Wikipedia talk:Stub sorting policy

The policy really needs to be decided. Anyone have any ideas? -- AllyUnion (talk) 05:29, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Please keep in mind:

• Wikipedia:How to create policy
• Wikipedia:Consensus

Thanks. -- AllyUnion (talk) 01:49, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Multiple tags

I'm for keeping only the most most specific tags, and trying my darndest not to use more than one unless it's really, really necessary, like Interstate Commerce Commission. A structure should be set up via Category: hierarchies, as is done with {{sci-stub}} and everything under it. The need for more categories seems to come into focus gradually (I think we may need a geo-stub for geology, and maybe for biochemistry---and does anatomy go under medicine or biology? I have it under science right now), and others seem mightily specific or weird, like telecom and wireless.

This whole thing should be relatively fast-and-loose, but how it ultimately should take form should be determined by the people who actually fix stubs. Are any people here stub-hunters? grendel|khan 05:50, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)

I think that including zillions of stub categories on a page is just annoying. It would be better to just include one (maybe two) stub category, and any other categories on the page should be REAL categories. Once it is marked as a stub, it's obviously a stub. No need to pound that in harder. Does that make sense? --ssd 07:25, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, we don't want zillions, but I strongly agree with GK below. This type of thing is a problem in the arts. If you're doing a biographical entry on an Japanese-American actor with dual citizenship who's famous in theatre in the States and on film in Japan, sojurned in China becoming a famous cellist but has now moved to England where she's the most popular feminist writer of all time, and no one even knows she was ever on stage, where does the entry go to ensure that those who can supply additional material see the stub? CATEGORIES sort of work and sort of don't, can't tell you the amount of time I've wasted trying to figure out where to put something (often to have someone else move it later!)

Can't vote yet, have to think about it.

Quill 23:10, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

IMO, due to the amount of information your example presents, such an article would probably not be categorized as a stub. But if it was you could use the same guidelines for notability as article titles. If this lady was currently a popular feminist writer, then she could be accurately stubbed as a writer-stub or as a fem-stub, depending on whether she was known for her feminism or her writing in general. --Viriditas | Talk 12:53, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I can see a need, occasionally, to use two stub. For example, one of my main interests is Japanese literature. For most of the minor topics in that area, they probably need only a japan-stub. There are still, however, some major topics in Japanese literature that are still stubs, and those articles should probably get both a japan-stub and lit-stub. My personal opinion is that the stub messages should be moved to the talk pages, or, at the very least, if there are two stubs, to only have one on the main page, and the other on the talk page. gK ¿? 09:17, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A maximum of two sounds sensible. More than that is just asking for trouble---we have the category system, which is well-developed, for that sort of thing. The only reason to categorize stubs in two categories is if we honestly can't figure out which will have the right contributors looking at it. It shouldn't be common---I've ended up using multiple tags in... one in fifty? one in a hundred? of the stubs I've categorized. One tag should be highly preferred, two when absolutely necessary, more than that never. These things aren't permanent, they're just a way of directing the articles to people who will write about them. grendel|khan 09:22, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)

One of things we really need to, at least I think that needs to be done, is to create a list of categories and subcategories for which we need stubs for. Then decide from there where everything breaks down. -- AllyUnion (talk) 01:53, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Here is another example of where two stubs might be appropriate. I stumbled upon a very brief article for a sports executive. It currently has a bio-stub tag, but the odds are that it is more likely to be found and expanded if it had a sports-stub tag instead. Should it just get the sports-stub tag, or should it get both a sports and bio-stub tag? gK ¿? 03:01, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

IMO, it should get the sports-stub tag, and if possible a more specific tag based on the the type of sports executive. I have proposed eliminating the bio-stub tag and replacing it with categorical descriptions, such as scientist-stub, or using already existing stubs like musician-stub, and writer-stub. I feel that the bio-stub is a generalized, superfluous template. Unfortunately, I do not support the use of two stubs and I think the project should attempt to minimize the use of stubs whenever possible. --Viriditas | Talk 10:20, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

An idea

How about editing {{Metastub}} to add a variable (or whatever it is called) for additional stub categories? so you could have {{Judaism-stub| extra = People stubs| extra = History stubs}} at Amram Gaon. This would allow an article to be listed in all the appropriate stub categories, while leaving only one main stub template visible (the "extra" would only add category links). --Circeus 02:56, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)

Voting on a proposed policy for multiple stubs

Voting closed on 31 Jan 2005, 23:59 (UTC)

Only two stubs allowed, one on the main page, one on the talk page — votes:

• -- AllyUnion (talk) 01:19, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• gK ¿? 02:26, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Only two stubs allowed, both on the main page — votes:

• --Alsocal 09:19, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• —msh210 01:33, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• james_anatidae 05:26, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)
• dcljr 11:03, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Never more than one stub, on the main page — votes:

• Viriditas | Talk 10:22, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Courtland 06:28, 2005 Feb 12 (UTC)

As many stubs as necessary, all on the main page — votes:

1. Grutness|^hello? 09:43, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC) with the stipulation that there should rarely if ever be more than two. That is, make "two stubs" a guideline, not a law.
2. Alai 08:07, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC) Really don't see how anything else is at all viable. The stubs are much less fine-grained than categories; is it really desirable to arbitrarily exclude an accurate (due to the lack of a precise stub tag) and useful (in attracting as many relevant stub-expanders as possible) stub categorisation from an article just for "stub beautification" reasons? Alai 08:07, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Comments:

• Note: If we do the two stubs on the talk page thing, then we should change all the stubs to link to the main page, maybe? -- AllyUnion (talk) 01:19, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• As explained on other policy and stub pages, putting stub messages on talk pages is a bad idea. When a stub is edited to greater than stub length, the editor will see a stub message on an article page and remove it. If the stub message is on the talk page it will stay there until (eventually) noticed by a stub sorter - if that stub sorter opens the article page (which they may not if they only have to edit the talk page). And that's assuming that the stub isn't sorted into a handy category already. Or it may wait until someone else decides to edit a stub - in which case, they may well look through a stub category, pick out a likely candidate to expand, then be disheartened to discover (once they've opened it) that it no longer need expansion. More work, less likelihood of the message being removed, more frustration for Wikiproject editors... all for what? Saving a line of text at the bottom of the article! Grutness|^hello? 10:18, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Minimum number of articles in a stub category

I'm tempted to say that 10 articles is too few. A new stub category shouldn't be necessary unless you have an existing stub category that is just too big (say, more than a few thousand). Of course, if a stub category starts with a hundred articles, and over time shrinks to 15, I wouldn't necessarily consider merging the category with another one. (It would be better to just finish writing the remaining articles and empty it instead of merging it.) --ssd 07:28, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think that a numerical requirement as the primary criteria for a stub is the wrong way to go. Hopefully even some of the large stub such as the sci-stub will see some reduction as people turn stubs into articles, although counterbalancing the decrease will be the introduction of new stubs. Therefore there will always be some ebb and flow in the numbers in any particular stub category. Currently Category:City stubs is underpopulated, but a quick run through the main stubs category could quickly fill the City-stubs category.

I think that a better way to go is probably to use some functional requirements for the creation of new stubs. I've already suggested that one set of criteria is that every active Wikiproject should have a stub, and every regional notice board should have a stub.

Another set of criteria would be both need and usability. Any country that is in the top 20 in GDP, population, or size should probably have a stub (Brazil, Mexico, and Korea need their own stubs, for example). Every major religion should have its own stub, so there should be ones created for Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam at a minimum). I was surprised to find that there seems to be neither a WikiProject or stub for science fiction, but the topic should probably get both.

Another criteria for creation of new stubs is when any stub gets too large (for example the sci-stub category), people should look for subcategories that could be used to reduce the size of the large category.

Are there stubs that should probably be pruned? Absolutely, although I imagine that you will get challenges for any stubs that you propose to eliminate. For example, Category:Disney stubs currently has only one "real" stub in the category. There are three different movie/film stubs that need to be merged. The Category:Van stubs should probably be merged into the auto-stub category. gK ¿? 09:08, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'd second the lumping-together of van and disney stubs with parent categories. I see the stub sorting effort as a way of helping to direct effort---when I first saw {{compu-stub}} and its associated category, I thought it was a great idea, and that's how I noticed boolean datatype and unstubbed it. "Science", as a category, seems really broad. I think it benefits from having biology, chemistry and physics under it. (And maybe geology, though I haven't added that, since we're now hammering out policy and why not get a consensus on it?) And I think biology benefits from having animals and plants under it, since there are so many of those Tree-of-Life stubs to work with. I believe that it will be easier for a user with specialized knowledge to contribute if they can go see a list of stubby articles in their field. grendel|khan 09:33, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)

Regarding the van stub, mentioned earlier, I created it becasue I noticed the coverage on vans are a lot less than I expected. Merging with auto-stub is proably not a good idea as that category is too big. Maybe it could go into a general purpose vehicle stub category instead. Norman Rogers\^talk 22:36, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A truck-stub that covered trucks, vans and utilitiy vehicles might be okay, but the van-stub is probably just too small. gK ¿? 02:26, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I just looked at Category:Animal stubs and it is probably large enough that it would benefit from adding an Avian-stub and a Mammal-stub. I was very surprised that the Category:Plant stubs wasn't larger. There are probably plant articles in the stub category that need to be reclassified, and I think that there are some plant articles that should be stubs that may not be classified as stubs. gK ¿? 10:39, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The plant-stub category is newish; I made it when I started sorting things out of sci-stubs because I felt that it contained subgroups that could benefit from specification. So it should grow, just give it a bit of time. I'd write bird-stub instead of avian-stub, though. The criteria for adding a new stub should be: there's a stub category that contains a lot (that's intentionally mushy) of articles that all fall into a category that doesn't exist yet. If there's not a clear need for a new stub, I'd leave it alone. grendel|khan 20:22, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)

I would say that a rough rule-of-thumb would be to try to break any stubs that had more than 400 articles and that had obvious, large subcategories that it could be broken down into. gK ¿? 20:43, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Since I was the one who wrote the 10 article limit, let me first explain my initial reasonings behind it. It was put as a notice to avoid people to create stubs for like, a television show that just started. Some guy created a ice hockey stub when this all started. Wikipedia's ice hockey stubs apparently do not number many, in fact fewer than 10 articles. Nor did the stub seemed to be in use. In retrospect, it should be corrected to say that useful stubs should be created or something along the lines which has been suggested above. But this is the reason why we're deciding the policy, in order to come with a good plan that will set the guidelines and help where this project needs to go.

As anyone clearly can see, the stubs have grown considerably, to the point that I feel that we need to make the subpages links, rather than display the whole page. Even a list would be much better to look at, rather than that very long page.

I can understand how every regional notice board could use a stub, this make sense. However, we have kind of define that.

The primary concern I have is creating stubs that... are useless and create categories that never get used, and will have to be deleted.

I think, for now, we should stop creating new stubs, figure out what stubs that need to be created to break down existing stub categories, think about what stub categories that can break down stub even further.

Perhaps the best policy would be:

Before creating a stub, try to create the broadest category for the article in which the stub can fit in to.

If that stub exists, check if the current stub is being overwhelmed with articles (more than 100?)

If the current stub is being overwhelmed with articles, think of the next broadest subcategory for the original category you thought of. Example: An article about an artist (painter). You thought about creating an art stub, which exists, but instead you create artist/painter stub.

-- AllyUnion (talk) 01:38, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Stub categories are just more bogus stuff to remember. There shouldn't be more than a few of them, if that many. How about just using {{stub}} and regular categories. Then the software can automatically maintain stub lists for each of the regular categories, and add the article to the stub list when it sees the {{stub}} directive.

(From unsigned user: Phr)

It has been suggested before, but you know, the developers are busy with other stuff. Plus, Wikipedia has enough problems with management, scripts, size, servers, etc. Why load the processors and the server with an additional task? You actually prefer the Wikipedia slower than it is? P.S., please do not forget to sign your name. -- AllyUnion (talk) 18:55, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Currently some categories are currently too big while some are too small. I feel that each category should ideally around 10 - 200 articles in size, as a convenient to-do list for different projects. Currently categories like compu-stubs, geo-stubs and bio-stubs are too big and need to be split into good subcategories, while categories like disney-stubs are too specific and could go somewhere else. I also think that for every stub category that is created there must be some sort of control for it like someone watching the category so the number of articles dosen't get too low or high. Norman Rogers\^talk 22:58, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

One of the reasons that I've suggested trying to tie stubs with WikiProjects and Regional Notice Boards is that there will hopefully be a group of people who will be interested in overseeing their associated stubs. gK ¿? 02:26, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

100 articles?

Isn't 100 articles a bit high? It's very hard to get an idea if there are going to be as many as 100 articles without making the category and putting the articles into it. (Wikipedia and Google searches only get you so far.) Furthermore, a good deal of the existing categories have never had as many as 100 articles. I would say 40 or 50 would be a more reasonable limit, and more in keeping with current de facto standards. Also there are often categories that could and should have 100 or more articles, but it takes some serious detective work to find them.

The point, I thought, was to get these categories specific enough that someone with an interest in the subject area could go through them, looking for something to work on. -Aranel ("Sarah") 02:45, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I reread it and it seems to be discussing resorting existing stub categories. Perhaps that could be made more clear? -Aranel ("Sarah") 02:46, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As the policy is not finalize, the only thing for policy and guidelines are at here: Wikipedia:Stub_categories#Stub_Category_Creation_Guidelines. Netoholic decided to change it from 10 to 100, and I only merely reflected that here on the policy page.

The basic idea is that one should not create a new category unless they really have to. One should only be creating a category to help cut down existing categories down to managable number of articles. We want to keep categories which are very broad in nature, so that even if they reach under the 100 article limit, they are kept in the event that article does not fall under existing subcategories. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:18, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I brought this up at the talk page for that page, then. I don't believe what the goal is necessarily to have horribly broad stub categories, and I think it's unnecessarily restrictive to insist that a category must contain 100 articles before it can even be created (I certainly wouldn't create any if that were the case—who has time to sit down and do all that at once?). In my opinion, it's more useful to have categories that are specialized enough that someone with an interest in the subject area might also be interested in expanding a reasonably portion of those stubs. If the categories are too broad, then they don't make it much easier to find stubs you want to work on. -Aranel ("Sarah") 21:34, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Someone originally created a Ice hockey stub... which its use ended up with only 7 articles. I don't want to see a stub to be used on only 7 articles. Something with only 7 articles means it's a small problem, and when the small problem goes away, the stub goes away. We don't want to overflow CFD and TFD for deletions of useless stubs and stub categories. Someone might want to create a stub for their most favorite thing in the world... but what if their most favorite thing is limited in nature, and is likely to be under just ten articles? The idea is that you must justify the existance of the stub before creating it. If you can not, then it should not be created. We do not want vandalism through the creation of stubs, nor do we want to create 5000 stubs for 5000 specialized topics. -- AllyUnion (talk) 11:57, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

We have yet to have any problem with people creating large numbers of useless stub categories. The stub category creation process is, I think, sufficiently complicated to prevent it from being abused by the merely clueless. I don't see why we need to be so concerned about a hypothetical problem that has yet to surface. (Considering the number of unnecessary categories created every day, stubs are only a very minor blip on the radar at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion.)

However, we could accomplish the purpose of preventing entirely spurious stub categories with a much lower limit. (Take a look at Category:Ice hockey stubs, which now contains 139 articles. Clear this was a useful categorization.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 17:50, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Are we forgetting the basic purpose of stub notices here? The idea is to make it so people can easily find stubs in their area of interest/knowledge. These could be large or small categories, the smaller, usually the more specific and therefore the better. --YixilTesiphon 01:32, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

• 100 is very high. As YixilTesiphon says it all depends who's sorting stuff, and also on how the categorisation is best split up. I use a rough rule of 60 articles for a new category, but less if there is a dedicated WikiProject. If there is a WikiProject looking for stubs, why deny them a category just because we can only find 90 of the things? And if a stub category is at 1000 but the largest logical subcategory would only have 90 stubs, do we noit make it because we can't find another 10? Common sense should tell us what is "enough" articles, rather than having a red line below which we cannot go. Grutness|^hello? 09:48, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Systemic bias in stubs? A proposal for handling multiple stubs

After thinking about it for a couple of days, I've started to wonder if the way that I have been handling Japanese literature stubs (labeling most stubs as a japan-stub, but a very few of the more "important" topics as both a japan-stub and a lit-stub) is the right way to go. Doing it that way is sort of like saying the minor Japanese literature articles are not really literature (even though I've seen the most trivial English-language fancruft marked as lit-stubs. At the same time that doing things that way may be a symptom of an unintentional systemic bias, it may also overemphasize the inherent Englishness of the Wikipedia by making the literature stubs category mostly English-language topics.

I now think that it may be much better to label all literature stubs as lit-stubs on their main page, and then add a geographic stub, such as the japan-stub, on the talk page when it is appropriate. Doing it this way would allow persons who are interested in literature in general to see the non-English-language literature stubs (and might get them interested in tackling a topic outside of their special interests) but still have the same articles listed in the Japanese stubs category (where, quite honestly, the people most likely to update and fix the stubbiness of an article will probably be looking).

Another example of this unintential bias in the Wikipedia is when I changed a bunch of the stub labels for Japanese TV stations and TV networks from the old {{msg:stub}} to japan-stubs. If I had labeled them as station-stubs, the articles might be easier to find for those people who have added nice infoboxes to many of the current station-stubs and would help give the Japanese TV station articles the same look-and-feel as the British and American station articles.

So my proposal is that most stubs and substubs should be converted to some general subject stub on their main page, and a geographic stub, when appropriate, should be added to the talk page. Also: for any articles currently labeled with a geographic stub that are not primarily about that geographic region in some way, the geographic stub should be moved to the talk page, and a more general subject stub added to the main page. gK ¿? 05:51, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How about an easier rule of thumb: Post them into a subject which it fits, if it doesn't fit anything use the region specific. -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:05, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'd prefer to see more hybrid stubs. Many such exist for geo-stubs, but more could be added for other common stub types. For instance, if there are indeed a bunch of Japanese TV station stubs, why not have japan-station-stub, which would be a subcategory of japan-stubs and station-stubs? That gives everyone more information, without further bloating the larger topical stub cats. There is a potential for messiness, but as long as the new stub categories are announced in relevant places, I think they can add a lot. -- Visviva 23:14, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There has to be a criteria of how useful a specific stub is going to be. For the Japanese TV stations, the people who are going to search out and expand the stubs are going to be mostly people interested in Japan in general, so creating specific stubs for the TV stations serves little purpose. There is also the fact that there are not that many Japanese TV stations which means that it will be a category that won't have many stubs. On the other hand, a fairly large number of the literature stubs have to do with poetry, and there are a fair number of people who are mostly interested in poetry, rather than literature in general, so it probably makes sense to create a poetry-stub with the poetry-stub category a subcategory of the literature-stub category. gK ¿? 01:47, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hybrid stubs are certainly more useful, as they are more specific. And the easiest way to find out what hybrid stubs are needed is to run a google search on articles that have both the simple stubs. The only way that method can work, however, is to start by labelling all the target articles with both stub types (note: both must be on the article - it won't work if one of them is on the talk page, which is also a bad idea for other reasons discussed on other WP pages). Grutness|^hello? 09:52, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Lots of problems with stubs

While we're on the subject, I've gots lots of stub problems. First is dissemination of information. When did we start getting these specific stubs? How does one know which ones are out there? First I stumbled upon one, then another one--I love them but I wish there were a Wikipedia news flash page where one could check in daily or weekly to see what's changed. The same thing happened with categories.

Second, I've been calling all my new short entries 'stubs'. At least one well-known Wikipedian out there disagrees, pointing out that ALL Wikipedia articles are candidates for expansion and so only entries that cannot possibly be considered articles--that is, a line or two, should be given a stub message. Others feel that these are 'sub-stubs'. I've seen articles with three or four paragraphs and a stub message, and articles of one paragraph without one.

So, we're talking about stub sorting and we haven't yet got the stub definition down pat.

Quill 22:57, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The Wikipedia is a work in progress (but it always will be). Much is being decided on the fly, and often the changes are not communicated well, at least at the beginning of a change. The use of stubs has being going through a major [r]evolution, from stubs, to substubs, to topic stubs, to ...??? As you can see from this page, many things are still being decided upon.

You can find one version of the list of all the current topic stubs at Wikipedia:Template_messages/Stubs, and also at Category:Stub categories. I've also created a suggestion for a quick guide for the topic stubs, with an example for just the science stubs at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting#Stub Quick Guide.

Personal opinion: If an article is so small that it is only a paragraph and probably won't be expanded much beyond that, it probably should be merged with a large topic instead of being labeled a stub or substub. The substub label is pretty useless, and should not be used at all. Topic stubs should be used for anything that is still pretty short, but can be expanded to a larger article. For a more "official" view of stubs, see Wikipedia:Perfect stub article. gK ¿? 02:39, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Some articles might not have been gotten around to be marked as stubs. -- AllyUnion (talk) 03:33, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Especially articles that are created by new editors may not be labeled with any sort of stub tab even when they are very short articles.

There is always Special:Shortpages, which shows any short Wikipedia articles, but I've found it pretty useless. gK ¿? 05:33, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Pictures

See Template:Ling-stub, for linguistics stubs. It uses an image which is a linguistics-oriented depiction of the fact that the article is a stub (not a depiction of linguistics). This makes more sense to me. After all, everyone who's read the article knows it's about linguistics; the stub notice is to announce that it's a stub! I'm not sure how one would do that with most topics, though. (Perhaps for writer-stub or lit-stub one can use a pencil stub.) [[—msh210 01:32, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

We have to make sure ling-stub and lang-stub don't get muddled up. I think there's some stuff in one that can be moved to the other, at the least. I'll get started on that. grendel|khan 17:17, 2005 Feb 7 (UTC)

get your new stub notice/cat approved

AllyUnion (who, incidentally, has been doing a lot of great work — thanks, AU!) has added a rule to the policy page: get any new stub notice/category approved at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting before creating it. Was this policy decision discussed here? If so, I missed it. Is it in the history of this page, but erased from the current page? Perhaps I shoul check.... —msh210 17:03, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Any stub that is created should be discussed at the WikiProject before its creation. If anyone could create a stub without discussing with the project, what is the point of having the project anyway? If we are to be involved with project planning, then anyone interested in creating a stub should express their interest for a stub on this project. -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:28, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I see absolutely no reason not to have some sort of link to our project on that page. I was actually going to add one myself, but Ally beat me to it. Once the categories are re-organized, the page should also be revised to reflect the new hierarchy. --Circeus 22:30, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

And no, it was not discussed here, because I don't think there is a need. It's only common sense for someone to ask to create a stub at this WikiProject. This idea is borrowed from the request for approval for a bot, and I feel that the number of stubs have reached a point where we should really consider what we create as new stubs prior before their creation. Although this may slow stub sorting down slightly, I believe it is far useful for more and more people to discuss and involve themselves in the discussion of this project rather than mindless stub sorting. -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:32, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

But how does one go about getting it approved? Do I have to suggest it and wait an entire week to see if anyone objects? Is this really necessary? There haven't been that many useless categories created. -Aranel ("Sarah") 22:54, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I personally see the recent "rocketry" stub to be useless. Unless there is a wikiproject concerned with it. As for approval, well, they ask and give their reason (as is, it should mostly be to de-clutter a wide category, such as we tried to with Biology, or for WikiProject purpose) and we either say "no reason" or "Go for it!". It will at the very list force people to reflect as to whether a category is really needed. --Circeus 01:52, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

We can either go about it three ways. We can allow its creation, and wait a week... if it isn't useful by the end of the week, it's listed at TFD and CFD with no objections. This idea is a bad idea, since, it causes more trouble than its worth. We can wait a week, with the person who wants to create it form a list of articles they found that the stub can be used on... then base an approve or disapprove on that. We wait a week, if no objections are raised about the stub, or several people feel it is necessary, then allow its creation. And as, Circeus wisely pointed out, this forces people to reflect as to whether a new stub/category is really needed. We can then enforce any stub without approval for immediate deletion. -- AllyUnion (talk) 05:56, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Fine, let's do that. —msh210 17:07, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Tareget number of stub-types

I'd like to see if the number of stub categories can be reduced to 200. This is not an arbitrary number. It is the number that will display on one page so when I go to figure out what stub category to use I can see them all at once. Does this number sound attainable? RJFJR 02:20, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Doesn't Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs do a better job of it? After all, not all categories are listed at Category:Stub categories --Circeus 19:53, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Geographical Completeness

I have been struck by the incompleteness of the stub-categorisation system in certain respects. While some the individual US state of Utah seem to have a bio-stub category of its own, whole regions of the world are without a non-geo stub category - so when there is a stub that relates to Norwegian culture or to a Georgian (Caucasus) politician or to a Serbian historical figure, there is no way to place them geographically (these are three real instances I have found in the past few days). I think that geographic sorting is very important, since people tend to be more expert and more interested in history, culture and politics by region. My suggestion: every region which has a geo-stub category but no non-geo-stub category should either (a) be given a non-geo-stub category as well, or (b) the geo-stub category should be extended to cover local topics not related to geography. How would this work? For example, with the Caucasus, either (a) there should be a {Caucasus-stub} category to form a pair with {Caucasus-geo-stub} or (b) we should be allowed to use {Caucasus-geo-stub} to cover non-geography issues (perhaps after a renaming). At the meoment it doesn't feel very consistent, a bit like we're saying "Sure, we acknowledge that there are places in the Caucasus, and that people might create stubs to describe them, but surely nobody would make a stub to describe what happens there(!)" These slightly far-flung places are likely to throw up stub topics precisely because people are unlikely to know enough about them to write a full-blown article. When I label a Caucasus politician stub as just a "politician-stub" then my heart sinks a little because I know that that is quite unlikely to actually speed up the stub being expanded. Labelling him as both a Caucasus-stub and Politician-stub might have more effect. In fact I think that geographical completeness is so important that for such categories the 100-minimum rule should be overruled. Does anybody else have any opinions? --VivaEmilyDavies 00:29, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

So far, one of our guiding principles has been that a stub category ought to contain at least a moderate number of articles. (Not everyone agrees on 100, but most would agree that a category containing less than 40 or so articles is of limited usefulness.) Many of the areas that have geo-stubs do not have other non-geographic region-specific stubs for the simple reason that there aren't very many non-geographic articles for that region, sometimes as a result of Wikipedia-wide systemic bias.

I don't think there is much point in creating stubs for every single geographical category whether there is a demand for them or not. (The reason there are so many overly broad geographic categories is that the geo-stub category needed to get down to a more reasonable size. This is not ideal. Another basic principle is that stub categories should be specific enough that someone with an interest in the topic can easily find stubs to expand.) What I suggest is going through the list of geo-stub categories and seeing which missing region stubs might be reasonably well populated if they were created. The goal here is to categorize existing stubs, not to develop a comprehensive classification system. -Aranel ("Sarah") 01:41, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That's very true (you need a useful number of articles, in a place where it's easy to find them more than complete categorisation). At the moment though, especially in history, biography, sport, culture and politics, there are localisable articles "lost" in the {bio-stub} or {politician-stub} sea. There is clearly no point having a region-based or country-based non-geo-stub category with less than 20 articles in. I still think it might pay to be a little more lenient than with other categories because geographic location is one of the few places you can at least approach completeness (and completeness, if not a goal, should be recognised at least as something positive - there's no need for {Falkland-Islands-stub}, but it would be good if 95% of bio-stubs had a country or useful regional stub category). Contrast categorising by geography with categorising the sports or different aspects of culture - it's far easier to approach completeness. Right now, Jamaican politicians in the Caribean get mixed up with Georgian politicians from the Caucasus and Serbian politicians from the Balkans. It would be silly putting them into {Jamaica-stub}, {Georgia-stub} and {Serbia-stub} because frankly those would be too small to be useful, at least for the moment, but I think that {Caribbean-stub}, {Caucasus-stub} and {Balkans-stub} would be a great improvement. Although they are "super-categories" they are at least geographically-contiguous (which makes it easier to find things - it means a person with an interest in Panamanian politics/culture/history/sport knows to look in {CentralAm-stub} for example; whereas for a Norwegian person to use a hypothetical {RestOfEurope-stub} covering all of Europe not otherwise categorised would be very undesirable, and to try to find Norwegian-related articles in Category:Stubs is very hard indeed).

There are also two sides to the coin on the article numbers question - if there aren't all that many articles in a regional category then it's easier to find ones to do with your own country, and if there are quite a lot then it makes it easier to see which of the countries in the region ought to be breaking out into a stub category of its own (hard to tell at the moment - but personally I guess that Norway and Greece would have a chance). Further, there is the "reverse bonus" - look at how few articles are in the {Lithuania-stub} category (only 17 actually about Lithuania - even I think that is useless, I certainly wouldn't suggest any more cats like this). It may make group size more consistent if you shelved {Lithuania-stub} and moved the articles inside it to {Baltic-states-stub}, helping to get the article count up to a more useful level (and also correcting the anomaly that Lithuanian-related articles have a place to go but Estonian or Latvian ones don't). It works both ways. I think this would be worth doing even if the grand total of {Baltic-states-stub} articles doesn't get far beyond 50 (I'm confident it would at least reach 50).

Even if people disagree with me on lowering the bar on completeness grounds for regional categories (and the odd medium-sized country that is hard to place in a region) then I think it is definitely worth considering {MidEast-stub}, {Balkans-stub}, {CentralAm-stub}, {Caribbean-stub}, {SE-Asia-stub} and {Caucasus-stub} categories, because I am sure they'd have enough articles, they're local and specific enough to be useful and it would aid completeness. I'm certainly volunteering to go stub-collecting to fill them! How about a trial run with {Caucasus-stub}? --VivaEmilyDavies 18:13, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What about more region-specific bio-stub categories? (There is certainly a great need to get Category:People stubs down to a more reasonable size.) If people articles are the major concern, then it would make sense to go one step further with region stubs, so that it wouldn't be necessary to include, say, a caucacus-stub and a bio-stub tag. (Right now, the bio-stub tag is so widely used as to be almost useless except as a way of decreasing the size of Category:Stub.)

If you do make a stub category for the Caucasus, I recommend including, on the category page, a brief list of some of the more important (i.e. numerically important, in terms of number of articles) regions in the area as a guide to sorters. I suspect that most North Americans and Western Europeans are not sufficiently familiar with the region to sort effectively otherwise.

Of course, these are just my own ideas that I'm throwing out. You are under no obligation to agree or comply with them. You might try proposing a couple of new region stubs as test cases at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria to get some more feedback. -Aranel ("Sarah") 19:07, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I think it's important to avoid national and regional bio-stub categories for nations and regions that don't have any non-geo stub category at all. The reason they currently don't have one is that it is assumed there aren't enough stub articles to fit in them, including non-bio ones. I think that it's for this reason that there is no {Norway-stub} or even {Spain-stub}(!). Again, I have half an eye on completeness - even if it is a little messy to class a stub on a Norwegian writer as both a {writer-stub} (avoids {bio-stub}) and a {Norway-stub} where it would mix in with stubs on Norwegian culture, history and sport (rather than a purely {Norway-biostub} category) at least there'd also be a place to put stubs on Norwegian football teams, battles or food - we could have both {Norway-biostub} and {Norway-stub}, but we don't even do that for countries where we have a lot of stubs! Incidentally I think you have brought up a fantastic point - there really ought to be {USA-biostub}, {UK-biostub}, {Germany-biostub} etc for the better documented countries. But for countries with less of a presence on Wikipedia I don't think that's so much of an issue. Definitely {bio-stub} is silly - all it says about an article is that it's about a person, which is of no help for anyone trying to find and expand stubs on something they have a particular interest in. If a stub on a US writer can be classed as {US-biostub} and {writer-stub}, and a stub on a Lithuanian writer can be classed as {Baltic-stub} and {writer-stub} then I think both are an appropriate way of (a) avoiding overuse of {biostub} (some more professions would be useful, of course) and (b) sorting to a "appropriately and usefully local" level geographically. --VivaEmilyDavies 02:06, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Having been largely responsible for the splitting up of geo-stub into its subcategories, I'd like to dip my oar in here. The geo-stubs are split the way they are to completely cover the entire planet, but to keep categories with a reasonable number of items (at least 50 - although some other people have created individual country stubs that are smaller). In the case of the US states, this was due to individual WikiProjects for those states. Some countries simply will never reach a required number of geo-stub articles. As far as country-stubs (non-geo) are concerned, they have been created only when there are sufficient articles to warrant them. They are more tricky than geo-stubs, because they exist not only in area but in time. By this I mean that a place in Austria today gets a Austria-geo-stub. An item relating to Austrian history, say, may also deal with Hungary, or Germany, or Croatia, or any of a number of other countries, due to the changes of country borders with time. Again, some people have created smaller categories for individual countries.

I wouldn't totally recommend a direct one-to-one mapping of country stubs and country geo stubs. The reason is that - particularly with small countries - there may be a strong preponderabce of one type of stub or the other. Pitcairn, for example has only got pitcairn-stub. The dozen or so items in there are overwhelmingly geo-stub items, but if you give them a separate category, you would have a ludicrously small number left in the main category (two, IIRC). On the other hand, Monaco-stub is on 40 items, of which only about three are geo-stubs. the reasons in both cases are obvious - Monaco is a densely populated tiny country. Lots of people, lots of history, but very little geography. Pitcairn has 50 people; it is geography and very little else. My suggestion is to keep the categories as they are, and continue to monitor the size of the multi-nation categories. If any of them get to the stage where individual countries can be split off, then that is the time to consider doing so (at the moment - as far as geo-stubs are concerned - Azerbaijan, French Polynesia and Trinidad & Tobago are close enough that if there were WikiProjects for them I would be proposing separate categories). If the number of stubs continues to grow, then most countries will eventually be candidates for separate geo and non-geo stubs, but until then there is no need to create extra stub categories just for the sake of it. Grutness|^hello? 10:09, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Request for comments

• Wikipedia:Categorization policy is a bold proposal to make WP categorization more consistent and stable. Some of the concepts proposed there may also be applied to stubs.

Stub message position on the page (revisited)

previous discussion

I don't see a recommendation as to the placement of the stub message on a page in the pages related to policy for this Project (if I missed it, please point me at it and we can trim off this talk-page entry).

My thinking is to either a) add something to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Policy, but as a section called "Recommendations - Not Policy" or b) make a new very small page for "aesthetics of stubbing". Here's my suggested text, based on the previous discussion with an additional "clause":

• Place the {{stub}} at the bottom of the article. We recommend putting it either directly before or directly after the Category Listing, which makes it easy to find when either removing or replacing it.
  • Putting it after the Category Listing a) puts the stub category at the end of the category listing on the page and b) separates the stub from the article text. However, when there are several categories, this can place a large white space at the foot of the article which some people find very unattractive.
  • Putting it before the Category Listing a) puts the stub category at the front of the category listing on the page and b) keeps the stub close to the article text. However, close might be "too close" for some who would rather see the stub message (and icon) separated from the text. To provide some space between the stub and the article, place two blank lines before the stub (i.e. three carriage returns) or use the
    (line break) tag.
• When there is a {{spoiler}}, we recommend putting the stub between the spoiler message and the article. This provides some disruption to the flow of the article for those who do not wish to read the spoiler text, making accidental read-through less likely.

In addition to this, maybe we can add to the policy page something like this:

• Disambiguation pages (having {{disambig}}) should not be stubbed.
• List pages should not be stubbed. Instead, use one of the list expansion templates, such as {{listdev}}, which should go at the top of the article rather than at the bottom.
• Category pages should not be stubbed. Instead, use one of the category expansion templates, such as {{popcat}}, which should go at the top of the page rather than at the bottom.

Courtland 23:54, 2005 Mar 27 (UTC)

I sense there's been a fork - most of this stuff has been being discussed over at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Guidelines for the last couple of months. I only found out about this page here in the last 48 hours. Grutness|^hello? 09:57, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Move to Policy

If what we've been working with for a while isn't policy, what is the stub-related policy(policies) and, after months now, is there any notion that there ever will be input into policy from this group?

Courtland 23:04, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

Well... we have actually been more or less following this "policy" as a guideline. -- AllyUnion (talk) 17:07, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Speak for yourself - several of us have been been following the "Guidelines" as a policy! Grutness|^hello? 10:11, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Links to WikiProjects in stub messages

I've just had someone revert my link to Wikipedia:WikiProject Formula One in the {{F1-stub}}, citing a prior, similar, revert by User:Rdsmith4 with the edit summary "WikiProject shouldn't be linked from the article namespace". Given that a ton of stubs have links to relevant WikiProjects (IMO, a good thing), and that I can't find any precedent here or at Wikipedia:WikiProject, I'm reverting, but I would like some clarification if there is anything wrong. [Crossposted to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject ] - SoM 15:46, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

So far {{Chem-stub}} hasn't insulted anyone... Yet it was far more extensive a change. Circeus 16:08, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)

Quite a few stub templates have WP links - the comics ones all do, to start with. I think it's a reasonable idea to put them there, too. Go for it. Grutness|^hello? 00:52, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Has anyone heard of this guideline that WikiProjects should not be linked to from the article name space? I'm wondering if this is a being-bold effort on the part of Rdsmith4? Not a bad thing per se but I'd hate to see a layer of Wikipedia effectively hidden from view by the efforts of one or a small number of sensitive users. Courtland 12:49, 2005 May 24 (UTC)

I certainly haven't... BTW, what's with the change to {{cvg-stub}}? I don't mind a link to a wikiproject, but this looks a little odd - and wordy, too. Grutness...wha? 14:05, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Don't know, but the link associated with "expand this" is not pointing where it should ... it points to editing the template itself. Courtland 17:38, 2005 May 24 (UTC)

In fact it looks like a universal problem across stub types. Courtland 17:40, 2005 May 24 (UTC)

umm, err, ok let's see if I can spell S-T-O-O-P-I-D. Courtland 17:44, 2005 May 24 (UTC)

Forteana

You may want to take a look at this: Template:Forteana-stub --Nabla 18:37, 2005 May 9 (UTC)

Policy or guideline?

I moved this page to Wikipedia:Stub sorting guideline, but then decided that I don't know enough about stub sorting and moved it back. So, if this is a policy, it should be marked as such, if it is a guideline it should be renamed. Zocky 13:19, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm... I suppose the question is - can someone be banned or blocked for failing to sort stubs, or sort them properly? Using that question is how I've always seen the distinction between policy and guideline. In my opinion, this page (and other stub-related pages) should all be merged into one single Wikipedia:Stub page. In the meantime, this page really is just a guideline. -- Netoholic @ 15:03, 2005 May 18 (UTC)

Your question borders on determining if they are doing it by accident or on purpose. Vandalism / non-vandalism. -- AllyUnion (talk) 23:36, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps looking at it from the perspective of "ignorance of the policy is no excuse" is helpful. I don't believe in that particular dictum with regards to Wikipedia, but it is one way to look at things.

Policy isn't just something to hang the threat of punitive damages on. It's a set of rules that are not subject to change without a really good reason and a lot of discussion leading up to that change. This "positive resistance to change" is one thing that distinguishes policy from guideline. Another distinction is whether activities, guidelines, plans can be made assuming that things will look, function, react in the manner described by a policy. Policy provides a foundation upon which other things can be built owing to their relative stability and permanence as compared to guidelines. I've not taken a good hard think at the draft policy stated here with those two things in mind, so I'm not sure at this point whether the draft policy fits these two molds; I should take the time to do that soon. Courtland 03:06, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

In a matter like this, sorting stubs, we have to decide which is more important, getting it right, or making it consistent. So I'd say that the main consequence of calling this policy instead of a guideline is how one handles edits that are contrary to it. If it's a guideline, discuss the pros and cons of the alternative solution. If it's policy, revert and direct the user to this page.

Could one get blocked for breaking this if it were policy? No need really, as the damage would be easily mitigated. The way in which it gets broken may be subject to other pieces of policy, of course. Zocky 06:46, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Forcing the use of template:metastub and template:metapicstub as design templates and not meta-templates

Doing double transclusion, as both MediaWiki m:developers User:Jamesday and User:Tim Starling have said, is a drain on system resources (for example, see what Jamesday says here). On the other hand, having some consistent guide to similar templates (such as the sister projects or the stub templates) is a good idea (you should have seen all the different designs for topic stubs before template:metastub and template:metapicstub were created). Whether this style guide is another template that is subst:'d when the new template is created, or copied-and-pasted is debatable. My own opinion is that the copy-and-paste method will mean that it will be much less likely to be used and be more likely to result in non-matching templates.

Another way to use design templates: Add some explanation text to the design template that will explain how it should be used, and prevent it from being used in double transclusion. For example: for the metastub template, the text might be something like:

This is a design template for the creation or modification of topic stub templates. To create a new stub for "newtopic", add the "subst:" parameter to the template (e.g. {subst:metastub | article=newtopic-related article | id=newtopic-stub | category=newtopic}}. After creating the stub, you will need to reedit the stub to remove this text. There are suggested criteria for the creation of stubs (see Wikipedia:Stub sorting policy), and a Stub-creation WikiProject you should visit if you have never created a topic stub before.

After creation of each design template with the additional text, each one should then be protected from further modification. BlankVerse ∅ 10:58, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

To prevent accidental use, and maybe dissuade proliferation of new stub types, I would suggest that instead of that complicated method, that this project should document the format as easy "copy and paste". Please take a look at Wikipedia:Boilerplate text for examples of how this can work. -- Netoholic @ 15:07, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

I would suggest offering both methods. My personal opinion is that doing C&P from a boilerplate page will generally be a PITA, especially for anyone using a non-tabbed browser like MSIE, so the boilerplate method would be the less used of the two alternatives. BlankVerse ∅ 05:39, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Back to the 100-stub article threshold

This follows from Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#.5B.5BTemplate:Torture-stub.5D.5D and Wikipedia_talk:Stub_sorting_policy#Minimum_number_of_articles_in_a_stub_category and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria#.26.23123.3B.26.23123.3Btorture-stub.26.23125.3B.26.23125.3B

I don't want to revisit the matter of the threshold for stub count for the creation of a stub type. I think there's general consensus that a handful of stubs is not enough, that a hundred might be difficult to achieve for narrow topics of active and specific interest, and that WikiProjects are exempt from the threshold.

What I'm curious about is when a stub type is created that does not abide by the guideline and is subsequently found. Under what circumstances should this found stub type be preserved or deleted? The stub type in question at WP:TFD is {{Torture-stub}}. As Grutness points out, this is a pre-existing stub type and is therefore not subject to the 100 article threshold for existence. However, it was created on 1 May by the user LevelCheck and began existence with a very few or no referring articles. Subsequently, the stub type was brought to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria as a potential type for deletion. Two things seem to have gone awry at this point. First, it was put up on WP:TFD without much discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria and second, it started to be used apparently under the (unwritten and doens't need to be written) guideline "if it exists, use it". Neither one of these things is bad in and of itself, but taken together they clash and the clash has gone to WP:TFD for resolution.

What I'm proposing is that we not automatically say "if it exists, use it". I do agree with the "if it passes below a stub count we would normally use as a threshold for making a stub type, don't delete it", but that wasn't the case here. I don't think I'd write this into the policy but would set it aside as "precedent based on policy" which could include a judgement on this particular issue as well as things related to the threshold stub count (100, 60, etc.) ... essentially a "common law" interpretation of the policy, which could sit on a page like Wikipedia:Stub_sorting_policy/Precedents.

Heading off some criticisms, I think this actually works against instruction creep and bureaucracy in that every tiny bit of circumstance isn't encoded in a rule set. Further, it would provide a body of interpretation to refer to in times of conflict when policy interpretations get heated.

Thanks for giving this a bit of thought.

Courtland 17:07, 2005 May 21 (UTC)

This particular one came about because of a coincidence - I started going through the big list of found stubs (and proposed stubs that had been made), documenting them over at the styb types list. I found torture stub (which I had noted on the criteria page could take some of the stubs that had been found and temporarily dumped in other categories) - but it had no category attached to it. I created a category but, as sometimes happens, it must have still shown up as a redlink on the template. I then started hunting down items to fill the category, knowing that there would be a considerable number of them, but not exactly how many (my guess is that it will proably end up with 60 or so - and I would regard 60 as a perfectly adequate number of stubs to keep an existing category. After adding the template to a number of stubs, I noticed that the tfd banner was coming up above the torture-stub template when I saved.

IMO, there is a grey area here between stubs that have been created and will easily get 100 articles (the recently created US-gov-stub, for instance. Others will clearly never get more than one or two (Eris-stub, anyone?). The problem lies in those ones where the population will probably be between about 25 and 60. In those cases, I think the best question is "how well would these stubs fit in another category?" In the case of torture-stub, many of the items in it wouldn't easily fit into other stub categories, so I don't see any harm in it staying.

As far as a list of precedents, though - that's a great idea, and would sit well alongside the archive of discussions which led to successful stub creation as a subpage of /Criteria/Archive. Grutness...wha? 01:13, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

For my part on the nomination at WP:TFD: I'd had posted the info on the torture stub here at the Stub-sorting WikiProject where it recieved very little attention and never had a proper category created for it BEFORE I nominated it at TFD. I was doing a bunch of nominations at TFD, so I figured that I would go ahead and add the torture stub as well. My personal opinion is that although there are articles that are very clearly about a torture-related subject, that the stub itself will likely lend itself to POV problems. To avoid those problems, it should be deleted. BlankVerse ∅ 05:15, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't really think so - there's certainly been no POV-related problems that I'm aware of at Category:Torture, and that's been around for quite a while. If you noitice, what you'd previously said was that you were going to list it at tfd if no-one thought it would be useful. I added a comment indicating a use for it. I was quite surprised when I saw it turn up at tfd. Grutness...wha? 07:07, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Policy pedantry

Excuse me for being pedantic, but since this page isn't actually policy, maybe it should be renamed to Wikipedia:Stub sorting guideline? Radiant_* 12:37, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

You're right, of course, but I suspect the whole thing's moot anyway. The Stub sorting pages are busy getting a thorough overhaul at the moment over at WP:WSS, as many of them have weird names that must have been sensible once. This page and the equally spuriously named Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Guidelines are both likely to be merged, spindled, folded, and mutilated into something much more sensible (and let's not get started on how all the discussions on new stub types came to be debated at a page called "Criteria"!). Also, there's more information about this page's name further up, under "Policy or guideline?" Grutness...wha? 13:33, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Possibly a move to Wikipedia:Stub sorting, currently a redirect to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting, would be good? Then the tag will tell whether it is a policy, a guideline or whatever. --Nabla 00:19, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)

Sounds like a reasonable idea. Courtland 02:11, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)