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Archive 1 | ← | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | → | Archive 10 |
I've just had someone revert my link to Wikipedia:WikiProject Formula One in the {{ F1-stub}}, citing a prior, similar, revert by User:Rdsmith4 with the edit summary "WikiProject shouldn't be linked from the article namespace". Given that a ton of stubs have links to relevant WikiProjects (IMO, a good thing), and that I can't find any precedent here or at Wikipedia:WikiProject, I'm reverting, but I would like some clarification if there is anything wrong. [Crossposted to /Policy and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject ] - SoM 15:46, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I can't help but feel that the new look to {{ cvg-stub}} could have been better, though - a link to the WikiProject, yes, but this doesn't do that directly, and looks a bit too wordy. Grutness... wha? 07:22, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
User:Grutness mentioned this on Wikipedia talk:Deletion of useless stub templates and stub categories:
It's true. We need a restructuring and rewriting of many pages that relate to stub sorting and stubs in general. To seed the discussion, here's a list of stub-related pages:
I'm sure there are more, so please add to this list.
For starters, I think Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub and Wikipedia:Perfect stub article have to be rewritten to make stub sorting more apparent (they still recommend using {{ stub}}). Wikipedia:Stub categories and Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types are essentially the same. Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria doesn't do what the name says. Wikipedia:Stub sorting policy and Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Guidelines overlap significantly. Now, I don't want to make this more of a campaign than it has to be, and I myself have learned to navigate these pages, but in my opinion it would be nice to streamline this whole business a bit more to make it more accessible, and a procedure which is less confusing for the casual editor means less work for stub sorters in the long run. -- grm_wnr Esc 15:29, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I've made a slight change to the wording of {{ sportbio-stub}}, from "...biographical article about a sportsperson" to "biographical article relating to sport...". The reason is that I've found a few stubs relating to racehorses, and this seems the best category to put them in... Grutness| hello? 06:05, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Sounds like a good revision, Grutness. I suppose we couldn't say "horses are people too" and leave it at that :) Courtland 23:00, 2005 May 9 (UTC)
I took a shot at this section, I'm hoping it's close to what people were looking for. Please take a look and make whatever changes you see fit, I borrowed freely from several sources. I'm also happy to make whatever changes people would like...especially the "how to" section on creating the categories, something I'm a little hazy on. It might not be very clear, as you can see I refered to the help article on category creation instead of explaining it here. Rx StrangeLove 17:10, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
Hi,
I'm here because I think you might be interested in a report I generated with stubsensor, something I've recently come up with. Stubsensor finds articles that are labeled as stubs and spits out the largest of them. The first three articles out of the report are Niqqud, Christian Opposition to Anti-Semitism, and Women in India. All 3 labeled as stubs and all 3 clearly are not stubs.
I thought maybe you guys would be interested because you donate your efforts at fixing other portions of the stub system. If you are see the top 200 at User:Triddle/stubsensor/20050421. I've already fixed about 40 of them myself and I'm pretty sure I took care of nearly all the false positives when it comes to stub detection. Triddle 19:08, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
There is a newly created Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates. Should this be listed as one of the parents of Stub-sorting WikiProject? Also, the currently lists "parent" Wikipedia:Maintenance doesn't have any information on the Stub-sorting WikiProject, which seems like a logical place to have info in the WP:WSS. BlankVerse ∅ 12:28, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
With substubs on the final days of their existence and a SfD proposal pending (and no strong objection, apparently) I think it's probably time to get started on the final draft of the new referece article for stubs. I will write it as if these two things had already come true, and then we can discuss it. I will probably get it ready by the end of today. Cheers. -- Sn0wflake 18:30, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
Sorry for the delay, everyone. I will try to get it done ASAP. -- Sn0wflake 18:57, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
A good idea (IMHO) has been suggested about sfd by User:Korath at the VP - that if sfd goes ahead, both cfd and tfd should be notified of any current stubs up for deletion, sort of along the lines of a posting at both saying "The proposed deletion of toenail-stub is now being debated - all comments should be addressed to Wikipedia: Stubs for deletion#Toenail-stub." I think this might be a good way of mollifying anyone who thinks that tfd and cfd might somehow miss out on some juicy debates. Grutness| hello? 23:13, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
Erm. That actually wasn't what I was suggesting at all. I meant something more along the lines of: if things end up being decided only on TfD, then Category:Toenail stubs should get a variant of the {{cfd}} template that points discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Toenail-stub instead of Wikipedia:Categories for deletion#Category:Toenail stubs, with no mention on CfD at all. (And vice-versa if the Rightful Place to deal with it were instead at CfD. If it were at SfD, both Template:Toenail-stub and Category:Toenail stubs should be tagged and pointed at their entry there.) If SfD goes through, then listing digests at TfD and CfD might be useful as a temporary transitional measure, but in the long term, it's instruction creep for very little real value. People who are interested in stubs will watch SfD; people who're interested in general categories or templates, but not stubs, will get annoyed at the listings fairly quickly. After all, part of the stated rationale for SfD is to reduce their impact on TfD and CfD. — Korath ( Talk) 04:22, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
I'm a little confused also, Grutness basically said that we should post something at tfd and cfd when there's a template up for deletion, "sort of along the lines of a posting at both saying "The proposed deletion of toenail-stub is now being debated - all comments should be addressed to Wikipedia: Stubs for deletion#Toenail-stub." That's what I was commenting on.
I agree that a new template needs to be created {{sfd}} and all that follows. My first reaction was almost exactly what you wrote here, I don't see any need to involve cfd/tfd for all the reasons you talked about above, I think we all agree on this, just a misunderstanding is all. At the very most, as you say, transitional notes might be posted, but not many and not for long. Rx StrangeLove 05:30, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
In the course of my sorting today (over 250 sorts), the amount of stubs jumped from a seemingly-huge 600 to an undeniably HUGE 2100. What the heck happened? This is most discouraging. Sorry that this is just a rant... but holy smokes! Linuxbeak 01:35, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
Changing one stub label for another for no discernable benefit [*] gets dull after a while. Ever feel like creating content but don't know what to write about? Then come on over to Wikipedia:2004 Encyclopedia topics. We have a list of >20,000 topics that need an article, so there is bound to be one to your taste! Add content to Wikipedia today! Pcb21| Pete 11:03, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
[*] I haven't discerned any, but clearly your mileage may vary.
Would it be possible to create multiple stub templates for some of these stub categories? Ones that look and do the exact same things, but are activated in different ways. For example, you could have Amfooty-stub and Football-stub. *Kat* 00:47, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
I centralized all Substub discussions under this heading. -- grm_wnr Esc 07:52, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Template:Substub is up for potential deletion on tfd, and the vote looks close. While I think there's little point in the template, I'd be worried if it were removed at the moment, gven the large number of artcieles that use it. Either they will have the template removed with no replacement, or they will be changed to plain stubs - adding a couple of thousand items to the current pile of unsifted stubs.
Whatever the outcome of the vote, can I urge the people currently going through Category:Stub to spend some time sifting substubs as well? Reducing the number of substubs is as useful as sifting stubs, and may prevent (or at least reduce) problems should the vote be for deletion of the substub template! Grutness| hello? 01:57, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Follow-up ... The request for deletion did not go through and got moved to Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/Not deleted ... Courtland 19:40, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)
The wording of the new document seems to be coming on quite well... one point about the substub section, though - slowly but surely that is being winnowed away. Many of substubs seem to be redirectable, deletable, mergeable, or are not really substubs anyway. Most of the rest are best served in the more specific stub categories than they ever would be sitting in Category:substubs. At the current rate, that category could be empty 9and redundant?) within the month. Maybe its an idea that's had its time... Grutness| hello? 01:34, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
Mmm. hadn't tought of that (the deletionists point). Still, there are enough non-deletionists prowling the vfd pages. I suspect I'm getting a reputation as a deletionist considering the number of substubs I've dispatched there (I'm not really - my view is predominantly that if it's not doing any harm it can probably be kept). Category:Substubs is now (just) below 1000 articles, BTW! Grutness| hello? 07:00, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
I know the correct place to list potential stub template deletions is over at the "Criteria" page, but this one is such a biggie I feel it warrants extra discussion (to that end, I've also listed it at Template talk:Substub, but so far there have been no bites there). There are now (count 'em) 60 substubs. Personally, I believe this template has had its day. It may have been useful prior to subcategorising stubs, as a way of saying "these need priority attention", but now the best way to get editors to work on stubs is to put them in subcategories where they can be found, and substub defeats that purpose. Sure, some articles that would have been marked substub are potential candidates for vfd or merging, but the same is true with quite a number of stubs. I would like to propose a debate on whether the substub template and associated category are worth keeping, or whether those articles which would have been marked {{ substub}} are better served with a subcategory of Category:stub. Grutness| hello? 07:01, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
Well done with all the hard work on categorizing the stubs! I've seen that there are no longer any substubs, so am I correct to state that that category and template can now be deprecated? R adiant _* 14:41, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
I just found Template:Active Wiki Fixup Projects, which looks like the WSS should be added to it. BlankVerse ∅ 11:55, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
What happened to SFD? Sounds like a good idea to me. R adiant _* 13:45, May 12, 2005 (UTC)
If people consider the Village Pump proposal for a SFD page to have a general creation consensus , I'd be happy to take a first go at it so we have a starting point. I imagine that it would look a lot like TFD, with different deletion guidlines and it's own {{sfd}} tag and the deletion tools. Rx StrangeLove 01:35, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
I note that User:Husnock has created Category:Stubs to be discussed. I'm a little baffled by the reqason this is needed, and I'm loath to ask him, since I think I'm already on his list of "least favourite Wikipedians". Anyone have any ideas about it? Grutness| hello? 05:21, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
There has been some information requested and exchanged on this at User_talk:Husnock#.22Stubs_to_be_discussed.22. Courtland 22:26, 2005 May 13 (UTC)
I feel like Stub-Sorting would benefit from taking some preemptive action -- that is, to prevent people from just sticking a {{stub}}
tag on their short pages in the first place. Perhaps placing a prominent message somewhere in the Manual of Style or in the Tutorial would help. For example, we could insert a notice saying something to the effect of, Please help ensure your stub article is expanded quickly by categorizing it. with a link to, say, the
stub types page. If there is already something like this, it does not seem to be obvious enough. But it is clear that we need a way to reduce "stubber's sloth."
MithrandirMage 15:47, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
There's a proof-of-concept page up at Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Biography that is meant to possibly evolve into a Biography Portal. I thought I'd point out that Category:People stubs has been included in the Category Listing on this page. Also, we might consider what might be done with People Stubs given a portal on this topic.
Courtland 04:11, 2005 May 16 (UTC)
Hi all - I've just been looking at Category:Buildings and structures stubs, tp see whether it could be split further, and discovered it has double the number of stubs it had two months ago (just under 500). So... I decided to check a few - the 78 beginning with T-Z. Amazingly, 45 of them had been mis-labelled. there were UK-struct-stubs, US-struct-stubs, Arch-stubs, a couple of geo-stubs, a water-stub, and even a rocket-stub! I'm going to wade through the rest, but if there are any stub sorters looking for something to do, I could do with a hand! (Oh, and by the way, Asia-struct-stub is looking like a good one to split off it). Grutness... wha? 09:55, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
I have edited the pre-final draft after some corrections by Grutness and I think that it has reached a fairly descent state. Propose changes here, or make corrections to the draft. If everything goes well, I will migrate it to Wikipedia:Stub by the end of the week. It makes no sense for that article to be a redirect. Find and fix a stub and the rest of its family should also be redirected to the new page. -- Sn0wflake 20:48, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Looks great! Of the two here I think I prefer the New stub categories section single spaced. I think it's easier to read, scans better. Otherwise it's in good shape! Rx StrangeLove 03:55, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
I have made some suggested edits in the copy shown below. Codes used are strikout to indicate information removed or replaced; <new>new</new> for new or replacing information; <revised>revision</revised> to indicate a passage with multiple minor edits.
Courtland 02:51, 2005 May 18 (UTC)
Ladies and gentlemen, the Substub is dead. Long live the glorious stub category revolution! Grutness... wha? 02:53, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
†
here lies
Template:substub
07-21-2004 - 05-18-2005
R.I.P.
-- grm_wnr Esc 08:06, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
P.S. Category:Substubs is still on life support, however. -- grm_wnr Esc 14:11, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
Great work, Grutness. That was truly an accomplishment. This will be reinforced by the new Wikipedia:Stub as of tomorrow. :) -- Sn0wflake 23:40, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
"It's alive!" {{ substub}} ( t/ l) was recreated as a redirect to {{ stub}} at 09:06, 25 Jun 2005 by AaronSw ( talk · contribs). There are currently two articles with the substub template. BlankVerse ∅ 17:31, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The articles that were using the template have been sorted, and the newly created redirect is currently listed at SfD. -- Allen3 talk 18:58, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)
Hey, when you go through and sort stubs, don't smack articles with the patent nonsense template. Patent nonsense is absolute gibberish. As much as you may not like silly statements, propaganda, advertisements, etc, those are valid stubs that need editors to work on them. Please go read "Not to be confused with..." at Wikipedia:Patent nonsense. kthxbye. PS, also, an edit that would mark an article to be deleted is anything but a minor edit. If you still choose to put a delete template on an article, make sure it has a valid edit summary. SchmuckyTheCat 18:08, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
This section will be moved to Wikipedia:Stub on the 19th, May of 2005. Cheers! PS: I would appreciate comments about the changes made by Courtland to the New stub categories section. Rx opposes to it on some degree and I am uncertain. Input, anyone? I also removed references to section stubs, as I believe they need their own article. ( Sn0wflake)
Stubs are articles which have not yet received substantial attention from the Wikipedia editors. They have been created, but don't yet contain enough information to be considered articles. The community believes that stubs are far from worthless. They are, rather, the first step articles take on their course to becoming complete.
A stub is an article which is clearly too short, but not too short to be useless. 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 article 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 should invariably be placed at the bottom of the article. Stub templates are composed by two distinct parts: a short message stating that said article is a stub of a particular type and encouraging editors to expand it, and a category link, which places the article on 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.
In general, the naming convention for stubs is topic-stub; for a complete list of stub categories, please refer to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. When marking articles as stubs, please be as precise as you possibly can - it saves other editors 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 (shortcut 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:
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 customizing 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:
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).
If you have doubts or comments regarding any part of the process, don't hesitate to address them at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting.
I forgot to add a link to the salient part of the page: Wikipedia_talk:Templates_for_deletion#Speedy_category_deletion ~~ Courtland
There is a discussion that happened about 5 days ago which I only just now noticed which deals with the deletion of stub templates and their associated categories. I thought I'd bring it to your attention; I've noted there that the decisions in this area shouldn't be made on WP:TFD and WP:CFD alone but should come here at some point for discussion/input ... or at least informing folks here that such discussions are taking place (wouldn't want to be dogmatic about saying who can talk about what where and among whom :) ). Courtland 02:38, 2005 May 19 (UTC)
Hi all - just stumbled across this - thought WP:WSS should know about it. Grutness... wha? 05:49, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
Hi there! Regarding Wikipedia:Substub - this page should probably be reworded to indicate there no longer is such a thing. I'd also support deleting it entirely, if necessary, but I think asking WSS input would be useful. R adiant _* 11:40, May 19, 2005 (UTC)
Now that Wikipedia:Stub is taken care of, it's probably time to move on to Wikipedia:Perfect stub article. I might get started on it this next week, but if somebody wants to go ahead, have fun. Cheers. -- Sn0wflake 22:51, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
While Snowflake and other were diligently creating the new central project page, I've been working on something else which I think might be a reasonable addition to the project's pages, which I'd now like to present for appraisal and improvement. A lot of recent talk has been about trying to maintain consistent naming of stub templates, and working out which redirects are badly-enough named to reuire deletion. I have written a first draft of some naming guidelines, also including some of the major exceptions, on a subpage of my user page at User:Grutness/WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines. If you think it is a good enough start for such a page, then I will move it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines. Please have a look, make any amendments you think necessary and get back to me (even if only to tell me it was a waste of time and a co0mplete crock of tutae, as they might say in Maori). Grutness... wha? 08:15, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Even as we are diligently hacking away at (sorting) the remaining articles in Category:Stub, some users are creating new {{stub}} articles or applying the {{stub}} tag to existing ones. I have composed a couple of form messages that I have started inserting on the User_Talk pages of users who have recently used the {{stub}} tag. I have gotten some positive responses to these, and want to make them available to others who may find them useful. They are:
Both messages take the same two parameters:
There is no guarantee that these messages will remain available in their current forms, so I highly recommend that you {{subst:}} them.
I think the key to making this work is the positive, polite tone; it doesn't do any good to lay a guilt trip on someone for being ignorant of the availability of stub categories. Also, of course, it only makes sense to do this when the page history shows that the {{stub}} tag has been inserted recently, not for articles that have been sitting around for months waiting to be sorted.
I hope others find this useful, and that it enlightens other Wikipedians about our labors here!
-- Russ Blau (talk) 13:13, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
The discussion of SfD at the Village Pump ran favorably, even though not many peopla seemed to care. So, I've made a draft (obviously heavily inspired by TfD):
Please edit it mercilessly, or tell me if it is completely pointless. -- grm_wnr Esc 21:19, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
It was mentioned on TFD that there are quite a number of stubs that have grown but still are tagged as such (usually because the editor forgot the stub). This is just a random idea, but how about using a bot to remove stub tags from any article bigger than, say, 2kb?
(or, conversely, add it to any really short article, although that's likely less useful... does WSS cover Wikipedia:Deadend pages?) R adiant _* 11:14, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
I think that no article with more than 5KB can be considered a stub, but on the other hand, 2KB is a bit too low. Might be a good idea, but I do not know how necessary it is. -- Sn0wflake 12:11, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
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 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | → | Archive 10 |
I've just had someone revert my link to Wikipedia:WikiProject Formula One in the {{ F1-stub}}, citing a prior, similar, revert by User:Rdsmith4 with the edit summary "WikiProject shouldn't be linked from the article namespace". Given that a ton of stubs have links to relevant WikiProjects (IMO, a good thing), and that I can't find any precedent here or at Wikipedia:WikiProject, I'm reverting, but I would like some clarification if there is anything wrong. [Crossposted to /Policy and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject ] - SoM 15:46, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I can't help but feel that the new look to {{ cvg-stub}} could have been better, though - a link to the WikiProject, yes, but this doesn't do that directly, and looks a bit too wordy. Grutness... wha? 07:22, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
User:Grutness mentioned this on Wikipedia talk:Deletion of useless stub templates and stub categories:
It's true. We need a restructuring and rewriting of many pages that relate to stub sorting and stubs in general. To seed the discussion, here's a list of stub-related pages:
I'm sure there are more, so please add to this list.
For starters, I think Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub and Wikipedia:Perfect stub article have to be rewritten to make stub sorting more apparent (they still recommend using {{ stub}}). Wikipedia:Stub categories and Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types are essentially the same. Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria doesn't do what the name says. Wikipedia:Stub sorting policy and Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Guidelines overlap significantly. Now, I don't want to make this more of a campaign than it has to be, and I myself have learned to navigate these pages, but in my opinion it would be nice to streamline this whole business a bit more to make it more accessible, and a procedure which is less confusing for the casual editor means less work for stub sorters in the long run. -- grm_wnr Esc 15:29, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I've made a slight change to the wording of {{ sportbio-stub}}, from "...biographical article about a sportsperson" to "biographical article relating to sport...". The reason is that I've found a few stubs relating to racehorses, and this seems the best category to put them in... Grutness| hello? 06:05, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Sounds like a good revision, Grutness. I suppose we couldn't say "horses are people too" and leave it at that :) Courtland 23:00, 2005 May 9 (UTC)
I took a shot at this section, I'm hoping it's close to what people were looking for. Please take a look and make whatever changes you see fit, I borrowed freely from several sources. I'm also happy to make whatever changes people would like...especially the "how to" section on creating the categories, something I'm a little hazy on. It might not be very clear, as you can see I refered to the help article on category creation instead of explaining it here. Rx StrangeLove 17:10, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
Hi,
I'm here because I think you might be interested in a report I generated with stubsensor, something I've recently come up with. Stubsensor finds articles that are labeled as stubs and spits out the largest of them. The first three articles out of the report are Niqqud, Christian Opposition to Anti-Semitism, and Women in India. All 3 labeled as stubs and all 3 clearly are not stubs.
I thought maybe you guys would be interested because you donate your efforts at fixing other portions of the stub system. If you are see the top 200 at User:Triddle/stubsensor/20050421. I've already fixed about 40 of them myself and I'm pretty sure I took care of nearly all the false positives when it comes to stub detection. Triddle 19:08, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
There is a newly created Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates. Should this be listed as one of the parents of Stub-sorting WikiProject? Also, the currently lists "parent" Wikipedia:Maintenance doesn't have any information on the Stub-sorting WikiProject, which seems like a logical place to have info in the WP:WSS. BlankVerse ∅ 12:28, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
With substubs on the final days of their existence and a SfD proposal pending (and no strong objection, apparently) I think it's probably time to get started on the final draft of the new referece article for stubs. I will write it as if these two things had already come true, and then we can discuss it. I will probably get it ready by the end of today. Cheers. -- Sn0wflake 18:30, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
Sorry for the delay, everyone. I will try to get it done ASAP. -- Sn0wflake 18:57, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
A good idea (IMHO) has been suggested about sfd by User:Korath at the VP - that if sfd goes ahead, both cfd and tfd should be notified of any current stubs up for deletion, sort of along the lines of a posting at both saying "The proposed deletion of toenail-stub is now being debated - all comments should be addressed to Wikipedia: Stubs for deletion#Toenail-stub." I think this might be a good way of mollifying anyone who thinks that tfd and cfd might somehow miss out on some juicy debates. Grutness| hello? 23:13, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
Erm. That actually wasn't what I was suggesting at all. I meant something more along the lines of: if things end up being decided only on TfD, then Category:Toenail stubs should get a variant of the {{cfd}} template that points discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Toenail-stub instead of Wikipedia:Categories for deletion#Category:Toenail stubs, with no mention on CfD at all. (And vice-versa if the Rightful Place to deal with it were instead at CfD. If it were at SfD, both Template:Toenail-stub and Category:Toenail stubs should be tagged and pointed at their entry there.) If SfD goes through, then listing digests at TfD and CfD might be useful as a temporary transitional measure, but in the long term, it's instruction creep for very little real value. People who are interested in stubs will watch SfD; people who're interested in general categories or templates, but not stubs, will get annoyed at the listings fairly quickly. After all, part of the stated rationale for SfD is to reduce their impact on TfD and CfD. — Korath ( Talk) 04:22, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
I'm a little confused also, Grutness basically said that we should post something at tfd and cfd when there's a template up for deletion, "sort of along the lines of a posting at both saying "The proposed deletion of toenail-stub is now being debated - all comments should be addressed to Wikipedia: Stubs for deletion#Toenail-stub." That's what I was commenting on.
I agree that a new template needs to be created {{sfd}} and all that follows. My first reaction was almost exactly what you wrote here, I don't see any need to involve cfd/tfd for all the reasons you talked about above, I think we all agree on this, just a misunderstanding is all. At the very most, as you say, transitional notes might be posted, but not many and not for long. Rx StrangeLove 05:30, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
In the course of my sorting today (over 250 sorts), the amount of stubs jumped from a seemingly-huge 600 to an undeniably HUGE 2100. What the heck happened? This is most discouraging. Sorry that this is just a rant... but holy smokes! Linuxbeak 01:35, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
Changing one stub label for another for no discernable benefit [*] gets dull after a while. Ever feel like creating content but don't know what to write about? Then come on over to Wikipedia:2004 Encyclopedia topics. We have a list of >20,000 topics that need an article, so there is bound to be one to your taste! Add content to Wikipedia today! Pcb21| Pete 11:03, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
[*] I haven't discerned any, but clearly your mileage may vary.
Would it be possible to create multiple stub templates for some of these stub categories? Ones that look and do the exact same things, but are activated in different ways. For example, you could have Amfooty-stub and Football-stub. *Kat* 00:47, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
I centralized all Substub discussions under this heading. -- grm_wnr Esc 07:52, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Template:Substub is up for potential deletion on tfd, and the vote looks close. While I think there's little point in the template, I'd be worried if it were removed at the moment, gven the large number of artcieles that use it. Either they will have the template removed with no replacement, or they will be changed to plain stubs - adding a couple of thousand items to the current pile of unsifted stubs.
Whatever the outcome of the vote, can I urge the people currently going through Category:Stub to spend some time sifting substubs as well? Reducing the number of substubs is as useful as sifting stubs, and may prevent (or at least reduce) problems should the vote be for deletion of the substub template! Grutness| hello? 01:57, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Follow-up ... The request for deletion did not go through and got moved to Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/Not deleted ... Courtland 19:40, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)
The wording of the new document seems to be coming on quite well... one point about the substub section, though - slowly but surely that is being winnowed away. Many of substubs seem to be redirectable, deletable, mergeable, or are not really substubs anyway. Most of the rest are best served in the more specific stub categories than they ever would be sitting in Category:substubs. At the current rate, that category could be empty 9and redundant?) within the month. Maybe its an idea that's had its time... Grutness| hello? 01:34, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
Mmm. hadn't tought of that (the deletionists point). Still, there are enough non-deletionists prowling the vfd pages. I suspect I'm getting a reputation as a deletionist considering the number of substubs I've dispatched there (I'm not really - my view is predominantly that if it's not doing any harm it can probably be kept). Category:Substubs is now (just) below 1000 articles, BTW! Grutness| hello? 07:00, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
I know the correct place to list potential stub template deletions is over at the "Criteria" page, but this one is such a biggie I feel it warrants extra discussion (to that end, I've also listed it at Template talk:Substub, but so far there have been no bites there). There are now (count 'em) 60 substubs. Personally, I believe this template has had its day. It may have been useful prior to subcategorising stubs, as a way of saying "these need priority attention", but now the best way to get editors to work on stubs is to put them in subcategories where they can be found, and substub defeats that purpose. Sure, some articles that would have been marked substub are potential candidates for vfd or merging, but the same is true with quite a number of stubs. I would like to propose a debate on whether the substub template and associated category are worth keeping, or whether those articles which would have been marked {{ substub}} are better served with a subcategory of Category:stub. Grutness| hello? 07:01, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
Well done with all the hard work on categorizing the stubs! I've seen that there are no longer any substubs, so am I correct to state that that category and template can now be deprecated? R adiant _* 14:41, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
I just found Template:Active Wiki Fixup Projects, which looks like the WSS should be added to it. BlankVerse ∅ 11:55, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
What happened to SFD? Sounds like a good idea to me. R adiant _* 13:45, May 12, 2005 (UTC)
If people consider the Village Pump proposal for a SFD page to have a general creation consensus , I'd be happy to take a first go at it so we have a starting point. I imagine that it would look a lot like TFD, with different deletion guidlines and it's own {{sfd}} tag and the deletion tools. Rx StrangeLove 01:35, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
I note that User:Husnock has created Category:Stubs to be discussed. I'm a little baffled by the reqason this is needed, and I'm loath to ask him, since I think I'm already on his list of "least favourite Wikipedians". Anyone have any ideas about it? Grutness| hello? 05:21, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
There has been some information requested and exchanged on this at User_talk:Husnock#.22Stubs_to_be_discussed.22. Courtland 22:26, 2005 May 13 (UTC)
I feel like Stub-Sorting would benefit from taking some preemptive action -- that is, to prevent people from just sticking a {{stub}}
tag on their short pages in the first place. Perhaps placing a prominent message somewhere in the Manual of Style or in the Tutorial would help. For example, we could insert a notice saying something to the effect of, Please help ensure your stub article is expanded quickly by categorizing it. with a link to, say, the
stub types page. If there is already something like this, it does not seem to be obvious enough. But it is clear that we need a way to reduce "stubber's sloth."
MithrandirMage 15:47, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
There's a proof-of-concept page up at Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Biography that is meant to possibly evolve into a Biography Portal. I thought I'd point out that Category:People stubs has been included in the Category Listing on this page. Also, we might consider what might be done with People Stubs given a portal on this topic.
Courtland 04:11, 2005 May 16 (UTC)
Hi all - I've just been looking at Category:Buildings and structures stubs, tp see whether it could be split further, and discovered it has double the number of stubs it had two months ago (just under 500). So... I decided to check a few - the 78 beginning with T-Z. Amazingly, 45 of them had been mis-labelled. there were UK-struct-stubs, US-struct-stubs, Arch-stubs, a couple of geo-stubs, a water-stub, and even a rocket-stub! I'm going to wade through the rest, but if there are any stub sorters looking for something to do, I could do with a hand! (Oh, and by the way, Asia-struct-stub is looking like a good one to split off it). Grutness... wha? 09:55, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
I have edited the pre-final draft after some corrections by Grutness and I think that it has reached a fairly descent state. Propose changes here, or make corrections to the draft. If everything goes well, I will migrate it to Wikipedia:Stub by the end of the week. It makes no sense for that article to be a redirect. Find and fix a stub and the rest of its family should also be redirected to the new page. -- Sn0wflake 20:48, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Looks great! Of the two here I think I prefer the New stub categories section single spaced. I think it's easier to read, scans better. Otherwise it's in good shape! Rx StrangeLove 03:55, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
I have made some suggested edits in the copy shown below. Codes used are strikout to indicate information removed or replaced; <new>new</new> for new or replacing information; <revised>revision</revised> to indicate a passage with multiple minor edits.
Courtland 02:51, 2005 May 18 (UTC)
Ladies and gentlemen, the Substub is dead. Long live the glorious stub category revolution! Grutness... wha? 02:53, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
†
here lies
Template:substub
07-21-2004 - 05-18-2005
R.I.P.
-- grm_wnr Esc 08:06, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
P.S. Category:Substubs is still on life support, however. -- grm_wnr Esc 14:11, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
Great work, Grutness. That was truly an accomplishment. This will be reinforced by the new Wikipedia:Stub as of tomorrow. :) -- Sn0wflake 23:40, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
"It's alive!" {{ substub}} ( t/ l) was recreated as a redirect to {{ stub}} at 09:06, 25 Jun 2005 by AaronSw ( talk · contribs). There are currently two articles with the substub template. BlankVerse ∅ 17:31, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The articles that were using the template have been sorted, and the newly created redirect is currently listed at SfD. -- Allen3 talk 18:58, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)
Hey, when you go through and sort stubs, don't smack articles with the patent nonsense template. Patent nonsense is absolute gibberish. As much as you may not like silly statements, propaganda, advertisements, etc, those are valid stubs that need editors to work on them. Please go read "Not to be confused with..." at Wikipedia:Patent nonsense. kthxbye. PS, also, an edit that would mark an article to be deleted is anything but a minor edit. If you still choose to put a delete template on an article, make sure it has a valid edit summary. SchmuckyTheCat 18:08, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
This section will be moved to Wikipedia:Stub on the 19th, May of 2005. Cheers! PS: I would appreciate comments about the changes made by Courtland to the New stub categories section. Rx opposes to it on some degree and I am uncertain. Input, anyone? I also removed references to section stubs, as I believe they need their own article. ( Sn0wflake)
Stubs are articles which have not yet received substantial attention from the Wikipedia editors. They have been created, but don't yet contain enough information to be considered articles. The community believes that stubs are far from worthless. They are, rather, the first step articles take on their course to becoming complete.
A stub is an article which is clearly too short, but not too short to be useless. 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 article 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 should invariably be placed at the bottom of the article. Stub templates are composed by two distinct parts: a short message stating that said article is a stub of a particular type and encouraging editors to expand it, and a category link, which places the article on 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.
In general, the naming convention for stubs is topic-stub; for a complete list of stub categories, please refer to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. When marking articles as stubs, please be as precise as you possibly can - it saves other editors 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 (shortcut 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:
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 customizing 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:
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).
If you have doubts or comments regarding any part of the process, don't hesitate to address them at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting.
I forgot to add a link to the salient part of the page: Wikipedia_talk:Templates_for_deletion#Speedy_category_deletion ~~ Courtland
There is a discussion that happened about 5 days ago which I only just now noticed which deals with the deletion of stub templates and their associated categories. I thought I'd bring it to your attention; I've noted there that the decisions in this area shouldn't be made on WP:TFD and WP:CFD alone but should come here at some point for discussion/input ... or at least informing folks here that such discussions are taking place (wouldn't want to be dogmatic about saying who can talk about what where and among whom :) ). Courtland 02:38, 2005 May 19 (UTC)
Hi all - just stumbled across this - thought WP:WSS should know about it. Grutness... wha? 05:49, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
Hi there! Regarding Wikipedia:Substub - this page should probably be reworded to indicate there no longer is such a thing. I'd also support deleting it entirely, if necessary, but I think asking WSS input would be useful. R adiant _* 11:40, May 19, 2005 (UTC)
Now that Wikipedia:Stub is taken care of, it's probably time to move on to Wikipedia:Perfect stub article. I might get started on it this next week, but if somebody wants to go ahead, have fun. Cheers. -- Sn0wflake 22:51, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
While Snowflake and other were diligently creating the new central project page, I've been working on something else which I think might be a reasonable addition to the project's pages, which I'd now like to present for appraisal and improvement. A lot of recent talk has been about trying to maintain consistent naming of stub templates, and working out which redirects are badly-enough named to reuire deletion. I have written a first draft of some naming guidelines, also including some of the major exceptions, on a subpage of my user page at User:Grutness/WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines. If you think it is a good enough start for such a page, then I will move it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines. Please have a look, make any amendments you think necessary and get back to me (even if only to tell me it was a waste of time and a co0mplete crock of tutae, as they might say in Maori). Grutness... wha? 08:15, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Even as we are diligently hacking away at (sorting) the remaining articles in Category:Stub, some users are creating new {{stub}} articles or applying the {{stub}} tag to existing ones. I have composed a couple of form messages that I have started inserting on the User_Talk pages of users who have recently used the {{stub}} tag. I have gotten some positive responses to these, and want to make them available to others who may find them useful. They are:
Both messages take the same two parameters:
There is no guarantee that these messages will remain available in their current forms, so I highly recommend that you {{subst:}} them.
I think the key to making this work is the positive, polite tone; it doesn't do any good to lay a guilt trip on someone for being ignorant of the availability of stub categories. Also, of course, it only makes sense to do this when the page history shows that the {{stub}} tag has been inserted recently, not for articles that have been sitting around for months waiting to be sorted.
I hope others find this useful, and that it enlightens other Wikipedians about our labors here!
-- Russ Blau (talk) 13:13, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
The discussion of SfD at the Village Pump ran favorably, even though not many peopla seemed to care. So, I've made a draft (obviously heavily inspired by TfD):
Please edit it mercilessly, or tell me if it is completely pointless. -- grm_wnr Esc 21:19, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
It was mentioned on TFD that there are quite a number of stubs that have grown but still are tagged as such (usually because the editor forgot the stub). This is just a random idea, but how about using a bot to remove stub tags from any article bigger than, say, 2kb?
(or, conversely, add it to any really short article, although that's likely less useful... does WSS cover Wikipedia:Deadend pages?) R adiant _* 11:14, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
I think that no article with more than 5KB can be considered a stub, but on the other hand, 2KB is a bit too low. Might be a good idea, but I do not know how necessary it is. -- Sn0wflake 12:11, 27 May 2005 (UTC)