Wikipedia talk:Stub/Archive 11

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Stub template for a television program series?

What is the stub template that can be used for an article about a television program series (instead of tagging the article the regular {{stub}} template)? --Lightsup55 ( T | C ) 04:40, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

{{Tv-prog-stub}} would be the obvious one, though there are subtypes for several countries and programme types - have a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types/Culture#Television for a full list fo possibilities. Grutness...wha? 05:08, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I must have missed that when I was looking. --Lightsup55 ( T | C ) 05:30, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

language link

Dear Adminstrator, please add "scn:Wikipedia:Stub" to the language link. thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sicilianu101 (talk • contribs) 05:44, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Stub tags on 'Future' articles

For articles with a {{future}} tag, is it worth adding the stub tag? Does it make sense to do so when all available sources have been used for articles which are still in the making? Curious to know people's general thoughts before I revert some adds to an article and possibly start an edit war. -- Harish (Talk) - 21:00, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd say it probably does make sense to add it. Just because something's a future project doesn't mean that all the available information will be included on the page - chances are that many articles on future events/structures/etc could still be expanded further. It's just a case of exercising discretion with the template and possibly lowering your arbitrary threshold on article length for those subjects- it may be that shortish articles that would be stubs for existing subjects are sufficient to not be stubs for future subjects ((similar to my Croughton-London rule). Grutness...wha? 22:49, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, greatly appreaciated! P.S. Happy New Year mate! -- Harish (Talk) - 03:52, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

You too :) Hope '09's a good one. Grutness...wha? 04:14, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

New section - stub templates vs assessment templates

I've added a new section to trhe page. We seem to spend a huge amount of time at WP:WSS and WP:SFD explaining why wikiprojects are better off with talk-page templates than stub templates. It's probably been worth putting something on WP:STUB to explain the differences and advantages of the two types of template for quite some time. Please have a look at it, check whether it needs amending. Grutness...wha? 05:33, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

sczxc  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.155.165.35 (talk) 05:04, 20 February 2009 (UTC) 

Comment

a page should be like the length of a woman's skirt. long enough to cover everything, yet short enough to keepit interesting. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.151.51.182 (talk) 16:28, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Clever=P.Smallman12q (talk) 22:59, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

{{asbox}}

What's the official status of {{asbox}}? Isn't it better than substing {{metastub}}? GregorB (talk) 23:22, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

See the discussions over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting. Grutness...wha? 23:50, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Stub MOS

Hi all - it's been pointed out to me that WP:STUB is the nearest we have to a stub manual of style, but that it isn't really in line with other MOS-type documents, and quite a bit which would be on there if it were a MOS document is actually in aa separate area (WP:WSS/NG). Is it worth revamping the Wikipedia:Stub page, possibly along the lines of this? -

• Wikipedia:Manual of style (stubs) - general overall comments about what a stub is (and with redirects from WP:STUB), with two subpages
  • Wikipedia:Manual of style (stubs)/Stub creation - details about how, where and when stub categories and templates are created
  • Wikipedia:Manual of style (stubs)/Naming conventions - the current WP:WSS/NG page

It would make it clear that the naming "guidelines' have been regarded as conventions for some time, and would make them a distinct part of WP:STUB, without lengthening the page. It would also make it easier for it to conform to the other MoS pages. (crossposted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting, but please make any responses here, to keep the discussion in one place) Grutness...wha? 06:19, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I second that emotion...uh, suggestion. More uniformity [at least organizational] looks more professional, if you will, and more likely [I wish] to be taken seriously. One can only hope. Pegship (talk) 17:15, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Stub size

This article needs to state clearly what makes a stub. CatScan defines as stubs articles that are having less than 512 bytes or less than 4 links (main namespace only). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 21:30, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

CatScan starts with that definition, but you can alter it to more bytes or fewer links, etc. etc. Wikipedia:Stub states as clearly as possible what constitutes a stub without nailing down a particular size, which (as the content states) may or may not be relevant. This is an area where editors' judgment comes into play, rather than statistics. Pegship (talk) 23:02, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

There is definitely no given size for a stub - the usage for CatScan is arbitrary and may miss a large number of stubs (which is why cattersect is often a more useful tool). Some stubs are many kilobytes in length (a list with only a one sentence text lede is a stub, as is a two-sentence article with several images and navigation templates). My Croughton-London rule is linked from WP:STUB and explains why an arbitrary size is useless in decciding what is or isn't a stub. Grutness...wha? 23:27, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, that's helpful. I totally agree with those points, but I think they should be made more clear in the article. In other words, I suggest adding a sentence about stub size with the gist of the explanation from above. I searched the article for the world size and didn't find anything relevant :( --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 11:49, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Mmmm. Yeah - I get your point. I've added a paragraph to the "Basic information" section which will hopefully cover that (feel free to amend it if my wording's a bit off) Grutness...wha? 12:33, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Length

How short does a stub have to be to be a stub? --The High Fin Sperm Whale (talk) 01:48, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Seer the section immediately above this one on this page, and also see the "Basic information" section of WP:STUB. Grutness...wha? 07:06, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Stub templates shouldn't link to "Wikipedia:Perfect stub article"

Looks like someone needs to design a bot to change "[[Wikipedia:Perfect stub article|stub]]" to point to Wikipedia:Stub as the former now redirects to the latter. --AlastairIrvine (talk) 05:33, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

New Proposal

Just letting everyone here know that I posted a proposal at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Stub_Changes.
— Ω (talk) 06:07, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Two blank lines

"It is usually desirable to leave two blank lines between the first stub template and whatever precedes it." Why? –BLACK FALCON ^(TALK) 17:36, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Probably because it puts a little distance between the stub template and any formatting that precedes it that might create a mess. Just my 2c. Pegship (talk) 19:40, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

New section for tools

Hi all - I've added a section to list useful tools used in finding and sorting stubs. Unfortunately these come and go with some regularity - interiot's tool is long gone, and cattersect is as well. If anyone knows of any other working tools for stub location/sorting, please add them under the "Tools" header. Grutness...wha? 01:44, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

minor problem with 2000 novel stubs?

Not sure if this is the right place for this question, but I noticed that articles that are stubbed with 2000s novel (see [1]) have an extra bracket and pipe after the stub.

If I should be posting this somewhere else, please let me know.

Thanks. -- --Omarcheeseboro (talk) 09:49, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

This is already fixed (may take some time to trickle down to the articles), it was some stray code leftover by my bot [2]. The bot has been fixed to look for and remove stray wikicode like this. If you see any more errors as a result of conversion to {{asbox}} (usually from original code that diverges from standard stub code), please leave a note at my talk page. –xeno^talk 13:43, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. --Omarcheeseboro (talk) 13:56, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

PS - if you find any similar problems in future, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting is probably a better place to post this sort of query. Grutness...wha? 01:10, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Bot proposal to convert stub templates to Template:Asbox

Please see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Xenobot 6.1. Here is a sample of the edits that it will make if approved. –xeno^talk 14:53, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

• I am happy to announce that this task is  Done, and there are now 13337 uses of Template:Asbox. –xeno^talk 18:09, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

lol, leeet! -- œ^™ 23:57, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Lines before stub template

This guideline says "It is usually desirable to leave two blank lines between the first stub template and whatever precedes it". Why 2? I always leave only 1, as between all other things, and see no reason to break conformity. Debresser (talk) 02:55, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Two allows a space to appear between the bottom of the text and the template on the article. It's hardly a heavily enforced rule, though - as long as there's some space there's no real problem. It's more important to get the right stub and put it below the categories than to worry too much about the number of lines between the template and the text (and if two lines are left bots often come along and remove one anyway). Grutness...wha? 09:48, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I understand that, about the extraspace. But why should we have it? One blank line is enough, isn't it. Debresser (talk) 11:16, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Seems enough for me - perhaps we should reassess whether it's worth having it as a rule? Grutness...wha? 01:23, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

That's precisely my point. Debresser (talk) 22:10, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

If memory serves me correctly another outcome of having two lines before the template is that if there is a template on the side of the page that is longer than the article, 2 lines pushes the stub template out of the way to the bottom of the page, just above the categories. Waacstats (talk) 10:15, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

How would that be? Debresser (talk) 07:33, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

It appears that it doesn't, I'm sure I remember it doing it at some point and assumed it was something in the wiki programming. Waacstats (talk) 12:24, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Research

Thanks for the link to Wikipedia:Layout#Standard_appendices_and_footers. The text there ("the first stub template should be preceded by two blank lines") was added in this edit on 22 June 2008 by Nurg with the edit summary "including details harvested from other guideline pages". So he got it from here, since the line here predates his edit. Debresser (talk) 19:11, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

The text under discussion was added in this edit on 22 April 2007 by SMcCandlish. He added the reason inside the text "to prevent the stub template(s) from butting up against the preceding content when the page is rendered". For reason I do not understand this is either not the case any more, or it is no longer the opinion of editors that such "butting up" is too close. Debresser (talk) 19:22, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Proposal (whitelines)

To remove the line "It is usually desirable to leave two blank lines between the first stub template and whatever precedes it" from this guideline, since there seems to be no necessity to have such a rule. Debresser (talk) 16:55, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I suggest the rewording of that line to say "It is usually desirable to leave one blank line between the first stub template and whatever precedes it". That way, people stop using two, and there's a place that says what to do for sure. I'm afraid that if we say nothing, both will be used. I'm a big fan of consistency. hmwitht 17:16, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I can agree with that as well. Debresser (talk) 18:32, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

WP:FOOTERS states the same thing. I have no idea whether this phrase was introduced for a good reason -- someone would have to do research to figure out how it got introduced, etc. Speaking from my own intuition, I assume that this two-line thing got introduced to make it clear in the wikitext where the body text ends and where the meta data begins, so that editors working on autopilot doesn't attempt to add text below the metadata. I think it would make sense to express that sentiment -- e.g., "Metadata (such as footers and categories) should be grouped together at the end of the article. To prevent this convention from being degraded, the boundary between the body text and the metadata should somehow be indicated. One popular convention is to interpose two line breaks, since two line breaks are never used in the body text of the article."

My prose is stilted, but these are the ideas that would need to be conveyed. Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 18:54, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

We have lots of metadata templates at the top of an article, like protection template e.g., and nobody leaves a whiteline after them to indicate the boundary between the text and metadata. Let alone two. So that's not it, I'm sure. Debresser (talk) 18:59, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, nobody leaves one or two whitelines after the metadata at the TOP because these whitelines would be visible when the page was rendered, i.e. it looks ugly. My impression is that when the extra whitelines are at the bottom, they're not visible. So there is a difference.

Anyhow, I don't have an opinion -- I'm just hypothesizing an explanation for why it was written. I do think this policy could be justifiable, so before you change it, I'd suggest inviting feedback at Wikipedia talk:Layout. (Sorry to be the bearer of bureaucracy.) Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 19:58, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I'll post a link there to this discussion. Debresser (talk) 22:04, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Blank lines used to also be the standard for navboxes; a CSS rule for navboxes was added that adds a top margin for the first navbox. The same behavior could certainly be added for {{asbox}}. See MediaWiki_talk:Common.css/Archive_9#Navbox_margin. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:33, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

And what would that do for us? Debresser (talk) 23:20, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

As best I see it, the two line rule separates the stub and prevents content above it from running into it. By applying the same CSS rules added for navboxes, we can keep the stubs separate without worrying about whitespace. I find that those blank lines are often deleted by editors who do not understand the intent. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:57, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

It seems that editors, and I am one of them, do not agree with the need for these 2 lines. One line is enough to keep contents from above running down, wouldn't you agree? Debresser (talk) 00:01, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

• Debresser, I have to admit that the 2-line policy does makes sense to me, for the reasons I suggested, i.e. to convey where the body text ends and the categories begin. WP:Footers is not written in conformity with this principle, but on those grounds I would suggest a rewrite to incorporate it. Now, there are other ways to convey the end of the body text, e.g. by inserting <!--end of body text-->, but using two lines seems to be the most lightweight way to do it. My !vote is against killing the 2-line principle.
• Given this reason in favor of keeping, I'm not really sure I understand why you want to get rid of it. Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 03:02, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

It appears that the intent is for {{asbox}} to have a 1em top margin. I will look up the status on this tomorrow. One problem with the two lines is that it requires that the initial editor understand that they are needed, and for follow on editors to understand the same and not delete a line as useless whitespace. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 03:46, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Don't forgot that AWB adds in the two lines with other minor changes so this would need to be altered as well. Waacstats (talk) 08:42, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

This is why I started this: I saw someone with AWB adding a whiteline. If Gadget850 can make the change to stubtemplates through {{Asbox}}, all will agree that we can drop the "two line requirement". Frankly, I hold that we should drop it even without that. I do not think that we need to show the end of the text "proper". Nor is this more than a hunch of one editor, which has no basis in any guidelines. Frankly, I don't believe that was the reason this "two line requirement" was started. It think that was just to avoid overlapping. And it isn't needed. Period. And many don't use it, or even actively remove it. So why keep this contentious line? To have another rule that will be broken countless times every day? Debresser (talk) 15:13, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

COMMENT. I haven't really been following this, since too much talk of formatting makes my eyes glaze over, but... if an article is correctlyn formatted, then we have the article, then a blank line, then the categories, then a blank line, then the stub templates. In other words, even with only one blank line betweent he categories and template, we effectively have two between the article text and the stub template. Grutness...wha? 01:39, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I actually have been actively adding the extra blank line, and up until this point I wasn't really sure why except that it was recommended in MOS:APPENDIX. Now that I think about it, I have to agree with Debresser that it's not really necessary and only adds extra work for me to do. Plus the page looks nicer aesthetically without an empty blankspace at the bottom, in fact I actually proposed a while back to insert a horizontal line as a separator between the text and stub templates. Besides that, why can't the stub template be a relevant part of the article? Why should it be separated at all? However if we should delete that bit in WP:LAYOUT where it says "(the first stub template should be preceded by two blank lines)" then that still creates work by having to go and delete that extra blank line out all the articles it's in, but I'm sure a bot can be programmed to take care of that. -- œ^™ 21:08, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

The relevant discussion on the CSS rules for asbox is at Template_talk:Asbox#mbox. I had thought this was implemented, but apparently there was no support at the time, and asbox was not then the standard meta-template. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:45, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

The problem occurred, IIRC, when the stubs followed a navbox. It exercised my mind for some time, trying to design a template which would have something at the top (blank lines in this case) only if it did not follow another instance of that type of template. Eventaully I had to conclude it was a CSS solution or nothing. Rich Farmbrough, 21:07, 31 August 2009 (UTC).

Navboxes had the same issues; a CSS fix was implemented to clear the first navbox. Probably need to take this up at the mbox discussion. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 01:37, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

The questions is: do we really have to wait for that? I see enough opinons here and in actual practise (=editing) that we can remove the requirement for a second line. It is just fine as it is with one line (which is indeed the same as no whiteline at all). Debresser (talk) 01:58, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

One line is the same as zero lines, I think. A possible kludge would be to end Asbox with <!-- and start it with
&ltfont color=white> -->
<Rest of template>

Of course this would destroy al the interwikis, since the stubs aren't at the actual absolute very end. <sigh> CSS it is. Rich Farmbrough, 09:22, 1 September 2009 (UTC).

Can that be pushed a little? Debresser (talk) 09:44, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea see the Asbox talk page for the people who have talked to the CSS people. In theory any admin could implement it but since we have specialists, best let them do it. Of course there will probably then be too much blank space before the stubs and we will have to arrange for it to be vanished when the stubs are being edited for other reasons. (there's about 1.1 million of them now.) Rich Farmbrough, 09:01, 2 September 2009 (UTC).

• Wikipedia_talk:Stub/Archive_7#.22But_before_the_inter-Wiki_links.22 The proposal for the text in the project page
• Wikipedia_talk:Stub/Archive_8#Spacing Extensive discussion which also came up with CSS as the solution.

Rich Farmbrough, 09:11, 2 September 2009 (UTC).

Did those experts do anything yet? Debresser (talk) 17:48, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Stub classification for small topics?

I use wikipedia often for clarification on obscure and highly specific science topics; I often see short articles classified as stubs when there is only a paragraph of useful information worth mentioning on that topic. Should I be bold and "de-stub" an article that is in my opinion complete if it is only a paragraph long? user: npatchett

There is a template {{notstub}} for use in such cases which is invisible but tells bots and stub-sorters not to add stub templates, but it's usually used for things where no other information is ever likely to be possible. Care should definitely be taken with it, though, since what seems a complete article to one editor - even an exprt in an obscure topic - may still seem to be expandable to another. It's not usually used on science articles, though (which may gain more information through research). More info can be found at {{notstub}}'s /doc file. Grutness...wha? 22:26, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer Grutness. I'm a bit confused about the relation of stub status to "expandability" though. Lets say I read the (relatively long) article about llamas and it has all the basic info that a layman would want to know about llamas, but far less than it could possibly say on the topic; that could be an A class article, even though it is clearly expandable. On the other hand, if I have an article on something simple - lets say a small muscle in the human body - it could have the same degree of completeness as the llama article, yet often it would be called a stub merely because of length. So, I suppose I'm wondering if short topics have a higher standard of completeness that has to be attained before they become an article. It seems to me that stub classification (in practice) addresses elements of both length and completeness, yet the relation of these factors seems unclear in Wikipedian policy. user:npatchett —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.95.237.141 (talk) 04:07, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

By chance, I have a user essay which addresses just that subject - have a look at User:Grutness/Croughton-London rule of stubs; it may help to explain a little. Grutness...wha? 05:02, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

To summarize Grutness's argument for any future readers of this post: a stub must be

a) an article

b) short

c) incomplete

Therefore, a long article that is somewhat incomplete (like my llama example) is "immune" except in extreme cases because it meets criterion b; however a short article fails criterion b and must be scrutinized to see if it meets criterion c (completeness). If it clearly is complete to a well-informed user then, the notstup template can be added by that user. user:npatchett —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.95.237.141 (talk) 18:21, 3 October 2009 (UTC)