Wikipedia talk:Stub/Archive 3

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Color change

The project page was just edited to but some of the prototype code on a red background. I think this makes it harder to read. What was the reason for this change? DES ^(talk) 16:05, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

It was edited by an anon with only that one edit. I have reverted it as vandalism. --TheParanoidOne 19:14, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Phillipine writers

The stub {{phil-lit-stub}} somehow ends up linking to Category:Stubs, making it appear that a load of phillipine literature is in need of classification. Could someone sort this out? It's... Thelb4! 16:17, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Includeonly for stub categories on templates

Since includeonly tags have been added, some stub templates have been edited to use them around the category link, while most haven't. While I see the point of using them (the template itself isn't a stub), it does make it harder to navigate from the template to the category (or tell that the template even has a matching category). Perhaps if includeonly is to be used, a link to the category could be put in noinclude tags? (altho I'd rather leave the templates as they were before) Either way, it'd be nice if there was some consistency and consensus... --Mairi 00:25, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I just did this (noinclude) on {{Malta-stub}} .. the category template does include a link to the template itself. Should this be an official part of the documentation? Srl 19:59, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Looks good to me. I'd suggest perhaps rolling this style out on a few stub types gradually, and seeing if people yelp on the one hand, or applaud and adopt on the other. (Or remain profoundly unmoved either way, indeed.) Alai 06:45, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Addition

Further to some discussions on Wikipedia talk:Schools, I added Having an interwiki link, or at least one relevant picture also lends weight to it's claim to be a stub. to the definition of a stub. The purpose of this is to help define the minimum criteria that an article should have in order not to be merged automatically up into a parent article. The implication is that having a picture, or an article on another language wiki, makes it more likely that the stub will expand, or less convenient and useful to merge. Thoughts? Trollderella 09:21, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I would like to see some logical basis for this criteria, as in the whole of my experience with stub-sorting and related activities, I have never noticed that as being meaningful. The article becomes more likely to expand if its text is compreensive. That's it. If you include this criteria, 70% of the stub articles will get merged, which is just a bad idea. --Sn0wflake 16:32, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

If this is changed, I'd like to suggest that the criteria from WP:CORP concerning not counting self promotional sources of data not be considered in the content being counted. Vegaswikian 19:17, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I think I was unclear, these things are 'ors', not 'ands', I am suggesting that, in addition to the current definition of having 3-8 sentences, we say 'either 3-8 sentences, an interwiki link, or a picture' are the things that make the difference between a sub-stub to be merged and a stub to be kept. I believe it broadens the scope of acceptable stubs. Thoughts? Vegaswikian, I'm sort of confused, because what I added to this was that if an article had an interwiki lnk or a picture then we should count it as a stub - the criteria about text was already there. Trollderella 19:29, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

To reitterate, I was proposing adding "Having an interwiki link, or at least one relevant picture also lends weight to its claim to be a stub.". The reason being that having an interwiki link to an actual article on another language wiki means that an article has been written, and implies that there is a possibility to write one in english, and having a picture makes it more difficult to merge, because of the size. Trollderella 19:39, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I presume that you are arguign that such links make an article more properly a stub, rather than a sub-stub that may be fit only for merging or deletion. But much of the Stub page is more concerned with distinguising between stubs and non-stub, but short, articles. To say that a feature "makes something be counted as a stub" can incorrectly be seen as part oc the upper boundery rather than the lower unless the wording is quite clear. Besides, we don't formally recognize sub-stubs, and the normal answer for soemthing below the lower boundry is expansion rather than deeltion or merger, so i don't think this addition has much value. DES ^(talk) 19:46, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

My primary motivation for wanting to add it is related to a discussion that is current on Wikipedia talk:Schools, where a lot of users are concerned about the point at which a school article is suitable to be merged, and at what point is should be kept as a stub. It's a real, and acrimonious, debate, and adding these two (fairly incocuous, I think) criteria to the stub definition is a rare point of concensus that looks like it may provide peace on the school deletion wars. Are there concerns you have about practical implications of this? Thanks, Trollderella 19:51, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

What can I say other than "please don't drag the stub sorting project into the schools-on-Wikipedia mess"? The fact is that merger is not the general rule, but rather the exception. We hardly merge anything, instead expanding the article by a bit, turning it into a small stub. Now, for schools, the rules you are proposing seem quite logical, but that should be dealt with within the schoold project, instead of being generalized. Regards, --Sn0wflake 22:41, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

section stub

I remember seeing a stub marker for just a section of an atricle, rather the whole thing. This page doesn't mention it though. Is it supposed to be used? (unsigned comment by 67.165.96.26 at 17:57, 30 November 2005 --BigBlueFish 19:23, 30 November 2005 (UTC))

Triple-stubbing considered anathema?

Does anyone else feel the current wording, that "using more than two [stub tags] is strongly discouraged" is far too strong? This just doesn't take into consideration the practicalities of the categorisation scheme, and the stub categories in particular, where we try to avoid "over-splitting" categories in such a way as to make them overly small. If someone is, for example, an American sports journo, we're up to three equally applicable stub categories already, even if the subject isn't also equally notable for something else. I'd prefer a weaker wording, or better still, one rates to areas of notability, as above, and not raw numbers of tags. If people find more than one or two inlined images and template messages excessive, it might be worth considering the use of a "silently stub-categorise" template for the equally applicable additional tags, though that's complicating matters somewhat. And surely the object isn't to make stubs visually acceptable anyway, it's to make them non-stubs! Alai 05:44, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

As you put it, "it's to make them non-stubs!" In the case that you give, of the American sports journalist, it much more likely that it will be sports fans that will improve the article, so in my opinion only a {{Sportbio-stub}} is necessary. In many other cases, there are now appropriate combo stubs so that, for example, a Japanese writer no longer needs both a Japanese stub and a writer stub, but instead gets a {{Japan-writer-stub}}. Every case where I've seen three stubs it's been overkill and at least one of the stubs was was so general or so loosely connected to the article that it wasn't needed. If you really think that a third category might be appropriate, it is easy enough to add just the category without the stub template by hand. ^BlankVerse 11:05, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

This isn't always clear; indeed, I'm not sure it's even clear in my example instance. An Argentinian soccer fan isn't very likely to be be interested in writers on US baseball, say, so what's to say the general sportsbio cat is more likely to lead to expansion than a USA-specific one? (Even within the same sport this may be often true, though writers aren't even necessarily going to be so particular.) I certainly don't see how that would rise to being "so general or so loosely connected to the article". Making it a judgement call as to which one or two is the "most important" is just going to lead to needless confusion, and to arbitrary omission from entirely applicable categories. Obviously where there's a "combo stub" there's no problem. Adding by hand is possible, but not actually quite so easy to do, since even if one knows the stub template off the top of one's head, the text of the category may be less evident. Alai 02:00, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

AFAIC the more stub templates on an article the better, since it increases the chance that appropriate editors will see and expand an article. In any case, it's often impossible to accurately put an article into one - or even two - neat little pigeon-hole(s). If a mountain is at the point that three countries meet, what are you going to do? Ignore one country? Or just use "geo-stub" and hope that an editor will stumble across it by accident? If someone was a politician and novelist and came from a small country that doesn't have its own politician-stub or writer-stub then do you ignore the country-stub? No - you triple stub. I'll 'fess up - I put that "strongly discouraged" line there - it used to read "not permitted", which went against normal stubbing practice. But as the number of available stub types has increased, so the ability to use several far finer descriptions of an article has improved, and more stubs are now more the norm. Perhaps if we bump it up one and say that four stubs in strongly discouraged, it would better reflect current practice. Grutness...wha? 07:04, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

-related

This page and things it links to refer to "-related" categories, i.e. France-related.. apparently this is against current guidelines. Can the examples be improved? Thanks Srl 22:33, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I fixed France-related. OK to remove road-related? any reason to keep it? Srl 22:57, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

How does this work?

Hi every body, i'm new here and just wanted to ask if there was a manual or something for writing, and also have a few ideas for the site.

Thank you.

Adham

Hi there Adham. I have added a welcome messages to your talk page that has some useful links. You might also want to have a look through Wikipedia:Your first article. --TheParanoidOne 19:39, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Addition of "cite your sources"

Jengod (talk · contribs) has been adding "and citing the source of your information." to a number of stub templates, such as insect-stub and others. Does this seem necessary? It seems to just make the stub notice longer than needed, by adding redundant instructions. --TheParanoidOne 12:59, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

As far as I know, it has not been discussed on stubsorting or anywhere else. Now, the same bloody line is added twice or three times whenever an article is double-stubbed. That looks very much like vandalism to me. It should be removed at once. --Valentinian 14:28, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree they should be removed, stub notices are not the place to nag people for sources since the same thing applies equally to any substantive edit. Kappa 14:40, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but if we suddenly expect every featured article candidate to have a full slate of citations and hope the same thing for every article on down, I think it's only fair that we alert people from the get-go. And truth be told, I think Wikipedia has enough momentum that we no longer have gently grovel for edits. Ideally everything that goes into the 'pedia in the post-Siegenthaler era should be verifiable. I know it's not going to happen—this is a vernacular, populist document—but we simply have to push that way if we are to protect ourselves and/or be taken seriously. Also, it's soooo much easier to cite things as you go along, rather than go back and cite later, and going forward, we really, really ought to encourage it. jengod 18:04, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

First of all, couldn't you have discussed this with the stub sorting community beforehand? If citing sources is important to the Wikipedia, then what about consensus? I think it is at least twice as important! Second, I find it rather unlikely that this short sentence at the end of every stub tag will make any difference. People already know that they have to cite, they just either forget or do not have the time/patience to do it. If this was a formal vote of any kind, I'd vote for the sentence to be removed. --Sn0wflake 18:14, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I was being bold. Of course you should do whatever you want with your usual stub notices and I'm sorry I didn't seek consensus beforehand. I'll go back tonight and revert all my changes. jengod 18:19, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Note that MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning appears underneath the text box every time you hit the "edit" link and it contains the Wikipedia:Verifiability link that you have added to the stub templates. --TheParanoidOne 18:27, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I kind of think repetition isn't a sin when you're trying to get a message across, but never mind. Anyway, I think I got them all, let me know if I missed any. jengod 18:49, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

No offence to jengod, but - as one of those heavily involved in stub sorting - I don't think it's a particularly good idea for a number of reasons: 1) there are already specific templates for this sort of thing; 2) a lot of stubs are sourced and externally linked; 3) changing heavily used templates makes for server trouble. Also, it would have been nice if WP:WSS had been at least told of what was going to happen. Of these points, the most important is the second one. Why indiscriminately add a "cite your sources" message to all stubs when a lot of them ARE cited? Grutness...wha? 23:34, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Stubs obsoleted in German Wikipedia

Maybe some food for thought... As of December 28, 2005, the German Wikipedia community has decided to get rid of all stub categories (see de:Wikipedia:Meinungsbilder/Stubs). The poll ended 106:68 in favor of "killing" the stub categories. The reason given was that stub categories have proven to be simply not working out and do not make sense at all regarding srticle quality. --Pmkpmk 17:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Stub categories in the German Wikipedia came and went very fast. I remember that by the time we were rewriting the Stub policy (mid-2005), they were starting to implement the first stub categories. So that means they didn't notice an enormous change in a short timeframe and deemed the proccess useless. Sound more like imediatism than good sense to me. --Sn0wflake 20:54, 4 January 2006 (UTC)