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User:500LL has been putting a lot of work into adding new stub images, some of which are a big improvement. However, there has been some discussion at User talk:500LL about the legal status of these images. I've looked over the site that they come from and I'm having trouble finding a clear, unambiguous statement. (However, the freeware origin of some of the images offered at the site is dubious.)
I'd like to say that what is best all around is for us to always use custom-made images (i.e. images made entirely by Wikipedians, perhaps based on other public domain or GFDL images made by Wikipedians) whenever possible, so that we can know exactly where we stand. What do you think? Can anyone else figure out the copyright status of those images? (This effects a large number of templates.) - Aranel ("Sarah") 01:28, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Image:Musician-stub.gif "and many others like it" have turned up on Wikipedia:Image sleuthing; apparently they come from http://www.iconarchive.com, which has a no-commerical-use license. It's looking very much like we'll have to go back to the old ones. — Korath ( Talk) 14:57, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
I want to say that I've made a mistake uploading those copyrighted icons, so there's a list of the icons that I'v uploaded, if you want to delete them: Image:Composer-stub.jpg, Image:X-wing-stub.jpg, Image:Beagle-stub.jpg, Image:Darth Vader-stub.jpg, Image:BMW-stub.jpg, Image:BMW-stub.jpg, Image:Plane6-stub.jpg, Image:Italymap-stub.jpg, Image:Canadamap-stub.jpg, Image:Mexicomap-stub.jpg, Image:Japanmap-stub.jpg, Image:Ukmap-stub.jpg, Image:Usamap-stub.jpg, Image:Croix-stub.jpg, Image:Movie-stub.jpg, Image:Chemistry-stub.jpg, Image:Medicine-stub.jpg, Image:Baseball-stub.gif, Image:Cycle-stub.gif, Image:Sportsman-stub.jpg, Image:Newspaper-stub.gif, Image:Brain-stub.gif, Image:Certific-stub.gif, Image:Musician-stub.gif, Image:Oscar-stub.gif, Image:Song-stub.gif. 500LL 22:09, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've come across a couple of articles with two stub notices on them. At the time of writing, Guiseley railway station is an example. I presume this practice is to deprecated? Which should take precedence? -- Tagishsimon (talk) 01:48, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Unfortunately I got into a rather heated disagreement with an editor over this one and now the Frankenstein's Monster is dead and buried. Courtland 18:03, 2005 Mar 4 (UTC)
Using this search [1], I've re-stubbed many of the first 750 results. Since the search is not done in "real-time", anyone using the same search should start farther down the list and please say where, so as to avoid duplication of effort. Personally, I think this is faster and more efficient than everyone going through the list and only stubbing articles that suit them. (If you're doing that, thats fine too.) I understand some of you may not appreciate having a bunch of stuff thrown into a general stub category, like people-stub for instance, but at least they are better sorted now than before. If you think this creates more work for you, then just leave them alone and I (or someone else) will eventually re-stub them under the proper category (like writer, scientist, etc). One way or another this will get done. :) -- jag123 01:54, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Just to let everyone know, the google search seems to end prematurely. After going through the first 20 pages, you can repeat the search to get some omitted results, but after about 4 times of doing so, you reach the end and you don't get newer results. -- jag123 17:36, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Bluemoose 13:48, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The article Andreas Karlstadt relates to a chuch theologian and reformer. Would he get a simple bio-stub, or do theologians count under philosophers and qualiy for philo-stub? Grutness| hello? 05:16, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I suddenly noticed that almost every remaining unsubcategorised article in Category:Geography stubs was a British overseas territory stub. So the last one is - {{BritOT-geo-stub}}. Grutness| hello? 00:42, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I've moved the Science Stubs Census materials to a new page: User:Ceyockey/Science_stub_census. Please feel free to modify this page or add more data. I didn't think for general purposes that the detailed census that was done earlier was needed, so this is what I think might be the minimum useful information. Let me know if you disagree ... also, if things go automated, I'd be happy to retire/archive this page. Courtland 03:22, 2005 Feb 16 (UTC)
From my understanding, meta templates are a problem since they are used in every stub template, which accounts for 20-30K articles, and this creates load problems. Am I correct in assuming that if every current stub template had a "hard-coded" equivalent of the metapic or metastub template (or pure html), then there would be no problem? If that's the case, then I'll change all the templates myself and everyone will be happy... right? -- jag123 05:54, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Could we change the policy to state that, if there are no objections after, say, 3 days, the stub template can go ahead and be deleted *edit: this was really supposed to say "created"*? (We're having to wait too long for templates that are clearly needed.) -
Aranel ("Sarah") 01:12, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I notice a change has been made to the former Template:phys-stub changing it to Template:physics-stub. This was done by User:Eequor with the note "Decrypt." Eequor created a redirect from Template:phys-stub to Template:physics-stub. I thought I'd read on here that such redirects are a no-no, something to be avoided because it messes with automated processes. I would take action and do a switch back, but I don't want to do that unless there's a reason to. Courtland 23:10, 2005 Feb 17 (UTC)
Err I had no idea you needed approval to make a new stub, so this is a notification that I have made a stub for biographical articles about scientists. What is the next step to get it approved? -- LexCorp 23:56, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
template:China-stub, template:Taiwan-stub, and template:China-geo-stub have all just been listed over at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion, with their related categories at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion. I'm not telling you how to vote, but if you'd care to protest...? Grutness| hello? 23:46, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I thought of this the other day when I was looking about for stubs in particular categories. It would be quite useful to have articles that are stubs obviously exposed in the listings of articles in categories. For instance, in the main article category Category:Mathematicians, to have an asterisk or some indicator next to the article titles that are stubs would be very useful for both users of the Encyclopedia and contributors to the Encyclopedia alike. Maybe this has been brought up and rejected before, but I thought I'd unknowingly re-hash old ground nonetheless if that is the case. Courtland 00:11, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)
(and the category Category:Taiwan-related stubs)
The flag of the Republic of China (ROC) is used in this template, and the articles linked to it can be ROC-related. Taiwan is not an accurate and NPOV terms to refer to the ROC, for neither the
island of Taiwan nor the
province of Taiwan covers 100% of ROC's territories.
Suggestions: rename as
Template:ROC-stub (or
Template:Republic of China-stub), or spliting into
Template:ROC-stub and
Template:Taiwan-stub.
(see also relevant discussions at
Wikipedia:Requested moves) —
Insta
ntnood 19:20, Feb 18 2005 (UTC)
(copy and paste from Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Taiwan-stub, see also the discussion there.) — Insta ntnood 12:04, Feb 19 2005 (UTC)
(and the category Category:China-related stubs)
Currently it covers stubs of both mainland China-related topics and China-related topics. The former deals with articles of mainland China (i.e. People's Republic of China (PRC) excluding Hong Kong and Macao), and the latter deals with things about China in general, such as historical events, calligraphy, etc.
The suggestion is to split the template into two, with the titles Template:China-stub and Template:Mainland China-stub respectively. — Insta ntnood 20:53, Feb 18 2005 (UTC)
(copy and paste from Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:China-stub, see also the discussion there.) — Insta ntnood 12:07, Feb 19 2005 (UTC)
(and the category Category:China geography stubs)
Currently it covers geostubs of both mainland China and territories under the control of the Republic of China (ROC). Hong Kong geostubs are already covered by Template:Hong Kong-geo-stub.
The suggestion is to split the template into two, with the titles Template:Mainland China-geo-stub and Template:ROC-geo-stub (or Template:Republic of China-geo-stub) respectively. — Insta ntnood 20:56, Feb 18 2005 (UTC)
(copy and paste from Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:China-geo-stub, see also the discussion there.) — Insta ntnood 12:07, Feb 19 2005 (UTC)
Should this include Madagascar or is there a better place to stub Madagascar-related stubs to? Courtland 16:47, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)
I've looked briefly back through the archives of discussions here and haven't found discussion of editing the main Stub sorting Project page (if I missed it and its there, please post the information here:
I've a couple of suggestions for consideration:
That's quite a bit, I know. Some of the discussion in the past couple of weeks suggested that maybe the Project Page needed a bit of change to keep up with the outcomes of those discussions. Courtland 22:52, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:Template_messages/Stubs#animal-stub_vs_biosci-stub for this discussion if you're interested and haven't already seen it. (I seldom go to that talk page, myself) Courtland 22:59, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
There was a suggestion @ Wikipedia_talk:Template_messages/Stubs#animal-stub_vs_biosci-stub that the dog-stub be expanded to be a general pet-stub. I'm not very supportive of this, as the dog-category in general hits a specific and active community of both hobbyists and professionals. Nonetheless, I wanted to transfer that thought here and put it up for consideration. Courtland 23:18, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
Not to worry folks, this never made it to "Templates for deletion". I put it here so as to prepare in case it did, as the sentiment was out there. Thanks; we'll archive this away for future reference. Courtland 17:01, 2005 Mar 8 (UTC)
see User:Ceyockey/Science_stub_census#Top_Level_Counts
I have more detailed statistics in an Excel spreadsheet, but I think this is about the granularity that most people might be interested in Courtland 04:07, 2005 Feb 21 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion#Category:Quebec-related_stubs Courtland 14:11, 2005 Feb 21 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion#Category:People_from_Quebec_stubs Courtland 14:13, 2005 Feb 21 (UTC)
After some deep thought, more information coming to light, and seemingly endless wrangling on tfd, I've come up with a possible solution to the Taiwan/RoC and China/PRChina stub issues, which I've listed on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria. Please have a look and make any comments you see fit! Grutness| hello? 11:38, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Stub lists more articles than Category:Stub. Is this because the stub template hasn't always categorised its articles? Susvolans (pigs can fly) Did you know that there is a proposal to treat dissent from naming conventions as vandalism? 13:36, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Like me, you may well get fed up with waiting for all the icons and tables to load at Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs when you want to find out which stub to use on a particular article. for that reason, I've added an extra page to my user pages ( User:Grutness/Stubs) with a plain-text list of all the stub templates listed as they stand now (00:23, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)). Feel free to amend the list when new stubs are created (but make sure you only list them with SINGLE curly brackets! I don't want my user pages covered in templates!). Also, feel free to advertise this page anywhere where stub sorting is going on. Grutness| hello? 00:23, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
hi, i think there are a few more stub categories needed, anyone whos been sorting them much recently will agree, i dont know how to make a new one so would appreciate it if some else could (sorry)! those categories are: business/marketing, sociology, phrases/figures of speech, and maybe jobs/industry. thanks in advance. Bluemoose 10:20, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
oh and possibly one for objects/materials, thanks Bluemoose 10:22, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
As I understand it, {{ compu-domain-stub}} was designed to deal with articles like .af or .ch, of which there were a whole bunch. But most of them aren't in that category; I don't know if they're considered non-stubby at their current length. But a lot of people seem to be getting confused and putting websites there instead of in {{ website-stub}}. I found alt.folklore.urban in there today.
So, there's clearly a need here. compu-domain-stub should be for TLDs only. website-stub should be for actual websites. And we should have internet-stub above both of them to catch things like alt.folklore.urban.
Thoughts? Objections? There's a lot of stuff to sort out of {{compu-stub}}. grendel| khan 17:40, 2005 Feb 27 (UTC)
Discussion on the compu-stub talk page failed to come up with anything more to add to the ccTLD (county code Top Level Domain) at least in a general sense (individual entries certainly do). There isn't much to say about a ccTLD beyond what it is used for (though there are some interesting notes in some of the entries). Since there is nothing to add they are complete and the stub template was removed. Please correct me if you can think of material that should be added to the majority of ccTLDs.
RJFJR 04:19, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
Ought there to be a stub category for dance-related topics? Alai 01:50, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I've added a new stub, {{ compu-hardware-stub}}. There's plenty in {{ compu-stub}} which can be moved down into it; it's partly done already. There's some merge work that needs to be done with {{ microcompu-stub}}---it's already under the new category; perhaps it should be moved to just cover CPUs. grendel| khan 03:16, 2005 Mar 2 (UTC)
The full plain-text list of stub categories (formerly at User:Grutness/Stubs) is now at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types, complete with links to the templates. Grutness| hello? 08:37, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
We seem to have a large number of journalists stub articles. Are journalist writers (for the sake of writer-stub) or are they currently sorted in bio-stub? Are there enough entries and is it distinctive enough to warrant a seperate stub category? RJFJR 05:05, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
Category:Comics stubs has grown to a nearly unmanageable size (564 articles and counting). WikiProject Comics would like to create subcategories for Marvel Comics stubs, DC Comics stubs, and comics creators stubs, along with corresponding templates. Any objections? — Gwalla | Talk 22:04, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'll go ahead and get started. — Gwalla | Talk 23:26, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I just went through this and moved all of the creator stubs that I could find into the comics-creator-stub category. Chyel 18:11, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)
I think everybody agrees that the bio-stub category is getting far too big. Recently I have been protesting at the lack of categories for general stubs related to e.g. Norway other than geo-stubs. Perhaps people seemed to think that there wouldn't be much point in having a Norway-stub category like we do for US-stubs and UK-stub. Then I had a closer look and found out that there actually was a Norway-bio-stub category, not listed on Wikipedia:Stub categories, a type I thought would probably be useless (if there aren't enough general non-geo articles on Norway how could there possibly be enough bio ones alone?). Looking inside that category I found only 23 bio-stubs, a number which I think we can all agree is too small. But then I tried finding any stray Norwegian bio-stubs that might keep those 23 company. Without too much effort on my part I soon boosted that number to 230! Of course, part of my original quibble still stands (what if I do find a non-bio stub on Norwegian culture for example? My proposal for this involved regional stub categories in instances where national ones would be too small, but that's another story altogether...). But the point that I would like to make, for when the inevitable "let's break up the bio-stub category" comes, is that doing it by career isn't the only way. It seems from my Norwegian experience that even fairly small countries are actually likely to have sufficient numbers of biostubs to make it worthwhile. The opposite problem is entirely likely - countries prominent in Wikipedia will have giant national biostub categories (I suspect we'd soon see US-writer, US-politician, US-actor etc) but (a) at least that would constitute an improvement over the present and (b) it would mean that biostubs could be localised both in terms of the field that the person achieved fame in and their geographical context, both of which would help users track down stubs within their field of expertise for expanding. Really I'm just laying this down for any future discussion - if somebody says "oh, but country X couldn't possibly have enough biostubs to justify a category for them" they could well be wrong (especially because a huge number of countries have had stubs made for their historic and political leaders etc). The thing that I would like to know is why Norway-bio-stubs wasn't mentioned on Wikipedia:Stub categories? Was it created by an unofficial back-channel and never noticed? Other categories like chess-stub don't show up either, so I think that the page may need some updating. Thanks! -- VivaEmilyDavies 19:42, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Right now there are only 3 stub categories that are children of Category:Sports stubs, Category:American football stubs, Category:Baseball stubs and Category:Basketball stubs.
Looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types, shouldn't we make the items in the "Sports" section children of Category:Sports stubs?
Courtland 07:12, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)
I was curious about the prevalence of stubs in Wikipedia, so I randomly called up 40 pages ... 21 of these were stubs, more than half stubbed to general-stub. Courtland 08:41, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)
I've updated the image for {{ Afghanistan-geo-stub}}. Before I spend several days going through the rest of the country-specific geo-stub templates and doing the same: is it worth the effort? And is there anything in need of systematic improvement in this first image that I should know about before doing the rest? (e.g., should I pre-shrink the map, or leave it large? Is the border visible enough? Or should it be removed entirely?) — Korath ( Talk) 19:17, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)
I apologize for the blunder; the sad thing is, I was already vaguely aware that Afghanistan had border issues, but it didn't occur to me that the omission of a map was intentional. The appearance, if not the reality, was that many of the images were chosen on an ad-hoc basis of what was already available, and the discussion above in New stub images only reinforced that. Perhaps a warning worded similarly to the start of Template:controversial3 should be added to Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs to prevent someone else from coming along and trying to be helpful? — Korath ( Talk) 10:07, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)
Category:Sportspeople stubs is currently a child of Category:People stubs.
Would it be ok with you if this category were also made a child of Category:Sports stubs?
Courtland 04:36, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)
Hi there! I surfed into here from after doing sorting work on Deadend pages (most of which are stubs). I believe categorization is one of the most important steps of Wikipedia. I was wondering about something...
As I was categorizing some stubs, I came across a digimon stub and came to the shocking realization that we don't seem to have a digimon stub category. Considering the insane number of articles on obscure digimons, shouldn't we have one? DaveTheRed 03:26, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
see Wikipedia:Redirects_for_deletion#February_7
Courtland 05:49, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC)
I was somewhat bemused to notice several user pages (and a couple of User_talk: pages, too) tagged as stubs. Should there be a stub category for them? Ought we just to ignore them? Alai 08:37, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Category:People stubs may actually be larger than Category:Stub now. (I haven't countered the pages, but it's enormous.) I've just been working on it a little bit and it is becoming increasingly obvious that emergency rescue efforts are needed.
With the addition of Template:US-bio-stub and Template:UK-bio-stub, the vast majority of stubs with generic bio-stubs can now be given more specific categories. (So if you're bored or looking for something really easy to sort, you might work on Category:People stubs.) When sorting generic stubs, please use the most specific bio-stub subcategory you can. (If you can't find one that fits, you might consider whether a new subcategory would be useful!)
We should probably also be careful about Category:Politician stubs, which seems to be the end location of a huge number of bio-stubs. - Aranel ("Sarah") 01:37, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Stubs I've found that make sense to move to Wiktionary I've been adding the "move to Wiktionary" message to but leaving the stub message in place. I'm tempted to remove removing the stub messages, as the article will be listed in the "move to Wiktionary" category, where pretty much most things are stubs. What do you think?
Courtland 03:57, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)
I'm going to have a look at the Africa-geo-stubs, see if there's any way of splitting it up a bit. There are about 700 Africa-geo-stubs, plus over 400 South Africa-stubs (many of which are geo-stubs). At the very least I'd like to create SA-geo-stub, and hopefully there will be one or two other African countries with enough geo-stubs for a separate category. Grutness| hello? 05:12, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've spoken with a developer, Jamesday, who said that large categories are a problem. I also asked him about the 100 minimum count for categories, and he replied there was no minimum, and that 100 articles was above his maximum target. I'm not sure why a 100 article minimum was suggested, but it doesn't seem to be related to server or performance issues, as I originally believed. According to Jamesday, it's better to have many stub templates that house a smaller number of articles per category than having large categories, especially one as huge as Category:Stub. Personally, I would create/encourage/approve any stub that can help split up a large category or make stub sorting easier. Thought I'd share. -- jag123 09:31, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The {{ SoapChar}} template message did not have a corresponding category and was not listed in Category:Stub categories. I just finished a) creating the category and assigning it to parent categories and b) going through the soapchar stubs and doing null saves to get them to appear in the category (a few could be de-stubbed, but many had stub msgs put on them late, when they were already beyond what I would normally call a stub).
Courtland 04:38, 2005 Mar 15 (UTC)
I've put numbers in the form of "<100", for instance, on the wonderful Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types page next to about 1/4 of so of the entries. These are bins indicating the approximate sizes of the different categories. I thought when I was near done with this that a # pages might be more useful or as useful, so that one would have "4+pgs" or "5pgs" as a size measure equivalent to 800-1000 stubs. People actively working in a category could update the number occasionally. I don't think that the current # of bins would catch on, but maybe the # pages would be an easy enough measure that people might update those numbers. Thoughts ... other than "will one revert restore the page to its pristine condition?" :) actually 3 reverts, but one to get rid of all the numbers. I also put on R beside those templates that are redirects to flag these as "do not use" if that is OK? Courtland 04:00, 2005 Mar 16 (UTC)
One very good thing about this... I've discovered there are 19 pages of Japan geo-stubs. I'm going to put a small cry for help on the relevant wikiproject page, in the hope that someone can turn some of those into full-scale articles! Grutness| hello? 01:32, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
One more minor change to the count on the Stub type page - I've started making the date the category was counted visible to readers - it'll make it more obvious when we need to re-tally. Grutness| hello? 08:01, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've added a new sign, *W, to a couple of stub listings. This is meant to indicate association with a WikiProject and I've wikilinked the sign to the wikiproject. Do you think this would be good to propagate throughout the list? It would not need to be updated frequently but could help explain low stub counts (or even empty ones) which might otherwise be called into question. I've not modified the introductory information on the stub types page yet until there's affirmation (or not) of this particular addition. Courtland 15:50, 2005 Mar 19 (UTC)
Well, everything's counted and dated, from the tiny (a unique Runescape-stub) to the positively scary (14,000 bio-stubs). Now it's juts a case of adding any *Ws and keeping it updated. Grutness| hello? 11:00, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
As stub sorters are a large part of Wiki Categorization, please give your opinion on the proposal at Wikipedia:Categorization policy.
A bot has just gone through and added information to a huge number of geography items - many of them stubs. For that reason, Category:Stub has just experienced a huge influx of geo-stubs (I've just cleared over 60 Australian national park stubs from the first page!). Please, if you sort these stubs make an effort to assign the specific country-geo-stub templates. On a normal day a dozen or more stubs are simply changed to geo-stub (and I go through and correct them to their specific country or region geo-stub templates). If as many geo-stubs as I think have come through, I don't want to discover 500 new generic geo-stubs tomorrow! Even if you don't know for certain whether a particular country has a geo-stub, at least try "countryname-geo-stub" in preview, and chances are you'll hit lucky. Thanks! Grutness| hello? 06:50, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Not sure if this is clear, but D6 didn't in fact add stub tags, it just updated pages (formatting coordinates) that did already have stub tags.
BTW seeing that you re-categorized some of these stubs, I had the bot move some Brazilian stubs directly from stub to Brazil-geo-stub when updating. -- User:Docu
A few days ago, User:Burgundavia created the Category:Aviation stubs and added Category:Aircraft stubs, Category:Airport stubs, and Category:Airline stubs to it (not Category:Bomber stubs, though. Rather than just changing things I thought I'd bring it up here. First, the text for Category:Aircraft stubs doesn't match that for the template {{ aero-stub}}. Second, there might have been a long discussion before on what to call this top-level category and if so do you recall what the arguments were for not naming it Category:Aviation stubs rather than the current Category:Aircraft stubs? One problem with the new category is that it has no corresponding template; rather than having it deleted, though, I'm wondering if the opportunity might be taken to either a)change the category name associated with aero-stub or b) create an "aviation-stub" template that is categorized the parent of all existing related categories or c) delete this and create a Category:Aerospace stubs that would replace both Category:Aviation stubs and Category:Aircraft stubs? I like that last one, myself.
Thanks for thinking on this. Courtland 16:11, 2005 Mar 19 (UTC)
When you enter into the Stub category, you see alongside the subcategories (the types of stubs), some star trek stubs in the "article" section. Why is that? 500LL 23:02, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)
I've just been looking through Category:Historical stubs, looking for stubs to add to the new Category:Ancient Rome stubs, and I noticed what a shambles it is! The category seems to have been used as a dump for things that don't quite fit in anywhere else. Weapons, biographies, books, linguistics and geography items are all mixed in with the expected battles and treaties. If anyone has some spare energy, this is a place that needs quite a bit of work. The most notable problem is biographies - there seems to be an idea that biographical items for people from more than a couple of hundred years ago are somehow history not biography (admittedly this is a grey area). Surely though they are still primarily biographies... anyone have any thoughts on this? Grutness| hello? 02:04, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Mainly because there are more specific stubs for weapons (weapon-stub) and people (bio-stub). We haven't got specific traty or batttle stubs (I suppose you could argue that the miliatary stub and the politics stub could be used, but that's a fair stretch). As far as people are concerned, as I said it's a grey area - it feels as though modern people get bio-stub and ancient ones get hist-stub, but where do you draw the line, or would they all bre better getting bio-stub? I think that history stubs are a good area to consider splitting at some point, but - other than the ones already in progress (Rome, Russia and Eastern Slavic history) it's probably better to concentrate on some of the more urgent sections (like bio-stub) first. As for how to split, historical period would make sense, but so would region - especially for ancient history when many regions were quite separate, and possibly also for modern history. This probably needs a big debate before it's tackled. Grutness| hello? 11:40, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've taken the liberty of expanding the scope note on the {{ Comedian-stub}} to include both comedians and humorists. I hope that's ok with folks. This was a response to a) the small number of articles in the stub category and b) stumbling across the humorist category while looking at the bio-stub bottomless pit.
Courtland 05:30, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)
Courtland 22:45, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)
Courtland 01:40, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
This is the type of thing we struggle against: according to the original author, the article Dawn Powell is still a stub. Is that reasonable, really? Courtland 05:05, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
Without trying to sound elitist, unless the article's creator has been around Wikipedia quite a while, a hard-working stub sorter might well have a better idea of what a stub is than the article's creator has. Common sense should guide you really. Does the article look complete enough (but with stll room for expansion), or does it definitely need expanding? Could you add a sect-stub to part of it rather than stub? Grutness| hello? 05:40, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Mmm. One of the cases that actually works in the opposite way to what I said above! To someone (like a stub sorter) with knowledge of what a stub looks like, but not enough knowledge of how the finished article should look... Perhaps in that instance it would have been better to subdivide the page "Life", "Work", etc, and put a sect-stub on the "Work" section. Sadly, however, sect-stub is simply a generic sect-stub. Keeping track of separate stub categories is enough work without trying to keep track of separate sect-stub subcategories (don't try saying that if you have a lisp!) Grutness| hello? 09:41, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Two questions about category boundaries:
I propose adding the following fourth point to the project goals:
4. The ultimate goal of this project is to get stubs expanded to full articles by making it as easy as possible for other editors to do so.
Sometimes I get the feeling there is to much stub sorting for sorting's sake going on... Not posting this on the project page right away, because it is a major change and might be worded better. -- grm_wnr Esc 16:50, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Could someone who's a bit less casually connected to stub sorting than I stop by WP:TFD and try to figure out what's up with Template:Czechia-geo-stub and Template:Czech-geo-stub? I mean, it's conceivable that the name change was discussed somewhere before Starky showed up out of nowhere an hour ago and started replacing the former with the latter and flinging {{db}} tags around, but I have to leave and can't follow up. — Korath ( Talk) 17:22, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
Instead of putting mutliple stub tags into one article, why don't we add just one, the most important one, and then add the article manually into the other stub categories. Example: for a stub article about a French actress, we add the template {{ Template:actor-stub}} and then we add it manually to the Category Category:France-related stubs. 500LL 13:03, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
That's off the top of my head - if I thought for a while about it I could probably come up with another three or four more reasons to add to this... Grutness| hello? 05:00, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Definitely! The purpose of stubs is to help editors. If an article could attract editors working on two different fields, then putting two stubs on it is the logical answer - in the above example, a france-stub and a history-stub for articles on the French revolution. As time goes on, more and more "complex-stubs" (e.g., france-hist-stub) are being created where there is enough call for them (see the discussions at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria. Even using three stubs is viable, but more than that begins to get messy. As for the old "stub templates are ugly" argument that is often heard - yes they are. But stubs themselves are ugly, and multi-stubbing is more likely to get them turned into "real" articles. Grutness| hello? 13:56, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
<div style="display:none">{{whatever-stub}}</div>
A very simple idea. Simply reduce the size of the text. I've used the "small" and "/small" messages on a couple of stub templates, and I think it improves them greatly. It would be another easy way around the annoyance at seeing multiple stub messages - they's still be there, but they'd be far less prominent. Have a look at how {{ Lawschool-stub}} appears on University of Virginia School of Law. Grutness| hello? 03:21, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
id="stub"
, so a #stub { font-size: smaller; }
in
MediaWiki:Monobook.css (and, if you're feeling frisky, to the corresponding files for the other skins) would do it. (Mind, since there's only supposed to be a single element of a given id on a page, the templates should have been of the stub class, i.e. class="boilerplate metadata stub"
, and .stub { font-size: smaller; }
in the css, but that's another issue entirely, and not in any way urgent.) This lets people override the display if they want, makes it easy to find stub templates that were cobbled together by hand instead of substing the meta templates, and lets changes be done in a single edit without having to recache any of the pages the templates appear on. —
Korath (
Talk) 09:15, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)See also MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css#small :) request. -- cesarb 19:48, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
This should be changed to .stub { ... }
, before some well-meaning editors start adding id=stub
to all the different stub category templates. That would also let people format them all the way they like, in their user monobook.css style sheets. —
Michael
Z. 2005-04-15 20:27 Z
id="stub"
. Fixing them is a project in itself, and given that every browser I'm aware of deals with it gracefully, and the mindbogglingly huge number of pages that would need to be recached if all the templates change, it probably isn't worth the effort. —
Korath (
Talk) 21:17, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC){{ chem-stub}} was recently harshly redesigned by the folks over at WP Chemistry for "complying with other Chemistry templates". I am of opinion that the wider stub templates class is more important in this case than the chemistry one (and besides, only a few Project use such "part of" boxes, and they make them much less obvious), and WP chemistry should be told. Circeus 21:29, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
I write a lot of stubs. If I know what stubs exist for the article I've just written, I put them on, otherwise, I just use [stub].
Just recently, I thought of putting a stub msg on even if the stub does not yet exist (or there's another one in use that I don't know). E.g., I just posted Tallong Midge Orchid. I used "stub" and "Australia-stub" (way too general for this, but I didn't know of another), but when I placed "flower-stub" there wasn't one. Hmmm...is there a "plant-stub" or "pretty fragrant growing thing-stub" or where is it?
My question is, should I leave something like "flower-stub" using the logic that the stub sorters will see it and know what stub to use without having to read the whole article, or is that making things worse? Is it more helpful just to put "stub" and leave the stub sorters to it? Quill 23:39, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The logic behind this is simple, BTW - "stub" will put things in Category:stub - using a nonexistent template like "flower-stub" will simply leave a red link on the page. Since most of the stub sorting is done using the existing stub categories, we might never find something red-linked to flower-stub. Grutness| hello? 00:44, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
A week ago I googled Wikipedia for all uncategorised stubs, and there were 16,000, that has steadily gone done and today it is 11,700, and if you consider google always seems to over estimate the amount of stubs, then we really are making progress!, well done everyone, keep it up and we will be finished soon! Bluemoose 11:22, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
This under the assumption that the stub tag's use won't grow by that time... as we're always adding articles... -- AllyUnion (talk) 10:33, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I know everyone is busy sorting or what not... but this policy has been left out to dry for a long time. Is it acceptable to everyone? -- AllyUnion (talk) 17:09, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Anyone have advice on how to handle articles like Bunah and Buzi? Being biblical references they seem to deserve entries, but it is unlikely that these entries or others like them will ever grow to a point where anyone looking at article length will not consider them stubs. Should we just let articles like these be stubs forever, or should we come up with some type of comment to place in the article saying that even though the article is short it is not a stub? -- Allen3 talk 01:53, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
I'm beginning to wonder whether it will be worth having a purge of useless stub categories sometime - especially if the suggestions about making new categories pass WP:WSS before acceptance is passed. At the moment there are a huge number of categories with little apparent justification around. Many of them just seem to have arrived, and I've only noticed them just now going through the list of stub types - no mention on WP:WSS at all other than that. It's getting completely out of hand. The following list are all those which (1) weren't made after debate at WP:WSS/Criteria; (2) have less than 25 articles; and (3) have no associated Wikiproject. Surely some of them could go?
{{ Nickelodeon stub}} | {{ Robotech-stub}} | {{ Shahnama-stub}} | {{ Hanna-Barbera stub}} |
{{ Poker-stub}} | {{ Climbing-stub}} | {{ F1-stub}} | {{ RugbyLeague-stub}} |
{{ Skateboarding-stub}} | {{ Zen-stub}} | {{ Eris-stub}} | {{ Sefer-stub}} |
{{ Newage-stub}} | {{ Astrology-stub}} | {{ Uganda-stub}} | {{ Afghanistan-stub}} |
{{ Kyrg-stub}} | {{ Lao-Stub}} | {{ SL-stub}} | {{ Kiribati-stub}} |
{{ Palau-stub}} | {{ Pitcairn-stub}} | {{ Tuvalu-stub}} | {{ Albania-stub}} |
{{ Andorra-geo-stub}} | {{ Tatarstan-geo-stub}} | {{ Tatarstan-hist-stub}} | {{ Icehockey-player-stub}} |
{{ Sustainability-stub}} | {{ Statistics-stub}} | {{ Hurricane stub}} | {{ GNOME-stub}} |
{{ Energy development stub}} | {{ Photo-stub}} | {{ Censorship-stub}} | {{ Scout-stub}} |
{{ Secur-stub}} | {{ Philately-stub}} | {{ Crime-stub}} |
that's 39 stubs that are of questionable worth, to say the least... Grutness| hello? 10:33, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I propose the deletion of the following stub categories from the list: Eris-stub, Shahnama-stub, Robotech-stub, Tatarstan-geo-stub and Tatarstan-hist-stub. There is absolutely no need for these. There is at least some amount of potential on the other categories. -- Sn0wflake 15:26, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There seems to be a consensus. Do we have to list these under a deletion proccess or can one of the sysops involved on the project do the deletion? If the later is true, we can start emptying those categories right now... in truth, I will get started with it. -- Sn0wflake 16:00, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Until Wikipedia:Deletion of useless stub templates and stub categories is an actual policy, it must go through the normal process... however it is not to say that you couldn't just cut and copy the text over to TFD and CFD... -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:42, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
AllyUnion might accept to perform the deletions. Presumably there are enough people with their nose into this project to talk about a partial consensus at the cery least. At worst, tell the VfDs that we are only seeking approval for the deletion. Circeus 16:40, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
I offer the following statistic: I printed Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types and it was 16 pages long. (well, th last page was only half a page and the table of contents took1 and a fraction pages. But it is still really long to try to find anything). RJFJR 03:04, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
The whole reason I created that page was to have all the stubs on one page, in one place, without huge graphics. Splitting the page defeats the whole purpose of it. As for printing it, I use smaller text, and it comes out at five pages. And I still think that getting rid of some of the useless categories (and there are quite a few) will have more effect, as would the proposed policy of only allowing new categories that have been vetted by WP:WSS. One problem though - it is technically a fork of wikipedia:template messages/Stubs, and the two keep getting out of kilter with each other. We probably need to go through both lists and correct any discrepancies. Grutness| hello? 01:30, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
As I've been doing stub sorting for some weeks now, I really thing that there is a real need for something like a {{hist-bio-stub}}, especially for people which can't be covered by the other bio- or hist-stubs (I seem to remember that this was mentioned before). What do you think? Lectonar 06:51, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
How about a tl|royal-stub}}, to categorise all those European and other royals? I'm sure that would reduce the bio-stub category quite a lot without having to resort to separate categories for each royal line. We've got a peer-stub, and it would fit in well with that. It could just about be seen as an "occupation", after all! Grutness| hello? 10:26, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Neat project! All these stubs are driving me mad, though. Forming category names with lots of adjectives in them is just evading a serious metadata problem... I'm content with carpentry stubs --> joinery stubs... which isn't to say they're quite the same subjects. +sj + 07:29, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
That was part of the point for the change - the articles were about joinery (smaller items, furniture, cabinets etc) rather than carpentry (big items, houses, ships etc). As to the categorising of stubs it is very useful for editors. Consider this - there's a wiki project working on the geography of Italy. Do they want to look through all the geography stubs, or all the stubs related to Italy? Or everything that is simply listed as "stub"? Or would they prefer a stub category especially on Italian geography? Grutness| hello? 08:30, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Please help finalize this policy. Leave the comments on the talk page of that page. -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:37, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The deletion proposal doesn't seem to be going anywhere. There is any easy alternative that doesn't require a vote: we just don't use the the stub types we don't want. We can even leave them off the list so we don't think about them (and they don't lengthen the list). Maybe take votes in the stub sorting project before adding new stub types to the list. RJFJR 16:41, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)
This is a very rough draft of what I believe should be the new reference regarding stubs, from which Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub and Wikipedia:Perfect stub article should be redirected to. Let's work together on improving it. If we manage to do it, we can create a more centralized and effective project, with new and clearer policies. ( Sn0wflake)
Stubs are articles which have not yet received much attention from the Wikipedia editors. They have already been created, but don't contain enough information to be considered true articles. A typical stub usually consist from three to seven lines of text. We belive that stubs aren't worthless, but rather the first step an article takes on its course to becoming complete.
Stubs on all subjects exist, and in order for them to be properly indexed, a system was created in order to make finding and improving them easier for editors interested on a particular subject. For example, a stub named as such: {{music-stub}} would be included on the same category as other stubs that relate to music. Thus, a consistent database of stubs that need work can be created and easily searched.
This is a list of the most commonly used stub types, for a full list please refer to this article: LINK TO PLAINTEXT LIST, SUCH AS THE ONE MADE BY GRUTNESS
(...)
Please append new versions of this draft below.
This was an attempt at a draft for a new stub page. It's still incomplete obviously, and I'm not satisfied with what's there, but maybe some points can be salvaged for a better page. ( Grm wnr)
Stubs are articles which have not yet received much attention from the Wikipedia editors. They have already been created, but don't contain enough information to be considered true articles. We believe that stubs aren't worthless, but rather the first step an article takes on its course to becoming complete.
A stub is an article which is clearly too short, but not too short to be useful - certainly no longer than the lead section of a perfect article, but enough to define what the article title is actually about and why an article is useful. This usually means about the length of 2 to 10 short sentences. Another rule of thumb is given on Wikipedia:Did you know: "Look for articles that are +1,000 characters in size. NO STUBS.". Note that a longer page may be a stub if the topic is a very complicated one - conversely, a short article on a topic which has a very narrow scope may not be a stub.
Anything that is shorter (or has less information) than a stub is called a substub.
Sometimes, stubs are frowned upon, but generally, they are seen as starting points for proper articles. On the other hand, s stub that can never be expanded into an article is either not a stub (because it defines the topic completely)) or a candidate for deletion. Since a stub's reason for existence is future expansion, it must be
a) marked as such and
b) be easy to find.
That's where stub templates come into play.
Stub templates have two components: A short visible text marking an article as a stub and encouiraging editors to expand it (condition a)) and a category link, placing the article in a stub category (condition b)). Stub templates are placed at the bottom of articles.
The basic stub template is {{ stub}}. This takes care of condition a); however, on the English Wikipedia the number of stubs has grown so big as to make {{ stub}} useless for condition b). To alleviate this problem, topical stubs have been introduced. The main difference to the normal stub template is that the stub category will be a subcategory of the normal topic category,people will be able to work expanding stubs on topics they know about, instead of wading to the mass of general stubs. Of course, topical categories should not become too big themselves, so the topical stubs may be again split up into subtopical stubs. This is usually the case if a stub category has over 1000 entries. On the other hand, the category should not be too small, or the number of stub categories will make the stub hierarchy impossible to maintain. The lower threshold is about 100 articles. Exception: Topics which have a WikiProject may warrant their own stub category regardless of the number of existing stubs.
Stubs exist for many, many topics; for a full list please refer to this article: Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. In general the naming convention for stubs is topic-stub. You will find that you can find topical stubs just by trying and previewing. When marking articles a stubs, please be as precise as you can manage - It saves other people a lot of work later on.
There is a template for substubs, {{ substub}}. Its use is discouraged however - most people feel that useful substubs are really stubs and should be sorted, and useless substubs are candidates for deletion, merging or moving to Wiktionary.
A regular editor can't be expected to memorize all the stub types, so the stub categories have to be regularily checked for stubs which are labeled too generally. The official headquarters for this activity is the Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting. For all things stub-related, apply within.
So, you think you need to start a new stub? First, check the following:
If you answered "yes" to all of the above, do the following:
(...)
Please append new versions of this draft below.
This is the third draft for the new reference regarding stub articles. ( Sn0wflake)
Stubs are articles which have not yet received substantial attention from the Wikipedia editors. They have been created, but don't contain enough information to be considered true articles. The Wikipedia community believes that stubs aren't worthless, but rather the first step an article takes on its course to becoming complete.
A stub is an article which is clearly too short, but not too short to be useful. It must be long enough to define the article's title. This usually means stubs are about the length of 3 to 10 short sentences. Note that a longer page may be a stub if the topic is complex enough - conversely, a short article on a topic which has a very narrow scope may not be a stub.
An article which contains less information than a stub is called a substub. It is consisted generally of 1 or 2 lines that convey only very basic information about the subject. However, please do remember that the Wikipedia is not a dictionary. That is why the Wiktionary exists.
After writing the stub, the editor must insert what is called a stub template, so that the article can be flaged as a stub. These stub templates must be placed at the bottom of articles, invariably. Stub templates are composed by two distinc parts: a short message stating that said article is a stub and encouraging editors to expand it, and a category link, which places the article in a stub category.
Stub categories are needed due to the fact that the basic stub template - {{stub}} - has become so large that it became very hard to find articles on a specific subject. That is why stub categories were created. If an editor is, for example, a biologist, then he or she can look for stubs with the tag {{biology-stub}} on said category and easily find stubs to which they can add, subtract or modify.
For a complete list of stub categories, please refer to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. In general, the naming convention for stubs is topic-stub. You will find that you can find topical stubs simply by trying and previewing. When marking articles as stubs, please be as precise as you possibly can - it saves other people a lot of work further down the road.
Most (if not all) stub-related activities are centralized on Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting.
The template for substubs is {{substub}}. Editors should, however, avoid creating substubs. With a small amount of research, it is possible to create an useful stub on a short time. Consider this before creating a substub.
If you identify a group of stubs that do not fit in an existing category or if you see that an existing stub category that is growing very large and might be improved by breaking a sub set of stubs out into a new category you can create a new stub category. Before you make a new stub category make sure you consider these guidelines:
If you think these guidelines are satisfied propose the new stub here. If there are no objections after a week you can go ahead and create the new stub category. Edit the new stub template page, Template:stub-name-stub, for example Template:Road-stub. This is the basic format for new stubs:
<div class="boilerplate" id="stub">
''This [[A]] related article is a [[Wikipedia:Perfect stub article|stub]]. You can [[Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub|help]] Wikipedia by [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|action=edit}} expanding it]''.
</div>
[[Category:B]]
You can copy this text into the new page and customize it by inserting your new stub text into the boiler plate language, in this example where the A and B appear.
When you save the page you will have created the new stub template, in this example {{road-stub}}. You'll also need to add the new stub template to these two lists::
Wikipedia:Stub_categories - This displays the full templates as they appear in articles.
Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types - This is a text only version of the same list.
Creating the new category
Next you will need to create a category that contains all the articles that will have the new stub tag attached.
To start editing you can follow the red category link on the new stub page. In this case it would appear as Category:Road stubs. Here's the basic format for stub categories:
{{Stub Category|article=[[A]]s or [[A]]|newstub=B|category=C}}
This syntax does four things, it adds the category:road stubs to category:stubs, it provides a description of the category, it displays the stub text and it inserts this category into a higher level category, in this case the category:road stubs will be a member of category:Road Transport.
So in this example the formatting would look like this:
{{Stub Category|article=[[Road]]s or [[Road Transport]]|newstub=road-stub|category=road transport}}
In order to increase the categories effectivness and visability it's generally advisable to add your category to several catigories. For example, this would add it to the Roads category:
[[category:Roads]]
When you are done, it is important that you make sure that the new stub and the new stub category are linked correctly to other categories. Using the road-stub as an example, the road-stub category needs to be a member of category:stub categories (because it's a stub category) and category:roads (because it's a category consisting of roads).
This is the pre-final draft for the new reference regarding stub articles. Sorry for the delay. I had several problems with my computer and wasn't able to work seriously on this for a while. ( Sn0wflake)
Stubs are articles which have not yet received substantial attention from the Wikipedia editors. They have been created, but don't contain enough information to be considered true articles. The community believes that stubs are far from worthless. They are, rather, the first step an article takes on its course to becoming complete.
A stub is an article which is clearly too short, but not too short to be useful. On a general manner, it must be long enough to at least define the article's title. This usually means stubs are about the length of 3 to 10 short sentences. Note that a longer page may be a stub if the topic is complex enough - conversely, a short article on a topic which has a very narrow scope may not be a stub.
In the past, a category referred to as substubs was utilised in case articles were smaller than the proposed size of stubs, but this category has been deprecated with time. It is important to remember that the Wikipedia is not a dictionary. That is why the Wiktionary exists. In case your article is too short to be a stub, consider moving it to said sister project or, even better, with a small amount of research, create an useful stub. Take this into consideration before creating short entries containing close to no information.
After writing the stub, the editor must insert what is called a stub template, so that the article can be flagged as a stub. These stub templates must be placed at the bottom of the article, invariably. Stub templates are composed by two distinct parts: a short message stating that said article is a stub and encouraging editors to expand it, and a category link, which places the article in a stub category.
Stub categories are needed due to the fact that the basic stub template - {{ stub}} - has become so large that it became very hard to find articles on a specific subject. That is why stub categories were created. If an editor is, for example, a biologist, then he or she can look for stubs with the tag {{ biology-stub}} on said category and easily find stubs to which they can add, subtract or modify.
For a complete list of stub categories, please refer to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. In general, the naming convention for stubs is topic-stub. You will find that you can find topical stubs simply by trying and previewing. When marking articles as stubs, please be as precise as you possibly can - it saves other people a lot of work further down the road. If an article overlaps two potential categories, two different stub templates may be used, but using more than two is strongly discouraged.
Stub-related activities are centralized on Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting. The project should be your main referential when it comes to this subject.
If you identify a group of stubs that do not fit in an existing category, or if an existing stub category is growing too large and might be optimized by creating a narrower category, you might propose the creation of a new stub category. Before you start a new stub category, make sure you consider these guidelines:
If you think you have satisfied these guidelines, propose the new stub category here. If there are no objections within a week, you can go ahead and create the new stub category.
First, you will need to create the template which will be displayed on the articles which contain the stub. This should be named logically, following this model: Template:topic-stub.
This is the basic format for new stub templates:
<div class="boilerplate" id="stub">
''This [[A]]-related article is a [[Wikipedia:Perfect stub article|stub]]. You can [[Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub|help]] Wikipedia by [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|action=edit}} expanding it]''.
</div>
[[Category:B]]
You might find use in pasting this code into the new template and customize it by inserting different text into it. Replacing the letters A and B as such:
At this point, you should add the new stub category to the following lists:
Next, you will need to create a category to hold the articles which will have the new stub tag attached to them.
To start editing it, you should follow the red category link on the stub template you have created. In this case, it would appear as Category:Road stubs. Here's the basic format for stub categories:
{{Stub Category|article=[[A]]s or [[A]]|newstub=B|category=C}}
This syntax does four things: it adds the
Category:Road stubs to
Category:Stub, it provides a description of the category, it displays the stub text and, finally, inserts this category into a higher level category, in this case the Category:road stubs will be a member of category:Road Transport.
So, in this example, the formatting would look like this:
{{Stub Category|article=[[Road]]s or [[Road Transport]]|newstub=road-stub|category=road transport}}
In order to increase the categories effectiveness and visibility, it's generally advisable to add your category to several categories. For example, this would add it to the Roads category:
[[category:Roads]]
When you are done, it is important that you make sure that the new stub and the new stub category are linked correctly to other categories. Using the road-stub as an example, the road-stub category needs to be a member of
Category:Stub categories (because it's a stub category) and
Category:Roads (because it's a category consisting of roads). If your new category has been made from part of an existing stub category or categories, these should also be listed here (so, for example,
Category:France geography stubs should be part of
Category:France-related stubs and
Category:Europe geography stubs).
Courtland's revision
Stubs are articles which have not yet received substantial attention from the Wikipedia editors. They have been created, but don't contain enough information to <new>yet</new> be considered true articles <new>according to the
standard Wikipedia definition</new>. The community believes that stubs are far from worthless. They are, rather, the first step an article takes <new>many articles take</new> on its course to becoming complete.
A stub is an article which is clearly too short, but not too short to be useful<new>useless</new>. On a general manner, it must be long enough to at least define the article's title. This usually means stubs are about the length of 3 to 10 short sentences. Note that a longer page may be a stub if the topic is complex enough - conversely, a short article on a topic which has a very narrow scope may not be a stub.<new>Also, a longer article can contain sections that are stubs.</new>
In the past, a category referred to as substubs was utilised in case articles were smaller than the proposed size of stubs, but this category has been deprecated with time. It is important to remember that the Wikipedia is not a dictionary. That is why the Wiktionary exists. In case your article is too short to be a stub, consider moving it to said sister project or, even better, with a small amount of research, create an useful stub. Take this into consideration before creating short entries containing close to no information.
After writing the stub, the editor must insert what is called a stub template, so that the article can be flagged as a stub. These stub templates must be placed<new>belong</new> at the bottom of the article, invariably<new>except in the case of the aforementioned section stub</new>. Stub templates are composed by two distinct parts: a short message stating that said article is a stub <new>of a particular type and encouraging editors to expand it, and a category link, which places the article in a stub category.
Stub categories are needed due to the fact that the basic stub template - {{ stub}} - has become so large that it became very hard to find articles on a specific subject. That is why stub categories were created. If an editor is, for example, a biologist, then he or she can look for stubs with the tag {{ biology-stub}} on said category and easily find stubs to which they can add, subtract or modify.
For a complete list of stub categories, please refer to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. In general, the naming convention for stubs is topic-stub. You will find that you can find topical stubs simply by trying and previewing <????>. When marking articles as stubs, please be as precise as you possibly can - it saves other people a lot of work further down the road. If an article overlaps two potential categories, two different stub templates may be used, but using more than two is strongly discouraged.
Stub-related activities are centralized on Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting (aka WP:WSS). The project should be your main referential when it comes to this subject.
If you identify a group of stubs that do not fit in an existing category, or if an existing stub category is growing too large and might be optimized by creating a narrower category, you might propose the creation of a new stub category. Before you start a new stub category, make sure you consider these guidelines:
<revised>
</revised>
If you think you have satisfied these guidelines, propose the new stub category here. If there are no objections within a week <new>.. or affirmation by a number of WP:WSS Participants</new>, you can go ahead and create the new stub category.
First, you will need to create the template which will be displayed on the articles which contain the stub. This should be named logically, following this model: Template:topic-stub.
This is the basic format for new stub templates:
<div class="boilerplate" id="stub">
''This [[A]]-related article is a [[Wikipedia:Perfect stub article|stub]]. You can [[Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub|help]] Wikipedia by [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|action=edit}} expanding it]''.
</div>
[[Category:B]]
You might find use in pasting this code into the new template and customize it by inserting different text into it. Replacing the letters A and B as such:
At this point, you should add the new stub category to the following lists:
Next, you will need to create a category to hold the articles which will have the new stub tag attached to them.
To start editing it, you should follow the red category link on the stub template you have created. In this case, it would appear as Category:Road stubs. Here's the basic format for stub categories:
{{Stub Category|article=[[A]]s or [[A]]|newstub=B|category=C}}
<revised>
This syntax does four things, it:
</revised>
So, in this example, the formatting would look like this:
{{Stub Category|article=[[Road]]s or [[Road Transport]]|newstub=<s>road-stub|category=road transport</s><new>Road-stub|category=Road transport</new>}}
In order to increase the categories effectiveness and visibility, it's generally advisable to add your category to several categories. For example, this would add it to the Roads category:
[[category:Roads]]
When you are done, it is important that you make sure that the new stub and the new stub category are linked correctly to other categories. Using the road-stub as an example, the road-stub category needs to be a member of
Category:Stub categories (because it's a stub category) and
Category:Roads (because it's a category consisting of roads). If your new category has been made from part of an existing stub category or categories, these should also be listed here (so, for example,
Category:France geography stubs should be part of
Category:France-related stubs and
Category:Europe geography stubs).
<new>If you have any questions or comments on this process of producing a new stub type and category, don't hesitate to address them to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting.</new>
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | → | Archive 10 |
User:500LL has been putting a lot of work into adding new stub images, some of which are a big improvement. However, there has been some discussion at User talk:500LL about the legal status of these images. I've looked over the site that they come from and I'm having trouble finding a clear, unambiguous statement. (However, the freeware origin of some of the images offered at the site is dubious.)
I'd like to say that what is best all around is for us to always use custom-made images (i.e. images made entirely by Wikipedians, perhaps based on other public domain or GFDL images made by Wikipedians) whenever possible, so that we can know exactly where we stand. What do you think? Can anyone else figure out the copyright status of those images? (This effects a large number of templates.) - Aranel ("Sarah") 01:28, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Image:Musician-stub.gif "and many others like it" have turned up on Wikipedia:Image sleuthing; apparently they come from http://www.iconarchive.com, which has a no-commerical-use license. It's looking very much like we'll have to go back to the old ones. — Korath ( Talk) 14:57, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
I want to say that I've made a mistake uploading those copyrighted icons, so there's a list of the icons that I'v uploaded, if you want to delete them: Image:Composer-stub.jpg, Image:X-wing-stub.jpg, Image:Beagle-stub.jpg, Image:Darth Vader-stub.jpg, Image:BMW-stub.jpg, Image:BMW-stub.jpg, Image:Plane6-stub.jpg, Image:Italymap-stub.jpg, Image:Canadamap-stub.jpg, Image:Mexicomap-stub.jpg, Image:Japanmap-stub.jpg, Image:Ukmap-stub.jpg, Image:Usamap-stub.jpg, Image:Croix-stub.jpg, Image:Movie-stub.jpg, Image:Chemistry-stub.jpg, Image:Medicine-stub.jpg, Image:Baseball-stub.gif, Image:Cycle-stub.gif, Image:Sportsman-stub.jpg, Image:Newspaper-stub.gif, Image:Brain-stub.gif, Image:Certific-stub.gif, Image:Musician-stub.gif, Image:Oscar-stub.gif, Image:Song-stub.gif. 500LL 22:09, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've come across a couple of articles with two stub notices on them. At the time of writing, Guiseley railway station is an example. I presume this practice is to deprecated? Which should take precedence? -- Tagishsimon (talk) 01:48, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Unfortunately I got into a rather heated disagreement with an editor over this one and now the Frankenstein's Monster is dead and buried. Courtland 18:03, 2005 Mar 4 (UTC)
Using this search [1], I've re-stubbed many of the first 750 results. Since the search is not done in "real-time", anyone using the same search should start farther down the list and please say where, so as to avoid duplication of effort. Personally, I think this is faster and more efficient than everyone going through the list and only stubbing articles that suit them. (If you're doing that, thats fine too.) I understand some of you may not appreciate having a bunch of stuff thrown into a general stub category, like people-stub for instance, but at least they are better sorted now than before. If you think this creates more work for you, then just leave them alone and I (or someone else) will eventually re-stub them under the proper category (like writer, scientist, etc). One way or another this will get done. :) -- jag123 01:54, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Just to let everyone know, the google search seems to end prematurely. After going through the first 20 pages, you can repeat the search to get some omitted results, but after about 4 times of doing so, you reach the end and you don't get newer results. -- jag123 17:36, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Bluemoose 13:48, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The article Andreas Karlstadt relates to a chuch theologian and reformer. Would he get a simple bio-stub, or do theologians count under philosophers and qualiy for philo-stub? Grutness| hello? 05:16, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I suddenly noticed that almost every remaining unsubcategorised article in Category:Geography stubs was a British overseas territory stub. So the last one is - {{BritOT-geo-stub}}. Grutness| hello? 00:42, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I've moved the Science Stubs Census materials to a new page: User:Ceyockey/Science_stub_census. Please feel free to modify this page or add more data. I didn't think for general purposes that the detailed census that was done earlier was needed, so this is what I think might be the minimum useful information. Let me know if you disagree ... also, if things go automated, I'd be happy to retire/archive this page. Courtland 03:22, 2005 Feb 16 (UTC)
From my understanding, meta templates are a problem since they are used in every stub template, which accounts for 20-30K articles, and this creates load problems. Am I correct in assuming that if every current stub template had a "hard-coded" equivalent of the metapic or metastub template (or pure html), then there would be no problem? If that's the case, then I'll change all the templates myself and everyone will be happy... right? -- jag123 05:54, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Could we change the policy to state that, if there are no objections after, say, 3 days, the stub template can go ahead and be deleted *edit: this was really supposed to say "created"*? (We're having to wait too long for templates that are clearly needed.) -
Aranel ("Sarah") 01:12, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I notice a change has been made to the former Template:phys-stub changing it to Template:physics-stub. This was done by User:Eequor with the note "Decrypt." Eequor created a redirect from Template:phys-stub to Template:physics-stub. I thought I'd read on here that such redirects are a no-no, something to be avoided because it messes with automated processes. I would take action and do a switch back, but I don't want to do that unless there's a reason to. Courtland 23:10, 2005 Feb 17 (UTC)
Err I had no idea you needed approval to make a new stub, so this is a notification that I have made a stub for biographical articles about scientists. What is the next step to get it approved? -- LexCorp 23:56, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
template:China-stub, template:Taiwan-stub, and template:China-geo-stub have all just been listed over at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion, with their related categories at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion. I'm not telling you how to vote, but if you'd care to protest...? Grutness| hello? 23:46, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I thought of this the other day when I was looking about for stubs in particular categories. It would be quite useful to have articles that are stubs obviously exposed in the listings of articles in categories. For instance, in the main article category Category:Mathematicians, to have an asterisk or some indicator next to the article titles that are stubs would be very useful for both users of the Encyclopedia and contributors to the Encyclopedia alike. Maybe this has been brought up and rejected before, but I thought I'd unknowingly re-hash old ground nonetheless if that is the case. Courtland 00:11, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)
(and the category Category:Taiwan-related stubs)
The flag of the Republic of China (ROC) is used in this template, and the articles linked to it can be ROC-related. Taiwan is not an accurate and NPOV terms to refer to the ROC, for neither the
island of Taiwan nor the
province of Taiwan covers 100% of ROC's territories.
Suggestions: rename as
Template:ROC-stub (or
Template:Republic of China-stub), or spliting into
Template:ROC-stub and
Template:Taiwan-stub.
(see also relevant discussions at
Wikipedia:Requested moves) —
Insta
ntnood 19:20, Feb 18 2005 (UTC)
(copy and paste from Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Taiwan-stub, see also the discussion there.) — Insta ntnood 12:04, Feb 19 2005 (UTC)
(and the category Category:China-related stubs)
Currently it covers stubs of both mainland China-related topics and China-related topics. The former deals with articles of mainland China (i.e. People's Republic of China (PRC) excluding Hong Kong and Macao), and the latter deals with things about China in general, such as historical events, calligraphy, etc.
The suggestion is to split the template into two, with the titles Template:China-stub and Template:Mainland China-stub respectively. — Insta ntnood 20:53, Feb 18 2005 (UTC)
(copy and paste from Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:China-stub, see also the discussion there.) — Insta ntnood 12:07, Feb 19 2005 (UTC)
(and the category Category:China geography stubs)
Currently it covers geostubs of both mainland China and territories under the control of the Republic of China (ROC). Hong Kong geostubs are already covered by Template:Hong Kong-geo-stub.
The suggestion is to split the template into two, with the titles Template:Mainland China-geo-stub and Template:ROC-geo-stub (or Template:Republic of China-geo-stub) respectively. — Insta ntnood 20:56, Feb 18 2005 (UTC)
(copy and paste from Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:China-geo-stub, see also the discussion there.) — Insta ntnood 12:07, Feb 19 2005 (UTC)
Should this include Madagascar or is there a better place to stub Madagascar-related stubs to? Courtland 16:47, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)
I've looked briefly back through the archives of discussions here and haven't found discussion of editing the main Stub sorting Project page (if I missed it and its there, please post the information here:
I've a couple of suggestions for consideration:
That's quite a bit, I know. Some of the discussion in the past couple of weeks suggested that maybe the Project Page needed a bit of change to keep up with the outcomes of those discussions. Courtland 22:52, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:Template_messages/Stubs#animal-stub_vs_biosci-stub for this discussion if you're interested and haven't already seen it. (I seldom go to that talk page, myself) Courtland 22:59, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
There was a suggestion @ Wikipedia_talk:Template_messages/Stubs#animal-stub_vs_biosci-stub that the dog-stub be expanded to be a general pet-stub. I'm not very supportive of this, as the dog-category in general hits a specific and active community of both hobbyists and professionals. Nonetheless, I wanted to transfer that thought here and put it up for consideration. Courtland 23:18, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
Not to worry folks, this never made it to "Templates for deletion". I put it here so as to prepare in case it did, as the sentiment was out there. Thanks; we'll archive this away for future reference. Courtland 17:01, 2005 Mar 8 (UTC)
see User:Ceyockey/Science_stub_census#Top_Level_Counts
I have more detailed statistics in an Excel spreadsheet, but I think this is about the granularity that most people might be interested in Courtland 04:07, 2005 Feb 21 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion#Category:Quebec-related_stubs Courtland 14:11, 2005 Feb 21 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion#Category:People_from_Quebec_stubs Courtland 14:13, 2005 Feb 21 (UTC)
After some deep thought, more information coming to light, and seemingly endless wrangling on tfd, I've come up with a possible solution to the Taiwan/RoC and China/PRChina stub issues, which I've listed on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria. Please have a look and make any comments you see fit! Grutness| hello? 11:38, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Stub lists more articles than Category:Stub. Is this because the stub template hasn't always categorised its articles? Susvolans (pigs can fly) Did you know that there is a proposal to treat dissent from naming conventions as vandalism? 13:36, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Like me, you may well get fed up with waiting for all the icons and tables to load at Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs when you want to find out which stub to use on a particular article. for that reason, I've added an extra page to my user pages ( User:Grutness/Stubs) with a plain-text list of all the stub templates listed as they stand now (00:23, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)). Feel free to amend the list when new stubs are created (but make sure you only list them with SINGLE curly brackets! I don't want my user pages covered in templates!). Also, feel free to advertise this page anywhere where stub sorting is going on. Grutness| hello? 00:23, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
hi, i think there are a few more stub categories needed, anyone whos been sorting them much recently will agree, i dont know how to make a new one so would appreciate it if some else could (sorry)! those categories are: business/marketing, sociology, phrases/figures of speech, and maybe jobs/industry. thanks in advance. Bluemoose 10:20, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
oh and possibly one for objects/materials, thanks Bluemoose 10:22, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
As I understand it, {{ compu-domain-stub}} was designed to deal with articles like .af or .ch, of which there were a whole bunch. But most of them aren't in that category; I don't know if they're considered non-stubby at their current length. But a lot of people seem to be getting confused and putting websites there instead of in {{ website-stub}}. I found alt.folklore.urban in there today.
So, there's clearly a need here. compu-domain-stub should be for TLDs only. website-stub should be for actual websites. And we should have internet-stub above both of them to catch things like alt.folklore.urban.
Thoughts? Objections? There's a lot of stuff to sort out of {{compu-stub}}. grendel| khan 17:40, 2005 Feb 27 (UTC)
Discussion on the compu-stub talk page failed to come up with anything more to add to the ccTLD (county code Top Level Domain) at least in a general sense (individual entries certainly do). There isn't much to say about a ccTLD beyond what it is used for (though there are some interesting notes in some of the entries). Since there is nothing to add they are complete and the stub template was removed. Please correct me if you can think of material that should be added to the majority of ccTLDs.
RJFJR 04:19, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
Ought there to be a stub category for dance-related topics? Alai 01:50, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I've added a new stub, {{ compu-hardware-stub}}. There's plenty in {{ compu-stub}} which can be moved down into it; it's partly done already. There's some merge work that needs to be done with {{ microcompu-stub}}---it's already under the new category; perhaps it should be moved to just cover CPUs. grendel| khan 03:16, 2005 Mar 2 (UTC)
The full plain-text list of stub categories (formerly at User:Grutness/Stubs) is now at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types, complete with links to the templates. Grutness| hello? 08:37, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
We seem to have a large number of journalists stub articles. Are journalist writers (for the sake of writer-stub) or are they currently sorted in bio-stub? Are there enough entries and is it distinctive enough to warrant a seperate stub category? RJFJR 05:05, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
Category:Comics stubs has grown to a nearly unmanageable size (564 articles and counting). WikiProject Comics would like to create subcategories for Marvel Comics stubs, DC Comics stubs, and comics creators stubs, along with corresponding templates. Any objections? — Gwalla | Talk 22:04, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'll go ahead and get started. — Gwalla | Talk 23:26, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I just went through this and moved all of the creator stubs that I could find into the comics-creator-stub category. Chyel 18:11, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)
I think everybody agrees that the bio-stub category is getting far too big. Recently I have been protesting at the lack of categories for general stubs related to e.g. Norway other than geo-stubs. Perhaps people seemed to think that there wouldn't be much point in having a Norway-stub category like we do for US-stubs and UK-stub. Then I had a closer look and found out that there actually was a Norway-bio-stub category, not listed on Wikipedia:Stub categories, a type I thought would probably be useless (if there aren't enough general non-geo articles on Norway how could there possibly be enough bio ones alone?). Looking inside that category I found only 23 bio-stubs, a number which I think we can all agree is too small. But then I tried finding any stray Norwegian bio-stubs that might keep those 23 company. Without too much effort on my part I soon boosted that number to 230! Of course, part of my original quibble still stands (what if I do find a non-bio stub on Norwegian culture for example? My proposal for this involved regional stub categories in instances where national ones would be too small, but that's another story altogether...). But the point that I would like to make, for when the inevitable "let's break up the bio-stub category" comes, is that doing it by career isn't the only way. It seems from my Norwegian experience that even fairly small countries are actually likely to have sufficient numbers of biostubs to make it worthwhile. The opposite problem is entirely likely - countries prominent in Wikipedia will have giant national biostub categories (I suspect we'd soon see US-writer, US-politician, US-actor etc) but (a) at least that would constitute an improvement over the present and (b) it would mean that biostubs could be localised both in terms of the field that the person achieved fame in and their geographical context, both of which would help users track down stubs within their field of expertise for expanding. Really I'm just laying this down for any future discussion - if somebody says "oh, but country X couldn't possibly have enough biostubs to justify a category for them" they could well be wrong (especially because a huge number of countries have had stubs made for their historic and political leaders etc). The thing that I would like to know is why Norway-bio-stubs wasn't mentioned on Wikipedia:Stub categories? Was it created by an unofficial back-channel and never noticed? Other categories like chess-stub don't show up either, so I think that the page may need some updating. Thanks! -- VivaEmilyDavies 19:42, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Right now there are only 3 stub categories that are children of Category:Sports stubs, Category:American football stubs, Category:Baseball stubs and Category:Basketball stubs.
Looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types, shouldn't we make the items in the "Sports" section children of Category:Sports stubs?
Courtland 07:12, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)
I was curious about the prevalence of stubs in Wikipedia, so I randomly called up 40 pages ... 21 of these were stubs, more than half stubbed to general-stub. Courtland 08:41, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)
I've updated the image for {{ Afghanistan-geo-stub}}. Before I spend several days going through the rest of the country-specific geo-stub templates and doing the same: is it worth the effort? And is there anything in need of systematic improvement in this first image that I should know about before doing the rest? (e.g., should I pre-shrink the map, or leave it large? Is the border visible enough? Or should it be removed entirely?) — Korath ( Talk) 19:17, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)
I apologize for the blunder; the sad thing is, I was already vaguely aware that Afghanistan had border issues, but it didn't occur to me that the omission of a map was intentional. The appearance, if not the reality, was that many of the images were chosen on an ad-hoc basis of what was already available, and the discussion above in New stub images only reinforced that. Perhaps a warning worded similarly to the start of Template:controversial3 should be added to Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs to prevent someone else from coming along and trying to be helpful? — Korath ( Talk) 10:07, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)
Category:Sportspeople stubs is currently a child of Category:People stubs.
Would it be ok with you if this category were also made a child of Category:Sports stubs?
Courtland 04:36, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)
Hi there! I surfed into here from after doing sorting work on Deadend pages (most of which are stubs). I believe categorization is one of the most important steps of Wikipedia. I was wondering about something...
As I was categorizing some stubs, I came across a digimon stub and came to the shocking realization that we don't seem to have a digimon stub category. Considering the insane number of articles on obscure digimons, shouldn't we have one? DaveTheRed 03:26, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
see Wikipedia:Redirects_for_deletion#February_7
Courtland 05:49, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC)
I was somewhat bemused to notice several user pages (and a couple of User_talk: pages, too) tagged as stubs. Should there be a stub category for them? Ought we just to ignore them? Alai 08:37, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Category:People stubs may actually be larger than Category:Stub now. (I haven't countered the pages, but it's enormous.) I've just been working on it a little bit and it is becoming increasingly obvious that emergency rescue efforts are needed.
With the addition of Template:US-bio-stub and Template:UK-bio-stub, the vast majority of stubs with generic bio-stubs can now be given more specific categories. (So if you're bored or looking for something really easy to sort, you might work on Category:People stubs.) When sorting generic stubs, please use the most specific bio-stub subcategory you can. (If you can't find one that fits, you might consider whether a new subcategory would be useful!)
We should probably also be careful about Category:Politician stubs, which seems to be the end location of a huge number of bio-stubs. - Aranel ("Sarah") 01:37, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Stubs I've found that make sense to move to Wiktionary I've been adding the "move to Wiktionary" message to but leaving the stub message in place. I'm tempted to remove removing the stub messages, as the article will be listed in the "move to Wiktionary" category, where pretty much most things are stubs. What do you think?
Courtland 03:57, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)
I'm going to have a look at the Africa-geo-stubs, see if there's any way of splitting it up a bit. There are about 700 Africa-geo-stubs, plus over 400 South Africa-stubs (many of which are geo-stubs). At the very least I'd like to create SA-geo-stub, and hopefully there will be one or two other African countries with enough geo-stubs for a separate category. Grutness| hello? 05:12, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've spoken with a developer, Jamesday, who said that large categories are a problem. I also asked him about the 100 minimum count for categories, and he replied there was no minimum, and that 100 articles was above his maximum target. I'm not sure why a 100 article minimum was suggested, but it doesn't seem to be related to server or performance issues, as I originally believed. According to Jamesday, it's better to have many stub templates that house a smaller number of articles per category than having large categories, especially one as huge as Category:Stub. Personally, I would create/encourage/approve any stub that can help split up a large category or make stub sorting easier. Thought I'd share. -- jag123 09:31, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The {{ SoapChar}} template message did not have a corresponding category and was not listed in Category:Stub categories. I just finished a) creating the category and assigning it to parent categories and b) going through the soapchar stubs and doing null saves to get them to appear in the category (a few could be de-stubbed, but many had stub msgs put on them late, when they were already beyond what I would normally call a stub).
Courtland 04:38, 2005 Mar 15 (UTC)
I've put numbers in the form of "<100", for instance, on the wonderful Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types page next to about 1/4 of so of the entries. These are bins indicating the approximate sizes of the different categories. I thought when I was near done with this that a # pages might be more useful or as useful, so that one would have "4+pgs" or "5pgs" as a size measure equivalent to 800-1000 stubs. People actively working in a category could update the number occasionally. I don't think that the current # of bins would catch on, but maybe the # pages would be an easy enough measure that people might update those numbers. Thoughts ... other than "will one revert restore the page to its pristine condition?" :) actually 3 reverts, but one to get rid of all the numbers. I also put on R beside those templates that are redirects to flag these as "do not use" if that is OK? Courtland 04:00, 2005 Mar 16 (UTC)
One very good thing about this... I've discovered there are 19 pages of Japan geo-stubs. I'm going to put a small cry for help on the relevant wikiproject page, in the hope that someone can turn some of those into full-scale articles! Grutness| hello? 01:32, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
One more minor change to the count on the Stub type page - I've started making the date the category was counted visible to readers - it'll make it more obvious when we need to re-tally. Grutness| hello? 08:01, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've added a new sign, *W, to a couple of stub listings. This is meant to indicate association with a WikiProject and I've wikilinked the sign to the wikiproject. Do you think this would be good to propagate throughout the list? It would not need to be updated frequently but could help explain low stub counts (or even empty ones) which might otherwise be called into question. I've not modified the introductory information on the stub types page yet until there's affirmation (or not) of this particular addition. Courtland 15:50, 2005 Mar 19 (UTC)
Well, everything's counted and dated, from the tiny (a unique Runescape-stub) to the positively scary (14,000 bio-stubs). Now it's juts a case of adding any *Ws and keeping it updated. Grutness| hello? 11:00, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
As stub sorters are a large part of Wiki Categorization, please give your opinion on the proposal at Wikipedia:Categorization policy.
A bot has just gone through and added information to a huge number of geography items - many of them stubs. For that reason, Category:Stub has just experienced a huge influx of geo-stubs (I've just cleared over 60 Australian national park stubs from the first page!). Please, if you sort these stubs make an effort to assign the specific country-geo-stub templates. On a normal day a dozen or more stubs are simply changed to geo-stub (and I go through and correct them to their specific country or region geo-stub templates). If as many geo-stubs as I think have come through, I don't want to discover 500 new generic geo-stubs tomorrow! Even if you don't know for certain whether a particular country has a geo-stub, at least try "countryname-geo-stub" in preview, and chances are you'll hit lucky. Thanks! Grutness| hello? 06:50, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Not sure if this is clear, but D6 didn't in fact add stub tags, it just updated pages (formatting coordinates) that did already have stub tags.
BTW seeing that you re-categorized some of these stubs, I had the bot move some Brazilian stubs directly from stub to Brazil-geo-stub when updating. -- User:Docu
A few days ago, User:Burgundavia created the Category:Aviation stubs and added Category:Aircraft stubs, Category:Airport stubs, and Category:Airline stubs to it (not Category:Bomber stubs, though. Rather than just changing things I thought I'd bring it up here. First, the text for Category:Aircraft stubs doesn't match that for the template {{ aero-stub}}. Second, there might have been a long discussion before on what to call this top-level category and if so do you recall what the arguments were for not naming it Category:Aviation stubs rather than the current Category:Aircraft stubs? One problem with the new category is that it has no corresponding template; rather than having it deleted, though, I'm wondering if the opportunity might be taken to either a)change the category name associated with aero-stub or b) create an "aviation-stub" template that is categorized the parent of all existing related categories or c) delete this and create a Category:Aerospace stubs that would replace both Category:Aviation stubs and Category:Aircraft stubs? I like that last one, myself.
Thanks for thinking on this. Courtland 16:11, 2005 Mar 19 (UTC)
When you enter into the Stub category, you see alongside the subcategories (the types of stubs), some star trek stubs in the "article" section. Why is that? 500LL 23:02, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)
I've just been looking through Category:Historical stubs, looking for stubs to add to the new Category:Ancient Rome stubs, and I noticed what a shambles it is! The category seems to have been used as a dump for things that don't quite fit in anywhere else. Weapons, biographies, books, linguistics and geography items are all mixed in with the expected battles and treaties. If anyone has some spare energy, this is a place that needs quite a bit of work. The most notable problem is biographies - there seems to be an idea that biographical items for people from more than a couple of hundred years ago are somehow history not biography (admittedly this is a grey area). Surely though they are still primarily biographies... anyone have any thoughts on this? Grutness| hello? 02:04, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Mainly because there are more specific stubs for weapons (weapon-stub) and people (bio-stub). We haven't got specific traty or batttle stubs (I suppose you could argue that the miliatary stub and the politics stub could be used, but that's a fair stretch). As far as people are concerned, as I said it's a grey area - it feels as though modern people get bio-stub and ancient ones get hist-stub, but where do you draw the line, or would they all bre better getting bio-stub? I think that history stubs are a good area to consider splitting at some point, but - other than the ones already in progress (Rome, Russia and Eastern Slavic history) it's probably better to concentrate on some of the more urgent sections (like bio-stub) first. As for how to split, historical period would make sense, but so would region - especially for ancient history when many regions were quite separate, and possibly also for modern history. This probably needs a big debate before it's tackled. Grutness| hello? 11:40, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've taken the liberty of expanding the scope note on the {{ Comedian-stub}} to include both comedians and humorists. I hope that's ok with folks. This was a response to a) the small number of articles in the stub category and b) stumbling across the humorist category while looking at the bio-stub bottomless pit.
Courtland 05:30, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)
Courtland 22:45, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)
Courtland 01:40, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
This is the type of thing we struggle against: according to the original author, the article Dawn Powell is still a stub. Is that reasonable, really? Courtland 05:05, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
Without trying to sound elitist, unless the article's creator has been around Wikipedia quite a while, a hard-working stub sorter might well have a better idea of what a stub is than the article's creator has. Common sense should guide you really. Does the article look complete enough (but with stll room for expansion), or does it definitely need expanding? Could you add a sect-stub to part of it rather than stub? Grutness| hello? 05:40, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Mmm. One of the cases that actually works in the opposite way to what I said above! To someone (like a stub sorter) with knowledge of what a stub looks like, but not enough knowledge of how the finished article should look... Perhaps in that instance it would have been better to subdivide the page "Life", "Work", etc, and put a sect-stub on the "Work" section. Sadly, however, sect-stub is simply a generic sect-stub. Keeping track of separate stub categories is enough work without trying to keep track of separate sect-stub subcategories (don't try saying that if you have a lisp!) Grutness| hello? 09:41, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Two questions about category boundaries:
I propose adding the following fourth point to the project goals:
4. The ultimate goal of this project is to get stubs expanded to full articles by making it as easy as possible for other editors to do so.
Sometimes I get the feeling there is to much stub sorting for sorting's sake going on... Not posting this on the project page right away, because it is a major change and might be worded better. -- grm_wnr Esc 16:50, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Could someone who's a bit less casually connected to stub sorting than I stop by WP:TFD and try to figure out what's up with Template:Czechia-geo-stub and Template:Czech-geo-stub? I mean, it's conceivable that the name change was discussed somewhere before Starky showed up out of nowhere an hour ago and started replacing the former with the latter and flinging {{db}} tags around, but I have to leave and can't follow up. — Korath ( Talk) 17:22, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
Instead of putting mutliple stub tags into one article, why don't we add just one, the most important one, and then add the article manually into the other stub categories. Example: for a stub article about a French actress, we add the template {{ Template:actor-stub}} and then we add it manually to the Category Category:France-related stubs. 500LL 13:03, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
That's off the top of my head - if I thought for a while about it I could probably come up with another three or four more reasons to add to this... Grutness| hello? 05:00, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Definitely! The purpose of stubs is to help editors. If an article could attract editors working on two different fields, then putting two stubs on it is the logical answer - in the above example, a france-stub and a history-stub for articles on the French revolution. As time goes on, more and more "complex-stubs" (e.g., france-hist-stub) are being created where there is enough call for them (see the discussions at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria. Even using three stubs is viable, but more than that begins to get messy. As for the old "stub templates are ugly" argument that is often heard - yes they are. But stubs themselves are ugly, and multi-stubbing is more likely to get them turned into "real" articles. Grutness| hello? 13:56, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
<div style="display:none">{{whatever-stub}}</div>
A very simple idea. Simply reduce the size of the text. I've used the "small" and "/small" messages on a couple of stub templates, and I think it improves them greatly. It would be another easy way around the annoyance at seeing multiple stub messages - they's still be there, but they'd be far less prominent. Have a look at how {{ Lawschool-stub}} appears on University of Virginia School of Law. Grutness| hello? 03:21, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
id="stub"
, so a #stub { font-size: smaller; }
in
MediaWiki:Monobook.css (and, if you're feeling frisky, to the corresponding files for the other skins) would do it. (Mind, since there's only supposed to be a single element of a given id on a page, the templates should have been of the stub class, i.e. class="boilerplate metadata stub"
, and .stub { font-size: smaller; }
in the css, but that's another issue entirely, and not in any way urgent.) This lets people override the display if they want, makes it easy to find stub templates that were cobbled together by hand instead of substing the meta templates, and lets changes be done in a single edit without having to recache any of the pages the templates appear on. —
Korath (
Talk) 09:15, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)See also MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css#small :) request. -- cesarb 19:48, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
This should be changed to .stub { ... }
, before some well-meaning editors start adding id=stub
to all the different stub category templates. That would also let people format them all the way they like, in their user monobook.css style sheets. —
Michael
Z. 2005-04-15 20:27 Z
id="stub"
. Fixing them is a project in itself, and given that every browser I'm aware of deals with it gracefully, and the mindbogglingly huge number of pages that would need to be recached if all the templates change, it probably isn't worth the effort. —
Korath (
Talk) 21:17, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC){{ chem-stub}} was recently harshly redesigned by the folks over at WP Chemistry for "complying with other Chemistry templates". I am of opinion that the wider stub templates class is more important in this case than the chemistry one (and besides, only a few Project use such "part of" boxes, and they make them much less obvious), and WP chemistry should be told. Circeus 21:29, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
I write a lot of stubs. If I know what stubs exist for the article I've just written, I put them on, otherwise, I just use [stub].
Just recently, I thought of putting a stub msg on even if the stub does not yet exist (or there's another one in use that I don't know). E.g., I just posted Tallong Midge Orchid. I used "stub" and "Australia-stub" (way too general for this, but I didn't know of another), but when I placed "flower-stub" there wasn't one. Hmmm...is there a "plant-stub" or "pretty fragrant growing thing-stub" or where is it?
My question is, should I leave something like "flower-stub" using the logic that the stub sorters will see it and know what stub to use without having to read the whole article, or is that making things worse? Is it more helpful just to put "stub" and leave the stub sorters to it? Quill 23:39, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The logic behind this is simple, BTW - "stub" will put things in Category:stub - using a nonexistent template like "flower-stub" will simply leave a red link on the page. Since most of the stub sorting is done using the existing stub categories, we might never find something red-linked to flower-stub. Grutness| hello? 00:44, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
A week ago I googled Wikipedia for all uncategorised stubs, and there were 16,000, that has steadily gone done and today it is 11,700, and if you consider google always seems to over estimate the amount of stubs, then we really are making progress!, well done everyone, keep it up and we will be finished soon! Bluemoose 11:22, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
This under the assumption that the stub tag's use won't grow by that time... as we're always adding articles... -- AllyUnion (talk) 10:33, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I know everyone is busy sorting or what not... but this policy has been left out to dry for a long time. Is it acceptable to everyone? -- AllyUnion (talk) 17:09, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Anyone have advice on how to handle articles like Bunah and Buzi? Being biblical references they seem to deserve entries, but it is unlikely that these entries or others like them will ever grow to a point where anyone looking at article length will not consider them stubs. Should we just let articles like these be stubs forever, or should we come up with some type of comment to place in the article saying that even though the article is short it is not a stub? -- Allen3 talk 01:53, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
I'm beginning to wonder whether it will be worth having a purge of useless stub categories sometime - especially if the suggestions about making new categories pass WP:WSS before acceptance is passed. At the moment there are a huge number of categories with little apparent justification around. Many of them just seem to have arrived, and I've only noticed them just now going through the list of stub types - no mention on WP:WSS at all other than that. It's getting completely out of hand. The following list are all those which (1) weren't made after debate at WP:WSS/Criteria; (2) have less than 25 articles; and (3) have no associated Wikiproject. Surely some of them could go?
{{ Nickelodeon stub}} | {{ Robotech-stub}} | {{ Shahnama-stub}} | {{ Hanna-Barbera stub}} |
{{ Poker-stub}} | {{ Climbing-stub}} | {{ F1-stub}} | {{ RugbyLeague-stub}} |
{{ Skateboarding-stub}} | {{ Zen-stub}} | {{ Eris-stub}} | {{ Sefer-stub}} |
{{ Newage-stub}} | {{ Astrology-stub}} | {{ Uganda-stub}} | {{ Afghanistan-stub}} |
{{ Kyrg-stub}} | {{ Lao-Stub}} | {{ SL-stub}} | {{ Kiribati-stub}} |
{{ Palau-stub}} | {{ Pitcairn-stub}} | {{ Tuvalu-stub}} | {{ Albania-stub}} |
{{ Andorra-geo-stub}} | {{ Tatarstan-geo-stub}} | {{ Tatarstan-hist-stub}} | {{ Icehockey-player-stub}} |
{{ Sustainability-stub}} | {{ Statistics-stub}} | {{ Hurricane stub}} | {{ GNOME-stub}} |
{{ Energy development stub}} | {{ Photo-stub}} | {{ Censorship-stub}} | {{ Scout-stub}} |
{{ Secur-stub}} | {{ Philately-stub}} | {{ Crime-stub}} |
that's 39 stubs that are of questionable worth, to say the least... Grutness| hello? 10:33, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I propose the deletion of the following stub categories from the list: Eris-stub, Shahnama-stub, Robotech-stub, Tatarstan-geo-stub and Tatarstan-hist-stub. There is absolutely no need for these. There is at least some amount of potential on the other categories. -- Sn0wflake 15:26, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There seems to be a consensus. Do we have to list these under a deletion proccess or can one of the sysops involved on the project do the deletion? If the later is true, we can start emptying those categories right now... in truth, I will get started with it. -- Sn0wflake 16:00, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Until Wikipedia:Deletion of useless stub templates and stub categories is an actual policy, it must go through the normal process... however it is not to say that you couldn't just cut and copy the text over to TFD and CFD... -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:42, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
AllyUnion might accept to perform the deletions. Presumably there are enough people with their nose into this project to talk about a partial consensus at the cery least. At worst, tell the VfDs that we are only seeking approval for the deletion. Circeus 16:40, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
I offer the following statistic: I printed Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types and it was 16 pages long. (well, th last page was only half a page and the table of contents took1 and a fraction pages. But it is still really long to try to find anything). RJFJR 03:04, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
The whole reason I created that page was to have all the stubs on one page, in one place, without huge graphics. Splitting the page defeats the whole purpose of it. As for printing it, I use smaller text, and it comes out at five pages. And I still think that getting rid of some of the useless categories (and there are quite a few) will have more effect, as would the proposed policy of only allowing new categories that have been vetted by WP:WSS. One problem though - it is technically a fork of wikipedia:template messages/Stubs, and the two keep getting out of kilter with each other. We probably need to go through both lists and correct any discrepancies. Grutness| hello? 01:30, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
As I've been doing stub sorting for some weeks now, I really thing that there is a real need for something like a {{hist-bio-stub}}, especially for people which can't be covered by the other bio- or hist-stubs (I seem to remember that this was mentioned before). What do you think? Lectonar 06:51, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
How about a tl|royal-stub}}, to categorise all those European and other royals? I'm sure that would reduce the bio-stub category quite a lot without having to resort to separate categories for each royal line. We've got a peer-stub, and it would fit in well with that. It could just about be seen as an "occupation", after all! Grutness| hello? 10:26, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Neat project! All these stubs are driving me mad, though. Forming category names with lots of adjectives in them is just evading a serious metadata problem... I'm content with carpentry stubs --> joinery stubs... which isn't to say they're quite the same subjects. +sj + 07:29, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
That was part of the point for the change - the articles were about joinery (smaller items, furniture, cabinets etc) rather than carpentry (big items, houses, ships etc). As to the categorising of stubs it is very useful for editors. Consider this - there's a wiki project working on the geography of Italy. Do they want to look through all the geography stubs, or all the stubs related to Italy? Or everything that is simply listed as "stub"? Or would they prefer a stub category especially on Italian geography? Grutness| hello? 08:30, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Please help finalize this policy. Leave the comments on the talk page of that page. -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:37, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The deletion proposal doesn't seem to be going anywhere. There is any easy alternative that doesn't require a vote: we just don't use the the stub types we don't want. We can even leave them off the list so we don't think about them (and they don't lengthen the list). Maybe take votes in the stub sorting project before adding new stub types to the list. RJFJR 16:41, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)
This is a very rough draft of what I believe should be the new reference regarding stubs, from which Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub and Wikipedia:Perfect stub article should be redirected to. Let's work together on improving it. If we manage to do it, we can create a more centralized and effective project, with new and clearer policies. ( Sn0wflake)
Stubs are articles which have not yet received much attention from the Wikipedia editors. They have already been created, but don't contain enough information to be considered true articles. A typical stub usually consist from three to seven lines of text. We belive that stubs aren't worthless, but rather the first step an article takes on its course to becoming complete.
Stubs on all subjects exist, and in order for them to be properly indexed, a system was created in order to make finding and improving them easier for editors interested on a particular subject. For example, a stub named as such: {{music-stub}} would be included on the same category as other stubs that relate to music. Thus, a consistent database of stubs that need work can be created and easily searched.
This is a list of the most commonly used stub types, for a full list please refer to this article: LINK TO PLAINTEXT LIST, SUCH AS THE ONE MADE BY GRUTNESS
(...)
Please append new versions of this draft below.
This was an attempt at a draft for a new stub page. It's still incomplete obviously, and I'm not satisfied with what's there, but maybe some points can be salvaged for a better page. ( Grm wnr)
Stubs are articles which have not yet received much attention from the Wikipedia editors. They have already been created, but don't contain enough information to be considered true articles. We believe that stubs aren't worthless, but rather the first step an article takes on its course to becoming complete.
A stub is an article which is clearly too short, but not too short to be useful - certainly no longer than the lead section of a perfect article, but enough to define what the article title is actually about and why an article is useful. This usually means about the length of 2 to 10 short sentences. Another rule of thumb is given on Wikipedia:Did you know: "Look for articles that are +1,000 characters in size. NO STUBS.". Note that a longer page may be a stub if the topic is a very complicated one - conversely, a short article on a topic which has a very narrow scope may not be a stub.
Anything that is shorter (or has less information) than a stub is called a substub.
Sometimes, stubs are frowned upon, but generally, they are seen as starting points for proper articles. On the other hand, s stub that can never be expanded into an article is either not a stub (because it defines the topic completely)) or a candidate for deletion. Since a stub's reason for existence is future expansion, it must be
a) marked as such and
b) be easy to find.
That's where stub templates come into play.
Stub templates have two components: A short visible text marking an article as a stub and encouiraging editors to expand it (condition a)) and a category link, placing the article in a stub category (condition b)). Stub templates are placed at the bottom of articles.
The basic stub template is {{ stub}}. This takes care of condition a); however, on the English Wikipedia the number of stubs has grown so big as to make {{ stub}} useless for condition b). To alleviate this problem, topical stubs have been introduced. The main difference to the normal stub template is that the stub category will be a subcategory of the normal topic category,people will be able to work expanding stubs on topics they know about, instead of wading to the mass of general stubs. Of course, topical categories should not become too big themselves, so the topical stubs may be again split up into subtopical stubs. This is usually the case if a stub category has over 1000 entries. On the other hand, the category should not be too small, or the number of stub categories will make the stub hierarchy impossible to maintain. The lower threshold is about 100 articles. Exception: Topics which have a WikiProject may warrant their own stub category regardless of the number of existing stubs.
Stubs exist for many, many topics; for a full list please refer to this article: Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. In general the naming convention for stubs is topic-stub. You will find that you can find topical stubs just by trying and previewing. When marking articles a stubs, please be as precise as you can manage - It saves other people a lot of work later on.
There is a template for substubs, {{ substub}}. Its use is discouraged however - most people feel that useful substubs are really stubs and should be sorted, and useless substubs are candidates for deletion, merging or moving to Wiktionary.
A regular editor can't be expected to memorize all the stub types, so the stub categories have to be regularily checked for stubs which are labeled too generally. The official headquarters for this activity is the Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting. For all things stub-related, apply within.
So, you think you need to start a new stub? First, check the following:
If you answered "yes" to all of the above, do the following:
(...)
Please append new versions of this draft below.
This is the third draft for the new reference regarding stub articles. ( Sn0wflake)
Stubs are articles which have not yet received substantial attention from the Wikipedia editors. They have been created, but don't contain enough information to be considered true articles. The Wikipedia community believes that stubs aren't worthless, but rather the first step an article takes on its course to becoming complete.
A stub is an article which is clearly too short, but not too short to be useful. It must be long enough to define the article's title. This usually means stubs are about the length of 3 to 10 short sentences. Note that a longer page may be a stub if the topic is complex enough - conversely, a short article on a topic which has a very narrow scope may not be a stub.
An article which contains less information than a stub is called a substub. It is consisted generally of 1 or 2 lines that convey only very basic information about the subject. However, please do remember that the Wikipedia is not a dictionary. That is why the Wiktionary exists.
After writing the stub, the editor must insert what is called a stub template, so that the article can be flaged as a stub. These stub templates must be placed at the bottom of articles, invariably. Stub templates are composed by two distinc parts: a short message stating that said article is a stub and encouraging editors to expand it, and a category link, which places the article in a stub category.
Stub categories are needed due to the fact that the basic stub template - {{stub}} - has become so large that it became very hard to find articles on a specific subject. That is why stub categories were created. If an editor is, for example, a biologist, then he or she can look for stubs with the tag {{biology-stub}} on said category and easily find stubs to which they can add, subtract or modify.
For a complete list of stub categories, please refer to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. In general, the naming convention for stubs is topic-stub. You will find that you can find topical stubs simply by trying and previewing. When marking articles as stubs, please be as precise as you possibly can - it saves other people a lot of work further down the road.
Most (if not all) stub-related activities are centralized on Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting.
The template for substubs is {{substub}}. Editors should, however, avoid creating substubs. With a small amount of research, it is possible to create an useful stub on a short time. Consider this before creating a substub.
If you identify a group of stubs that do not fit in an existing category or if you see that an existing stub category that is growing very large and might be improved by breaking a sub set of stubs out into a new category you can create a new stub category. Before you make a new stub category make sure you consider these guidelines:
If you think these guidelines are satisfied propose the new stub here. If there are no objections after a week you can go ahead and create the new stub category. Edit the new stub template page, Template:stub-name-stub, for example Template:Road-stub. This is the basic format for new stubs:
<div class="boilerplate" id="stub">
''This [[A]] related article is a [[Wikipedia:Perfect stub article|stub]]. You can [[Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub|help]] Wikipedia by [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|action=edit}} expanding it]''.
</div>
[[Category:B]]
You can copy this text into the new page and customize it by inserting your new stub text into the boiler plate language, in this example where the A and B appear.
When you save the page you will have created the new stub template, in this example {{road-stub}}. You'll also need to add the new stub template to these two lists::
Wikipedia:Stub_categories - This displays the full templates as they appear in articles.
Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types - This is a text only version of the same list.
Creating the new category
Next you will need to create a category that contains all the articles that will have the new stub tag attached.
To start editing you can follow the red category link on the new stub page. In this case it would appear as Category:Road stubs. Here's the basic format for stub categories:
{{Stub Category|article=[[A]]s or [[A]]|newstub=B|category=C}}
This syntax does four things, it adds the category:road stubs to category:stubs, it provides a description of the category, it displays the stub text and it inserts this category into a higher level category, in this case the category:road stubs will be a member of category:Road Transport.
So in this example the formatting would look like this:
{{Stub Category|article=[[Road]]s or [[Road Transport]]|newstub=road-stub|category=road transport}}
In order to increase the categories effectivness and visability it's generally advisable to add your category to several catigories. For example, this would add it to the Roads category:
[[category:Roads]]
When you are done, it is important that you make sure that the new stub and the new stub category are linked correctly to other categories. Using the road-stub as an example, the road-stub category needs to be a member of category:stub categories (because it's a stub category) and category:roads (because it's a category consisting of roads).
This is the pre-final draft for the new reference regarding stub articles. Sorry for the delay. I had several problems with my computer and wasn't able to work seriously on this for a while. ( Sn0wflake)
Stubs are articles which have not yet received substantial attention from the Wikipedia editors. They have been created, but don't contain enough information to be considered true articles. The community believes that stubs are far from worthless. They are, rather, the first step an article takes on its course to becoming complete.
A stub is an article which is clearly too short, but not too short to be useful. On a general manner, it must be long enough to at least define the article's title. This usually means stubs are about the length of 3 to 10 short sentences. Note that a longer page may be a stub if the topic is complex enough - conversely, a short article on a topic which has a very narrow scope may not be a stub.
In the past, a category referred to as substubs was utilised in case articles were smaller than the proposed size of stubs, but this category has been deprecated with time. It is important to remember that the Wikipedia is not a dictionary. That is why the Wiktionary exists. In case your article is too short to be a stub, consider moving it to said sister project or, even better, with a small amount of research, create an useful stub. Take this into consideration before creating short entries containing close to no information.
After writing the stub, the editor must insert what is called a stub template, so that the article can be flagged as a stub. These stub templates must be placed at the bottom of the article, invariably. Stub templates are composed by two distinct parts: a short message stating that said article is a stub and encouraging editors to expand it, and a category link, which places the article in a stub category.
Stub categories are needed due to the fact that the basic stub template - {{ stub}} - has become so large that it became very hard to find articles on a specific subject. That is why stub categories were created. If an editor is, for example, a biologist, then he or she can look for stubs with the tag {{ biology-stub}} on said category and easily find stubs to which they can add, subtract or modify.
For a complete list of stub categories, please refer to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. In general, the naming convention for stubs is topic-stub. You will find that you can find topical stubs simply by trying and previewing. When marking articles as stubs, please be as precise as you possibly can - it saves other people a lot of work further down the road. If an article overlaps two potential categories, two different stub templates may be used, but using more than two is strongly discouraged.
Stub-related activities are centralized on Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting. The project should be your main referential when it comes to this subject.
If you identify a group of stubs that do not fit in an existing category, or if an existing stub category is growing too large and might be optimized by creating a narrower category, you might propose the creation of a new stub category. Before you start a new stub category, make sure you consider these guidelines:
If you think you have satisfied these guidelines, propose the new stub category here. If there are no objections within a week, you can go ahead and create the new stub category.
First, you will need to create the template which will be displayed on the articles which contain the stub. This should be named logically, following this model: Template:topic-stub.
This is the basic format for new stub templates:
<div class="boilerplate" id="stub">
''This [[A]]-related article is a [[Wikipedia:Perfect stub article|stub]]. You can [[Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub|help]] Wikipedia by [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|action=edit}} expanding it]''.
</div>
[[Category:B]]
You might find use in pasting this code into the new template and customize it by inserting different text into it. Replacing the letters A and B as such:
At this point, you should add the new stub category to the following lists:
Next, you will need to create a category to hold the articles which will have the new stub tag attached to them.
To start editing it, you should follow the red category link on the stub template you have created. In this case, it would appear as Category:Road stubs. Here's the basic format for stub categories:
{{Stub Category|article=[[A]]s or [[A]]|newstub=B|category=C}}
This syntax does four things: it adds the
Category:Road stubs to
Category:Stub, it provides a description of the category, it displays the stub text and, finally, inserts this category into a higher level category, in this case the Category:road stubs will be a member of category:Road Transport.
So, in this example, the formatting would look like this:
{{Stub Category|article=[[Road]]s or [[Road Transport]]|newstub=road-stub|category=road transport}}
In order to increase the categories effectiveness and visibility, it's generally advisable to add your category to several categories. For example, this would add it to the Roads category:
[[category:Roads]]
When you are done, it is important that you make sure that the new stub and the new stub category are linked correctly to other categories. Using the road-stub as an example, the road-stub category needs to be a member of
Category:Stub categories (because it's a stub category) and
Category:Roads (because it's a category consisting of roads). If your new category has been made from part of an existing stub category or categories, these should also be listed here (so, for example,
Category:France geography stubs should be part of
Category:France-related stubs and
Category:Europe geography stubs).
Courtland's revision
Stubs are articles which have not yet received substantial attention from the Wikipedia editors. They have been created, but don't contain enough information to <new>yet</new> be considered true articles <new>according to the
standard Wikipedia definition</new>. The community believes that stubs are far from worthless. They are, rather, the first step an article takes <new>many articles take</new> on its course to becoming complete.
A stub is an article which is clearly too short, but not too short to be useful<new>useless</new>. On a general manner, it must be long enough to at least define the article's title. This usually means stubs are about the length of 3 to 10 short sentences. Note that a longer page may be a stub if the topic is complex enough - conversely, a short article on a topic which has a very narrow scope may not be a stub.<new>Also, a longer article can contain sections that are stubs.</new>
In the past, a category referred to as substubs was utilised in case articles were smaller than the proposed size of stubs, but this category has been deprecated with time. It is important to remember that the Wikipedia is not a dictionary. That is why the Wiktionary exists. In case your article is too short to be a stub, consider moving it to said sister project or, even better, with a small amount of research, create an useful stub. Take this into consideration before creating short entries containing close to no information.
After writing the stub, the editor must insert what is called a stub template, so that the article can be flagged as a stub. These stub templates must be placed<new>belong</new> at the bottom of the article, invariably<new>except in the case of the aforementioned section stub</new>. Stub templates are composed by two distinct parts: a short message stating that said article is a stub <new>of a particular type and encouraging editors to expand it, and a category link, which places the article in a stub category.
Stub categories are needed due to the fact that the basic stub template - {{ stub}} - has become so large that it became very hard to find articles on a specific subject. That is why stub categories were created. If an editor is, for example, a biologist, then he or she can look for stubs with the tag {{ biology-stub}} on said category and easily find stubs to which they can add, subtract or modify.
For a complete list of stub categories, please refer to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. In general, the naming convention for stubs is topic-stub. You will find that you can find topical stubs simply by trying and previewing <????>. When marking articles as stubs, please be as precise as you possibly can - it saves other people a lot of work further down the road. If an article overlaps two potential categories, two different stub templates may be used, but using more than two is strongly discouraged.
Stub-related activities are centralized on Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting (aka WP:WSS). The project should be your main referential when it comes to this subject.
If you identify a group of stubs that do not fit in an existing category, or if an existing stub category is growing too large and might be optimized by creating a narrower category, you might propose the creation of a new stub category. Before you start a new stub category, make sure you consider these guidelines:
<revised>
</revised>
If you think you have satisfied these guidelines, propose the new stub category here. If there are no objections within a week <new>.. or affirmation by a number of WP:WSS Participants</new>, you can go ahead and create the new stub category.
First, you will need to create the template which will be displayed on the articles which contain the stub. This should be named logically, following this model: Template:topic-stub.
This is the basic format for new stub templates:
<div class="boilerplate" id="stub">
''This [[A]]-related article is a [[Wikipedia:Perfect stub article|stub]]. You can [[Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub|help]] Wikipedia by [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|action=edit}} expanding it]''.
</div>
[[Category:B]]
You might find use in pasting this code into the new template and customize it by inserting different text into it. Replacing the letters A and B as such:
At this point, you should add the new stub category to the following lists:
Next, you will need to create a category to hold the articles which will have the new stub tag attached to them.
To start editing it, you should follow the red category link on the stub template you have created. In this case, it would appear as Category:Road stubs. Here's the basic format for stub categories:
{{Stub Category|article=[[A]]s or [[A]]|newstub=B|category=C}}
<revised>
This syntax does four things, it:
</revised>
So, in this example, the formatting would look like this:
{{Stub Category|article=[[Road]]s or [[Road Transport]]|newstub=<s>road-stub|category=road transport</s><new>Road-stub|category=Road transport</new>}}
In order to increase the categories effectiveness and visibility, it's generally advisable to add your category to several categories. For example, this would add it to the Roads category:
[[category:Roads]]
When you are done, it is important that you make sure that the new stub and the new stub category are linked correctly to other categories. Using the road-stub as an example, the road-stub category needs to be a member of
Category:Stub categories (because it's a stub category) and
Category:Roads (because it's a category consisting of roads). If your new category has been made from part of an existing stub category or categories, these should also be listed here (so, for example,
Category:France geography stubs should be part of
Category:France-related stubs and
Category:Europe geography stubs).
<new>If you have any questions or comments on this process of producing a new stub type and category, don't hesitate to address them to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting.</new>