Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines

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In order to maintain some consistency in the naming of stub templates, several guidelines are used by WP:WSS when naming new templates. The following is a list of several of the most important guidelines to take into consideration when naming a stub template. for a full list of stub types in use, see The WP:WSS Stub type list.

Contents 1 Brief summary of the main highlights 2 Templates 2.1 xx-stub 2.2 xx-xx-stub 2.3 Use of lower case 2.4 Use of abbreviations 2.5 Hybrid/complex/composite/compound stubs 2.5.1 Order and usual form 2.5.1.1 The subdivisional component 2.5.1.2 The major component 2.5.2 Mix and match 2.6 Exceptions 2.6.1 Children of {{Compu-stub}} and {{Music-stub}}, {{Geo-term-stub}} 2.6.2 Missing hyphens 2.7 Redirects 3 Categories 3.1 General form 3.2 Abbreviations 3.3 Foo stubs or Foo-related stubs?

[edit] Brief summary of the main highlights

1. Stub template and redirect names should be in the form xx-stub or xx-xx-stub, with the parts separated by hyphens
2. Capital letters should be used where they are normally used - i.e., for proper nouns like personal or place-names, but nowhere else
3. Where a place-name is part of the stub, this name is normally (but not always) written in full (exceptions are listed below)
4. Stub template and redirect names with three parts (xx-xx-stub) are normally used only when an existing category is divided into subcategories (e.g., dividing biography stubs by nationality)
5. Stub category names should be in the form Cat:Foo stubs - not Cat:Foo-related stubs or Cat:Fooian stubs
6. These are only guidelines, and can have exceptions where necessary, but the fewer exceptions there are, the better
7. Many existing categories do not follow these guidelines, but some of these may later be changed by WP:WSS to names which are more appropriate

[edit] Templates

[edit] xx-stub

All stub templates should have names ending in "-stub". Note two things here:

1. there is a hyphen, not a space, prior to the word "stub".
2. the word "stub" is entirely in lower-case letters.

[edit] xx-xx-stub

When the name has three or more parts, hyphens are used between all sections. This is particularly notable with Hybrid/complex/composite/compound stubs (see below), although they also occasionally occur when the subject matter of the stub has more than one word in its name (e.g., DC-Comics-stub, Opera-singer-stub). The latter type should be avoided, however, if necessary by running words together. This allows for more consistent creation of complex stubs later.

[edit] Use of lower case

In general, stub names use lower case letters (although the first letter of any template name is not case sensitive, so this may be upper or lower case). The main exceptions to this rule are cases where Proper nouns are used - the names of people or places which get capital letters when written normally. The following are some of the exceptions:

• US-stub and its children (e.g., US-geo-stub)
• UK-stub and its children (e.g., UK-bio-stub)
• NZ-stub

[edit] Use of abbreviations

Abbreviations are acceptable in the name of stub templates - they are for the benefit of the editor, not the reader, and the template names do not appear on screen in articles. Ambiguous abbreviations should be avoided however.

For this reason, names like football-stub (which could refer to any of several sports) are not appropriate. Similarly, ISO codes for country names are generally regarded as inappropriate, since geography stub templates can refer to either countries or regions (many of which share two letter abbreviations - Gabon and the US state of Georgia both use GA, for example) and non-geography stubs can refer to things other than country names (for instance, UA could refer to Ukraine or United Artists, and AI to Anguilla or artificial intelligence).

Of current stub categories, the most ambiguous are probably bio-stub (biography, not biology) and geo-stub (geography, not geology).

[edit] Hybrid/complex/composite/compound stubs

These terms are four names for the same thing. When a stub type is created by the intersection of two large categories, the form xx-xx-stub should be used. Examples of these stubs are things like {{UK-geo-stub}}, which is the intersection of {{UK-stub}} and {{geo-stub}}, and {{France-bio-stub}}, which is the intersection of {{France-stub}} and {{bio-stub}}. These stubs are often referred to as the "children" of the larger categories of which they are the intersections

[edit] Order and usual form

In general, composite stubs are formed by subdividing a major category into smaller sections, often by location. Thus, the vast majority composite stubs are formed by a combination of a geographical location and one other type of stub. We have UK-hist-stubs, Australia-bio-stubs, and Canada-geo-stubs, to give just three examples. In each case, a standard form should be used for the subdivisional component, and a standard form for the major component. These forms are as listed below:

[edit] The subdivisional component

Subdivision of existing categories is most commonly done by location, either by country or region. With most countries and regions, the common name of the area is used as the geographical component. Stubs about Argentina receive Argentina-stub, those about India receive India-stub, and so on. For some countries, however, an abbreviated form of the name is used. If a country has a two-word name, then occasionally this name will be written in full and concatenated (e.g., HongKong-geo-stub)The following are the abbreviations or alternatives currently in use. Note that those cases in italics may soon be deprecated, replaced by more acceptable alternatives:

Africa:

• AfricaC - Central Africa
• AfricaE - East Africa
• AfricaN - North Africa
• AfricaS - Southern Africa
• AfricaW - West Africa

Americas:

• CentralAm - Central America
• Salvador - El Salvador
• SouthAm - South America
• US - United States
  • NYC - New York City

Asia:

• CAsia - Central Asia
• Kyrg - Kyrgizstan
• MEast - Middle East
• SAsia - South Asia
• SEAsia - Southeast Asia
• Taiwan, or ROC (or Roc) - Republic of China (Taiwan)

Europe:

• BiH - Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Czech (or Cz) - Czech Republic/Czechia
• Euro - Europe
  • EU - European Union
• UK (or Uk) - United Kingdom
  • NI - Northern Ireland
  • BritOT - British overseas territories

Oceania:

• NZ (or Kiwi) - New Zealand
• PNG - Papua New Guinea

Non-geographic subdivisions:

• reli - Religious/Religion
• tv - Television

[edit] The major component

The following terms are used for the middle component of three-part stub names, and usually refer to the category which has been split to make the new subdivision:

• -actor- (actor)
• -album- (album)
• -bcast- (broadcasting)
• -bio- (biographical article)
• -book- (book)
• -compu- (computer)
• -corp- (company or corporation)
• -cvg- (computer and video game)
• -edu- (education)
• -film- (film)
• -geo- (geography)
• -gov- (government)
• -hist- (history)
• -myth- (mythology)
• -noble- (nobility or royalty)
• -org- (organization)
• -party- (political party)
• -poli- (politics)
• -politician- (politician)
• -road- (road)
• -school- (non-university schools)
• -sci- (science)
• -struct- (building or structure)
• -theat- (theater/theatre)
• -tv- (television)
• -university- (universities)
• -writer- (writer)

[edit] Mix and match

From the above lists and from the actual names of countries not listed) a large number of potential stub categories can be created which fit into a standard pattern. A few examples of non-existent but plausible stub categories should demonstrate:

• MEast-poli-stub (Middle East politics)
• NZ-tv-stub (New Zealand television)
• Canada-myth-stub (Canadian mythology)
• SouthAm-actor-stub (South American actors)
• Reli-hist-stub (Religious history)

[edit] Exceptions

There are, of course, many exceptions to these rules. Some of these are due to the stub template being made by someone from outside the WP:WSS project. Others are for convenience of editors, or because the name was the most logical one. WP:WSS is actively pursuing the renaming of some of these stubs, although many of them "work well enough" that this may not be necessary. The following are some of the most common (this is not an exhaustive list):

[edit] Children of {{Compu-stub}} and {{Music-stub}}, {{Geo-term-stub}}

These groups seem to work backwards to the normal system, with the main parent category appearing first. These make sense, however, since in common speech phrases like "computer software", "musical instruments", and "geographical terms" are named in this way.

[edit] Missing hyphens

Several stubs are formed this way, such as {{Tolkienstub}} and {{HeBible-stub}} (Hebrew Bible).

[edit] Redirects

Redirects follow the same guidelines as the templates they are redirects of.

[edit] Categories

[edit] General form

The general form of category names is "Noun stubs" (e.g., Cat:History stubs). Preferably, these should be in a similar form to their non-stub parent categories, although this is not always the case. The format "Adjectival stubs" (e.g., Cat:Historical stubs) is not to be used.

[edit] Abbreviations

Abbreviations should not be used in category names. Several are currently used (notably "UK" and "US") but these will hopefully be changed over to new names sometime soon.

[edit] Foo stubs or Foo-related stubs?

Many categories still have the older form "Foo-related stubs". WP:WSS is in the process of changing these over to the now accepted form of "Foo stubs". All new categories should avoid the use of the term "-related".