Wikipedia talk:Template index/Stubs

Old discussion

Why is this page in Template:? Shouldn't it be in Wikipedia:Template messages/stubs or something like that? -- Paddu 21:10, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's included in Wikipedia:Stub categories. — Gwalla | Talk 23:11, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's a fair point since it's now possible to transclude any page anywhere. --Phil | Talk 12:09, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Why would anyone want to transclude the entire list of stub messages? -- Paddu 18:21, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Oh, ok understood. Wikipedia:Stub categories transcludes this page, so it was created in [[Template:]]. BTW There's no MediaWiki:Stubs redirecting to this page, so that probably means this page was created after the advent of Template:, i.e. when it was possible to transclude any page anywhere. Possibly a misunderstanding by the original creator (that Wikipedia: pages can't be transcluded). -- Paddu 18:35, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ask ssd. I think he created the {{stubs}} template. But I believe it was created before the transcludes was done. --[[User:AllyUnion|AllyUnion (talk)]] 08:38, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I moved Template:Stubs to Wikipedia:Template messages/stubs. Ideally Template:Stubs should be deleted as one doesn't usually transclude a list of all stubs, but many user & talk pages link to it currently. -- Paddu 19:44, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Grrr. That should've been Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs (capital S), to be in line with other such pages -- Wikipedia:Template messages/Maintenance, etc. So moved Wikipedia:Template messages/stubs there. -- Paddu 20:03, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Cleanup

The request for cleanup is the reorganization of the stubs into categories. I'm too tired to complete this task, and I unfortunately can not fix or finish at this time. --[[User:AllyUnion|AllyUnion (talk)]] 12:25, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC) (-0800 GMT)

I did a bit, not much. —msh210 19:55, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I did a bit more, not much.  :-) —msh210 23:07, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I discovered and added the Danish stub template:Dk-stub to the "By Region" subpage. I think that I did everything properly, but it wouldn't hurt for someone to check and verify that I did it correctly. gK ¿? 08:15, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Missing the stub category template. -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:33, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Images

I think adding the little pics to the stub messages is annoying and adds no value. I already thought categorized stubs were bad enough. Nelson Ricardo 05:16, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

Why do you think stub categorization is bad? I think it's quite helpful, since it can focus the attention of people interested in a certain subject on articles on thatr subject that need work. Somebody who is primarily interested in anime probably isn't going to comb through the entire list of stubs regularly looking for articles he can work on.

I agree that the images don't add any information. But annoying? The ones I've run across seem tasteful to me. — Gwalla | Talk 18:19, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Weapon stubs

I don't have time at the moment, but someone should add a template and category for weapon stubs. Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Stub seems to have a lot of weapon-related articles. —msh210 00:54, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Done. —msh210 05:34, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hong-Kong-stub and HK-stub?

Template:HK-stub redirects to Template:Hong-Kong-stub. All the articles with the HK-stub properly show Category:Hong Kong-related stubs, but when you go to Category:Hong Kong-related stubs, that page doesn't show any of the articles with the HK-stub. Is this a bug, or should one of the Hong Kong stub templates be deleted, with all the articles moved over to the other template? (Thank goodness there aren't too many articles using either template (see [1], and several of those articles should be moved to the template:Hong-Kong-geo-stub if things do get moved.)

gK ¿? 02:22, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Must be a bug -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:33, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

MetaPicstub and Metapicstub

I can see no reason why both MetaPicstub and Metapicstub should exist: surely one should REDIRECT to the other (and be deprecated anyway). Can you REDIRECT a transclusion with parameters? --Phil | Talk 12:19, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

Actually... Metapicstub use to redirect to MetaPicstub. I don't know the reason why it isn't now. -- AllyUnion (talk) 11:12, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Some cobblers to do with CELLPADDING I think. --Phil | Talk 13:59, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

Stubs by region and Geo-stubs by region

Is it time to split this section up into stubs by region and geo-stubs by region? Grutness|^hello? 07:15, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sub-region? I'm not sure what you mean, please clarify. -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:57, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by sub-region. I mean that this table is so unwieldy it should be two tables: Regional stubs (e.g., "Brazil-stub", "UK-stub") and Regional geographical stubs by region (e.g., "Brazil-geo-stub", "UK-geo-stub"). Grutness|^hello? 01:16, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The problem with this page

This page is getting way too large to use effectively. I propose (informally) the following:

• Stub tags (e.g., {{art-stub}}) should be named in a simple yet obvious way that gives a clear indication of what types of stub articles they relate to.
• Given the above point, it should be unnecessary to display "What it makes" and "Type of stub" for each and every stub.
• Thus there could be a version of this page containing bare lists of stub tags, which could more easily be scanned for relevant tags for those who like to go through reclassifying {{stub}}s.

Obviously for this to work, several stub tags would have to be renamed. Please note that I am not proposing doing away with the current version of the page, simply providing a more compact alternate version. It would be great if it could be automatically generated from the full version. - dcljr 01:26, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That would take a lot of work. One compromise is to simplify the tables, which would be a lot easier to do. Currently each item on the page has "What to type" (which includes a link to the talk page), "What it makes", and "Type of stub". I suggest two things:

• remove the "type of stubs" column. If the template is shown, it's obvious what type of stub it is.
• remove the talk page links. It would only take one more click to go to the template and then to its talk page.

The page would still be big, but not as big as it is currently. There is probably an easier way of presenting the tables, too - Category:Geography stubs used to have a table at the top showing all the regional stubs. Now it simply has a list, which takes up half the space and loads more quickly. I realise that this can't be done here if the template messages are to be retained, but there is probably some way of simplifying the table to accommodate that. Grutness|^hello? 05:37, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've taken a step towards dealing with the length of this page by creating a separate short list of general stubs. It seemed like it would be a useful compromise for users looking for more than {{stub}} but less than {{flightless-birds-of-Danish-Islands-in-the-18th-century-stub}}. -- Jwanders 15:16, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

animal-stub vs biosci-stub

Hi, I'm having a discussion at Talk:Bolyeriidae about biosci-stubs versus animal-stubs (and plants for that matter). My argument is (or became during discussing) that animal stubs should be changed into zoology stubs, to ensure that they are more inclusive. Systematics of animals-stubs (Families, Orders etc.) should not be neither animal-stubs nor biosci-stubs. Animalstubs deal with animals, not with systematics, and bioscistubs are to general. So, is it possible to change animal-stub into zoology-stub? Also, I noticed the dog stub. Wouldn't it be better to change this into a pet stub? Phlebas 16:54, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the name "zoology-stub" would be clearer than "animal-stub". I'm not sure what you mean by your double negation. It sounds like "Systematics of animals-stubs should be either animal-stubs or biosci-stubs". But from the context of Talk:Bolyeriidae you seem to mean that we should separate stubs for species from stubs for families, orders &c., keeping Bolyeriidae a bio-stub, while Casarea dussumieri would be an animal- (or zoo-) stub. I would vote against such a distinction because I don't think there will be anyone who's interested in one and bothered by the other.
Sebastian 17:52, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)

Well yeah... there are two options: creating a zoology stub, while keeping the animal stub OR replacing the animal stub with the zoology stub. In both cases the zoology stub would contain articles on animal systematics, behaviour, etc. In case two specific animals would be added also to the zoology category. I think we agree on the second case (no distinction and change name). What I said on Bolyeriidae on placing systematics (Families, etc.) in biosci and animals themselves in animal, is justified (and useful), but not very elegant (biosci is too general). Systematics should not be included in animal and not in biosci (so yes, I changed my opinion). Phlebas 18:51, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

When you say "specific animals would be added also to the zoology category", are you proposing to double tag stubs, as in Loxocemus bicolor? I don't know if there is a consensus about this; I personally am not in favour, but this is yet another discussion.

If I understand you correctly, you propose to tag a page about a family (such as Bolyeriidae) as something like systematics-stub. I think this would be a wrong decision. We do not primarily hope to attract systematists; anybody interested in zoology is welcome to contribute -- just as if the article was Casarea dussumieri.

BTW, I just noticed that the systematics article itself is hardly longer than the Bolyeriidae article -- and not tagged as a stub. Maybe you could expand it a bit? ;-)

Sebastian 20:08, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)

I think that switching from "animal-stub" to "zoology-stub" is going to cloud things for the average contributor versus the scientist. My understanding is that animal-stub is typically used for a) specific animals (species) and b) groups of animals (orders, families, etc. as well as less formal non-taxonomic groupings). I wouldn't do the double-stubbing to both animal-stub and biosci-stub if the stub falls into one of these categories (a or b); In the case of Bolyeriidae, I'd stub that to animal-stub based on it's being in category-b. Courtland 23:11, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)

about dog-stub vs. pet-stub: I've started a discussion over at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting#dog-stub_.3D.3E_pet-stub.3F on this topic if you would like to wade in with your opinions. Courtland 23:21, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)

All the stub types

Like me, you may well get fed up with waiting for all the icons and tables to load at Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs when you want to find out which stub to use on a particular article. for that reason, I've added an extra page to my user pages (User:Grutness/Stubs) with a plain-text list of all the stub templates listed as they stand now (00:23, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)). Feel free to amend the list when new stubs are created (but make sure you only list them with SINGLE curly brackets! I don't want my user pages covered in templates!). Also, feel free to advertise this page anywhere where stub sorting is going on. Grutness|^hello? 00:23, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

UPDATE: The full plain-text list of stub categories (formerly at User:Grutness/Stubs) is now at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types, complete with links to the templates. Grutness|^hello? 08:35, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

New notes at top of project page

I've added a small section at the top of Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs, informing any casual stub-creators of the Stub sorting wikiproject, and mentioning one or two of the the most basic guidelines. Hopefully that will mean that WP:WSS doesn't suddenly discover half a dozen previously unreported stubs and unwanted changes to what categories there are! Grutness|^hello? 10:49, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please remove the images from the most used of these

For the reason given at m:Image server overload 2005-03, an image server which can't keep up with the number of requests it is getting, please temporarily remove the images from any of these stubs which is used by about 500 or more articles. At present, views of all pages, and even more, pages with many images, are being delayed in a queue waiting for a reply from the image server. Please don't be too keen with this and go much below 500 at present - we're trying to see if affecting only a relatively small number of uses can remove the immediate problem. Any page with the stub image removed will load faster because it will have one less wait in the queue... Jamesday 17:10, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

How does one tell quickly how many pages a stub message is currently on? Hyacinth 01:47, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Three ways -

1. go to the connected category and see how many articles are in there (accurate, but slow)
2. do a google search on the wording of the stub (fast, but highly inaccurate)
3. have a look on the list of all stub categories at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types (fast, accurate, and a far easier page to use than Wikipedia talk:Template messages!

Grutness|^hello? 05:03, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Duplicate Architecture Stub

The Architecture-related stubs template {{Arch-stub}} is currently under both Arts and Misc. I tried the 'purge page cache' option, but it's still there. Can someone who knows how fix this please? --Vishahu 00:26, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

The system is broken

There are several problems with the current stub-sorting system that make it virtually unusable, forcing me to use a generic stub tag most of the time.

1. Naming is not intuitive. I was looking for the aircraft stub. I tried aircraft-stub and airplane-stub neither of which worked. I had to come to the Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs page, wait about 5 minutes for it to load (see #2) and then use my browsers search feature to find out that the actual title was aero-stub. How was I supposed to guess that? There is absolutely no naming convention for stubs, though random abbreviations seem to dominate.
2. The lookup page takes 5 minutes to load all of the templates. Besides being a resource hog on the server side, it makes the job of the wiki-housekeeper much more tedious, and gives me a strong incentive to use the generic stub tag for all stubs I find. This page simply cannot go on working like this, and must be broken up into sub-pages.
3. There are far too many stub categories for them to be meaningful.
4. There seems to be no real convention as to what deserves a stub category, and what doesn't.
5. Stub categories are independent of the pre-established category system. This makes no sense.

I am hereby boycotting the use of stub categories, and I encourage everyone else to do the same. I recommend that the founders of this system give it a complete overhaul, or it be abolished.-Casito⇝Talk 04:44, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

To answer your points one at a time:

1. Naming is not intuitive because so many people just decide to add new stub categories without going through the propoer procedure of debating stub templates before creation at Wikipedia:Stub sorting. we are doing are best to remedy this, but considering how many people seem to see creating a stub template as a Wikipedian rite of passage, it takes time.
2. The lookup page is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types, and takes virtually no time to load at all.
3. There are a lot of stub templates for two very good reasons. 1) editors would find it impossible to look through the 25,000 stubs that would be in the generic stub category were there not separate categories, and 2) these categories have been designed to help aeditors with specialist knowledge about a subject. If, say, you are an expert at egyptology, why should you bother looking through 25,000 stubs? You wouldn't. But because there is a specialist Egyptology stub category, your wok is available immediately. Wikiprojects in particular fint these separate categories invalable.
4. There is a very clear convention, as you would know if you became involved at WP:WSS. precedence is given to splitting overly large categories, especially when a subcategory of 60-100 stub articles can be culled from it, and where there is a specific WikiProject involved with the subject. Thus, for example, Several European countries have separate geo-stubs, whereas some, which would not reach the 60 stub threshold, do not. Similarly, there are separate geo-stubs for those American states with separate WikiProjects, but not for those which do not.
5. The existing category system is for the use of readers. The stub category system is for the se of editors, and thus has different requirements. Having said that, every effort is made to ensure that each stub category is a natural subcategory of a non-stub category wherever possible.

Of course, if you had bothered to become a member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting before criticising the stub sorting system, you would have known all that. Grutness|^hello? 07:56, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Much as i know you as a very valuable contributor, i have to side with Casito, of whom i know nothing but that he has a nice wiggle in his sig.

• User Effort: It is not as trivial as you are painting it. When AverageUser comes across a page that should get a stub, he needs to to the following steps:
  1. Open a new instance of his browser.
  2. Find his way to the stub list.
  3. Pick the correct stub type.

This takes several minutes. In the same time, AverageUser could have tagged several pages as stubs. This is avoidable:

• Feasibility: Stub sorting is a thing of the past, since we now have categories.made redundant by Casito's remark below. What i meant was that i don't like having to parallel systems. 05:26, 2005 May 9 (UTC) Several people have already proposed to allow "intersection of categories" (e.g. Radiant on Wikipedia talk:Categorization policy). My proposal (Wikipedia:Categorization_policy#Combining_categories) would also include stubs, so editors will only have to remember one classification, aside from other advantages. I have not seen any negative reply to any of these proposals. I firmly believe that computers are there to serve humans, not the other way round. Sometimes, at work, we don't have a choice. But i sympathise with everyone who refuses to spend his/her spare time doing something that a computer can do much better. — Sebastian (talk) 09:30, 2005 May 4 (UTC)

Stub sorting only exists because of categories, not the other way round. Not that it matters too much. The problem is likely to be a small one soon, anyway, and possibly not worth worrying about. Category:Stub is emptying rapidly, and Category:Substubs is now almost empty. Once they have dropped to only a handfl of articles, it won't matter too much whether casual editors simply use the {{stub}} template, as stub sorters will quickly be able to assign them elsewhere. At the beginning of the year, there were some 25,000 unsorted stubs. Best estimates now put that figure at around 5000-6000. The current system has vast advantages from a couple of points of view, not least the problem of having the same template on all 35,000 or so stubs, a huge strain on the servers. Also it has great advantages with verifiability - how do you propose checking that a stub has been categorised at all under your proposal? Grutness|^hello? 06:13, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Wow, i'm impressed by the hard work you guys did while i was just jawing. Thanks a lot! Sebastian (talk) 05:26, 2005 May 9 (UTC)

I'm all for stubsorting and I've been helping when I have some time, but I agree with the name thing. Perhaps the names could be standardised as far as possible and the existing ones, where they differ red'd to them? If people could use an intuitively named stub, they wouldn't dump things into stub in the first place. Grace Note 03:48, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

(Thanks, Sebastian, for the compliment on the sig) I think part of the problem is that everyone here sees stub categories from a different perspective. Some of us categorize the stubs when we run across them in the wild; some of us sort stubs into categories by going through a list of stubs, and some of us expand articles from categorized stubs. The problem lies in creating a system that works for all 3 groups. Perhaps I can explain a bit better (and more constructively) how I see stub categories from my perspective:

I fall into the first category: I stubify articles that I find in the wild. Sebastian summed up my wishes by saying that I should be able to sort stubs into categories quickly, so I can go about my editing and get things done. Adding a category stub tag versus a generic stub adds value to Wikipedia, but if it takes exceedingly long to find the right category (as it does now) quickly adding a generic stub tag and then going on to copyedit 3 more short articles adds far more value than a category stub. Also, I am not particularly interested in becoming a member of WP:WSS, and I feel that it is necessary that people who have no interest in hard-core stub sorting be able to quickly and painlessly sort the stub they run across.

Secondly, I am an engineer. Without going into detail, I know that having two independent parallel systems that do essentially the same thing is, in nearly every case, a very bad and wasteful idea. I see two examples of this with the stub sorting.

• There currently exists two parallel category systems on Wikipedia: categories, and stub categories. While there appears to be some overlap, there isn't much. It is quite straight forward to identify and apply the normal category to an article, and I try to categorize stub articles that I find. Why can't I just apply the category link, and then create a stub and have it automatically categorized based on the normal Wikipedia category?
• There are two pages for determining stub categories: One (Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs) is easy for an outsider to find; the other (Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types) is actually usable. I suspect that the latter is a bandaid created because the former is broken. What harm would be done by making Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs look exactly like Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types? Better yet, why not have one page redirect to the other? This alone would probably be enough for me to end by boycott, and I volunteer to implement this solution once a consensus is reached that it is a good idea. -Casito⇝Talk 04:18, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

• Although some of names of the stubs may need to be changed, I am all for the current system because I feel that it makes editing Wikipedia more efficient. There are two reasons for this:

1. It is quicker and easier for those on RC and new pages patrol to mark stubs with {{stub}} instead of wasting time looking through the pages of stub templates while vandals and other nonsense slip by.
2. Once a stub is sorted, editors specializing in specific topics can easily find which ones to work on.

Zzyzx11 (Talk) 04:36, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

There have been attempts to standardise naming (in fact, those instances where WP:WSS named in the stubs there is a reasonable degree of consistency. I see noting wrong with adding redirects in those places where it doesn't work properly (in fact, I made a redirect "Uganda-geo-stub" for the badly named Ug-geo-stub" about two days ago). Personally, i think that would be a reasonable compromise situation and would save a hell of a lot of work with renaming/recategorising. I'm also very much in favour of replacing Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs with Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types (Casito's right - I created it as a bandaid because I could never get the older one to load). I also agree with Zzyzx11 - in fact what he said was a simpler way of saying what i tried to say on May 5. As to Casito's suggestion about two parallel systems, though, I'm less in support, since the two systems have different purposes and therefore have different requirements (the standard categories are for readers, the stub categories are for editors). For the ease of stub-sorting and calculating what stubs are where - and also for the sake of the servers, keeping them parallel is actually an advantage. Stub categories are split at least in part according to size, in order to keep them at a reasonable size for editors and servers alike. For example, Currently there is one category for geography stubs dealing with West Africa. Logically, if you were combining everything into one category type, you'd have different geo-stubs for each of the countries in West Africa - which means the five Gambia stubs would have one category, the two Guinea-Bissau stubs would have their own category, and so on. This would lead to far more fragmented stub categorisation. When a reader is looking for something on The Gambia, it would be logical for them to look in the Gambia category. If they want to edit stubs to do with The Gambia, it wouldn't take too much work to look throuh the 150-odd West Africa stubs, find any Gambian ones and maybe realise they can do one or two on Senegal, which borders The Gambia. Um... I think i lost the thread there, but I hope you get the point I'm trying to make. Grutness|^hello? 06:27, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Here is a possible solution: Stub categories wouldn't have to follow the exact tree structure of the Wikipedia categories, but a stub category could be given the same name as a higher-level category that the article could reasonably belong to. For instance: The article Fiat CR.42 currently belongs to Category:World War II Italian fighter aircraft. I agree that it would be senseless to have a stub category for WWII Italian fighter aircraft, but if you follow the category tree root-wards, you would come to Category:Aircraft. Why couldn't it be stipulated that stub categories be named after Wikipedia categories? For instance {{aircraft-stub}} should be mandated instead of {{aero-stub}} since there is no "aero" category but there is an "aircraft" category. While typing the four extra characters would slightly hamper someone who is mass-sorting stubs, it would save minutes for the casual reader/editor who is adding a stub tag.-Casito⇝Talk 07:10, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Makes sense. That would work - even as redirects. The best place to bring this up is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria, since that's where all the stub category naming goes on. I'd suggest you suggest it there (you're far clearer on exactly what and how this would work, and as you can tell I can get fairly muddled when trying to explain things!). It sounds like a reasonable move, and might solve some of the lengthy debates on what to name things. Admittedly, some of the naming has been done for very pragmatic reasons (the African geo-stubs I mentioned above, for example, were names AfricaS, AfricaW, AfricaE, AfricaN, and AfricaC for southern, west, east, north, and central Africa so as to only require one key stroke to change all the Africa-geo-stubs, and also to avoid confusion with the SA-geo-stub that someone outside the project had made for the Republic of South Africa). PS - apologies if I have seemed somewhat gruff or less than polite during this debate (it's been a hard couple of days for non-Wiki reasons I won't go into here). Grutness|^hello? 08:07, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

If i may add my humble opinion: I think Grutness' concerns can be better addressed with pure stubs (after implementing "intersection of categories", see above). Stubs would be a subcategory of Category:WikipediaMaintenance, which in turn would have all the categories listed on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention as subcategories. This would allow editors to efficiently determine what they want to do:

• An editor with a wide interest in aircraft would combine Category:Aircraft with Category:Stub, to obtain your example.
• An editor specialized in World War II aircraft might prefer combining this category with Category:WikipediaMaintenance to widen his scope.

( Minor note: For this kind of search we should also automatically expand all subcategories that have less than, say, 5 articles, and provide counts for those that have more.)
Sebastian (talk) 05:26, 2005 May 9 (UTC)

Nope, my concerns wouldn't be solved by that at all - in fact, IMHO, that proposal is likely to cause serious damage to Wikipedia. Unless the stubs are subcategorised, you're going to have to have all of them in one category. Given that having over a couple of hundred articles in one category is something of a strain on the servers, and the category actually had to be decoupled from the stub template when there were about 8,000 stubs (for fear of Wikipedia dying completely), having 35,000 stubs in one category - albeit one that can be crossreferenced to other categories - is going to be no use at all. It'll kill Wikipedia's servers. Grutness...wha? 10:38, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

I see! Indeed, no category has anywhere near that many articles in it. As it is, the current system is the best we can do. Call me an optimist, but I still believe in an easy technical solution. I'll have to think about it. — Sebastian (talk) 15:17, 2005 May 9 (UTC)

New Stub Problem

Hello all. I recently created a stub on Nazi Germany articles and tried my best to add it to the table. However, the table appears to be distorted as the last column is now cut off and the stub "spills over" to the next line. In addition, when I added this stub to National Socialist Flyers Corps, it appeared to accept yet upon going to "Category:Nazi Germany stub articles", the article does not appear listed . Any ideas on what the problem is? Thanks! -Husnock 17:11, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

The columns are still a problem. Can anyone fix this? Thanks. -Husnock 03:49, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Fixed. The problem was in the way the stub template itself was created - it was clearing the rest of the line after it. Grutness|^hello? 05:16, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Gutted page

OK. Well, the page has been gutted, 90% of the content eliminated and I'm not even going to consider bringing it back as I obviously am misdirected to be doing anything to improve the page ... essentially the person who gutted the page eliminated hundreds of hours of work by many people to suit their own particular tastes. Well, why fight being bold, right? Courtland 22:44, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)

Well considering what the last editor did, which made the page useless, I just eliminated it altogether and converted it to a redirect. If anyone wants to bring it back, bring it back as something useful. Courtland 22:48, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)

This has all been discussed at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting#Page_consolidation.2C_next_chapter. The consensus was to reduce it to parent templates only and add a note leading too the bigger list at WP:WSS/ST! Grutness...wha? 07:33, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Although it is good to reduce this page, since it is one of the most frequently linked stub pages and loaded v-e-r-y slowly, I think that there still needs to be a page hidden away someplace that shows all the stubs (WikiProject Stub-sorting/All Stubs?), if for no other reason that to catch all the weird formatting and editing changes for the stubs that are not on your watch list (e.g. the extra top and bottom spacing on the {{reli-stub}}). I've now edited that stub, but that sort of things seems to happen almost every time that someone not that familiar with stubs or templates goes and edits a stub. BlankVerse ∅ 08:43, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, this is bad form indeed. This "consensus" was reached in what, a few hours? Before destroying or completely mutating a page, a clear notice should be given at the top of the page being changed. This is a matter of basic wikiquette and is followed on the foo for deletion pages. Being a member in a WikiProject doesn't give special privileges above other users and editors. Also, discussion about specific pages are generally held at the talk pages of the pages in question. Wipe 10:05, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm very sorry about that. I didn't know that this page meant a lot to some people, but as for "bringing it back" - that's a basic revert, which takes about 5 seconds, and I won't complain if you do it. But please consider that this page was borderline unusable, since it didn't list all stub templates (why list most if you're not going to list all) and barely even loaded for me the last few times I tried to add a stub - I added "&action=edit" to the URL manually, because rendering took so long. We could bring it back, of course, but in that case I suggest marking it as {{historical}} until some stability in the creation of stub types has been reached.

Before destroying or completely mutating a page, a clear notice should be given at the top of the page being changed.

Could you point me to this section of a relevant policy page, because, you know, I never heard of it and I might have missed something else (note: this is not sarcasm) -- grm_wnr Esc 10:26, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

OK, my comment was too harsh because this issue hadn't been discussed here. But I think that the pages that people actually use as tools in editing need to remain functional. (Not quite sure what's the situation here.) Making drastic changes doesn't just change a piece of prose but also affects the usability of the tool. That demand you quoted doesn't appear to be an official policy, but pages like Wikipedia:Editing policy and WP:BOLD suggest discussing large changes and deletions on the relevant talkpages. Furthermore, whereas normal articles should remain clear of unnecessary instructions to editors, the project namespace pages are generally directed at editors and IMO it's common courtesy to alert users about major overhauls beforehand.

In regard to this page, I think a good compromise would be to add a list of links to all of the subpages that were previously transcluded, ie. Wikipedia:Template_messages/Stubs/Science, Wikipedia:Template_messages/Stubs/Leisure etc. If they are not complete, there should be notices about it, but these pages still give a good overview (see BlankVerse's comment). BTW, I don't mind sarcasm. Wipe 13:57, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

For what it's worth, my vote is to eliminate the page altogether; "being used" is secondary to "being utile" (consider the demise of the rotary phone in favor of touch-tone .. why did that happen? Both can make calls perfectly fine, and rotary can emulate pulse, afterall.) Courtland 12:51, 2005 Jun 11 (UTC)

FWIW, I agree. The page which is most often used by stub sorters is probably WP:WSS/ST, and it's silly having two different pages for the same thing. The ST page is also kept much more up to date, since it's so much easier to load. Simply putting a link to that page might be the easiest solution. Grutness...wha? 23:55, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Please do note that we weren't talking about using the pages for the same thing. You can't directly see how the templates are rendered from WP:WSS/ST. By not transcluding the subpages, this page would be much easier to load than the ST page. Wipe 13:37, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

As a closing comment, I do stand behind what User:Wipe has said. Allowing the passage of days and following guidelines like "discuss the fate of a page on the page's talk page" are there as a consequence of this being an asynchronous environment. I'll point out that I made 21 edits over the course of 3 days (7 June to 10 June) to the page in question here. Did the activity of an editor on the page trigger any notion that maybe there's some communication gap present, though at this point I doubt the history of the page was looked at prior to the change being made. That's not written down as policy anywhere either, I don't think. Courtland 18:08, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)