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New stub images

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)

First use PD images (and/or altered versions), then use GFDL or GNU images, then anything on the Wikipedia (and copy the tag over). -- AllyUnion (talk) 01:34, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I must admit to having been a tad miffed by some of the new images - simply because I'd put quite a bit of work into creating or finding some of the old ones. But I agree that a lot of the images are good. I can't see any clear-cut copyright info about them either, though. Grutness|hello? 01:37, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
As freeware goes, I think that comes very close to Public Domain. I'm having a deja vu on this discussion. And we really need to start breaking this page up. -- AllyUnion (talk) 01:45, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Some of the images at www.freegaia.com are absolutely not public domain. (I say this because I recognize the source for some. There are some others that are of trademarked characters and I don't believe those even can be public domain, though they may arguably be fair use.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 02:04, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
maybe I misunderstood ... "stub images" might pertain only to those thumbnails that go with the stub templates? If yes, then I was confused. Courtland 02:49, 2005 Feb 15 (UTC)
Going back to the "made by Wikipedians" statement ... I've considered whipping out the digital camera and snapping a couple of things for inclusion here, but I've hesitated because, well, I'm not a professional photographer and we do want a glossy looking product, yes? However, I'm torn by that other side pulling which says "Content is King!". What do you think? Is there a "holding pen" where images that should not see the light of day are restrained for the good of all? Or should we "be BOLD" and put things up and let the community decide? That last could, in this age of digital photography, open the gates to a veritable flood of color. Courtland 02:44, 2005 Feb 15 (UTC)
Yes, I meant the little ones used on stub templates. And I suppose it's better to use decent images in general. (But I do think that marginally decent user-created images have precedence over marginally decent images from who-knows-what source.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 03:38, 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)

  • Could you compile a list of the things that need to be retired/replaced and put it here? Courtland 19:29, 2005 Mar 5 (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)

Well, that explains why some stub images have disappeared. I also notice that flags are going--as in Australia-stub. Can these no longer be used? Quill 22:07, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
no - the stub icons are being removed from all the big stub categories because of server overload problems. A shame - I put in quite a bit of effort over some of the hand-drawn stubs I've made (I think the only one of mine left now is the kiwi in kiwi-stub), and I'm sure other icon-makers feel the same - but if it will save the machinery it's worth it. Grutness|hello? 02:53, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Redundant stub notices

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)

See Wikipedia talk:Stub sorting policy. Most people currently seem to be okay with two (different) stub templates being added to an article, as long as they are both equally appropriate. (This increases the chances of the stub being found by someone interested in expanding it.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 02:05, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Early on I was lightly admonished for adding two stubs and have since added only a single stub then if there is a burning for additional categorization, I do a standard article categorization. For instance, I felt strongly about getting Urakami into the right categories, as ground zero for the US bombing of Nagasaki. As far as things I've found, I saw a stub the other day with 5 stub notices ... I stripped all but one from that item (I don't remember what the article was). Courtland 02:37, 2005 Feb 15 (UTC)
  • I just became guilty of an egregious (though justified?) case of "over-stubbing" (? "multi-stubbing"): Love Child. It began as as a sub-stub + book-stub, then I found it and ... well, now it's a Frankenstein's Monster of the stubbing world. :) Courtland 03:47, 2005 Mar 4 (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)

Of course if you don't feel comfortable editing stubs out of your field, simply add another key word like bacteria or Zealand or ... you get the picture. Onco p53 02:04, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
No, I don't. What do you mean add another keyword? --jag123 03:06, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Well in the search field, after the "This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it" bit but before the site restriction code ie. "site:en.wikipedia.org" add one (or a few)words. I did this for bacteria, fungi, anatomy, Zealand, and microbiology. In this way the search is restricted to only stubby pages with those terms. I do this as these are topics that I know and can reliably put the correct stub, and maybe some more editing too. Screeds of pages about people I have never heard of before don't really interest me. Onco p53 03:16, 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)

anatomy: I just re-checked this URL and it returned only one entry
biology: Another search worked through the other day => biology "this is a stub" site:en.wikipedia.org now returns 0 hits.
biochemistry: biochemistry "this is a stub" site:en.wikipedia.org also now returns 0 hits. Courtland 03:35, 2005 Feb 17 (UTC)
  • I think this method of stub sorting is far superior to using the normal list, as it means people can stick to their favourite subject, it is also less boring and finds more stubs as well. Therefore I think we should popularize this method of sorting, for example on the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting we could put links such as this:
  • Writer stub search
  • Biology stub search

Bluemoose 13:48, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

    • Yes and no. It does find more stubs, but because of the way Google works it can take hours for its search to update. Even going through the stub categories I often find I'm opening articles that have been amended since I opened the category (even if it's only been open ten minutes or so) - working via google can be very frustrating in this way and may put off some stub sifters. Grutness|hello? 23:32, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)


A question about category limits

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)

In the 15th Century, philosophy and religious thought were tightly intertwined. So I'd suggest philo-stub. I would also categorize it to Category:Christian_philosophers (non-stub category) Courtland 05:26, 2005 Feb 15 (UTC)
... and/or perhaps to Category:German_theologians (ibid)
On the other hand, I would think it would be more likely that someone who knows church history would edit it, in which case christianity-stub might be a better choice. -Aranel ("Sarah") 02:55, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Interesting. OK, based on this input, I've stubbed Magnus_III_of_Norway to Category:Historical stubs ... monarchies are often subjected to close scrutiny in historical works and a person who is a member of a monarchy (for which there is not a general geographical stub, like Category:Norway-related stubs) is better stubbed to Category:Historical stubs than the more general Category:People stubs. Is that thinking more along the lines you are? Courtland 03:50, 2005 Feb 17 (UTC)
It also ties in to the idea about multiple stubs. I see nothing wrong with an Italian politician, say, in tagging the article as both an Italy-related stub and a bio-stub. Similarly, Andreas Karlstadt is both a philo-stub and a Christianity-stub. Grutness|hello? 05:45, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I was wrong - the final geo-stub

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)

Science Stubs Census - new page

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)

Meta-templates revisited

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)

You are supposed to use subst in stub templates for now, until a technical fix or more servers become available. See Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates - Omegatron 20:30, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

Shorter lag time?

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)

  • 10 days is the standard vote time on TFD. -- AllyUnion (talk) 03:16, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose for quick deletion. 10 days is a reasonable period. I don't think we're under any real time pressure, so let's not rush. Courtland 03:23, 2005 Feb 17 (UTC)
Whoah, we're not talking about deletion here. It is not at all the same thing as any of the deletion voting processes. As it currently stands, it's only as a courtesy that I am suggesting templates here before creating them; there is no Wikipedia policy that says that I can't just create them.
I really think we need a way to get the templates into existence more quickly. (If I've got over 100 articles, why on earth do I have to wait a week? Or even wait at all? We don't have approval periods for categories, articles, or any other templates.) It's extremely frustrating to be constantly running into stubs that I could be sorting (or sorting better, so they won't have to be resorted) if I could only create the categories.
We actually allow articles and categories to be deleted with less time and effort than this takes. -Aranel ("Sarah") 03:40, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I'm definitely with Aranel on this one - if she's talking about stub creation (the original message was confusing, to say the least!). If there's a need for a category, it's pretty obvious, and it shouldn't take long (and certainly not ten days) to work out whether it's viable and what the limits of the category should be. I'd say 3-5 days is plenty of time (in some cases, half an hour of stub-sorting is all that's needed before it becomes obvious that there's a category missing!) Grutness|hello? 05:50, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Support for quick creation: I was opposing the deletion that was the original message focus. Personally, though, I will still not just walk in and start creating stub templates and categories ... I'd rather get some input upfront prior to the creation, but that's just a personal weakness of not being Bold enough, I suppose. Courtland 07:15, 2005 Feb 17 (UTC)
  • Strongly support quick creation. I know this vote is OLD but the issue is still unresolved. *Kat* 07:41, May 18, 2005 (UTC)
heh! The opposite, I'd say. Impatience is my weakness - prudence is your strength! :) Grutness|hello?
Oops, sorry. It wasn't confusing, it was just wrong. I meant to be talking about stub creation. -Aranel ("Sarah") 15:37, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • What policy are you referring to exactly? Are you talking about deleting stubs after 3 days or just creating them? You're right, asking for a stub to be made is only a courtesy. Personally, I wouldn't hesitate to create a new stub template, so long as the reasons are sound. If you think your template won't fit the criterias currently being proposed under /Guidelines and that it will/might be deleted, then you'd really just be wasting your time. (I don't doubt whatever stub you want is probably needed, I'm just saying.) --jag123 09:30, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, I mistyped. I meant to be talking about stub template creation. -Aranel ("Sarah") 15:37, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

phys-stub vs. physics-stub

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)

Physics-stub is certainly a lot easier to remember. -Aranel ("Sarah") 23:30, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
And less confusing... physiotherapy, physical education, physiognomy... How many articles have "phys-stub" on them? If it's a small number, then deleting the phys-stub template might be the best option. Grutness|hello? 00:27, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
It's not a small number. There are currently 427. -Aranel ("Sarah") 01:37, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
see related => Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria#phys-stub Courtland 16:44, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)

New stub "Scientist-stub"

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)

You don't - it's just a courtesy to go through the process here, to make sure that someone else isn't organising the same groups of stubs in a different way. If there's a logical need for a stub, then I don't think anyone's going to object. Check the full lst of stub messages to see whether it seems to fit in with the general scheme of things (which scientist-stub does, I'm glad to say), then go for it. Be warned, though - if a stub message is created that hasn't been vetted here, there's a higher chance that someone will suggest deleting it. But if it proves to be useful, that shouldn't be a problem. One final note - make sure that you add any new stubs to the full list of stub messages, and also make sure that you tell people here (and preferably on any other relevant wikiprojects) what you've done. Ideally it would be good to go through a process of having the new idea debated first (on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria), but it's not imperative. And if the stub's already made, then it would be a definite case of shutting the stable door after the horse's bolted. Grutness|hello? 00:23, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
To be more precise, at least ask for council as for the hierarchy of the stub.
It was already planned for creation, so no worry, however, the implementation could be adjusted:
All on which I have now implemented except for moving it. Circeus 00:28, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)
I have now posted a proposal for the stub. Thanks for info and changes. --LexCorp 01:43, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What the...?

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'm beginning to think we've a new type of vandal in our midst. Courtland 23:52, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)
It's more of a rearrangement involving all three templates than an outright deletion...--jag123 00:01, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
It's still unneccessary, given how well populated these stub categories are and how well they fit into the current stub sortiing scheme. Grutness|hello?

Flag the stubs in category listings

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)

There used to be an option in your settings to have stubs (defined as being below a certain file size that you could set) tagged in some way. (I never used it so I don't know what it looked like.) It was removed because it was too much of a strain on the database, I believe. This sounds like a similar concept, as I understand it. -Aranel ("Sarah") 02:46, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Template:Taiwan-stub

(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) — Instantnood 19:20, Feb 18 2005 (UTC)

(copy and paste from Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Taiwan-stub, see also the discussion there.) — Instantnood 12:04, Feb 19 2005 (UTC)

Template:China-stub

(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. — Instantnood 20:53, Feb 18 2005 (UTC)

(copy and paste from Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:China-stub, see also the discussion there.) — Instantnood 12:07, Feb 19 2005 (UTC)

Template:China-geo-stub

(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. — Instantnood 20:56, Feb 18 2005 (UTC)

(copy and paste from Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:China-geo-stub, see also the discussion there.) — Instantnood 12:07, Feb 19 2005 (UTC)

Africa-stub scope

Should this include Madagascar or is there a better place to stub Madagascar-related stubs to? Courtland 16:47, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)

  • Africa-stub. I don't believe considering Madagascar part of Africa is being questionned. --jag123 17:55, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • It is a part of the African continent. --YixilTesiphon 23:02, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)
  • For the purposes of stub-sorting, Africa seems to include Madagascar, the Comoros, Mayotte, Reunion, Mauritius, the Seychelles, the Cape Verde Islands, and the Sinai Peninsula, all of which have strong links to Africa. The following are stubbed elsewhere: Azores (Portugal), Canaries (Spain), St Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha (UK Overseas territories). Grutness|hello? 00:13, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • mind if I add that detail somewhere unobtrusive to Wikipedia:Template_messages/Stubs? Courtland 22:55, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
    • It would be helpful if the talk page for the template (or else the category page) explained what territories go in what geo-stub category. They do get rather complicated if you're not 100% comfortable with your world geography. -Aranel ("Sarah") 23:54, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • Sounds like a good idea. It is easy to overlook that people don't always where which country is, especially where there might be doubt as to where a continent's borders are. Grutness|hello? 03:37, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Content & Wording of Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting

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:

  1. Include "What is a stub?", a definition, in the Scope section.
  2. Reword the existing sentence in the Scope section to read This WikiProject aims to sort stubs into categories to facilitate their future expansion by bringing them to the attention of persons with specific knowledge of those topic areas. Included in this aim is the creation and deletion of stub templates and corresponding stub categories.
  3. Rewording the existing Goals section to read:
    1. Better categorization of stubs (i.e. stub sorting)
    2. Consistency in stub sorting
    3. Manageable sizes for stub categories (roughly <300 stubs each)
    4. Overall facilitating the graduation of stubs to full article status, merger of stubs into existing articles, or deletion of stubs if they are inconsistent with Wikipedia content policies.
  4. About the Infoboxes section ... what does that mean?
  5. Add a line to the Participants section such as If you would like to join this WikiProject, insert your name in the list here and introduce yourself in the Discussion section for this article.

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)

animal-stub vs. biosci-stub

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)

dog-stub => pet-stub? (won't happen)

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)

  • Dog: keep the stub as dog-stub and don't convert to pet-stub. Courtland 23:18, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
  • Keep dog stub as is. If there is enough demand for another separate animal stub (or group of animals) then there would be no reason why not to add it. "Pet" is a bit too ambiguous, though. Do we include iguanas? Alpacas? Tigers? All have been kept as pets... Grutness|hello? 03:43, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • keepdog-stub as is. Gracious me--I'm just seeing this. The dog project at Wikipedia has worked very hard and is extremely organized and very specific; 'pet' is way too general. I'm going to inform the members of this suggestion; we didn't know anything about it--at least, I didn't. Quill 04:08, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep dog-stub as is. Even the stub message is very explicit to dogs, and if you look at Category:Dog_stubs, you'll see that there's quite a list there. I almost hate to use the word "polluted" to what would happen to this list if random other articles were added to it; would also lose the (hopefully) helpful info in the dog-stub message. Elf | Talk 19:14, 7 Mar 2005 (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)

Science Stubs Census - update for 20Feb

see User:Ceyockey/Science_stub_census#Top_Level_Counts

  • all categories increased except for Category:Knot stubs, which decreased by ~17% (from 84 to 70 stubs).
    • as a side note, other categories have decreased substantially before, though due to population of sub-categories ... Template:sci-stub, by ~50% for the 29Dec-9Feb period; Template:biosci-stub, by ~30% for the same period
  • the average stubs per category (includes all sub-categories) increased from 247 to 279.
  • the largest ratio increase for a category was for the Template:climate-stub, which increased ~270% between 14Feb and 20Feb, followed by Template:mathbiostub which increased by ~68%.

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)

People from Quebec stub category up for deletion

See Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion#Category:People_from_Quebec_stubs Courtland 14:13, 2005 Feb 21 (UTC)

Taiwan and China

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)

Correct. Sometimes the stub template has categorized its articles and sometimes it hasn't. (Too bad "what links here" only displays 500. Although it would probably be an impossible drain on the server if it didn't.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 16:58, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
According to one of the Wikipedia developers, User:Jamesday, large categories have a significant effect upon database performance. That is the reason that the Category:Stub was removed from Template:Stub (see Template talk:Stub and Wikipedia talk:Meta-templates considered harmful). The category was recently readded to the template, but it looks like it was done by someone who didn't look at the debate on the template's talk page. The developers prefer a category that is less than 500 articles, but definately less than 1,000. Since the stub category has over 4,000 articles (of the over 15,000 total articles with the stub template), the stub category should be removed from the stub template until the category gets back down below 1,000. BlankVerse ∅ 21:19, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Was this discussion before or after the change to only display 200 articles at once? -Aranel ("Sarah") 23:27, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Could it be done by changing the text of the stub template to [[Category:Stubs (start with {{{1}}})]]. When the tag {{stub}} is added to an article start with the letter A, it should be added as {{stub|A}}. This will link articles with the stub template to the corresponding stubs categories according the first letter of the title. — Instantnood 07:30 Feb 26 2005 (UTC)


All the stub types

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)

This is SO awesome; I was wrestling just last week with how to view or print the list easily so I didn't have to deal with that huge table-driven page and was having no luck at all. You're a lifesaver! Elf | Talk 15:29, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

new stub categories

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)

internet-stub --- creation proposal

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)


dance-stub?

Ought there to be a stub category for dance-related topics? Alai 01:50, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This was suggested on the criteria page and now Template:Dance-stub has been created. -Aranel ("Sarah") 03:04, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

compu-hardware-stub

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)

All the stub categories - UPDATE

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)


Journalist

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)

  • I generally stub journalists to Template:writer-stub. Courtland 05:15, 2005 Mar 4 (UTC)
  • If they're both journalists and writers, then writer-stub is fine. Just watch out for any photojournalists, who are not writers! Grutness|hello? 07:04, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC) (who is writing here as a distractor task from writing his newspaper column! :)
  • I do think it might be worth pulling out the journalists into a separate category. Category:Writer stubs is rather large. -Aranel ("Sarah") 15:38, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Agreed on both counts ... I merely put in where I currently stub to. Courtland 18:00, 2005 Mar 4 (UTC)
  • If you create this stub template and category, I'd suggest that one parent category in addition to the core be Category:Journalists (obvious, I know ... sorry). Courtland 00:56, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

Comics-stub subcategories

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)

  • No objection. Do you think that most of what they are looking for are stub categories that are congruent with the sub-categories of Category:Comic_books? Courtland 22:26, 2005 Mar 4 (UTC)
    • Pretty much. Things like "DC-Thompson-comics-stub" have also been proposed, but the idea right now is to first break out the two main companies plus artists/writers, and see where we're at. — Gwalla | Talk 22:57, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • If it's supported by a whole WikiProject, it's unlikely that many people will object, as long as there is a reasonable number of articles in each category. (The only difficulty with comic book companies is that if the article doesn't specify which one, the average stub-sorter will not be able to tell. This is okay if you're willing to go through Category:Comics stubs periodically and deal with the less accurately sorted ones.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 22:47, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • That's true. Most people who add articles on characters know what company owns them, though, fortunately. — Gwalla | Talk 22:57, 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)

Nationalising bio-stubs

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)

Sometimes people who are not connected with or even necessarily aware of the project create stub templates because hey, they see that there are other stub templates, and they don't realize that there are guidelines for their creation. (This is generally fine. It's how Wikipedia works.) Stub templates created under those circumstances often don't show up on any lists because the person who created them wasn't aware that the lists existed in the first place.
I posted about this under Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria#More people stubs. The criteria page seems to be the preferred place for discussing new stub suggestions (which is why it is linked to from the top of this page!)--suggestions made on this page tend not to receive very many comments. -Aranel ("Sarah") 20:04, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sports-stub children

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)

There are lots more, they just don't show up on the first page of the category. There should be a list of more specific templates to use, as there is with some of the other parent categories. -Aranel ("Sarah") 21:25, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Stubs among random page pulls

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)


(Even more) new stub images

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)

NO!!! Many of the images have been thought out very carefully, to avoid offending people. The ones that use flags rather than maps do so mainly because there is disputed territory involved - the ones that use plain maps rather than flag maps do so because the flags will not work as "fills" for the maps. Those that use neither have very logical reasons for them, often debated at length on any wiki topics relating to the countries involved. In the case of Afghanistan, several border regions are disputed with its neighbours. For that reason, no map was used and a national flag was used instead. Grutness|hello? 22:14, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I hadn't realized there was that much thought behind the choice of stub icons. Good to know. Courtland 23:53, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)
Korea-geo-stub took the longest, treading gently around political issues (and I'm fairly proud of the result, to be honest). China-geo-stub and China-stub were both debated at great length (the icons that is... the stubs themselves have also generated a fair amount of talk!), as was India-geo-stub. Grutness|hello?

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)

Not a bad idea... I shall do that to both there and the list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. Grutness|hello? 10:32, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sportspeople stubs categorization

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)

I'm surprised it isn't already set up like that. (This isn't a major enough change that you need to start a discussion first, though. It's easy enough to fix if we decide we disagree.) I went ahead and did it. -Aranel ("Sarah") 04:57, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm surprised as well. That would seem the logical thing to me (like Politician-stubs being in both subcat of People-stubs and Politics-stubs). Grutness|hello? 05:57, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Progress

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...

  • Is stub sorting making relative progress, or are stubs being created faster than they can be sorted?
  • Are stubs in fact being expanded, once sorted out, or are they being created faster than they can be expanded?
  • If the answer to either is 'no', what could be done about this? Would automation/botting help? Or should other measures be taken?
Yours, Radiant! 15:42, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
The answer to your first question is a definite "yes". It's hard to get a reliable count, but you can look at the first page of Category:Stub and note that it is reliably showing more than the first half of the alphabet on the first page. (When I started sorting, just the A and B entries were too much for the first page.) Beyond that is less well-sorted. Note that we are also dealing with pre-existing stubs that are just being edited (since that "activates" the template categorization). In theory, once we get through that backlog (which is admittedly enormous), progress will move even more quickly. The vast majority of the stubs that I sort are pre-existing, not new.
As fo the second, I don't know. I've noticed a few isolated instances of people saying that they go through stub categories to find articles to expand. (I used to do this with Tolkien articles when I first joined Wikipedia. It was useful then and is presumably still useful now, especially with teh smaller categories.) There is also a tendency to weed out more of the stubs that really should be deleted, since sorting draws more attention to them.
The primary difficulty of sorting remains that most people don't sort, so Category:Stub continues to grow. Probably the second biggest problem is that some of the stub categories (Category:People stubs) are so huge that they are basically no more useful than Category:Stub. -Aranel ("Sarah") 03:36, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Category:Stub was down to under eight pages (1600 stubs) yesterday for the first time. It may be the right time to start dividing bio-stub up properly, same as was done to geo-stub. Oh, and in answer to Radiant!'s second question, a lot of the stubs are being expanded once they are further sorted, at least if my random sample is anything to go by. I added 20 stubs at random to my watchlist for a week when I subcategorised them, and seven or eight of those were worked on within the week. Three (IIRC) were expanded well beyond stub level. The subcategories seem to be doing their job of alerting editors who know particular subjects which articles need looking at. Grutness|hello? 05:45, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Not noticing this comment until now, I just counted them: 1406 unsorted stubs. Alai 05:58, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I wanted to congratulate the group for having come to the point where there are categories into which almost all of the general-stubs can go. I've been sorting this evening (my time) for a bit and finding that a slim minority of general-stubs are not currently sortable based on present categories, which is about where we want it to be; based on present trends I think the final stabilized size of the category might be somewhere between 100 and 200. Courtland 04:57, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC) P.S. I just did a count by pages and found 1,520 general stubs; I've noticed stubs coming in occasionally while I've been sorting.

New stub category: digi-stub

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)

Most of the debate on new stubs is now on Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria - suggest it there - it sounds like it might be a good idea (either that or change the wording on the Pokemon stub to cope with both). Grutness|hello? 05:52, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Stub redirect to Wikipedia:Find_or_fix_a_stub up for deletion

see Wikipedia:Redirects_for_deletion#February_7

Courtland 05:49, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC)

User stubs?

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)

Every User page that I've seen the stub tag on has been done mostly as a joke. They could be ignored, although they do add a small number of extra pages to an already-too-large category. Another choice would be to create a new user-stub that looks exactly like template:stub, but would not include the category:stub. That would also make sure that those user pages would never show up under "Special:What links here" for the stub template. On the other hand, I am not sure that I want to be advocating the creation of any joke stub templates (like the recently deleted template:cow stub. BlankVerse ∅ 12:36, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Jokes that include categories or templates used on real articles should not be found on user pages. We might suggest to folks who really think it's just too funny to avoid that they use "subst:" with the template and then delete the category reference. -Aranel ("Sarah") 22:29, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Good idea. Note that some of these are not joke pages - some users have created template articles on subpages of their user pages (User:RobinPatterson is one such I know of) - personally, I have no problem with these having the stub template on (there are probably less than half a dozen of them in all).
According to Category:Stub there's 28 of them; my User page was on there until I tracked down where there was a stub lodged in some conversation text, so there might be several that are there by accident rather than design. Courtland 00:42, 2005 Mar 15 (UTC)

Category:People stubs is in desparate need of help

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)

Actually, I think I'm going to go ahead and create Template:US-politician-stub and Template:UK-politician-stub to help with that last comment. Note that the most difficult part of this sorting is that once you have been typing "US-" and "UK-" for a while, it is very easily to mistype one for the other! -Aranel ("Sarah") 01:39, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)


Move to Wiktionary and Stubbing

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)

Bluemoose suggested a "phrase-stub" at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria#phrase-stub to cover a lot of these. Some of them will fit into the current stub categories, but a word/phrase-related stub muight be worthwhile. Grutness|hello?

Africa-geo-stub

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)

Please be sure and tell us over at Wikipedia:Africa-related regional notice board when you do so. And thanks to Grutness for dropping us a note before. You are all doing a great job! Cheers, BanyanTree 06:21, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Will do. And thanks for the thumbs up :) Could take a few days - it means going through all the Africa-geo-stubs to work out which countries are heavily represented. Grutness|hello?

Categories vs templates

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)

By "100 ... above his maximum target", does that mean Jamesday would prefer to see categories that hold <100 articles in general? Courtland 00:45, 2005 Mar 15 (UTC)
Ehhhh, I'm not gonna stuff words in his mouth, but that's how I interpreted it. You can ask on his user page to give you the straight dope on the technical side of things and make your own decisions from there. Although he is the major db developer for Wikipedia, it's surprising the number of people who think they know better. If you plan to use that info in CfD or something similar, I wouldn't necessarily expect smooth sailing ;) --jag123 18:27, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The goal of the 100 minimum was to discourage creation of frivolous stub categories. There's not much point in a category that will never contain more than half a dozen articles! Personally, I support a much lower minimum and I agree that "as specific as possible" is more useful to people who might want to expand stubs. (I would say that 40 or 50 is plenty. Less than that may be appropriate if there is an interest in expanding them, particularly if there's an associated WikiProject.)
Does breaking categories into 200-article pages not decrease the effect on the server? I thought that was the whole point of that particular innovation. (The problem is that it currently looks like that was precisely what it did, so it has actually encouraged the use of larger and larger categories. If this is seriously a problem, then we need to have, first, more than one developer telling us about the problem—because we're talking about serious changes needed here—and second, we need to rethink the entire category system. Though I begin to wonder why we even bother having categories if they can't have more than 100 articles.)-Aranel ("Sarah") 14:48, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've personally used the argument of the 100 minimum to discourage creation of frivolous stub categories because it had been listed on the creation page that there be a 100 minimum. Someone changed the limit from 10 to 100 (on stub cat creation guidelines) at the end of January and never explained why, but for some reason I assumed it was because of a technical reason. I've argued that such a high limit be maintained mainly because I sincerely believed it decreased performance issues. This minimum was usually strongly contested, so it's not like there was a community consensus regarding this number, which is why I made the above post.
There is no need to rethink anything or to seriously change anything. If the project wants to maintain a 100 article minimum, then great, but if the 100 minimum is based on arguments I've previously made, or the edit to the stub category creation guideline, then it should definitely be reconsidered. It seems the 100 minimum came out of nowhere and was perpetuated for no real reason. --jag123 20:02, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
What I meant by massive rethinking was that currently, there is a tendency to avoid categories in general that are overly specific. (For example, we tend to get only as specific as a nationality plus a basic job, e.g. "American physicists", but not "American theoretical physicists" or "American physists of the 19th century".) There is a notion floating around that it would be even better to apply more general labels ("American people" and "physicists", say) if we could somehow find the intersection fo the two categories. This depends upon the notion that there is nothing wrong with, say, one category for all American people. If it is the case that categories with hundreds of members are harmful, then we will need to rethink this. (The current understanding in general seems to be that the only reason we use specific categories like "American physicists" is because we currently lack the technical ability to view the intersection of two categories.) '
It would certainly make life easier at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion if we know what, because of technical issues, would be an ideal range for categories (or even if there is such a range).
There have been discussions of the 100 article limit, but I'm having trouble locating them at the moment. I found some under "range of article count". I think we're tending to move away from the 100 limit, though. In my opinion, the ideal stub category—speaking practically with no regard for technical concerns—should fit onto one or maybe two pages.-Aranel ("Sarah") 22:36, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I don't quite understand the intersection thing you mention. Is this a proposed software feature for MediaWiki 1.5? I would think that if a new category can split up an otherwise large category, that would be a good thing. I don't follow CfD very closely, but from what I see, most of it is sticking to naming conventions or deleting empty, unused cats (which wouldn't be the case here). Two page views of categories is 400 items. Perhaps that's ideal, but do you have a problem with a user creating a new stub template for only 20 items? That's what should be decided, and ideally, the page that use the 100 limit be changed to reflect new (if there is one) consensus. --jag123 18:27, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Yes, it's a proposed feature. (Although, to be honest, it's been tossed around a lot but I don't know if it's been formally proposed. The MediaWiki update process is somewhat confusing.) See, for example, Wikipedia talk:Categorization under "Super Categories". As for the 100 limit, there have been some moves lately to soften that and they haven't met with any opposition. (See Wikipedia:Stub categories and look at the guidelines at the bottom. I think. I can't get that page to load at the moment.)
I wouldn't have any problem with a category containing 20 stubs if there were an associated Project or else a clear interest in expanding the article in that category, although I do think that 20 is a little low. (If we have too many tiny categories, it gets to the point where sorters can't keep track of them, so they are unlikely to be used except by the person who created them. That may not be a problem as long as there are dedicated people keeping an eye on them. If it's just one person, they might as well just make a personal list.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 20:42, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I have some concerns about categories as small as 20, for the reason Aranel has mentioned. If castub categories get that small, then there will be a proliferation of them, and trying to keep track of them all and (worse still) keep them hierarachical will be a nightmare. In some cases, the hierarchies would be easy to apply (with my current work on splitting africa-geo-stub up, I could easily simply make 55 country-specific stubs), but with other subjects it could get very messy indeed. Another less worrying problem is that - if the categories work the way they should - they may quickly empty and become dead categories, which means more work in the form of cfd and tfd - do we keep stub categories that have been emptied? Grutness|hello? 23:03, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

SoapChar template

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)

Counting experiment and Redirect flag

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)

:/ I actually prefer the names of several of the redirects. Sigh. The numbers are a very good move, though, although keeping them updated may be a bit time consuming, especially for the larger categories. Grutness|hello? 04:57, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm thinking that they only have to be ballpark figures to be useful, approximate; that's why I'm thinking that moving to a # of pages measure might be best as it's easy to catch and hits the brain hard if you say "17 pages of stubs" which translates to ~3400. Also, the size changes aren't going to happen quickly across the board; many of the categories have either ~60 or ~250 stubs, almost like two fuzzy/broad local maxima, based on the little survey I did to generate those numbers. Courtland 06:22, 2005 Mar 16 (UTC)
A great move by Courtland, but it should stay updated. 500LL 14:26, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Agreed - it is a great idea. Courtland, I hope you don't mind but I amended what you wrote at the top of the page a little (don't like altering something that someone has signed, but I made some changes that made some of what you put redundant). I've made a couple of cosmetic changes: 1) I put the numbers in parentheses so that they're separate from the template messages; 2) I added "to count" to those which have yet to be estimated; 3) I extended the number of different counts a little, and turned everything above 800 into page counts; 4) I changed the redirect symbol to *R - it just stands out a little more. Grutness|hello? 10:52, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
no worries :) feel free to edit Courtland 00:32, 2005 Mar 18 (UTC)
How do we feel about template redirects in general? There are some cases where redirects would be extremely useful either to avoid awkward formatting (math-bio-stub redirecting to current mathbiostub) or to cover common spelling issues (us-stub redirecting to US-stub). Are such template redirects harmful in any way? -Aranel ("Sarah") 00:14, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I hope not - there are several redirects I definitely prefer (I use "car-stub" a lot, for instance, and "SA-geo-stub" too, simply because it's consistent with the other names). And I agree with the point about awkward formatting - "Buddhistub" always trips me up (clever though it is), as does "cricket stub". Grutness|hello? 01:10, 18 Mar 2005 (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)

When I was sorting to move things from tv-stub to tv-series stub I found a couple dozen Japanese television stations that could be sorted to station-stub. Someone was pretty systematic and used the same format for every one. Courtland 02:31, 2005 Mar 18 (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)

WikiProject sign, *W

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)

Nice touch. I've added info about this to the page's introduction. Grutness|hello? 23:49, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

First-pass count completed

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)

Request for comment

As stub sorters are a large part of Wiki Categorization, please give your opinion on the proposal at Wikipedia:Categorization policy.

Huge geostub influx

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)

Who's Bot was it? Should be be talking to the person running the bot to see if they can do a better job of classifying the stubs as they are added? BlankVerse ∅ 08:38, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
User:Docu (and the bot's called D6). Not sure it would make much difference - the stubs being done are geo-stubs from all over (he's adding a geo-coordinate template to them). The best that it could probably do is add geo- to the front of stub, so they'd still need to be edited regardless. Grutness|hello? 10:06, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
It is probably better to have a (temporarily) large Category:Geography stubs (which is mostly empty right now since most of the stubs have been moved to more specific geo-stubs) than add to the already huge (but shrinking) Category:stub. BlankVerse ∅ 13:06, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
It had largely done its dash before I noticed what was happening, and much of it has been picked over anyway, so hopefully it won't be as troublesome as I feared. Grutness|hello? 00:06, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I think that it is part of an ongoing project, so the odds are that there will probably be more runs that are similar. BlankVerse ∅ 12:05, 19 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

Good move. Thanks! As for D6 not adding stubs, it's simply that the category was turned off Template:stub for a while, so any edit of these stubs will make them suddenly appear in category:Stub Grutness|hello? 23:46, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)


Aircraft stubs categorization

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)

Do you see Category:Aerospace stubs as including Category:Rocket and spacecraft stubs? Grutness|hello? 22:33, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
As someone who does a lot of work on aircraft-related content, I'd really like to see: (A) the aircraft-related stubs separated from more general aviation-related stubs (indeed, this is what I created the aero-stub for in the first place, but stub-sorting creep seems to have taken place), and (B) the bomber-stub category deprecated and absorbed into the aero-stub. Sorting aircraft stubs according to the type of aircraft they describe is of no practical value as far as I can see. --Rlandmann 05:56, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Error in the stub category

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)

A null edit on each fixed it. Probably left over from an old version of the template; categories in templates are bad about updating. --SPUI (talk) 23:20, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

History stubs a shambles

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)

I've probably contributed to said shambles. :/ But why are battles and treaties "history-related", and historial weapons, people, etc not? Some tightening up on the definition and/or splitting could be indicated though, certainly. Most obviously, splitting by historical period. Alai 02:52, 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)

Historical character stubs would be great addition for ancient civilization characters or the complex geography of the 19th century europe that left a large amount of people in undetermined modern nationalities. History stubs are definitely about past events (possibly past places), not things or people, though. Circeus 12:46, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

{{Comedian-stub}} scope expansion

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)

Sounds fair... I wonder if satirist might be a better term - or would that open up the category further than you were thinking? Grutness|hello? 06:51, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think that "Satirist" is a narrower term than "Humorist" as it refers to a particular style of humor.

Courtland 22:45, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)

True, but satirist also tends to include satirical essayists and the like. Mark Twain, for example, would count as a satirist, but I wouldn't expect him to get comedian-stub. Grutness|hello? 00:49, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Fortunately we don't need to handle a stub for ole' Sam, who'd no doubt have something pithy to say about being so labeled. There are lots of options as to what to do to bring things more clarity. My suggestion right now would be to restrict {{comedian-stub}} to standup comedians, radio comics, television comics, and film comics and to create a new {{humor-stub}} (or a better name) that would a) have the comedian stub category as a child and b) would include both people (humorists and satirists) and books, film, etc. thereby drawing from bio, film, book/lit, tv, etc. I think that such a stub was suggested a few months ago ... maybe by you? I'm not sure. Anyway, this would also handle one of the categories suggested for the TV-series stub category. Thoughts? If you think it's an ok-to-go, either of us could create it (I might not get to it for a day or two) and run with it and I'll re-stub those things I've put into commedian-stub that don't really belong .. and revert the wording on the template as well.

Courtland 01:40, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)

Mm. Maybe leave it as it is for now, see how it looks once it's a fuller category. After all there's only - what, 60? 70? - stubs at the moment. I'm not keen to handle it myself because I'm up to my eyeballs in history stubs at the moment and would like to make a start on splitting the UK geo stubs too - something I feel more comfortable about handling. One suggestion though - if you decide to go ahead with the split, try to find a name that has the same spelling in UK and US English (or at least also add in a redirect at humour-stub :)! Grutness|hello? 05:34, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

When's a stub not a stub anymore

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)

Not something I'd have slapped a stub tag on if I'd happened across it, anyway. I suppose it's hard to set an fixed criterion on, as in some people's minds it may relate to "what is there on this topic that's still to do?", as much as actual length. Alai 05:18, 4 Apr 2005 (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)

I have occasionally been expanding or writing articles on Swedish scientists, and when I wrote the article on Gösta Mittag-Leffler, I put a stub tag on it. It was later exchanged for another one, and finally deleted by User:Aranel with the edit comment that it is "not really a stub". The problem is that the article, although it is a few paragraphs long, really doesn't cover what he is famous for: his work as a mathematician. I know nothing about mathematics and don't even want to attempt to explain it in my own words, thus I limited myself to the "Life" part of the biography and left out the "Work". The biography could still be substantially expanded by someone into mathematics and would benefit from remaining in the Mathematician-stubs category. There are, I think, other examples like this one. / Uppland 08:57, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I've simply re-added math-stub to it. That way it's obvious that it's the math that is missing, not the biography. --Joy [shallot] 11:10, 6 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)

Myth or religion? And what of ancient tribes?

Two questions about category boundaries:

  1. Greek myths and legends get myth-stub, quite clearly. Articles about Islam or Christianity get reli-stub, again quite clearly. But where is tghe line drawn on things like Aztec deities, Voodoo, and similar subjects? Any suggestions?
  2. There are a lot of ancient tribe articles in hist-stub - Celts, Huns, Mongols, Pre-Columbians... Do they go in ethno-stub, or should they get their own stub category? If so, what should it be called? Grutness|hello? 11:44, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
My suggested answer to 1) is that stubs should be sorted by whoever is likely to contribute to them; articles about living religions are likely to be expanded by adherents or anthropologists and should get reli-stub, and articles about dead religions, which are of interest to historians, should get myth-stub. Susvolans (pigs can fly)

Addition to project goals

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)

  • Sounds sensible enough to me :) However, I think the inference being presented is a tad unfair. I doubt anybody stub-cats for the sake for the sake of it! It might sound like people here are too obsessed with the sorting, and do a lot of sorting, discuss a lot of sorting techniques and don't really talk much about expansion , but that's largely because this project is "Wikiproject Stub sorting" rather than "Wikiproject Stub expansion"! I guess some little things would be helpful for assisting the expansion effort though. For example, almost every notable historical mathematician has a biography at the MacTutor archive. The biographies are sometimes difficult to understand if you aren't a mathematician (and sometimes to do a good stub-expansion you'd need some grounding in history of maths) but if you do come across a mathbiostub without a MacTutor reference, simply finding the MacTutor biography and adding it as an external link will really help future editors. Quite a lot of stubs are worth googling for, and at the very least listing some of the most relevant links in the talk page (or if they are especially good as external links in the stub page). But probably the biggest single things that can be done to speed up expansion are to stick on the appropriate stubcat and also to categorise in the main category scheme (there are a lot of people who watch "their" categories even if they don't watch the stub categories). VivaEmilyDavies 02:43, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Czech(ia)-geo-stub

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)

Suggestion about multi-stubbing

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)

  1. It takes considerably longer, if you're going through hundreds of stubs at a time (the only way to keep up with some categories).
  2. Remembering the names of 150 stub templates is hard enough without having to remember 150 categiry names as well!
  3. When the page is edited to a good length, it's the stub template that is removed - most editors won't think to look in the categories for further stub messages.
  4. Allowing for two different ways to add things to stub categories is likely to lead to complication (i.e., K-I-S-S).
  5. It's far easier to calculate which intersecting categories need more complex stubs when there are multi-stubs present (e.g., calculating a need for France-hist-stub from France-stub and hist-stub).

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)

OK, you conviced me, but can we add multiple stubs (or at least two) to a page or not? 500LL 12:22, Apr 11, 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)

I've been toying with this little trick:
<div style="display:none">{{whatever-stub}}</div>
This way you can use the normal stub template, and it will place the article in the stub category, but the message will be invisible. I'd say to use this only if tons of stub messages are really, really annoying (if three or more, use for the third and additional ones), two stub messages should always be okay. It's a bit of work to type this out, but the use should be transparent to all editors who come across it. And if they only delete the stub tag - Well, an empty div does little harm. -- grm_wnr Esc 14:56, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


A simple idea to make stub templates look less ugly/obtrusive

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)

I think this is a pretty good plan. Alai 03:38, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The proper way to do this is to put it in the site-wide css. Most stubs - all the ones based on the meta templates - have 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)
I'm not computer-savvy enough to think I can do that without stuffing the meta-templates up thoroughly, but if you think it should be done, go do it! :) Grutness|hello? 09:45, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I can't edit stuff in the MediaWiki: namespace. I'll put a pointer here from its talk page, though. —Korath (Talk) 11:48, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)
But I can. I think. -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:20, 15 Apr 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

As noted above, the vast majority of the stub templates are already 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)
I don't like it. - Omegatron 20:27, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
My first thoughts on seeing the new reduced stub message: "What is going on, they shrunk the stub templates? For what? It looks uglier." I also think it draws attention to the stub messages, instead of making them more ignorable. --cesarb 19:45, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Hard-coding the small parameter into the stub templates is not a good idea, as it is sure to create discrepancies at one time or another, no matter how dedicated the project leader might be. If a change is to be made, it needs to be done directly on the global CSS style or on the Wiki software itself. I vote for the change to be reverted. It seems it already was reverted... if the change is still present to you, please refresh the page containing the stub. --Sn0wflake 23:18, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
A shame. It worked brilliantly for a while, and the stub templates became far less obtrusive - but now they've gone back to their large, uglier selves again. Grutness|hello? 01:12, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The idea in itself is not bad, but the application is far more complicated than it might initially seem. --Sn0wflake 02:43, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Would it still be as complex if it was done as I initially suggested - i.e., a minor edit on each individual template, rather than fiddling around with the metatemplate? Grutness|hello? 06:43, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
You would need to reach a community consensus before the changes could be made, no? Probably the best solution would be opening a discussion on the Wikipedia namespace. That way, you can get input from a wide variety of people (especially people who really understand the working of the TikiWiki software) and end up with an idea which is commom to the majority. But then again, you are better off asking somebody such as Meelar or Hadal on how to proceed. They will know. --Sn0wflake 13:08, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

keeping an eye on stub designs?

{{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)

The div tag with: div class="boilerplate metadata" id="stub" must be kept on all stubs. It identifies the template that it is a stub. -- AllyUnion (talk) 17:15, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Something we should consider to add to the policy/guidelines too... -- AllyUnion (talk) 17:19, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How to be helpful?

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)

  • 1) put "stub" not "flower-stub", unless "flower-stub" exists of course, putting plain old "stub" is better as it will be found and sorted. 2) try not to put more than 1 or 2 at max stubs on one article. 3) use the list of categories to know what stub to use, e.g. there is a plant-stub. 4) the main project page should answer a lot of questions. thanks - Bluemoose 23:56, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The closest stub would be "plant-stub". -- AllyUnion (talk) 23:59, 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)

I realized that, Grutness. I was wondering if red-links were useful in addition to the "stub" msg--I realize that the "stub" message is needed so the new stub can be found. So it's okay--I'll just put "stub". Quill 10:28, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
only rarely is "stub" the only option, if you look at the list of categories there is one for nearly every possible article. Bluemoose 11:14, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)


Real progress

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)

lets keep a record of the stub levels, to monitor progress and enable a prediction of project completion;
  • 16th April 2005 12.30 GMT 11700 stubs
  • 18th April 2005 12.15 GMT 11400
  • 20th April 2005 07:45 GMT 11100 - dropping at 150 per day. Theoretical empty point: July 3rd!
  • 22nd April 2005 14:23 GMT 10600
  • 24th April 2005 12:30 GMT 10800 - weekend always seems to bring an influx of stubs
  • 26th April 2005 14:00 GMT 10700
  • 29th april 2005 08:50 gmt 8510 - 2190 drop, not bad!

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)

yeah, but 11100 includes "supplemental results", which seems to approximately double to number of counted stubs. Bluemoose 15:00, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Let's keep a positive mindset here. :) The important thing is that we are making a lot of progress. --Sn0wflake 15:29, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Whisper it... under ten thousand! 9,120, to be precise! Grutness|hello? 09:07, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)


Wikipedia:Stub sorting policy

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)

First time I've been aware of it! I thought all the discussion of this was going on at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Guidelines, which seems to largely parallel thje page you've mentioned.
As to the vote, yes to points 1 and 3, no to points 2 and 4. Reasons:
  • Point 2: Since the theoretical maximum that should be in a stub category for the good of the servers (according to previous comments) is 200, that leaves a very narrow band for a successful category. As I've said elsewhere, I tend to use a rule of 60 articles as a starting point for a stub category - 50 if there is an associated WikiProject. What's more, often the only easy way to reduce the size of an over-large category is to split uff subcategories that have below 100 articles.
    The point of 100 articles was to ensure that no person went off to create something completely worthless, like a stub for paperclips with the associated category. -- AllyUnion (talk) 10:32, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Point 4: Common sense should prevail here. Occasonally (very occasionally) three categories are a better solution than two: a mountain range that runs through three countries;someone famous in three fields of endeavour. I'd prefer this to be worded as a strong preference rather than a hard-and-fast rule (e.g., Ideally, an article should have no more than two stub templates. Most articles...).
Grutness|hello? 02:05, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ultra-short articles

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)

This really comes under stub fixing rather than stub sorting, but... as far as tagging them is concerned, giving them a {{HeBible-stub}} will make them more likely to be found by editors who may be able to extend them further. Biblical history is a very specialist field, and it's quite possible they may grow some. If you really think that there is no chance of growth for articles, then there are three things that can be done:
  1. propose them for deletion on vfd, giving reasons according to deletion policy;
  2. propose that they be transwikied to wiktionary (not really an option in this case);
  3. find larger articles that them can be merged with.
In the two cases you've mentioned, it's possible that Wikipedia's Hebrew Bible experts may be able to do something with them. If they can't and the articles remain stubs, then merging them with larger articles (Judah and Ezekiel, perhaps) may be the thing to do. But let the HeBible people have a go at them first!
Remember, too that just because an article is short doesn't mean it is a stub. A short article which covers all the know facts about a subect is not a stub, whereas a far longer article that skimps the facts might be. In the two cases you mention, it's likely that short, complete articles could be writtem pn them, even if they still look "stub length". Grutness|hello? 05:04, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your comments. My real concern is touched by your last paragraph. As a short article may not always be a stub, the following edit loop can be created:
  1. Well intentioned wikipedian notices an article with a short length and tags it as a stub.
  2. Newly tagged stub is sorted to appropriate stub group.
  3. Subject matter expert examines article and after realizing the article is complete removes stub tag.
  4. GOTO step 1).
I have no indication that this problem currently exists, but it is possible for it to occur in the future. A little planning now may solve a bigger headache in the future. --Allen3 talk 16:12, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
I see the problem coming up, too; perhaps one could create a template wich boils down to: "This is not a stub, so do not restub it; but feel free to add any information you deem relevant" Lectonar 12:13, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
No need for a template (which clutters the article and seems redundant, as information deemed relevant should always be added), just add a HTML comment like this:
<!-- Note: This article is considered short, but not a stub - please do not add a stub template. Feel free to add any information you deem relevant, of course. -->
Any editor trying to tag the article as a stub will see it, as the article obviously will be short. We could create a template with a comment like this to subst: in. But I don't think such articles are that common. -- grm_wnr Esc 22:16, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Good thinking, Allen3. But I think that the edit history would help to break this loop, even without the HTML comment. FreplySpang (talk) 03:06, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yep, but not everyone checks the edit-history; it would be nicer to have something there taht springs to the eye Lectonar 06:25, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Too many useless categories

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)

  • One could argue about some of them (see andorra-geo-stub or palau-stub, which have been around for some time), but others are doubtless of use (see crime-stub or photo-stub, which haven't been around for long). Not every one is involved in stub sorting and so wouldn't know about them anyway, but I for one think at least some are useful to have around. Strong Keep for me would be: Crime-stub, Photo-stub, Philately-stub, Icehockey-player-stub, Afghanistan-stub, F-1-stub (this is more of interest in Europe, I think), new-age-stub...Lectonar 10:57, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • The main reason I put them here is for debate as to which are useful. Several of them I think could be very useful - if populated, and if we'd known about them. Unsure about philately stub, but photo-stub would take a lot of photography stuff out of art-stub, Ice-hockey stub could be well used, as could crime stub. But several are very good deletion candidates: poker stub? eris-stub? ones already covere by other categories (like the tatarstan ones, zen-stub, and Nickelodeon-stub...)? Grutness|hello? 00:58, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I would guess that at least half of the list could go away and there would be no noticable effects. I can see changing {{F1-stub}} to a more general motor sports category. This would give NASCAR and motorcycle racing a place to go. --Allen3 talk 13:10, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
  • There already is a more general motor-racing stub - {{autoracing-stub}} (although motorsport-stub would make more sense). And given that in ten minutes, I've found seven or eight unmarked F1-stubs without even trying hard, it makes sense. - SoM 14:53, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Category:Formula One stubs: "There are 103 articles in this category." - SoM 16:18, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • And although I hadn't known about it when I did that: Wikipedia:WikiProject Formula One - SoM 17:12, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • whee. The stub types list needs updating then - it said <25 and has no WP link. Grutness|hello? 00:58, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • Well, there were <25 stubs before - I went through a couple of the F1 categories and found a ton of articles that should have been stubbed & weren't (there are probably more still, but an hour of doing it was quite enough, TYVM). But the WikiProject existed already, so I wouldn't count on there being no WikiProjects for the others. It's probably more a case of no-one getting the giant list of stubs to load to edit it, or not being aware that they should. Someone needs to do a compare-and-contrast with Wikipedia:WikiProject, among other things. - SoM 14:26, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • F1-Stub was created per some suggestions. I also created Autoracing-stub at the time which i'm 100% sure had been needed for a long time. The biggest deal I believe is not the importance of F1-Stub, but how to decide whether its goes under that or the general autoracing one. Hedley 22:14, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Delete proposition

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)

Agreed Bluemoose 15:35, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Also agreed RJFJR 02:54, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
DittoLectonar 06:27, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
'Agreed as far as deleting those ones - I still have my doubts about the usefulness of several of the others, too! Grutness|hello? 14:00, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Good idea, you could add Kyrg-stub as well? Rx StrangeLove 14:36, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
agree Circeus 16:40, Apr 22, 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)

Eris-stub now only contains itself. Next. --Sn0wflake 16:23, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The same is valid for Shahnama-stub, which now only is present on Wikipedia: and Template:. --Sn0wflake 16:33, 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)

We just need a frontman, then. :P It's either you or Grutness, I guess. --Sn0wflake 16:48, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Heh. I'm beginning to think I'm too noisy over there as it is (and believe it or not they're currently wrestling through about eight potentially deletable stub templates!) Perhaps Circeus and I - and maybe one or two others - should take it in turns so that we don't look too deletion-happy... Grutness|hello? 13:19, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Stub list too long

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)

I have proposed before that any geographic subdivision be NOT listed there. Geo and country stub need to be under "stub by countries" stubs themselves sorted as [[category:stub categories|*]] Circeus 15:33, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
oopsies! i though this was relative to category:stub categories (which is a nightmare to navigate, by the way, with the flood of geo stubs!). It is expectable for the list to be that long: there are dozens of thousands of stubs to sort into cats that (we hope) should eventually stands between 60 to 200 articles... And the text list is merely a more usefiul version of the humongous list at wikipedia:template messages/Stubs. Circeus 16:17, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
Oh please don't start breaking the list into multiple pages! It's useful to me (and I'm guessing others) only if all the possible stub msgs are in one place. I just won't be able to manage if they're in multiple pages and I have to keep bouncing from page to page. Elf | Talk 23:22, 22 Apr 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)

There was a reason why the stubs were subpaged by category. You can make two pages, one that has a list of the stubs as a link to the specific subpage categories, and one as it stands. -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:40, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Not really the point I was trying to make. The main problem with wikipedia:template messages/Stubs (for me, at least) is that it has all the icons, all the stub messages are directly linked, and it is in table form. These three things make it a monster to load (hell, it takkes long enough to load the subpages!) and considerably longer than the list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. And none of those three things is really necessary for general-purpose stub-sorting. Grutness|hello? 09:15, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
How about placing an ID tag and a style for the image so that one can suppress the stub image depending on their stylesheet preferences??? -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:19, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Hate to admit it, but I know so little about the technology that you're gonna have to spell that option out for me in words I understand :) Sorry! Grutness|hello? 12:21, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

{{hist-bio-stub}}. What do you think?

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)

I'm very strongly against it. At the moment we're already dividing biographies up by profession and nationality 9which is a confusing enough combination). Adding a third variable makes it even more complex, especially when you're talking something as amorphous as "historical biographies". When does a biography become historical? When I dredged hist-stub removing all the biographies from it recently, I found some that were deemed historical because they were of people no longer in political office - one of them someone who had retired in 2002! Let's keep the two dimensions we've got for now and see how much we can shift by dividing by nationality and occupation first. Grutness|hello?
You've got a point there, but I thought especially about some of the polish and italian deceased nobility, wisigoths and ostrogoths kings et al., you name it; the underlying argument for stub sorting is to make the topic available to experts. In the abovementioned cases, people working on history-topics would be much more aware of it than people working on bio-stubs.. It was just a proposition, I don't intend to push it, but let' hear what the others have to say :) Lectonar 08:52, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
For people who won't fit in modern categories of nationality and occupation, you can make bio-stubs per period and perhaps general cultural area: {{classical-bio-stub}}, {{medieval-bio-stub}}, {{Byzantine-bio-stub}}, {{ANE-bio-stub}} (i.e. Ancient Near East) etc. For Polish and Italian aristocrats, I suppose {{Poland-bio-stub}} and {{Italy-bio-stub}} could work, even though nationality isn't a simple matter in either case. - Uppland 09:22, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes indeed, but I think that we have to keep the number of stub-categories down; I agree with you completely, it would be nice to have all those stub-categories around (idealiter would be something which would combine automatically all the stub denominations without having to resort to a template for each particular case) Lectonar 09:42, 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)

Not bad, {{noble-stub}} would be also possible; but would that stub get the attention of the appropriate users, namely historians? Lectonar 10:51, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There is a certain set of people interested in the genealogy of European royal houses and that kind of thing, but an all-purpose royal stub-tag might end up getting applied to Indian maharadjas and Sumerian city kings, which should come to the attention of entirely different people. As for a noble-stub tag, I wouldn't be surprised if it will lazily get used on anybody who seems to belong to some kind of petty nobility, even if the people who actually should find the stub are those interested in, say, Baroque architecture or French military history. --Uppland 12:39, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
How about {{euro-royal-stub}} then? And it could easily be a subcategory of both bio-stub and hist-stub if you think that that would make it easier for historians to find. Grutness|hello? 13:57, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
That seems like a good idea. Uppland 18:09, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I've proposed that one at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria. Hopefully it'll cut the unsorted bio-stubs down nicely. Grutness|hello? 13:24, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Madness

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 last bit was address to grutness :) +sj +

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)

Wikipedia:Deletion of useless stub templates and stub categories

Please help finalize this policy. Leave the comments on the talk page of that page. -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:37, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Alternate to stub deletion proposal

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)

Mmm. Where I come from this is known as "burying one's head in the sand". Sure, we won't use the new stubs - but other people might, especially the creators of them. Which means that a number - possibly a large number - of articles will disappear off into unrecognised stub categories (if we're lucky and their creators actually attach dedicated categories to the templates), or worse, will be lost because they were never categorised. And new categories will spring up parallel to ones we've created, so that, for example, history editors might need to look for articles in Category: Historical stubs, Category: History stubs, Category: History-related stubs, Category: Ancient stubs, Category: Past stubs, Category: Historic stubs, Category: History stub, and Category: History stub articles. Sorry, but this sounds like a non-solution to me. Grutness|hello? 09:27, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Centralization project: first draft

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.

Categorization and usage

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.

Stub types

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

  • music-stub
  • writer-stub
  • bio-stub

(...)

Please append new versions of this draft below.

Centralization project: second draft

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.

What is a stub?

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.

Why create stubs?

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

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.

What about substubs?

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.

Stub sorting

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.

Creation of new stub types

So, you think you need to start a new stub? First, check the following:

  • Is there no stub for this topic already? Check the list. All of it.
  • Are there enough articles to warrant this new type? (>100 in most cases, see above)
  • Do no other stub types overlap this category? For example, geography stubs are sorted by country, so don't create mountain-stub or river-stub.
  • Does the WP:WSS know about it? Of course, you can just go ahead, but a stub type the WP:WSS doesn't know about means that it won't be used to its full potential, and may be put up for deletion quickly if deemed superflous.

If you answered "yes" to all of the above, do the following:


(...)

Please append new versions of this draft below.

Centralization project: third draft

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.

Identifying a stub

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.

Creating and categorising stubs

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.

What about substubs?

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.

Creating new stub categories

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:

  • Is there a stub for this topic already? Check the list.
  • Will the new category be well defined enough to help editors identify articles that they have the expertise to expand?
  • Does the new category cover ground not covered by other categories, or create a well-defined subcategory that?
  • Will there be a significant number of stubs in this category; are there enough article stubs to warrant this new type?
  • Would your new category overlap with other categories? For example, geography stubs are sorted by country so you wouldn’t want to create mountain-stub or river-stub
  • If you are breaking a sub category out of a pre-existing category will the new stub reduce the size of the parent category by a significant amount?

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.

  • A: Put the stub topic into this field. In this example you would insert Road.
  • B: Include a new stub category so that the list of stubs will automatically appear in its own category. For this example, you would use Roads stubs as the name of the new category.

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.

  • A: Insert the description of the category here. In this case it would be roads, you can expand the description by adding additional terms. So you could add road transportation.
  • B: Insert the name of the new stub, in this case it's road-stub
  • C: Insert the name of an approprate higher level category, for this example it would be road transport stubs.

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).

Centralization project: pre-final draft

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.

Identifying a stub

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.

Categorising stubs

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.

New stub categories

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:

  • Is there a stub for this topic already? Check the list.
  • Will the new category be well-defined enough to help editors identify articles that they have the expertise to expand?
  • Does the new category cover ground not covered by other categories, or create a well-defined subcategory that does?
  • Will there be a significant number of stubs in this category; are there enough article stubs to warrant this new type?
  • Would your new category overlap with other categories? For example, geography stubs are sorted by country so you wouldn’t want to create mountain-stub or river-stub.
  • If you are breaking a sub-category out of a pre-existing category, will the new stub reduce the size of the parent category by a significant amount?

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.

Creating the stub template

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:

  • A: The stub topic goes into this field. For example, Road.
  • B: This should be replaced by a proper category, so that the stub will automatically be listed together with other stubs of its kind. Continuing with the previous example, you would replace B with Road stubs or Road-related stubs. When the page is saved, a new template will have beem crated. In this example, {{road-stub}}.

At this point, you should add the new stub category to the following lists:

Creating the stub category

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.

  • A: Insert the description of the category here. In this case it would be roads, you can expand the description by adding additional terms. So you could, for example, add road transportation.
  • B: Insert the name of the new stub here.
  • C: Insert the name of an appropriate higher level category, for this example it would be road transport stubs. If you have broken your new stub out from an existing stub category, it would be advisable to list this category here.

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).

edited Centralization project: pre-final draft

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.

Identifying a stub

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.

Categorising stubs

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.

New stub categories

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>

  • Is there a stub for this topic already?
Check the list.
  • Will the new category be well-defined enough to help editors identify articles that they have the expertise to expand?
Remember that using stubs categories is a way to facilitate article expansion.
  • Does the new category cover ground not covered by other categories, or create a well-defined subcategory that does?
A new category might fit as a sub-category of more than one existing category, such as in the case of {{Baseballbio-stub}}, which is a child of both {{Sportbio-stub}} and {{Baseball-stub}}.
  • Will there be a significant number of stubs in this category; are there enough article stubs to warrant this new type?
Typically the threshold is about 100 articles. This threshold is waved if the stub category exists as a tool for use by a WikiProject.
  • Would your new category overlap with other categories?
For example, geography stubs are sorted by country so you wouldn’t want to create mountain-stub or river-stub.
  • If you are breaking a sub-category out of a pre-existing category, will the new stub reduce the size of the parent category by a significant amount?
This is not an absolute necessity, but it has been a driver for the creation of most of the existing stub categories.

</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.

Creating the stub template

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:

  • A: The stub topic goes into this field. For example, Road.<new>The created Wikilink should lead to an existing article (not another stub).</new>
  • B: This should be replaced by a proper category, so that the stub will automatically be listed together with other stubs of its kind. Continuing with the previous example, you would replace B with Road stubs or Road-related stubs. When the page is saved, a new template will have beem crated<new>been created</new>. In this example, {{road-stub}}<new>{{road-stub}}</new>.

At this point, you should add the new stub category to the following lists:

Creating the stub category

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>

  • A: Insert the description of the category here. In this case it would be roads, you can expand the description by adding additional terms. So you could, for example, add road transportation.
  • B: Insert the name of the new stub here.
  • C: Insert the name of an appropriate higher level category, for this example it would be road transport stubs. If you have broken your new stub out from an existing stub category, it would be advisable to list this category here.

This syntax does four things, it:

  1. adds the Category:Road stubs to Category:Stub
  2. provides a description of the category
  3. displays the stub text and, finally
  4. inserts this category into a higher level category, in this case the Category:road stubs will be a member of category:Road Transport.

</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>

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