Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Archive 5

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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 /Policy 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)

In the interest of centralized discussion, I suggest any further comments go to Wikipedia talk:Stub sorting policy#Links to WikiProjects in stub messages. — Dan | Talk 13:46, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I can't help but feel that the new look to {{cvg-stub}} could have been better, though - a link to the WikiProject, yes, but this doesn't do that directly, and looks a bit too wordy. Grutness...wha? 07:22, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Gawd, that stub message may be longer than some computer game substubs!. My personal opinion is that it would be nice to include links to the appropriate WikiProjects for those that want the links, but the can easily be "hidden" as a link under the word Wikipedia in the second sentence of the standard stub format ("You can help Wikipedia by expanding it"). Then if they want, they can also include a template at the top of the article's Talk page, like some WikiProjects have, that says this article is part of WikiProject XYZ... BlankVerse ∅ 11:33, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

This gets to the scope of WP:WSS. I was going to suggest some things around "ownership" of various aspects of stub content, but then it hit me ... this is Wikipedia where "ownership" is an understandably dirty word. The question is whether we would want to write into the "charter" something about stub message content or not. With regard to the links related to the "help Wikipedia" text, it's not a bad idea to have a Wikiproject link under that text as it helps to focus assistance into the group efforts of the Project. As for length of stub messages ... for my money, anything that has to wrap on my screen is too long; that's about 150 characters or usually <25 words. Courtland 23:45, 2005 May 24 (UTC)

If we do, I'd limit it by number of words rather than characters, simply because some subject names are pretty long. Things like {{Antarctica-geo-stub}} are about as short as they can be and are still pretty lengthy in terms of characters. Grutness...wha? 02:36, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Overhaul of stub page structure.

User:Grutness mentioned this on Wikipedia talk:Deletion of useless stub templates and stub categories:

I'm beginning to wonder if the WP pages for Stub sorting need a bit of an overhaul anyway - it's forked a bit and grown into a bit of a tangle. But I suspect (shudder) that we'd need a special new page to discuss whether an overhaul is needed!

It's true. We need a restructuring and rewriting of many pages that relate to stub sorting and stubs in general. To seed the discussion, here's a list of stub-related pages:

• Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub
• Wikipedia:Perfect stub article
• Wikipedia:Stub categories
• WP:WSS
  • Wikipedia:Stub sorting policy
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Guidelines
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types
• Category:Stub categories
• Wikipedia:Deletion of useless stub templates and stub categories
• Wikipedia:template messages/Stubs

I'm sure there are more, so please add to this list.

For starters, I think Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub and Wikipedia:Perfect stub article have to be rewritten to make stub sorting more apparent (they still recommend using {{stub}}). Wikipedia:Stub categories and Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types are essentially the same. Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria doesn't do what the name says. Wikipedia:Stub sorting policy and Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Guidelines overlap significantly. Now, I don't want to make this more of a campaign than it has to be, and I myself have learned to navigate these pages, but in my opinion it would be nice to streamline this whole business a bit more to make it more accessible, and a procedure which is less confusing for the casual editor means less work for stub sorters in the long run. -- grm_wnr Esc 15:29, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree, I tried to sort out the Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting page a few weeks ago, it had no direction, no explanation of why or even how to sort stubs etc. I think making people aware of sorting into categories rather than just a plain old stub is really important. Bluemoose 16:09, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It is a mess. I don't think I'm being too egotistical to say that I do a hell of a lot of stub sorting, and yet I didn't know about Wikipedia:Stub sorting policy until about a week ago. There needs - at the minimum - to be some more sign-posting of what is where. And more usefully still, some kind of overhaul of the whole system. Grutness|^hello? 09:21, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I am sort of trying to start that, but you guys have to help me on some way, even if it is by proposing something completely different from what I have. --Sn0wflake 19:22, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't have much time for this right now, but I think I'll get to it in a few days -- grm_wnr Esc 12:50, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I tried to write something up on User:Grm_wnr/Stub page draft, but realized it had already become to long and specific. I'm posting it here anyway, because I didn't want to throw it away and maybe some parts of it can be salvaged for a better page. -- grm_wnr Esc 16:58, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I found your draft to be very suitable. It's only flaw, as I see it, is being a little verbose at one point or another. If there are no objections, I will work upon it and post my version below the first draft so that we (the community. Get involved, everyone!) can discuss this further. --Sn0wflake 16:44, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If you'll be working in User:Grm_wnr space for drafting maybe we should move the discussion to it's talk page and leave a note here for folks to follow. I totally agree that there's a need to clarify and focus the stub page(s). This is really a good idea. Rx StrangeLove 17:42, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I moved everything over to here. I just finished the third draft, based upon grm's work. It's starting to look good... still needs work, though. --Sn0wflake 01:22, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

If SfD makes it through Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) it should probably be added to the Centralization project: third draft section below. I'm also wondering if we should alter the substub section to reflect the talk around eliminating substub usage. Perhaps take this opportunity to eliminate them as a category, it sounds like that's what was being talked about below see: substubs (again). Personally I'd like to see them go away, though it'd take some work emptying it out....which Grutness has been hard at work doing already....I'd be willing to help out with that Rx StrangeLove 01:01, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Proposal for yet more stub templates

• Engineering
• Crime

To whoever didn't sign this - please read the note at the top of the page! New stubs should be proposed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria. Anyway, why not use the currently existing {{industry-stub}} and {{crime-stub}}, which seem to be exactly the ones you're looking for? Grutness|^hello? 04:28, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• I didn't propose it, but I think an 'Engineering' stub would be a good idea. There are a lot of things that are engineering related that don't fit neatly into {{physics-stub}}, {{tech-stub}}, or {{industry-stub}}. --Dcfleck 16:46, 2005 May 1 (UTC)

Sportbio-stub - sl. change

I've made a slight change to the wording of {{sportbio-stub}}, from "...biographical article about a sportsperson" to "biographical article relating to sport...". The reason is that I've found a few stubs relating to racehorses, and this seems the best category to put them in... Grutness|^hello? 06:05, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have moved this up for the sake of organization, if you find you must, then please move it back to the bottom of the page. --Sn0wflake 01:17, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good revision, Grutness. I suppose we couldn't say "horses are people too" and leave it at that :) Courtland 23:00, 2005 May 9 (UTC)

Creating new stub categories section

I took a shot at this section, I'm hoping it's close to what people were looking for. Please take a look and make whatever changes you see fit, I borrowed freely from several sources. I'm also happy to make whatever changes people would like...especially the "how to" section on creating the categories, something I'm a little hazy on. It might not be very clear, as you can see I refered to the help article on category creation instead of explaining it here. Rx StrangeLove 17:10, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

I like it, but the wording sucks. ;) Now seriously, it could do with some rewriting, but it's looking quite good. This basically leads us to our final issue: stub deletion system... I really don't know how to handle that. Help, anyone? --Sn0wflake 19:31, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Are you thinking that we'd need a Sfd page? Othwise we could run them through categories for deletion. Or maybe do them as a separate section on the Creation of stub categories page? I suppose for consistency sake we should do a SfD page like the others, though it wouldn't see much action. And then we'd have to replace the deleted stubs, we probably wouldn't want to redirect them would we? Rx StrangeLove 01:44, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

(I've just remembered TfD, I forgot about that. That makes most of the comments above pointless, nevermind :) Rx StrangeLove 04:31, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree it could use some tuning for sure, I had to fit it in between real life Sunday morning. I'll take it back and do some touching up, see what I can do. Rx StrangeLove 21:15, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

I made another pass at it, but there's still work to be on it, especially at the end in the category section. I'll work on that next, I'm not sure how much "how to" material to include in the category part. What makes sense to you guys? Rx StrangeLove 00:54, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Re: the idea of an Sfd page - I like the idea personally. At the moment we vote on stubs ar WSS/Criteria, then at tfd, and again at cfd. Doing the whole job in one pass would be a great advantage. As for "wouldn't see much action", over half the templates on tfd at the moment are stub templates! I'm beginning to thing that creation of a stub template is seen as a rite of passage for new wikipedians! Re: the "how to" part on stub categories, creators of stub templates need to know how to name the new category and which parent categories to put it in ({{Foo-stub}} links to Category:Foo-related stubs, which is a subcategory of both Category:Stub categories and Category:Foo). Grutness|^hello? 04:38, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree about Sfd, if it would streamline the process I'm all for it, especially after what BlankVerse ∅ found. Hopefully getting the current stubs culled out, the proposal process will help limit how much we have to use SfD but there's no way to make the proposal process mandatory (is there?) so we shall see. I also agree about including category creation, I'll expand the "how to" section. Rx StrangeLove 15:02, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

I added some more material to the category section at the end, take a look and let me know how it looks, I'm open to suggestions. I still need to add a part about adding the stub template to the stub lists so people see them. Rx StrangeLove 05:09, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I made a slight amendment - you said category:stub when you meant category:stub categories. Other than that, it looks about right. Grutness|^hello? 05:28, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

SfD would probably be quite useful, but we have to make sure that it doesn't require several weeks for the process to come to an end. As I see it, a week should be enough. --Sn0wflake 19:39, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

A week sounds fine to me, too. Should there be the option of speedy-delete for patent nonsense like banana-stub and {{template stub}}? Grutness|^hello? 01:10, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

It would probably be quite useful, but I am under the impression that there would likely be some objections from outside of the project. Just my opinion, though. --Sn0wflake 01:25, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, you're probably right there. Ah well, we can probably live with any ridiculous templates for a week... Grutness|^hello? 04:42, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

We don't know until we try it. To make a point, we should really flood TfD and CfD with the new stubs Grutness just found. I think that would raise the chances a lot :) -- grm_wnr Esc 09:02, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

:) There are already people at tfd getting pretty fed up with deleting stub templatess - they don't seem to care at cfd, but the comments at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Template_stub are telling. Grutness|^hello? 12:50, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I was bold: community concensus for or against SfD can now be established on VP/proposals. -- grm_wnr Esc 16:04, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Articles improperly tagged as stubs

Hi,

I'm here because I think you might be interested in a report I generated with stubsensor, something I've recently come up with. Stubsensor finds articles that are labeled as stubs and spits out the largest of them. The first three articles out of the report are Niqqud, Christian Opposition to Anti-Semitism, and Women in India. All 3 labeled as stubs and all 3 clearly are not stubs.

I thought maybe you guys would be interested because you donate your efforts at fixing other portions of the stub system. If you are see the top 200 at User:Triddle/stubsensor/20050421. I've already fixed about 40 of them myself and I'm pretty sure I took care of nearly all the false positives when it comes to stub detection. Triddle 19:08, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Good job there, Triddle. We often bump into such articles during Category:stub hunts, but it must be quite a pain to find those on specific categories. Your work is appreciated. Are the entries to be removed from the list once they are handled? --Sn0wflake 19:26, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't quite understand what the question is so I'll answer the two I think it could be: 1) is the list going to be updated automatically once the fix has been performed? No, there would be a lag time of at least a half a week to two weeks (depending on the sql dump schedule). 2) is it ok to remove items from that list if they have been fixed by hand? Yes, please, be my guest =) Also I only put the top 200 in there because its short; I've looked around article 5,000 in that list (Sutherland, Nasal irrigation) and it still seems to be going strong. Would you be interested in the complete list of 5,000 articles? Or anything inbetween? Triddle 19:51, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

I did some more work and put up a report of the top 2,000 in the same location. I'm going to keep going myself from 2001 and up. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have questions or have an idea for something I can do to help you guys out. Take it easy. Triddle 00:30, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

It is a good idea - as long as we keep in mind that stubbishness and article length aren't completely correlated. You can still have fairly long articles which have a stubby feel, remember. Good work, though Triddle - it should be very helpful. Grutness|^hello? 04:41, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Looks good, adding Not a stub; see [[User:Triddle/stubsensor|stubsensor]] to the edit summary will encourage more people to help. Onco p53 05:09, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Project Parent?

There is a newly created Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates. Should this be listed as one of the parents of Stub-sorting WikiProject? Also, the currently lists "parent" Wikipedia:Maintenance doesn't have any information on the Stub-sorting WikiProject, which seems like a logical place to have info in the WP:WSS. BlankVerse ∅ 12:28, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea, unless there are objections, I can add a listing to Wikipedia:Maintenance. Rx StrangeLove 00:21, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Finishing touches

With substubs on the final days of their existence and a SfD proposal pending (and no strong objection, apparently) I think it's probably time to get started on the final draft of the new referece article for stubs. I will write it as if these two things had already come true, and then we can discuss it. I will probably get it ready by the end of today. Cheers. --Sn0wflake 18:30, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for taking this on, looking forward to seeing it! Rx StrangeLove 01:19, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay, everyone. I will try to get it done ASAP. --Sn0wflake 18:57, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Good idea for sfd

A good idea (IMHO) has been suggested about sfd by User:Korath at the VP - that if sfd goes ahead, both cfd and tfd should be notified of any current stubs up for deletion, sort of along the lines of a posting at both saying "The proposed deletion of toenail-stub is now being debated - all comments should be addressed to Wikipedia: Stubs for deletion#Toenail-stub." I think this might be a good way of mollifying anyone who thinks that tfd and cfd might somehow miss out on some juicy debates. Grutness|^hello? 23:13, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Or maybe some sort of daily digest that would list the new SfD's each day at CfD/TfD that each nominator would add to? That might take up a little less space. I'm assuming the thought was that each nominator would post a note at CfD/TfD when adding a listing to SfD. Rx StrangeLove 02:11, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

I find Rx's idea quite plausible. An article containing the stubs added on the day could be linked from both TfD and CfD, so that there would be no need of doing things twice. --Sn0wflake 02:24, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Erm. That actually wasn't what I was suggesting at all. I meant something more along the lines of: if things end up being decided only on TfD, then Category:Toenail stubs should get a variant of the {{cfd}} template that points discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Toenail-stub instead of Wikipedia:Categories for deletion#Category:Toenail stubs, with no mention on CfD at all. (And vice-versa if the Rightful Place to deal with it were instead at CfD. If it were at SfD, both Template:Toenail-stub and Category:Toenail stubs should be tagged and pointed at their entry there.) If SfD goes through, then listing digests at TfD and CfD might be useful as a temporary transitional measure, but in the long term, it's instruction creep for very little real value. People who are interested in stubs will watch SfD; people who're interested in general categories or templates, but not stubs, will get annoyed at the listings fairly quickly. After all, part of the stated rationale for SfD is to reduce their impact on TfD and CfD. —Korath (Talk) 04:22, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry to say this, but I am finding this not only confusing, but also too much complication for nothing. Categories attached to stubs are nothing more than an extension of the stub itself. Stubs for deletion should be listed on SfD an that's it. Why complicate if you can simplify? --Sn0wflake 04:46, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm a little confused also, Grutness basically said that we should post something at tfd and cfd when there's a template up for deletion, "sort of along the lines of a posting at both saying "The proposed deletion of toenail-stub is now being debated - all comments should be addressed to Wikipedia: Stubs for deletion#Toenail-stub." That's what I was commenting on.

I agree that a new template needs to be created {{sfd}} and all that follows. My first reaction was almost exactly what you wrote here, I don't see any need to involve cfd/tfd for all the reasons you talked about above, I think we all agree on this, just a misunderstanding is all. At the very most, as you say, transitional notes might be posted, but not many and not for long. Rx StrangeLove 05:30, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Cause for alarm

In the course of my sorting today (over 250 sorts), the amount of stubs jumped from a seemingly-huge 600 to an undeniably HUGE 2100. What the heck happened? This is most discouraging. Sorry that this is just a rant... but holy smokes! Linuxbeak 01:35, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

• Don't Panic. Many stubs had the {{stub}} template added during time periods when the template did not include the current category information. As these stubs are editted, the template information is updated to the current version and the article is then added to the appropriate category. The jump in the number of stubs in the category is most likely due to some bot having made a minor edit to a bunch of articles that were already tagged as stubs but not yet in the category. --Allen3 ^talk 02:11, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Contributing content

Changing one stub label for another for no discernable benefit [*] gets dull after a while. Ever feel like creating content but don't know what to write about? Then come on over to Wikipedia:2004 Encyclopedia topics. We have a list of >20,000 topics that need an article, so there is bound to be one to your taste! Add content to Wikipedia today! Pcb21| Pete 11:03, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

[*] I haven't discerned any, but clearly your mileage may vary.

I have taken the liberty of striking your notice, since you seem to be rather biased against our project. Evidence? I might be the evidence myself. I am a content writer and I find {{band-stub}} to be a true blessing. So do editors in other areas. So I would like to ask that you stopped spamming our Discussion page and go find something better to do with your time. Thank you in advance. --Sn0wflake 19:04, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Don't strike other people's comments on talk pages, even if you disagree with them. Pcb21| Pete 20:05, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Suggestion

Would it be possible to create multiple stub templates for some of these stub categories? Ones that look and do the exact same things, but are activated in different ways. For example, you could have Amfooty-stub and Football-stub. *Kat* 00:47, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

• yes, we already do for quite a number, but via redirects, which is a far better way of doing it. Thus we have, for instance, UKS-geo-stub and Scotland-geo-stub, which do the same thing. Trouble with the ones you mention are that the names are ambiguous. Lots of different countries use the term football for completely different sports. And is AmFooty about American football or soccer in America? Grutness...wha? 01:44, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Well I'm glad to hear that this is being done to some extent and I do see what you mean by the ambiguity. Amfooty is American-style Football.

Question: Is there a uniform policy for stub template titles? I'm guessing that there must be a defacto policy for the geo and bio stubs, but what about the history and literature stubs? *Kat* 05:09, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

Sadly, there isn't. There are two problems - firstly this project inherited a lot of stub categories hat were made before there was any clear idea of how to proceed, and secondly a lot of people just make new templates without consulting here first. The best we can really do is shore up the mess a bit. We're trying to get some kind of consistency, but there's still a lot of work to go. Have a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria and Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types and you'll get some idea of the size of the problem. Hopefully we can keep consistency in those areas which have a geographical component, aty least (with things like France-hist-stub to go with France-bio-stub, France-geo-stub and plain ol' France-stub), but beyond that there's still a lot to be tidied. Grutness...wha? 05:32, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

• yeah, apart from football and american football are completely different!, other than in america of course, the rest of the world calls what americans call soccer football. Bluemoose 15:13, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Substubs

I centralized all Substub discussions under this heading. -- grm_wnr Esc 07:52, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Substubs

Template:Substub is up for potential deletion on tfd, and the vote looks close. While I think there's little point in the template, I'd be worried if it were removed at the moment, gven the large number of artcieles that use it. Either they will have the template removed with no replacement, or they will be changed to plain stubs - adding a couple of thousand items to the current pile of unsifted stubs.

Whatever the outcome of the vote, can I urge the people currently going through Category:Stub to spend some time sifting substubs as well? Reducing the number of substubs is as useful as sifting stubs, and may prevent (or at least reduce) problems should the vote be for deletion of the substub template! Grutness|^hello? 01:57, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Follow-up ... The request for deletion did not go through and got moved to Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/Not deleted ... Courtland 19:40, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)

Substubs (again)

The wording of the new document seems to be coming on quite well... one point about the substub section, though - slowly but surely that is being winnowed away. Many of substubs seem to be redirectable, deletable, mergeable, or are not really substubs anyway. Most of the rest are best served in the more specific stub categories than they ever would be sitting in Category:substubs. At the current rate, that category could be empty 9and redundant?) within the month. Maybe its an idea that's had its time... Grutness|^hello? 01:34, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I have noticed that you are working hard on emptying the substub category... my only fear is that deletionists might not exactly "get" that and start sending small stubs by bulk to VfD. But we might as well go on with this. Whoever makes the next draft should keep that in mind. --Sn0wflake 02:24, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Not sure I follow this -- might just be sleepy-headed, though. Do you mean that if substubs are more-or-less eliminated, then VfD effort will instead be displaced into other stub categories? Is that really any different, or is the substub category supposed to be a judgement of article quality, as opposed to just strictly length? Alai 07:22, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Mmm. hadn't tought of that (the deletionists point). Still, there are enough non-deletionists prowling the vfd pages. I suspect I'm getting a reputation as a deletionist considering the number of substubs I've dispatched there (I'm not really - my view is predominantly that if it's not doing any harm it can probably be kept). Category:Substubs is now (just) below 1000 articles, BTW! Grutness|^hello? 07:00, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

In case things go bad, we can back you up. :) --Sn0wflake 16:45, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Substubs (encore une fois)

I know the correct place to list potential stub template deletions is over at the "Criteria" page, but this one is such a biggie I feel it warrants extra discussion (to that end, I've also listed it at Template talk:Substub, but so far there have been no bites there). There are now (count 'em) 60 substubs. Personally, I believe this template has had its day. It may have been useful prior to subcategorising stubs, as a way of saying "these need priority attention", but now the best way to get editors to work on stubs is to put them in subcategories where they can be found, and substub defeats that purpose. Sure, some articles that would have been marked substub are potential candidates for vfd or merging, but the same is true with quite a number of stubs. I would like to propose a debate on whether the substub template and associated category are worth keeping, or whether those articles which would have been marked {{substub}} are better served with a subcategory of Category:stub. Grutness|^hello? 07:01, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

It is probably safer to turn the substub template into a redirect and delete the substub category. BlankVerse ∅ 07:06, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

That would definitely be a reasonable option - it would have a similar effect without much of the effort that deletion might involve. On second thoughts, given that quite a number of editors seem to be putting both {{substub}} and a subcategory of stub template onto short articles, it wouldn't help at all. All you'd get is the same article in both Category:stub and one of its subcategories. Grutness|^hello? 08:08, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

The only real use for a substub category is to mark the potential vfd or merge canidates. This function is better served by the various cleanup templates. As a result I see no reason to keep the substub category. This just leaves the problem of how to wean the Wikipedia community off of {{substub}}. --Allen3 ^talk 12:27, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

Update there are currently no substubs. Grutness|^hello? 12:48, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

I totally agree, and now's the perfect time. The category is empty (!!Nice job Grutness!!), and we're updating the stub page, the substub section in (Centralization project: third draft) will help publicize the change. There will be some ongoing maintenance/cleanup as usage tapers off, but we can handle that. The comments above are all right on. There's a fair amount of overlap between stubs and substubs as it is, there's really no need for both of them. The stub tag and a cleanup templete where needed should be sufficient Rx StrangeLove 13:31, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

thanks, but it wasn't just me... Allen3 and others did a lot of the work. It has been gratifying opening up Wikipedia in the mornings and seeing fewer substubs than when I looked the previous day! Grutness|^hello? 23:03, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

I have nothing to add to the discussion, so I will merely make my support for this move clear. Support. --Sn0wflake 18:17, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Substubs

Well done with all the hard work on categorizing the stubs! I've seen that there are no longer any substubs, so am I correct to state that that category and template can now be deprecated? Radiant_* 14:41, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

Every day for the last three days I've thought "shall I or shan't I list substubs today?" I'm glad someone else has had the boldness I lacked! Grutness...wha? 01:03, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

• Several people are voting to keep because they say the WikiProject Stub Sorting uses it. Since you are that project, please join the vote on WP:CFD and WP:TFD. Radiant_* 08:03, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

Erm...I'll take that as a compliment! I have - but a lot of the "keep" votes seem to be because stubs-osorters for the most part aren't voting...it'd be great if everyone here who has an opinion on substubs voiced that opinion at tfd and cfd! Grutness...wha? 05:19, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

• You = plural :) Anyway consensus seems to be delete for now, which is a good thing. Radiant_* 13:48, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

I thought that's what you meant, but my ego took over :) Grutness...wha?

Voting is over with 20 Deletes, 8 Keeps and 3 Redirects. Template was not deleted. Can we just redirect it to {{stub}}? That way, you can still get the functionality of substub by clicking [1],but none of the category fragmentation occurs. -- grm_wnr Esc 07:43, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

"Template was not deleted" - template has yet to be deleted. To quote the tfd page:

{{substub}} - Discussion at Template talk:Substub#Vote for deletion. I think is a mandate for delete, especially since many of the keep votes were "this should be left to the WikiProject", and the wikiproject was voting delete. Joe D (t) 19:29, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

It's currently in the holding pen at the bottom of the page, and may take a week or so to go from there. IMHO it would make sense to redirect to {{stub}} for now, to get people used to its disappearance. Grutness...wha? 08:33, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Oops, seems I overlooked that... Anyway, I edited all pages that mentioned linked to it (except for talk pages, I think these can handle a broken link). The page with the most changes was, not surprisingly, Wikipedia:Substub. I'd appreciate someone looking over that one, and second redirecting {{substub}} to {{stub}} as soon as possible. -- grm_wnr Esc 10:52, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

That page looks fine. All that remains is removal of {{substub}} from the few items in Category:Substubs - some just need null edits. The deletion log archive one is the tricky one. I (embarrassed pause) still use an old version of IE, so I can't edit that one as it is one single block of over 32k. I'll also see whether the protection has been removed from the template itself, and if so I'll do the redirect. Grutness...wha? 11:14, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

The deletion log is protected, and I'm not an admin. But I have to say that I don't care much if unimportant parts of the content of some articles deleted 10 months ago change sligthly, so just let there be a broken category and some broken links on that page. I took care of the other one (Template messages/All). -- grm_wnr Esc 11:51, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough, and thanks. As to the protection, I could take it off myself, but feel happier about contacting AllyUnion about it first (he put the protection on it). I've left a note on his user page which with any luck he'll see in the next few hours. Misunderstood your comment. Yeah, I don't think it matters that much about an item in the deletion log; it was simply a case where the entire content was left on the page (including the substub tag). See the lined-through comment as regards the template itself. Grutness...wha? 12:02, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Active Wiki Fixup Projects

I just found Template:Active Wiki Fixup Projects, which looks like the WSS should be added to it. BlankVerse ∅ 11:55, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

SFD?

What happened to SFD? Sounds like a good idea to me. Radiant_* 13:45, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

Currently making its way through Village pump (Proposals). Not sure what the next step after that will be - anyone? Grutness...wha? 01:54, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

I say we write a draft page and let people have a look at it - and maybe a test run with a few selected extra-useless stubs. -- grm_wnr Esc 08:06, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

If people consider the Village Pump proposal for a SFD page to have a general creation consensus , I'd be happy to take a first go at it so we have a starting point. I imagine that it would look a lot like TFD, with different deletion guidlines and it's own {{sfd}} tag and the deletion tools. Rx StrangeLove 01:35, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Category? (stubs to be discussed)

I note that User:Husnock has created Category:Stubs to be discussed. I'm a little baffled by the reqason this is needed, and I'm loath to ask him, since I think I'm already on his list of "least favourite Wikipedians". Anyone have any ideas about it? Grutness|^hello? 05:21, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

There has been some information requested and exchanged on this at User_talk:Husnock#.22Stubs_to_be_discussed.22. Courtland 22:26, 2005 May 13 (UTC)

An Ounce of Prevention....

I feel like Stub-Sorting would benefit from taking some preemptive action -- that is, to prevent people from just sticking a {{stub}} tag on their short pages in the first place. Perhaps placing a prominent message somewhere in the Manual of Style or in the Tutorial would help. For example, we could insert a notice saying something to the effect of, Please help ensure your stub article is expanded quickly by categorizing it. with a link to, say, the stub types page. If there is already something like this, it does not seem to be obvious enough. But it is clear that we need a way to reduce "stubber's sloth." MithrandirMage 15:47, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

• I think it's much easier for someone who knows the system to sort the stub, especially when the names are often hard to guess. Once someone sees the correct tag added to an article, they'll probably add it to the next stub they make of the same type. Kappa 15:54, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
  • It is true that an experienced stub-sorter would probably be more precise in his or her stub-categorizing. However, the nature of the Wikipedia is that the small contributions of many can add up to something useful. In this case, even if people categorize them only partially (which would be difficult if they could easily access our brilliant listing) or incorrectly (very very unlikely), the result would still be more desirable than thousands of unsorted stubs. MithrandirMage 16:11, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
• Though unlikely to get resourced as a development project, I'd like to see a system whereby upon creation of an article, at the first save, if the article is smaller than an imperfect threshold, the creator was prompted with something like "This article is short enough that it might qualify as a stub-article. If you agree, please either (click here) to append a generic stub label or proceed with saving the article then (see the stub-types hierarchy) and select an appropriate stub template to append (two at most, please)." The wording needs work and action on the part of the author should be minimized, but I think some implementation of the concept would be useful as a form of preemptive action. Courtland 16:56, 2005 May 15 (UTC)

Wikiportal:Biography

There's a proof-of-concept page up at Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Biography that is meant to possibly evolve into a Biography Portal. I thought I'd point out that Category:People stubs has been included in the Category Listing on this page. Also, we might consider what might be done with People Stubs given a portal on this topic.

Courtland 04:11, 2005 May 16 (UTC)

Call for help on struct-stubs

Hi all - I've just been looking at Category:Buildings and structures stubs, tp see whether it could be split further, and discovered it has double the number of stubs it had two months ago (just under 500). So... I decided to check a few - the 78 beginning with T-Z. Amazingly, 45 of them had been mis-labelled. there were UK-struct-stubs, US-struct-stubs, Arch-stubs, a couple of geo-stubs, a water-stub, and even a rocket-stub! I'm going to wade through the rest, but if there are any stub sorters looking for something to do, I could do with a hand! (Oh, and by the way, Asia-struct-stub is looking like a good one to split off it). Grutness...wha? 09:55, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

I had a quick scan through them and changed the relevant ones, but there are still a lot in the category. If you are thinking about a split, Canada-struct might be potential candidate, in addition to your suggested asia-struct. --TheParanoidOne 08:31, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks - I got through the rest, eventually, but the help was much appreciated. There were 490 of them - there are now 320, which gives some indication of how many were misplaced. I've changed the wording on the struct-stub templates to give more of a hint as to what should be in there (NOT architects! NOT caves! NOT shipwrecks!). Canada-stub is a good suggestion. I've proposed both of those, and germany-struct-stub (lots of them in the Euro-struct category) over at the Criteria page. Grutness...wha? 08:41, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

It's done

I have edited the pre-final draft after some corrections by Grutness and I think that it has reached a fairly descent state. Propose changes here, or make corrections to the draft. If everything goes well, I will migrate it to Wikipedia:Stub by the end of the week. It makes no sense for that article to be a redirect. Find and fix a stub and the rest of its family should also be redirected to the new page. --Sn0wflake 20:48, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Looks great! Of the two here I think I prefer the New stub categories section single spaced. I think it's easier to read, scans better. Otherwise it's in good shape! Rx StrangeLove 03:55, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

edits to the draft

I have made some suggested edits in the copy shown below. Codes used are strikout to indicate information removed or replaced; <new>new</new> for new or replacing information; <revised>revision</revised> to indicate a passage with multiple minor edits. Courtland 02:51, 2005 May 18 (UTC)

Note that since you began this re-edit, I changed the position of one of the sentences I added 9the one about multi-stubbing. I have taken the liberty of moving it in you amendment, since all it does is place it in a more appropriate place (two paragraphs lower than it was previously).

RIP

Ladies and gentlemen, the Substub is dead. Long live the glorious stub category revolution! Grutness...wha? 02:53, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

• Maybe breaking ground on a Stub Crypt or Garden of Passed Stubs would be in order? :) Courtland 03:34, 2005 May 18 (UTC)

†

here lies
Template:substub

07-21-2004 - 05-18-2005

R.I.P.

-- grm_wnr Esc 08:06, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Category:Substubs is still on life support, however. -- grm_wnr Esc 14:11, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Great work, Grutness. That was truly an accomplishment. This will be reinforced by the new Wikipedia:Stub as of tomorrow. :) --Sn0wflake 23:40, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

"It's alive!" Template:substub (links, talk) was recreated as a redirect to {{stub}} at 09:06, 25 Jun 2005 by AaronSw (talk · contribs). There are currently two articles with the substub template. BlankVerse ∅ 17:31, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The articles that were using the template have been sorted, and the newly created redirect is currently listed at SfD. --Allen3 ^talk 18:58, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

Speedy deleted, rule 4. Grutness...wha? 23:53, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

deletion templates during stub sorting

Hey, when you go through and sort stubs, don't smack articles with the patent nonsense template. Patent nonsense is absolute gibberish. As much as you may not like silly statements, propaganda, advertisements, etc, those are valid stubs that need editors to work on them. Please go read "Not to be confused with..." at Wikipedia:Patent nonsense. kthxbye. PS, also, an edit that would mark an article to be deleted is anything but a minor edit. If you still choose to put a delete template on an article, make sure it has a valid edit summary. SchmuckyTheCat 18:08, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Hm... I am sorry but I think that you have probably posted this on the wrong Talk page. If a specific member of the project did something you didn't agree with, you are encouraged to talk to him or her directly, but I don't see how we can help you. Cheers. --Sn0wflake 22:21, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Since at least two different stub sorters have done it, I'm posting it where it will be read by stub sorters. SchmuckyTheCat 23:03, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Recently the project has grown by quite a bit, and not everybody reads this Talk page, so I would really recommend direct communication; it's often the best way to solve this sort of problem. But your comment has been taken note of, nevertheless. --Sn0wflake 23:14, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Centralization project: final draft

This section will be moved to Wikipedia:Stub on the 19th, May of 2005. Cheers! PS: I would appreciate comments about the changes made by Courtland to the New stub categories section. Rx opposes to it on some degree and I am uncertain. Input, anyone? I also removed references to section stubs, as I believe they need their own article. (Sn0wflake)

Stubs are articles which have not yet received substantial attention from the Wikipedia editors. They have been created, but don't yet contain enough information to be considered articles. The community believes that stubs are far from worthless. They are, rather, the first step articles take on their course to becoming complete.

Identifying a stub

A stub is an article which is clearly too short, but not too short to be useless. On a general manner, it must be long enough to at least define the article's title. This usually means stubs are about the length of 3 to 10 short sentences. Note that a longer article may be a stub if the topic is complex enough - conversely, a short article on a topic which has a very narrow scope may not be a stub.

In the past, a category referred to as substubs was utilised in case articles were smaller than the proposed size of stubs, but this category has been deprecated with time. It is important to remember that the Wikipedia is not a dictionary. That is why the Wiktionary exists. In case your article is too short to be a stub, consider moving it to said sister project or, even better, with a small amount of research, create an useful stub. Take this into consideration before creating short entries containing close to no information.

Categorising stubs

After writing the stub, the editor must insert what is called a stub template so that the article can be flagged as a stub. These stub templates should invariably be placed at the bottom of the article. Stub templates are composed by two distinct parts: a short message stating that said article is a stub of a particular type and encouraging editors to expand it, and a category link, which places the article on a stub category.

Stub categories are needed due to the fact that the basic stub template - {{stub}} - has become so large that it became very hard to find articles on a specific subject. That is why stub categories were created. If an editor is, for example, a biologist, then he or she can look for stubs with the tag {{biology-stub}} on said category and easily find stubs to which they can add, subtract or modify.

In general, the naming convention for stubs is topic-stub; for a complete list of stub categories, please refer to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. When marking articles as stubs, please be as precise as you possibly can - it saves other editors a lot of work further down the road. If an article overlaps two potential categories, two different stub templates may be used, but using more than two is strongly discouraged.

Stub-related activities are centralized on Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting (shortcut WP:WSS). The project should be your main referential when it comes to this subject.

New stub categories

If you identify a group of stubs that do not fit in an existing category, or if an existing stub category is growing too large and might be optimized by creating a narrower category, you might propose the creation of a new stub category. Before you start a new stub category, make sure you consider these guidelines:

• Is there a stub for this topic already?

Check the list.

• Will the new category be well-defined enough to help editors identify articles that they have the expertise to expand?

Remember that using stubs categories is a way to facilitate article expansion.

• Does the new category cover ground not covered by other categories, or create a well-defined subcategory that does?

A new category might fit as a sub-category of more than one existing category, such as in the case of {{Baseballbio-stub}}, which is a child of both {{Sportbio-stub}} and {{Baseball-stub}}.

• Will there be a significant number of stubs in this category; are there enough article stubs to warrant this new type?

Typically the threshold is about 100 articles. This threshold is waved if the stub category exists as a tool for use by a WikiProject.

• Would your new category overlap with other categories?

For example, geography stubs are sorted by country so you wouldn’t want to create mountain-stub or river-stub.

• If you are breaking a sub-category out of a pre-existing category, will the new stub reduce the size of the parent category by a significant amount?

This is not an absolute necessity, but it has been a driver for the creation of most of the existing stub categories.

If you think you have satisfied these guidelines, propose the new stub category here. If there are no objections within a week, you can go ahead and create the new stub category.

Creating the stub template

First, you will need to create the template which will be displayed on the articles which contain the stub. This should be named logically, following this model: Template:topic-stub.

This is the basic format for new stub templates:

<div class="boilerplate" id="stub"> ''This [[A]]-related article is a [[Wikipedia:Perfect stub article|stub]]. You can [[Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub|help]] Wikipedia by [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|action=edit}} expanding it]''. </div> [[Category:B]]

You might find use in pasting this code into the new template and customizing it by inserting different text into it. Replacing the letters A and B as such:

• A: The stub topic goes into this field. For example, Road. The topic must have a developed article, and thus not be another stub.

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

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

• Wikipedia:Stub_categories
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types

Creating the stub category

Next, you will need to create a category to hold the articles which will have the new stub tag attached to them.

To start editing it, you should follow the red category link on the stub template you have created. In this case, it would appear as Category:Road stubs. Here's the basic format for stub categories:

{{Stub Category|article=[[A]]s or [[A]]|newstub=B|category=C}}

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

This syntax does four things, it:

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

So, in this example, the formatting would look like this:

{{Stub Category|article=[[Road]]s or [[Road Transport]]|newstub=<s>road-stub|category=road transport</s><new>Road-stub|category=Road transport</new>}}

In order to increase the categories effectiveness and visibility, it's generally advisable to add your category to several categories. For example, this would add it to the Roads category:

[[category:Roads]]

When you are done, it is important that you make sure that the new stub and the new stub category are linked correctly to other categories. Using the road-stub as an example, the road-stub category needs to be a member of Category:Stub categories (because it's a stub category) and Category:Roads (because it's a category consisting of roads). If your new category has been made from part of an existing stub category or categories, these should also be listed here (so, for example, Category:France geography stubs should be part of Category:France-related stubs and Category:Europe geography stubs).

If you have doubts or comments regarding any part of the process, don't hesitate to address them at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting.

WP:TFD proposal impacting on stub template/category deletion

I forgot to add a link to the salient part of the page: Wikipedia_talk:Templates_for_deletion#Speedy_category_deletion ~~Courtland

There is a discussion that happened about 5 days ago which I only just now noticed which deals with the deletion of stub templates and their associated categories. I thought I'd bring it to your attention; I've noted there that the decisions in this area shouldn't be made on WP:TFD and WP:CFD alone but should come here at some point for discussion/input ... or at least informing folks here that such discussions are taking place (wouldn't want to be dogmatic about saying who can talk about what where and among whom :) ). Courtland 02:38, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

Removing icons?

Hi all - just stumbled across this - thought WP:WSS should know about it. Grutness...wha? 05:49, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Substub page

Hi there! Regarding Wikipedia:Substub - this page should probably be reworded to indicate there no longer is such a thing. I'd also support deleting it entirely, if necessary, but I think asking WSS input would be useful. Radiant_* 11:40, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

I reworded it a couple of days ago, when it became clear that substubs were going, and I see several others have altered it more since (User:Grm wnr, for one). It might be better reworded as part of the new stub page that is being written, but I think that if it's made clear that Substubs are a historical item since deprecated, it shouldn't cause much trouble, and can be linked in from the stub page. Also, since people may wonder for a while what happened to "good ol'substub", it won't hurt if the page hangs around for a while. Grutness...wha? 13:40, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Are there really no substubs anymore? We treat them differently now, but "Substubs are short stubs" - a hazy, but workable definition, which could arguably mean that "Substubs are stubs that are too short to be considered good or acceptable stubs", which in turn means they still need special attention... Even as a subset of stubs, the term is entrenched in Wikipedia jargon, and we should have a page on that. -- grm_wnr Esc 17:47, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

• Would Template:Historical be appropriate? I do agree that substub as a meme still exists. But to alleviate confusion it might be a good idea to not use it overly much. Radiant_* 09:14, May 20, 2005 (UTC)

The next target

Now that Wikipedia:Stub is taken care of, it's probably time to move on to Wikipedia:Perfect stub article. I might get started on it this next week, but if somebody wants to go ahead, have fun. Cheers. --Sn0wflake 22:51, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Another page for your perusal

While Snowflake and other were diligently creating the new central project page, I've been working on something else which I think might be a reasonable addition to the project's pages, which I'd now like to present for appraisal and improvement. A lot of recent talk has been about trying to maintain consistent naming of stub templates, and working out which redirects are badly-enough named to reuire deletion. I have written a first draft of some naming guidelines, also including some of the major exceptions, on a subpage of my user page at User:Grutness/WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines. If you think it is a good enough start for such a page, then I will move it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines. Please have a look, make any amendments you think necessary and get back to me (even if only to tell me it was a waste of time and a co0mplete crock of tutae, as they might say in Maori). Grutness...wha? 08:15, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Even though I find it quite complete and certainly useful, I don't see how the average user would bother reading through it before creating stubs with unusual naming. Maybe an abridged version is in order? --Sn0wflake 19:27, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

You're probably right, but I'm considering it more as a way to list precedents and see what doesn't fit into the scheme and how we can improve those that don't. Perhaps "Naming guidelines" should be a summary of this page, and the page in my user pages should be called something like "Naming precedents"? Any thoughts? Grutness...wha? 01:19, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Do a little revision in case you missed anything and post it on the project page, then. :) As you proposed, make sure there is a quick summary on the top and it's all set. --Sn0wflake 12:51, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

OK - I've added the summary, and moved the page. Feel free to change anything that doesn't look right! Grutness...wha? 13:14, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Some helpful messages

Even as we are diligently hacking away at (sorting) the remaining articles in Category:Stub, some users are creating new {{stub}} articles or applying the {{stub}} tag to existing ones. I have composed a couple of form messages that I have started inserting on the User_Talk pages of users who have recently used the {{stub}} tag. I have gotten some positive responses to these, and want to make them available to others who may find them useful. They are:

• User:RussBlau/stub-sorted-msg for newly-created articles using {{stub}}.
• User:RussBlau/stub-edit-msg for users who have inserted {{stub}} into existing articles.

Both messages take the same two parameters:

pg

The title of the page you sorted (no brackets needed).

tag

The new stub category into which you sorted the page (no braces needed).

There is no guarantee that these messages will remain available in their current forms, so I highly recommend that you {{subst:}} them.

I think the key to making this work is the positive, polite tone; it doesn't do any good to lay a guilt trip on someone for being ignorant of the availability of stub categories. Also, of course, it only makes sense to do this when the page history shows that the {{stub}} tag has been inserted recently, not for articles that have been sitting around for months waiting to be sorted.

I hope others find this useful, and that it enlightens other Wikipedians about our labors here!

--Russ Blau (talk) 13:13, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

A good move, and they look useful (they could almost work as templates! :) It is important to keep a polite tone. I wrote a couple of "form letter" type things for when users create new stub categories without going through WP:WSS/Criteria first (I know a couple of others - Allen3 for one - use very similar messages). it's very difficult not to piss people off. So far, to the best of my knowledge, one person has got annoyed with my messages, and I do regret that. As to adding generic {{stub}}, I use a similar message when sifting out the generic geo-stubs (which I do every two days, putting them in their individual countries)> If I notice one editor who's been writing or editing several stubs on the same country, I put the following on their user page (or some variant of it):

Hi, I see you've been adding some geo-stubs on Country X! When you label them as stubs, a plain geo-stub is fine, but that country does also have its own geo-stub template, {{country-geo-stub}}, which will make it easier still for editors to find, so it would be even better if you could use that. Keep up the good work! :)

Grutness...wha? 14:33, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

This generally strikes me as a good idea. Would it also make sense to add a sentence to {{stub}}, {{geo-stub}}, and possibly {{bio-stub}} saying these can be further sorted? Susvolans (pigs can fly) 06:55, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Anyone who is sorting stubs to geo-stubs and stubs into bio-stubs might be just simply happy doing that. -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:02, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Great idea - I think these should go on the project page, in a form that can be copied and pasted. I would do it myself, but I dont want to take all the credit. - Bluemoose 09:27, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

SfD - for real

The discussion of SfD at the Village Pump ran favorably, even though not many peopla seemed to care. So, I've made a draft (obviously heavily inspired by TfD):

Please edit it mercilessly, or tell me if it is completely pointless. -- grm_wnr Esc 21:19, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Looks good - I've added a couple of thoughts on a discussion page for it. Grutness...wha? 01:15, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Big stubs

It was mentioned on TFD that there are quite a number of stubs that have grown but still are tagged as such (usually because the editor forgot the stub). This is just a random idea, but how about using a bot to remove stub tags from any article bigger than, say, 2kb?

(or, conversely, add it to any really short article, although that's likely less useful... does WSS cover Wikipedia:Deadend pages?) Radiant_* 11:14, May 27, 2005 (UTC)

Mmmm. I'm slightly against both of these (only slightly, though). Size isn't perfectly correlated with stubbiness, remember. I've just done a re-tally of the number of stubs in Category:Central Africa geography stubs, and noticed that thirty new stubs had come in since th beginning of the month but fifteen old ones had been removed, so it's clear that the templates are coming off at least some of the articles expanded. Mind you, if a bot removed the stub messages of any that are clearly much too big to be stubs by any definition of the term (say 7k), that might well be worth doing. Grutness...wha? 11:30, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

I think that no article with more than 5KB can be considered a stub, but on the other hand, 2KB is a bit too low. Might be a good idea, but I do not know how necessary it is. --Sn0wflake 12:11, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

I've just been helping move some templates for WikiProject Astronomical objects (to do with removing the confusion between star-stub and star stub). Several of these articles are clearly stubs, but were also quite long. Part of that is because articles on stars are a special case - a lot of them have a stub about the star itself, followed by basically a separate article on any extrasolar planets it may have. An argument could possibly be made that these should really have sectstub, but I understand why they've done it the way they have. It may be that other WikiProjects have a similar sort of system. Grutness...wha? 12:44, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Do you mean something like this: User:Triddle/stubsensor ?. Joe D (t) 13:06, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Exactly, while helping out with the stubsensor I come across a fair amount of articles that are large-ish but consist of a sentence or two and then a long list or table (Bibionomorphafor example). Automation probably isn't the direction to go here, Triddle has a group hand sorting the output of her stubsensor taking stub tags off where appropriate, even then there are complaints about stubs being taken off certain pages.

On the other hand maybe we could use a page that displays very short articles that do not have a stub tag, very small uncategorized pages that could use a stub or expand tag, something of that sort. Or maybe that exists and I don't know about it. Rx StrangeLove 22:12, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

One thing to keep in mind is that a significant proportion of stub-articles are not categorized beyond their stub category. Therefore, a part of the bot would need to both remove the stub template and ensure that the article is in the category(ies) that the stub category was a child of. Courtland 04:31, 2005 May 29 (UTC)

No page should just be in its stub category, so this would be necessary even if the messages remained. - SimonP 16:16, May 29, 2005 (UTC)