I created this type of stub because I saw a reference to it on Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub and thought that it needed to become official. Mike Storm 02:36, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I think tagging substubs is a nice alternative for the anti-deletionists, but I also think that the people using that template need to be aware that there a large number of people who will disagree with it and simply delete such pages. However, there are many pages that come very close to be CSDs but just hang around unimproved forever so it could be useful for those. However, I'm not sure if this just duplicates what the Special:Shortpages list already tells you. Angela . 18:59, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)
For possible copyvios I suggested a rewrite rather than a copyvio report. The definition of substub implies that the text is going to be so short that it's very likely to be so generic that it's uncopyrightable (lack of originality). Better a quick rewrite than the overhead of a possible copyvio listing when it's probably not a copyvio. Of course, this will sometimes not apply - sometimes there can be something really short which is creative rather than generic. But in this category, that seems unlikely to happen much. I suggested a SUBSTUB at the start of the edit comment so RC watchers can quickly pounce and expand these to stubs if that's possible. Jamesday 13:13, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
See also Template talk:Substub#Voting
What are we voting on? Whether or not there should be substubs? Whether we should have a tag for them? Whether or not the current tag is good? Whether the tag should be on the article page itself? anthony (see warning) 18:54, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I second anthony's above questions. In the absence of unambiguous clarification what this vote is about, it can only be considered null and void. Ropers 19:02, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Please add your name here:
[[User:Mike Storm| Mike ∞ Storm]] 14:33, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Please add your name.
Most substubs are created by inexperienced users. They add nothing to Wikipedia, their minimal content usually being covered elsewhere. They create blue links that users will follow, only to be disappointed and annoyed by lack of content, and this is particularly true of new users and lurkers. It is better to have a red link to these pages, which makes users aware of their non-existent content, and which are as easy to create from scratch as substubs. It is best therefore to offer them to Wikipedia:Cleanup:cleanup, and if and when they have run through the required month without improvement, then listed on votes for deletion. Alternatively, one may consider redirecting them; a user then may create a proper stub out of them later, whilst preserving page history. Googlebombing should be not an issue; Wikipedia is top of many Google searches anyhow, and substubs create a bad impression.
Err...can we mark our opposition to this idea? It seems to me that if an article is so short as to be useless, it is perfectly appropriate to delete it. If somebody wants to write an article on the subject, of course they should feel free, but the substub is so short that there's no real reason to preserve it even in such a case. john k 17:01, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
It's much easier to expand a stub. A substub is so worthless as to make it completely indifferent whether you build upon it or start from scratch. Or else it is a stub, and not a substub (as some of the examples listed on the main page are). john k 12:59, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
john k 12:59, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
My opinion is short of support, but I do not oppose those who want to use the substubs template and category to try to fix them. However, as has been pointed out above by a few others, they should not be upset to find that other Wikipedians decided to speedily delete a substub. Personally, if I come across a poorly formed substub that is embarassingly incomplete (like "James Madison was very short."), which I do not have the inclination or resources to research and improve, my preference is to delete it. There is no shortage of things to improve in Wikipedia, so whether it shows up as a substub or as a red link makes little difference--but I find the mere existence of an embarassingly short substub does not reflect well on the quality of information in WP. So in sum, I wish you well in your efforts to improve WP, but please don't get upset when someone else sees a substub as a candidate for speedy deletion. older≠ wiser 15:42, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
A new type of stub has been created: it's called a substub. Substubs are like regular stubs, only even smaller. You can read more about the difference between stubs and substubs here, or view examples of stubs vs. substubs. There is also a new substub template message; the new message is meant to replace the normal stub message, but only where, of course, an article is a substub instead of a stub. The new message looks like:
This article is a substub! If it is not expanded soon, it may be deleted.
You can use this new message by either replacing {{stub}} with {{substub}} in cases when a stub is more accurately described as a substub, or simply inserting {{substub}} at the bottom of an article. Many substubs are automatically listed on Wikipedia:Shortpages. You can discuss this new type of stub here, on the template message's talk page, or, preferably, on the substub talk page itself. -- Mike Storm 03:10, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
How about {{nanostub}}? Exploding Boy 07:44, Jul 21, 2004 (UTC)
Actually, if you go to Wikipedia:Shortpages, you'll see that there are no pages under 14 characters. I think the smallest right now is 46. -- Mike Storm 16:05, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
What exactly is this addition of another layer of complexity to the rules supposed to accomplish? You have a fancy new tag. Why? -- Cyrius| ✎ 22:45, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I think this is really rather silly. It doesn't seem to accomplish anything useful, it's just over-categorization. —Lady Lysiŋe Ikiŋsile | Talk 22:48, 2004 Jul 21 (UTC)
First topic: The whole idea is that substubs are in extreme need of improvement. Besides, while you complain about over-categorization, hundreds of other people scoff at Wikipedia and complain about how unorganized it is. Second topic: If you support the idea of having substubs, then please list your name on the substub talk page. Third topic: I have no plan to make a subsubstub. If anyone did, I would be against it. -- Mike Storm 00:03, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
There seems to be boundless hatred for the idea of the {{substub}} template. This makes no sense. It doesn't harm Wikipedia, nobody's advocating creation of substubs, nobody wants to keep candidates for speedy deletion. Those in support of substubs simply want the ability to mark the articles that are in dire need of expansion. The fact that these articles are tougher to expand than stubs while being more in need of it is the reasoning behind marking them as such. While they are tougher to expand—because they don't have as much context—information as longer articles, keep in mind, for someone who knows somethign about the topic marked as a substub, all it will take is a sentence or two to expand it to stub level. This is not a collection of hopeless articles.
Now, as is inherent to wikis in general no Wikipedian is forced to improve or mark substubs. So, if you're so against allowing this template, one which can only serve to help Wikipedians improve Wikipedia (see above paragraph before picking that sentence fragment apart), tell me why some of us dedicated Wikipedians should be deprived of a tool that we feel is useful?
—
siro
χ
o 00:34, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)
Cyrius, the erroneous example "James Madison was short" was removed from the project page; such an article is actually a candidate for speedy deletion that I would not advocate keeping. Substubs are a type of stub, not an argument for keeping worse articles. There is no change in the speedy deletion policy due to substubs.
The argument for marking them as such is, quoting myself, "that these articles are tougher to expand than stubs while being more in need of it" (here I make a distinction between substubs and stubs for clarity, a distinction that is often made, but substubs remain a type of stub in the larger sense). I agree completely when you say that substubs might be "listed for weeks or months without help." However, as
Wikipedia grows so does the number of stubs: shorter ones and longer ones alike. Why not give Wikipedians the tools to mark and find the ones that need the most help, that they may use them if they so choose?
—
siro
χ
o 01:34, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)
I would support such a list. However, I would also hope that the stub template could somehow reflect when stubs are in more need of help, so that visitors realize that it is shorter than the average stub. Half the point of the substub template is to mark them as worse than the average stub. Perhaps remove the new category, and use instead the list idea you suggested, but keep the new template (but include Category:Stub instead)? After all, expanding short stubs to long stubs is something we do want to encourage. Another option is to use some sort of priority variable on the stub template which would determine what message is placed, and using "if defined:" (or whatever it is), the normal stub message would be included if no priority was set? Several things to think about. — siro χ o 02:13, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)
Short stubs (IE, stubs that aren't candidates for speedy deletion, but are short) are fine.
Pages that aren't even short stubs are candidates for speedy deletion, which is fine.
A category to distinguish short stubs from long stubs serves no purpose. Martin 22:18, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Agree. The definition of a substub primarily by size encourages people to mindlessly tag articles just because they're small. That doesn't make sense. What is it with this classification of all articles into swans, cygnets and eggs anyway? Animals come in all sizes. A hummingbird can be beautiful, even if it never outgrows the swan's egg. The swan's beauty is not in her size. IMHO, many articles in Wikipedia are already obese.
There are some topics that by their nature require only very little text. An example for this is Wing Luke Asian Museum. The article is useful even if it doesn't grow because it provides a hub for other links from or to pages such as Museums and galleries of Seattle or Asian Pacific American, and to the external official museum page, which probably defines the museum better than we all could. Sebastian 09:46, 2005 Feb 13 (UTC)
It's interesting to note that the Substub support list above was started without any corresponding Substub opposition list. Since that list has been added, the additions have almost all been to the opposition. Anyway, since we still don't seem to have a clear consensus, we are trying a survey on what to do with the substub template. See Template talk:Substub. -- Michael Snow 21:20, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Even after reading the explanation in this article, whether an article should be considered a sub vs. whether it should be considered a substub is still unclear to me. For example, is Richard Linklater a sub or a substub? It is barely two sentences long, but it has a filmography and an external link. Taco Deposit | Talk-o Deposit 20:31, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Isn't "An airplane is a flying maching." better than nothing. Why are definitions pages discouraged? Are they not a good way to start a full blown article? Making an article from scratch is daunting, but allowing small contributions make wikipedia that much more inviting.
-- LegCircus
I have wanted to introduce substubs for a time, so I was delighted when I heard of this proposal. However, when I read it and looked at how it works so far, I see that it's not what I wanted at all.
This proposal tries to introduce an unnecessary differentiation between regular stubs and short stubs, which it calls "substubs". But "stub" already means "short article", so substub is a short short article. category:substubs is now full of short stubs that aren't going to get expanded any time soon and it is in fact just a short version of category:stubs, and just as useful.
OTOH, there are articles that are less than stubs - those that are just unwikified fragments of information. They are sub-standard in quality and as such reflect badly on wikipedia, therefore they should be corrected ASAP. When one is found, the best thing to do is to correct it, but that's not always possible - I know I always feel completely lost when I read a substub on an American athlete and have no idea how to turn it into a stub. In those cases, it would be genuinely useful if you could put them into category:substubs, which some nice hardworking editors would patrol and try to keep to a minimum.
How does that sound? Zocky 00:28, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Is it really accepted by a significant number of wikipedians? Or is it accepted by, you know, Mike Storm? john k 16:18, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I don't think that the definition of a substub as a short stub has been accepted. People who think substubs should be deleted on sight obviously do not believe that ordinary short stubs are substubs - because short stubs clearly shouldn't be deleted on sight. john k 19:06, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Substubs tend to be short for a reason... either because it is a future event with currently limited information ( Power Rangers: SPD), which should be updated soon enough with the other stubs; the articles should be grouped or marked for deletion ( Swazi embassy to Mozambique is surely a joke); can never be more than a definition ( identically distributed) and possibly should be redirected or deleted rather than marked with substub; or gives all possible information ( Ilia (Star Trek)). Anyone who marks something as a substub for special attention without giving it the simple attention it needs is not benefitting the community.
I think it's much more important to mark out stubs that might appear a bit longer (say, a paragraph or more - perhaps even a longer article not normally considered a 'stub') but which are missing more useful information. -- Mysteronald 15:02, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I posted this on WP:RFA a while ago. This version is edited.
I'm wondering why everyone has been suddenly so against substubs for the last few months. Do you agree with the policies on Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub? I guess not, if you count the part where it mentions substubs. But, how long had that part about substubs been there before I created Wikipedia:Substub? A week? Two weeks? A month? If you check the page history, you'll find that the part about substubs was there for over seven months with zero objections. So one day, I decided to help out by creating a separate page, entirely devoted to defining what substubs are. Maybe I'll even create a template message! But once I created Wikipedia:Substub, woah! Grab your torches and pitchforks! Down with substubs! Down with the evil user (me) who created them! Apparently nobody's noticed that I did not create substubs; in fact, since the policies on Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub were accepted policies, substubs were already accepted by the Wikipedia community. I am tired of people holding the fact that I created Wikipedia:Substub and Template:Substub against me. Did anyone accept the edit made on Jan. 2, 2004, to Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub? I guess that everyone did, because the "substub" addition stayed there for seven months (and continues to stay there). And if you did, then you support substubs too. But how come there is such stiff and resentful resistance to the idea now, when two pages were created that were devoted to their definition and labelling? It seems just a tad unfair to me. So in the end, why did I create Wikipedia:Substub and Template:Substub? I was just trying to help.
P.S. - This will be labelled as a rant, even though it isn't. I guarantee it. [[User:Mike Storm| Mike ∞ Storm]] 21:03, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Substubbing : I think this cat is usefull bat I don't understand the first lines, please rewrite in flat english.
(Please do not forget that not everybody in the world knows by heart the Ugly Duck story and that it is asking them too much to look in the link. English wp readers are not all of Western culture. "Is the metaphor necessary? No!" + "Is it fancy and culturocentric? Yes!" = "rm metaphor")
I would consider the substub example "A computer processes information with a mouse" to be patent nonsense, not a proper substub. It's like saying a car engine provides motive force with a turn signal. Coneslayer
The fact that the content of this talk-page's article is not WP policy is one thing. It's yet another that it lacks any credibility as potential policy.
This page tolerated, for 6 months,
It should not need saying, but
I am removing the numbered point in question. (As if it's being there made any difference.)
-- Jerzy (t) 01:37, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)
Here's more that's similar, and now removed:
In point of fact, "relevance" is all but explicitly excluded from having any bearing on what constitutes patent nonsense. At point 1 of Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#General], the "random characters" language in
is there with the specific intent to keep anyone from construing "patent nonsense" as anything nearly that broad. At Wikipedia:Patent nonsense, before the first heading, the PH door is opened beyond "random characters" -- about a 16th of an inch beyond it. Just having coherant syntax isn't enough to escape patent nonsense, but having a coherant idea or two is; if the article does, but it's irrelevant to the title, then it isn't patent nonsense (or even particularly likely to be deletable), but it probably needs retitling.
-- Jerzy (t) 02:35, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)
There are many stubs that are over 6 paragraphs long. And I also think that the transistion line for a substub should advance to 3 paragraphs and also, start the term microstub for the current substub transistion line. Click [[Wikipedia:Microstub]] to start the new concept. -- TheSamurai 02:18, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC) This contrib's lk to "Wikipedia:Microstub" has been disabled bcz creating the article would be vandalism. See below in this section. -- Jerzy (t) 19:01, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)
Many users have been nominating some pages for deletion under the term nanostub. I think we could use that term instead of Microstub. Click [[Wikipedia:Nanostub]] to start the new concept. -- SuperDude 01:01, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) This contrib's lk to "Wikipedia:Nanostub" has been disabled bcz creating the article would be vandalism. See below in this section. -- Jerzy (t) 19:01, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)
The following contrib has been moved here from its unsuitable original location at #Abolish the "substub" concept altogether. -- Jerzy (t) 19:01, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)
The existence of a [[Wikipedia:Microstub]] page was considered on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Wikipedia:Microstub and unanimously disapproved. The reasons given apply equally to "Wikipedia:Nanostub". A change such as these could, despite that judgement, be further considered on this page, and such suggestions are on topic in this section. While the previous proposals to "start the new concept" by creating such a page may deserve an assumption of good intentions, placing one, without relevance, in the section
suggests a bid for another bite at the apple, i.e. refusal to accept the community's judgement in ignoring similar suggestions in this, the section where they first appeared; it at best strains the claim to benefit from that assumption of good intentions. In any case,
Please, let's stop this inflation of sub-, micro-, nano-, pico-,... stubs. Some people like to classify articles, which is good. There are plenty of topical categories waiting for classification. However, the length of an article is not one of them.
Currently, this page starts with the command:
I would like to see a convincing argument why this is preferable to replacing the stub with the topical tag of the appropriate category, such as "China-stub". Doing this has in fact several disadvantages:
— Sebastian ( T) 10:19, 2005 Apr 22 (UTC)
A contribution made here, which does not further this discussion of the proposal to 'Abolish the "substub" concept altogether', has been moved to #Proposal for a nomenclature changeover. -- Jerzy (t) 18:59, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)
I have noticed that some Wikipedia users have different ideas as to what is a substub and what is a stub. For example, I have marked three one-sentence articles as substubs to find another user reclassified them as stubs. Can someone please post a clearer definition of how long substubs should be? тəzєті 23:54, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)
I am only concerned that these articles may be misclassified. However, I would also like to know length requirements so I can determine whether to classify short articles as stubs or substubs in the future. тəzєті 17:47, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
I am copying this across from where I listed it at
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting - it is also (in slightly different form) at
Template talk:Substub. There are now (count 'em) 40 substubs. Personally, I believe this template has had its day. It may have been useful prior to subcategorising stubs, as a way of saying "these need priority attention", but now the best way to get editors to work on stubs is to put them in subcategories where they can be found, and substub defeats that purpose. Sure, some articles that would have been marked substub are potential candidates for vfd or merging, but the same is true with quite a number of stubs. I would like to propose reopening the debate on whether the substub template and associated category are worth keeping, or whether those articles which would have been marked {{
substub}} are better served with a subcategory of
Category:stub. So far, comment at WP:WSS has included redirecting {{
substub}} to {{
stub}}, which would at least put all the unsorted mini-articles into one place. This sounds reasonable, but would have one side-effect, in that many ditors seem to put both substub and a subtemplate of stub onto short articles. If substub was redirected, the articles would appear in
Category:Stub and in one of its subcategories.
Grutness|
hello?
07:58, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
In my opinion, the substub category needs to be kept. Some of the categorized stubs are one-sentence articles and may be misclassified. Many users may want to be able to identify which articles are stubs and which are substubs to find out which articles need more work.
If substubs were abolished, I would favor establishing a method of identifing which stubs needed more work, potentially a category such as {{ short-stub}}. тəzєті 18:17, May 7, 2005 (UTC)
Short vs. long stubs is not a very good distinction. Stubs are short by definition. A long stub (2-3 paragraphs) is really a short article, not a stub. It should probably get an { {expand} } tag or something.
But, there do exist entries that are substubs, i.e. less than stubs. They are those which contain valid information, therefore aren't VfD or speedy deletion material, but don't conform to minimal standards of our style manual. They should therefore be corrected, i.e. turned into stubs, ASAP. If the substubs category contained only those, it could be a good resource for house-keeping. Zocky 19:06, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
A discussion is being held at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Substub over whether to deprecate the template and category. It hasn't been widely advertised, but I believe anyone can join. Kappa 21:14, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
User:Netoholic marked this page as {{ historical}}, but even though the substub template was deleted substubs unfortunately still exist and have to be dealt with, so I've removed it. Mentioning the content of the template is okay for historical interest, but I had already rewritten the rest of this page somewhat to give general advice on dealing with substubs. MAybe a bit more division of historical and present operation is still needed, however. I'll give that a shot later. -- grm_wnr Esc 13:56, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
That's good. Only now User:Radiant! has put {{ historical}} on it. I commented it out this time, with a note to read talk before reinstating it. The main reason for not having "historical" on this is that "substub" is a part of Wikipedia jargon and users are likely to look at this page if they see it mentioned, so we most probably want to have an up-to-date page on the term. Also, just by posting here we already satisfy what is written in {{ historical}} - we are using the talk page to revive the discussion. -- grm_wnr Esc 10:27, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
I support substubs. At least then they can be expanded. Which is more likely to be worked on - A substub page, or a nonexistant page? 24.193.50.181 04:04, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Important point of any wikipedia article to have at least one relevant, external, independent source. I think this is core element. Without it we cannot classify any long draw as a stub.
So what to do if we see an unclassified article start without any external reference? 1. Be sure, the creator finished the work. 2. If it is easy to find a relevant reference to the topic, anyone can/ should do it. 3. If you not able to find any reference, probably target of fast deletion.
Please check it, and If agreed/discussed I will move this point to the article.
I created this type of stub because I saw a reference to it on Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub and thought that it needed to become official. Mike Storm 02:36, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I think tagging substubs is a nice alternative for the anti-deletionists, but I also think that the people using that template need to be aware that there a large number of people who will disagree with it and simply delete such pages. However, there are many pages that come very close to be CSDs but just hang around unimproved forever so it could be useful for those. However, I'm not sure if this just duplicates what the Special:Shortpages list already tells you. Angela . 18:59, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)
For possible copyvios I suggested a rewrite rather than a copyvio report. The definition of substub implies that the text is going to be so short that it's very likely to be so generic that it's uncopyrightable (lack of originality). Better a quick rewrite than the overhead of a possible copyvio listing when it's probably not a copyvio. Of course, this will sometimes not apply - sometimes there can be something really short which is creative rather than generic. But in this category, that seems unlikely to happen much. I suggested a SUBSTUB at the start of the edit comment so RC watchers can quickly pounce and expand these to stubs if that's possible. Jamesday 13:13, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
See also Template talk:Substub#Voting
What are we voting on? Whether or not there should be substubs? Whether we should have a tag for them? Whether or not the current tag is good? Whether the tag should be on the article page itself? anthony (see warning) 18:54, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I second anthony's above questions. In the absence of unambiguous clarification what this vote is about, it can only be considered null and void. Ropers 19:02, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Please add your name here:
[[User:Mike Storm| Mike ∞ Storm]] 14:33, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Please add your name.
Most substubs are created by inexperienced users. They add nothing to Wikipedia, their minimal content usually being covered elsewhere. They create blue links that users will follow, only to be disappointed and annoyed by lack of content, and this is particularly true of new users and lurkers. It is better to have a red link to these pages, which makes users aware of their non-existent content, and which are as easy to create from scratch as substubs. It is best therefore to offer them to Wikipedia:Cleanup:cleanup, and if and when they have run through the required month without improvement, then listed on votes for deletion. Alternatively, one may consider redirecting them; a user then may create a proper stub out of them later, whilst preserving page history. Googlebombing should be not an issue; Wikipedia is top of many Google searches anyhow, and substubs create a bad impression.
Err...can we mark our opposition to this idea? It seems to me that if an article is so short as to be useless, it is perfectly appropriate to delete it. If somebody wants to write an article on the subject, of course they should feel free, but the substub is so short that there's no real reason to preserve it even in such a case. john k 17:01, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
It's much easier to expand a stub. A substub is so worthless as to make it completely indifferent whether you build upon it or start from scratch. Or else it is a stub, and not a substub (as some of the examples listed on the main page are). john k 12:59, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
john k 12:59, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
My opinion is short of support, but I do not oppose those who want to use the substubs template and category to try to fix them. However, as has been pointed out above by a few others, they should not be upset to find that other Wikipedians decided to speedily delete a substub. Personally, if I come across a poorly formed substub that is embarassingly incomplete (like "James Madison was very short."), which I do not have the inclination or resources to research and improve, my preference is to delete it. There is no shortage of things to improve in Wikipedia, so whether it shows up as a substub or as a red link makes little difference--but I find the mere existence of an embarassingly short substub does not reflect well on the quality of information in WP. So in sum, I wish you well in your efforts to improve WP, but please don't get upset when someone else sees a substub as a candidate for speedy deletion. older≠ wiser 15:42, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
A new type of stub has been created: it's called a substub. Substubs are like regular stubs, only even smaller. You can read more about the difference between stubs and substubs here, or view examples of stubs vs. substubs. There is also a new substub template message; the new message is meant to replace the normal stub message, but only where, of course, an article is a substub instead of a stub. The new message looks like:
This article is a substub! If it is not expanded soon, it may be deleted.
You can use this new message by either replacing {{stub}} with {{substub}} in cases when a stub is more accurately described as a substub, or simply inserting {{substub}} at the bottom of an article. Many substubs are automatically listed on Wikipedia:Shortpages. You can discuss this new type of stub here, on the template message's talk page, or, preferably, on the substub talk page itself. -- Mike Storm 03:10, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
How about {{nanostub}}? Exploding Boy 07:44, Jul 21, 2004 (UTC)
Actually, if you go to Wikipedia:Shortpages, you'll see that there are no pages under 14 characters. I think the smallest right now is 46. -- Mike Storm 16:05, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
What exactly is this addition of another layer of complexity to the rules supposed to accomplish? You have a fancy new tag. Why? -- Cyrius| ✎ 22:45, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I think this is really rather silly. It doesn't seem to accomplish anything useful, it's just over-categorization. —Lady Lysiŋe Ikiŋsile | Talk 22:48, 2004 Jul 21 (UTC)
First topic: The whole idea is that substubs are in extreme need of improvement. Besides, while you complain about over-categorization, hundreds of other people scoff at Wikipedia and complain about how unorganized it is. Second topic: If you support the idea of having substubs, then please list your name on the substub talk page. Third topic: I have no plan to make a subsubstub. If anyone did, I would be against it. -- Mike Storm 00:03, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
There seems to be boundless hatred for the idea of the {{substub}} template. This makes no sense. It doesn't harm Wikipedia, nobody's advocating creation of substubs, nobody wants to keep candidates for speedy deletion. Those in support of substubs simply want the ability to mark the articles that are in dire need of expansion. The fact that these articles are tougher to expand than stubs while being more in need of it is the reasoning behind marking them as such. While they are tougher to expand—because they don't have as much context—information as longer articles, keep in mind, for someone who knows somethign about the topic marked as a substub, all it will take is a sentence or two to expand it to stub level. This is not a collection of hopeless articles.
Now, as is inherent to wikis in general no Wikipedian is forced to improve or mark substubs. So, if you're so against allowing this template, one which can only serve to help Wikipedians improve Wikipedia (see above paragraph before picking that sentence fragment apart), tell me why some of us dedicated Wikipedians should be deprived of a tool that we feel is useful?
—
siro
χ
o 00:34, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)
Cyrius, the erroneous example "James Madison was short" was removed from the project page; such an article is actually a candidate for speedy deletion that I would not advocate keeping. Substubs are a type of stub, not an argument for keeping worse articles. There is no change in the speedy deletion policy due to substubs.
The argument for marking them as such is, quoting myself, "that these articles are tougher to expand than stubs while being more in need of it" (here I make a distinction between substubs and stubs for clarity, a distinction that is often made, but substubs remain a type of stub in the larger sense). I agree completely when you say that substubs might be "listed for weeks or months without help." However, as
Wikipedia grows so does the number of stubs: shorter ones and longer ones alike. Why not give Wikipedians the tools to mark and find the ones that need the most help, that they may use them if they so choose?
—
siro
χ
o 01:34, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)
I would support such a list. However, I would also hope that the stub template could somehow reflect when stubs are in more need of help, so that visitors realize that it is shorter than the average stub. Half the point of the substub template is to mark them as worse than the average stub. Perhaps remove the new category, and use instead the list idea you suggested, but keep the new template (but include Category:Stub instead)? After all, expanding short stubs to long stubs is something we do want to encourage. Another option is to use some sort of priority variable on the stub template which would determine what message is placed, and using "if defined:" (or whatever it is), the normal stub message would be included if no priority was set? Several things to think about. — siro χ o 02:13, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)
Short stubs (IE, stubs that aren't candidates for speedy deletion, but are short) are fine.
Pages that aren't even short stubs are candidates for speedy deletion, which is fine.
A category to distinguish short stubs from long stubs serves no purpose. Martin 22:18, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Agree. The definition of a substub primarily by size encourages people to mindlessly tag articles just because they're small. That doesn't make sense. What is it with this classification of all articles into swans, cygnets and eggs anyway? Animals come in all sizes. A hummingbird can be beautiful, even if it never outgrows the swan's egg. The swan's beauty is not in her size. IMHO, many articles in Wikipedia are already obese.
There are some topics that by their nature require only very little text. An example for this is Wing Luke Asian Museum. The article is useful even if it doesn't grow because it provides a hub for other links from or to pages such as Museums and galleries of Seattle or Asian Pacific American, and to the external official museum page, which probably defines the museum better than we all could. Sebastian 09:46, 2005 Feb 13 (UTC)
It's interesting to note that the Substub support list above was started without any corresponding Substub opposition list. Since that list has been added, the additions have almost all been to the opposition. Anyway, since we still don't seem to have a clear consensus, we are trying a survey on what to do with the substub template. See Template talk:Substub. -- Michael Snow 21:20, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Even after reading the explanation in this article, whether an article should be considered a sub vs. whether it should be considered a substub is still unclear to me. For example, is Richard Linklater a sub or a substub? It is barely two sentences long, but it has a filmography and an external link. Taco Deposit | Talk-o Deposit 20:31, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Isn't "An airplane is a flying maching." better than nothing. Why are definitions pages discouraged? Are they not a good way to start a full blown article? Making an article from scratch is daunting, but allowing small contributions make wikipedia that much more inviting.
-- LegCircus
I have wanted to introduce substubs for a time, so I was delighted when I heard of this proposal. However, when I read it and looked at how it works so far, I see that it's not what I wanted at all.
This proposal tries to introduce an unnecessary differentiation between regular stubs and short stubs, which it calls "substubs". But "stub" already means "short article", so substub is a short short article. category:substubs is now full of short stubs that aren't going to get expanded any time soon and it is in fact just a short version of category:stubs, and just as useful.
OTOH, there are articles that are less than stubs - those that are just unwikified fragments of information. They are sub-standard in quality and as such reflect badly on wikipedia, therefore they should be corrected ASAP. When one is found, the best thing to do is to correct it, but that's not always possible - I know I always feel completely lost when I read a substub on an American athlete and have no idea how to turn it into a stub. In those cases, it would be genuinely useful if you could put them into category:substubs, which some nice hardworking editors would patrol and try to keep to a minimum.
How does that sound? Zocky 00:28, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Is it really accepted by a significant number of wikipedians? Or is it accepted by, you know, Mike Storm? john k 16:18, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I don't think that the definition of a substub as a short stub has been accepted. People who think substubs should be deleted on sight obviously do not believe that ordinary short stubs are substubs - because short stubs clearly shouldn't be deleted on sight. john k 19:06, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Substubs tend to be short for a reason... either because it is a future event with currently limited information ( Power Rangers: SPD), which should be updated soon enough with the other stubs; the articles should be grouped or marked for deletion ( Swazi embassy to Mozambique is surely a joke); can never be more than a definition ( identically distributed) and possibly should be redirected or deleted rather than marked with substub; or gives all possible information ( Ilia (Star Trek)). Anyone who marks something as a substub for special attention without giving it the simple attention it needs is not benefitting the community.
I think it's much more important to mark out stubs that might appear a bit longer (say, a paragraph or more - perhaps even a longer article not normally considered a 'stub') but which are missing more useful information. -- Mysteronald 15:02, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I posted this on WP:RFA a while ago. This version is edited.
I'm wondering why everyone has been suddenly so against substubs for the last few months. Do you agree with the policies on Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub? I guess not, if you count the part where it mentions substubs. But, how long had that part about substubs been there before I created Wikipedia:Substub? A week? Two weeks? A month? If you check the page history, you'll find that the part about substubs was there for over seven months with zero objections. So one day, I decided to help out by creating a separate page, entirely devoted to defining what substubs are. Maybe I'll even create a template message! But once I created Wikipedia:Substub, woah! Grab your torches and pitchforks! Down with substubs! Down with the evil user (me) who created them! Apparently nobody's noticed that I did not create substubs; in fact, since the policies on Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub were accepted policies, substubs were already accepted by the Wikipedia community. I am tired of people holding the fact that I created Wikipedia:Substub and Template:Substub against me. Did anyone accept the edit made on Jan. 2, 2004, to Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub? I guess that everyone did, because the "substub" addition stayed there for seven months (and continues to stay there). And if you did, then you support substubs too. But how come there is such stiff and resentful resistance to the idea now, when two pages were created that were devoted to their definition and labelling? It seems just a tad unfair to me. So in the end, why did I create Wikipedia:Substub and Template:Substub? I was just trying to help.
P.S. - This will be labelled as a rant, even though it isn't. I guarantee it. [[User:Mike Storm| Mike ∞ Storm]] 21:03, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Substubbing : I think this cat is usefull bat I don't understand the first lines, please rewrite in flat english.
(Please do not forget that not everybody in the world knows by heart the Ugly Duck story and that it is asking them too much to look in the link. English wp readers are not all of Western culture. "Is the metaphor necessary? No!" + "Is it fancy and culturocentric? Yes!" = "rm metaphor")
I would consider the substub example "A computer processes information with a mouse" to be patent nonsense, not a proper substub. It's like saying a car engine provides motive force with a turn signal. Coneslayer
The fact that the content of this talk-page's article is not WP policy is one thing. It's yet another that it lacks any credibility as potential policy.
This page tolerated, for 6 months,
It should not need saying, but
I am removing the numbered point in question. (As if it's being there made any difference.)
-- Jerzy (t) 01:37, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)
Here's more that's similar, and now removed:
In point of fact, "relevance" is all but explicitly excluded from having any bearing on what constitutes patent nonsense. At point 1 of Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#General], the "random characters" language in
is there with the specific intent to keep anyone from construing "patent nonsense" as anything nearly that broad. At Wikipedia:Patent nonsense, before the first heading, the PH door is opened beyond "random characters" -- about a 16th of an inch beyond it. Just having coherant syntax isn't enough to escape patent nonsense, but having a coherant idea or two is; if the article does, but it's irrelevant to the title, then it isn't patent nonsense (or even particularly likely to be deletable), but it probably needs retitling.
-- Jerzy (t) 02:35, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)
There are many stubs that are over 6 paragraphs long. And I also think that the transistion line for a substub should advance to 3 paragraphs and also, start the term microstub for the current substub transistion line. Click [[Wikipedia:Microstub]] to start the new concept. -- TheSamurai 02:18, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC) This contrib's lk to "Wikipedia:Microstub" has been disabled bcz creating the article would be vandalism. See below in this section. -- Jerzy (t) 19:01, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)
Many users have been nominating some pages for deletion under the term nanostub. I think we could use that term instead of Microstub. Click [[Wikipedia:Nanostub]] to start the new concept. -- SuperDude 01:01, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) This contrib's lk to "Wikipedia:Nanostub" has been disabled bcz creating the article would be vandalism. See below in this section. -- Jerzy (t) 19:01, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)
The following contrib has been moved here from its unsuitable original location at #Abolish the "substub" concept altogether. -- Jerzy (t) 19:01, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)
The existence of a [[Wikipedia:Microstub]] page was considered on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Wikipedia:Microstub and unanimously disapproved. The reasons given apply equally to "Wikipedia:Nanostub". A change such as these could, despite that judgement, be further considered on this page, and such suggestions are on topic in this section. While the previous proposals to "start the new concept" by creating such a page may deserve an assumption of good intentions, placing one, without relevance, in the section
suggests a bid for another bite at the apple, i.e. refusal to accept the community's judgement in ignoring similar suggestions in this, the section where they first appeared; it at best strains the claim to benefit from that assumption of good intentions. In any case,
Please, let's stop this inflation of sub-, micro-, nano-, pico-,... stubs. Some people like to classify articles, which is good. There are plenty of topical categories waiting for classification. However, the length of an article is not one of them.
Currently, this page starts with the command:
I would like to see a convincing argument why this is preferable to replacing the stub with the topical tag of the appropriate category, such as "China-stub". Doing this has in fact several disadvantages:
— Sebastian ( T) 10:19, 2005 Apr 22 (UTC)
A contribution made here, which does not further this discussion of the proposal to 'Abolish the "substub" concept altogether', has been moved to #Proposal for a nomenclature changeover. -- Jerzy (t) 18:59, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)
I have noticed that some Wikipedia users have different ideas as to what is a substub and what is a stub. For example, I have marked three one-sentence articles as substubs to find another user reclassified them as stubs. Can someone please post a clearer definition of how long substubs should be? тəzєті 23:54, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)
I am only concerned that these articles may be misclassified. However, I would also like to know length requirements so I can determine whether to classify short articles as stubs or substubs in the future. тəzєті 17:47, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
I am copying this across from where I listed it at
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting - it is also (in slightly different form) at
Template talk:Substub. There are now (count 'em) 40 substubs. Personally, I believe this template has had its day. It may have been useful prior to subcategorising stubs, as a way of saying "these need priority attention", but now the best way to get editors to work on stubs is to put them in subcategories where they can be found, and substub defeats that purpose. Sure, some articles that would have been marked substub are potential candidates for vfd or merging, but the same is true with quite a number of stubs. I would like to propose reopening the debate on whether the substub template and associated category are worth keeping, or whether those articles which would have been marked {{
substub}} are better served with a subcategory of
Category:stub. So far, comment at WP:WSS has included redirecting {{
substub}} to {{
stub}}, which would at least put all the unsorted mini-articles into one place. This sounds reasonable, but would have one side-effect, in that many ditors seem to put both substub and a subtemplate of stub onto short articles. If substub was redirected, the articles would appear in
Category:Stub and in one of its subcategories.
Grutness|
hello?
07:58, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
In my opinion, the substub category needs to be kept. Some of the categorized stubs are one-sentence articles and may be misclassified. Many users may want to be able to identify which articles are stubs and which are substubs to find out which articles need more work.
If substubs were abolished, I would favor establishing a method of identifing which stubs needed more work, potentially a category such as {{ short-stub}}. тəzєті 18:17, May 7, 2005 (UTC)
Short vs. long stubs is not a very good distinction. Stubs are short by definition. A long stub (2-3 paragraphs) is really a short article, not a stub. It should probably get an { {expand} } tag or something.
But, there do exist entries that are substubs, i.e. less than stubs. They are those which contain valid information, therefore aren't VfD or speedy deletion material, but don't conform to minimal standards of our style manual. They should therefore be corrected, i.e. turned into stubs, ASAP. If the substubs category contained only those, it could be a good resource for house-keeping. Zocky 19:06, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
A discussion is being held at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Substub over whether to deprecate the template and category. It hasn't been widely advertised, but I believe anyone can join. Kappa 21:14, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
User:Netoholic marked this page as {{ historical}}, but even though the substub template was deleted substubs unfortunately still exist and have to be dealt with, so I've removed it. Mentioning the content of the template is okay for historical interest, but I had already rewritten the rest of this page somewhat to give general advice on dealing with substubs. MAybe a bit more division of historical and present operation is still needed, however. I'll give that a shot later. -- grm_wnr Esc 13:56, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
That's good. Only now User:Radiant! has put {{ historical}} on it. I commented it out this time, with a note to read talk before reinstating it. The main reason for not having "historical" on this is that "substub" is a part of Wikipedia jargon and users are likely to look at this page if they see it mentioned, so we most probably want to have an up-to-date page on the term. Also, just by posting here we already satisfy what is written in {{ historical}} - we are using the talk page to revive the discussion. -- grm_wnr Esc 10:27, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
I support substubs. At least then they can be expanded. Which is more likely to be worked on - A substub page, or a nonexistant page? 24.193.50.181 04:04, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Important point of any wikipedia article to have at least one relevant, external, independent source. I think this is core element. Without it we cannot classify any long draw as a stub.
So what to do if we see an unclassified article start without any external reference? 1. Be sure, the creator finished the work. 2. If it is easy to find a relevant reference to the topic, anyone can/ should do it. 3. If you not able to find any reference, probably target of fast deletion.
Please check it, and If agreed/discussed I will move this point to the article.