Wikipedia talk:Perfect stub article

See also Wikipedia talk:The perfect stub article for older comments.

An older version of this article, with complete edit history, is now archived at /Old.

When does a stub become not a stub?

I would like comment on the start of my research. It will progress. However, my goal is to get rid of the stub desgination. My article is Simone Cousteau

Well, the Preferences page suggests "500, 1000, etc." as a good "threshold for stub display." MadEwokHerd 00:26, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Stubs vs. short articles

from the village pump Stubs are supposed to be very short articles, supposedly even without a comma. But I've noticed that many short articles, which just need expansion, have the notice "This article is a stub". Should we be doing this?

Real stubs (with or without a comma) are not properly formed encyclopaedic articles, and should be immediately sent to cleanup, while short articles should be listed on something like:Wikipedia:Articles needing expansion. Maybe thay could have a notice, like "This article needs more work. See the talk page for details."

A whole another thing is that some articles may even need to be short. Zocky 16:58, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Exactly! Some articles need to exist as slightly more than a redirect to another article. For example, we have been discussing the article Latter Day Saint movement. And we have been asking, "Why is this needed? Isn't that the same as Mormonism?" Perhaps all that is needed is a redirect. But sometimes a sentence or two is perfect. Are we a little too stub-phobic at Wikipedia? Hawstom 21:09, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There seems to be a significant difference of opinion as to what constitutes a stub article. If you look at Wikipedia:Perfect stub article, it certainly sounds like a stub will have full sentences (presumably with commas as needed). On wikipedia:cleanup the term sub-stub is often used to describe a page that doesn't even meet the requirements of a stub.

By the way, I'd strongly discourage the placing of every stub article on cleanup. Perhaps every sub-stub should be listed there, but we sure don't want to flood cleanup with every stub. -Anthropos 16:19, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I agree, but I dislike this terminogy creep. I think "sub-stubs" should be called "stub" and most "stubs" should be called "articles in need of expansion". It's much clearer that way for newcomers Zocky 18:26, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I disagree. A sub stub is often regarded as something which is instantly deletable. A stub is not meant to be a derogatory term, but just a term meaning a short article, so I don't see a need to change it to articles in need of expansion, when this is already what it means. Angela. 15:33, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

WHo is the judge of what gets tagged as a 'stub'? It's not well defined who has this power, and why they've designated (for example) articles such as: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_economics and http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measuring_well-being . Granted, it might be nice if these were expanded, but they do contain enough info for someone to learn more about the general topic of 'green economics'... black bag

IMO the definion of "stub" is "an article that is clearly lacking the essential basics". -- Tarquin 11:20, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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Regardless of how a new page is classified, it would be helpful if the Wiki engine could automaticly display the page's classification with all the links to that page, maybe as a word in parentheses after the link. The classification could come from a markup sequence inserted automaticly at the top of a page when the page is first created, with an initial classification of "new". Editors could change it to "stub", or "definition", or something else, and remove it completely when the page content has sufficient quality and quantaty.

On a different subject, this is my first try at editing a Wiki page. When I tried to edit this page, the text window did not fit in my browser window. So I maximized the browser window. But the font became 20% larger, so again it would not fit in my browser window, regardless of the position of the horizontal scroll bar. That seems very strange. FYI...

David W Roscoe, 8 Jan 2004.

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Short Article Proposal

I have found stubs useful when building disambiguation pages and for getting titles straight when working on an interconnected set of articles. But I've also had one issue or area that concerns me. When checking links to names, etc. I've encountered stubs. Sometimes I add one or two facts. Then I'm faced with the question, should I remove the stub message or notice?

Sometimes, the answer is yes, the stub has grown into an article. But there are other cases. Sometimes it is no longer a stub, but its not an article I'm satisfied with. Of course, there is always the option of listing it on Articles Needing Attention with some explanation. But I'd like to suggest a middle ground. There could be an Articles Needing Expansion with an accompanying message. This could work like a stub. The article no longer shows up as a Stub, but other Wikipedians or readers would be alerted to the idea that this is an inadequate article. Just as we sometimes use What Links Here from the Stub page, looking for something we'd be interested in writing, we could use that feature with Articles Needing Expansion.

Another reason: I'm sometimes hesitant to start a talk page for a stub, since they complicate mergers and redirects. But if I'm pretty sure the article is under the right title (and only needs expansion), I'd feel better about describing the article's limitations on the talk page. Lou I 22:15, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This does exist, the template is Expand. Triddle 02:39, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Size of a Stub?

Jiang claims that an article is not a stub if it is larger than one paragraph. I think it's any article that's substantially undernourished. I see there is debate on this topic. Is there any consensus? Does any page attempt to address this terminology issue? jengod 22:25, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)

There's been much discussion, I think, but don't know where. I more or less agree with Jiang (my preferences mark a 500 word stub limit). I think there's a metawikipedia page called something like Kill the stub pages which has a discussion about size, and ml archives probably have oodles of discussion about "what is an article". Tuf-Kat

Sometimes an article is a stub because it is missing elements that are critical about the subject of the article. For instance, There are many stubs about writers that include a biography but not a book list, or a book list but not a biography. Many of these are quite long; however, a list of books is not an encyclopedia article, and a biography about an author that fails to list their books doesn't describe the author very well. At the same time, if the author lived an obscure life, and wrote one book that turned out to be very important, two sentences mentioning what is known about the author and mentioning the book (and linking to its article) might be enough to not be a stub. --ssd 04:30, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

What if I start writing a long article, divide it into sections, and each section is just a stub of what it should be? I think the article should be considered a stub. -Lev 06:39, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Random Observations

(from the village pump)

I've spent most of today clicking Random page and have seen a (random, naturally) sample of a couple of hundred articles. Excluding the U. S. places from the census, the following are just a few observations/questions that spring to mind. All comments welcome.

1. there are a lot of stubs without {{SUBST:stub}} on them.
2. there are a lot of oldstubs.
3. given 1 and 2,what is the value of adding {{SUBST:stub}}? (I ask because I did this a lot today).
4. if my sample is good, we have a lot of articles on people who have had their 15 minutes of fame,and very few in the area of "high culture" (the arts, I suppose). What, if anything, can be done to redress this? Or am I worrying about nothing?
5. how can the biographical articles of living people be kept up-to-date?

Bmills 16:30, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

well, the stub boilerplate points to the stub page, and so (in theory) someone can hit "what links here" on that page and they'll get a list of stubs. I don't know if anyone actually does this, however. With regard to your biography question, perhaps we could have the same thing - perhaps have a wikiproject biography, add a "this is the wikiproject biography" boilerplate on each biography's talk page, and then one can get the list of biographies from "what links here". Moreover, with that tag present a fairly simple SQL query could be constructed, saying something like "give me a list of biographies of living people which haven't been updated in the last XXX months". -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:59, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Re: hitting what links here from the stub page, I do this. :) On occasion, anyhow: I believe that proposed changes by developers will make it possible to "surf" the What Links Here section, meaning stub boilerplate will serve an even more useful purpose. I like Finlay's suggested bio-boiler, but am not in WikiProject:Biographies, so I don't know how they would like the idea. Jwrosenzweig 22:52, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Another very useful function of the stub boilerplate is to annoy people like me, who have the strange idea that they are to decide for themselves which Wikipedia articles to edit. I hate those things. Andre Engels 03:49, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Andre. Most people can figure out that an article is a stub without being told. It is never clear when an article stops being a stub, and when it does stop, people don't bother removing the stub notice. I find many good articles whose only reason that they could not be entered into a paper encyclopedia as is, is because they have the stub notice attached. I would consider removing the notices, but since there are so many of them and people are still adding them, there does not seem to be any point. We should abolish entirely the use of the notice. Ezra Wax

Jeez. Why would you waste the time considering removing the stub notice and then not waste the time actually removing it? :) I often trundle through part of the main stub list, putting them into their {{SUBST:stub}}, and when I see something that is larger, seems like it's on its way - I just remove the stub notice. (Isn't that how this place works?)--Bookandcoffee 16:38, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Formating

I don't get why someone changed all the m-dashes in the article into two hyphens next to each other. Maybe next we'll change all the W's to two V's next to each other. -- Chameleon 08:19, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'll change it back within a day or two unless someone replies. -- Chameleon 12:39, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There's no such thing as an mdash in ISO 8859-1. You're using an invalid Microsoft extension. Your mdashes show up as little dotted blocks to me.

Ah, I thought people had a problem with m-dashes themselves, rather than with the encoding I used. OK, I'll make sure I use the escape code rather than just typing it in, in future. Hmmm, Wikipedia automatically changes some characters to escape codes when I type them in. If m-dashes are tricky across platforms, why are they not among those characters? — Chameleon 11:51, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

New articles

Aside from articles that deserve speedy deletion, why do people waste their time (and ours) on articles that have only one line? Surely, other than defining, say, a city or town, shouldn't there be more content if they are going to create the article? Please help me, I'm getting annoyed.--naryathegreat 17:21, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

I don't see a one-line stub as a waste of time; that's more than was there before. Have faith, eventually they'll improve. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 19:51, 2004 Jul 19 (UTC)

It is if it is no more than a dicdef, for something that does not belong in a dictionary (a company name for instance). And I don't feel that they improve, they stay the same line forever. And if you're going to create an article, be ready to put some effort into it right then and there.--naryathegreat 21:37, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

Forever is a long time especially on a wiki! I've seen loads of one line articles improve over time. theresa knott 21:47, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

See: Wikipedia:Perfect stub article and m:Kill the Stub Pages. -- Kokiri 07:42, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

A stub will be seen and improved, a missing article is less likely to be created if you, the person who sees the need, fails to create it. So better create a stub than leave a gap. Bmills 07:40, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Add where to put stubs

I'm new to Wikipedia and decided to be good and make a short article I created a stub by adding {{stub}} to the end of the source. When I looked around afterwards, I noticed that other articles did not have {{stub}} at the very end of the source, but before the See also and the External links sections. When I tried to find how to create a stub I got here, but this article doesn't seem to mention where to put the stub. IMO this should be made clear in this article (and prominently). Perhaps by using the following that I eventually found in Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub#Stub_alert.21:

If you create a stub, please add the following tag at the end, but before the See also and the External links sections: {{stub}} (See Wikipedia:MediaWiki custom messages for more information).

--Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley 00:26, 2004 Nov 25 (UTC)

Definition of stub

Can we please start the article with a definition? Without a definition it's hard to know when to put the shortcut and when to remove it.

Football

The American Football article is no stub. Infact, it is one of the longer articles on Wikipedia. Can we change this?

One article, multiple stubs

What is the protocol for where a stub article fits into two stub classifications? For instance, Pearl Street can be a {{US-road-stub}} and a {{NYC-stub}}. Is it proper to add both stub designations to the article, or should just one be chosen? -- Fingers-of-Pyrex 19:55, 2005 May 11 (UTC)