my heart sinks a little because I know that that is quite unlikely to actually speed up the stub being expanded. Labelling him as both a Caucasus-stub and Politician-stub might have more effect. In fact I think that geographical completeness is so important that for such categories the 100-minimum rule should be overruled. Does anybody else have any opinions? -- VivaEmilyDavies 00:29, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Having been largely responsible for the splitting up of geo-stub into its subcategories, I'd like to dip my oar in here. The geo-stubs are split the way they are to completely cover the entire planet, but to keep categories with a reasonable number of items (at least 50 - although some other people have created individual country stubs that are smaller). In the case of the US states, this was due to individual WikiProjects for those states. Some countries simply will never reach a required number of geo-stub articles. As far as country-stubs (non-geo) are concerned, they have been created only when there are sufficient articles to warrant them. They are more tricky than geo-stubs, because they exist not only in area but in time. By this I mean that a place in Austria today gets a Austria-geo-stub. An item relating to Austrian history, say, may also deal with Hungary, or Germany, or Croatia, or any of a number of other countries, due to the changes of country borders with time. Again, some people have created smaller categories for individual countries.
I wouldn't totally recommend a direct one-to-one mapping of country stubs and country geo stubs. The reason is that - particularly with small countries - there may be a strong preponderabce of one type of stub or the other. Pitcairn, for example has only got pitcairn-stub. The dozen or so items in there are overwhelmingly geo-stub items, but if you give them a separate category, you would have a ludicrously small number left in the main category (two, IIRC). On the other hand, Monaco-stub is on 40 items, of which only about three are geo-stubs. the reasons in both cases are obvious - Monaco is a densely populated tiny country. Lots of people, lots of history, but very little geography. Pitcairn has 50 people; it is geography and very little else. My suggestion is to keep the categories as they are, and continue to monitor the size of the multi-nation categories. If any of them get to the stage where individual countries can be split off, then that is the time to consider doing so (at the moment - as far as geo-stubs are concerned - Azerbaijan, French Polynesia and Trinidad & Tobago are close enough that if there were WikiProjects for them I would be proposing separate categories). If the number of stubs continues to grow, then most countries will eventually be candidates for separate geo and non-geo stubs, but until then there is no need to create extra stub categories just for the sake of it.
Grutness|
hello?
10:09, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I don't see a recommendation as to the placement of the stub message on a page in the pages related to policy for this Project (if I missed it, please point me at it and we can trim off this talk-page entry).
My thinking is to either a) add something to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Policy, but as a section called "Recommendations - Not Policy" or b) make a new very small page for "aesthetics of stubbing". Here's my suggested text, based on the previous discussion with an additional "clause":
In addition to this, maybe we can add to the policy page something like this:
Courtland 23:54, 2005 Mar 27 (UTC)
I sense there's been a fork - most of this stuff has been being discussed over at
Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Guidelines for the last couple of months. I only found out about this page here in the last 48 hours.
Grutness|
hello?
09:57, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
If what we've been working with for a while isn't policy, what is the stub-related policy(policies) and, after months now, is there any notion that there ever will be input into policy from this group?
Courtland 23:04, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)
Speak for yourself - several of us have been been following the "
Guidelines" as a policy!
Grutness|
hello?
10:11, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I've just had someone revert my link to Wikipedia:WikiProject Formula One in the {{ F1-stub}}, citing a prior, similar, revert by User:Rdsmith4 with the edit summary "WikiProject shouldn't be linked from the article namespace". Given that a ton of stubs have links to relevant WikiProjects (IMO, a good thing), and that I can't find any precedent here or at Wikipedia:WikiProject, I'm reverting, but I would like some clarification if there is anything wrong. [Crossposted to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject ] - SoM 15:46, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Has anyone heard of this guideline that WikiProjects should not be linked to from the article name space? I'm wondering if this is a being-bold effort on the part of Rdsmith4? Not a bad thing per se but I'd hate to see a layer of Wikipedia effectively hidden from view by the efforts of one or a small number of sensitive users. Courtland 12:49, 2005 May 24 (UTC)
You may want to take a look at this: Template:Forteana-stub -- Nabla 18:37, 2005 May 9 (UTC)
I moved this page to Wikipedia:Stub sorting guideline, but then decided that I don't know enough about stub sorting and moved it back. So, if this is a policy, it should be marked as such, if it is a guideline it should be renamed. Zocky 13:19, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
Doing double transclusion, as both MediaWiki m:developers User:Jamesday and User:Tim Starling have said, is a drain on system resources (for example, see what Jamesday says here). On the other hand, having some consistent guide to similar templates (such as the sister projects or the stub templates) is a good idea (you should have seen all the different designs for topic stubs before template:metastub and template:metapicstub were created). Whether this style guide is another template that is subst:'d when the new template is created, or copied-and-pasted is debatable. My own opinion is that the copy-and-paste method will mean that it will be much less likely to be used and be more likely to result in non-matching templates.
Another way to use design templates: Add some explanation text to the design template that will explain how it should be used, and prevent it from being used in double transclusion. For example: for the metastub template, the text might be something like:
After creation of each design template with the additional text, each one should then be protected from further modification. BlankVerse ∅ 10:58, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
This follows from Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#.5B.5BTemplate:Torture-stub.5D.5D and Wikipedia_talk:Stub_sorting_policy#Minimum_number_of_articles_in_a_stub_category and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria#.26.23123.3B.26.23123.3Btorture-stub.26.23125.3B.26.23125.3B
I don't want to revisit the matter of the threshold for stub count for the creation of a stub type. I think there's general consensus that a handful of stubs is not enough, that a hundred might be difficult to achieve for narrow topics of active and specific interest, and that WikiProjects are exempt from the threshold.
What I'm curious about is when a stub type is created that does not abide by the guideline and is subsequently found. Under what circumstances should this found stub type be preserved or deleted? The stub type in question at WP:TFD is {{ Torture-stub}}. As Grutness points out, this is a pre-existing stub type and is therefore not subject to the 100 article threshold for existence. However, it was created on 1 May by the user LevelCheck and began existence with a very few or no referring articles. Subsequently, the stub type was brought to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria as a potential type for deletion. Two things seem to have gone awry at this point. First, it was put up on WP:TFD without much discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria and second, it started to be used apparently under the (unwritten and doens't need to be written) guideline "if it exists, use it". Neither one of these things is bad in and of itself, but taken together they clash and the clash has gone to WP:TFD for resolution.
What I'm proposing is that we not automatically say "if it exists, use it". I do agree with the "if it passes below a stub count we would normally use as a threshold for making a stub type, don't delete it", but that wasn't the case here. I don't think I'd write this into the policy but would set it aside as "precedent based on policy" which could include a judgement on this particular issue as well as things related to the threshold stub count (100, 60, etc.) ... essentially a "common law" interpretation of the policy, which could sit on a page like Wikipedia:Stub_sorting_policy/Precedents.
Heading off some criticisms, I think this actually works against instruction creep and bureaucracy in that every tiny bit of circumstance isn't encoded in a rule set. Further, it would provide a body of interpretation to refer to in times of conflict when policy interpretations get heated.
Thanks for giving this a bit of thought.
Courtland 17:07, 2005 May 21 (UTC)
Excuse me for being pedantic, but since this page isn't actually policy, maybe it should be renamed to Wikipedia:Stub sorting guideline? R adiant _* 12:37, May 23, 2005 (UTC)