Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting

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For creation of stub types, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals.

The same page is for discussion of the hierarchy of stub categories.

Archives material is available here by date of cleanup: February 2005, February 15, 2005, March 2005, May 2005, June 2005, March 2006, and September 2006.

Contents 1 Is stub sorting really necessary? 2 Which stub should I use? 3 {{diplomat-stub}} 4 Bored stub sorter looking for something new? 5 WARNING STUBS 6 Biography sorting 7 Victory! 8 Size of stub "thumbnails" 8.1 30 px examples 8.2 More examples: Flags at 25 px height 9 Cat:overpopulated stub categories 10 {{Struct-stub}} and all its child-struct-stubs → {{Structure-stub}} &c. 11 Instantnood and "Hong Kong" stub hierarchy issues 12 All hands to the pump! 13 Main geo-stub category 14 Am I on drugs? And if so, are they the right ones? 15 Multi-stubbing rogues' gallery 16 Project directory 17 Wikipedia:WikiProject Anti-Stub 18 Splitting the WSS list page 18.1 Proposal for new index format 18.2 A possible compromise option 18.3 Bot-generated mirror pages available: please comment 19 {{US-mall-stub}} 20 Bio-stubs? 21 Categorytree 22 A little help for us mid-level tinkerers 23 Stubs and categories 24 {{HeBible-stub}} 25 NO {{stub}} ARTICLES 26 Bio-stub 27 Stub thumbnail size, part two 28 WikiProject Munich stub templates 29 Virtual classroom 30 How many stub cats do we have? 31 {{Stubbed user}} 32 Cat:Stub templates 33 Forced sort works with categories but not stubs? 34 Wikiproject links on stub templates 35 Odd problem win NZ-geo-stubs

[edit] Is stub sorting really necessary?

If any of you ever wonder about the usefulness of sorting stubs, this article might convince you: [1] ... And now, back to work. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 14:03, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

• Nice one. It's funny that the guy just before you removed exactly one superfluous category, but didn't notice the fifteen stub tags. Piet 14:09, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
• Haha. Priceless. And look at the redundancy. It makes my poor brain hurt. --TheParanoidOne 20:41, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

• Ha! that's pathetic, check this out. That's right 10 stubs. Martin 21:29, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

This list pretty much demonstrates one of the reasons why Scandinavians refer to this conflict as the Great Northern War. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 22:08, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

• I realise I've probably mentioned this one before, but I still find this an entertaining use of stub templates. Grutness...wha? 23:38, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Another brilliant application of the WP:IAR "policy"... as far as anyone can tell, at least. Alai 07:49, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
• Stub sorting and stub categories make no sense. When I write a Wikipedia essay on this topic, that will be its title. Stub sorting is a kludge, a huge waste of resources. There has to be a better way, and I think that there is... GregorB 22:37, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
  • You'd prefer it, maybe, if all 400,000 stubs were in one unsorted category? Or perhaps you'd prefer it if stubs were automatically marked with whatever permanent categories they have (thus consigning all uncategorised stubs to some form of limbo)? or perhaps allowing anyone to pick their own automatic stub name and category, thus creating hundreds of parallel categories with fractionally different names? Sure, stub-sorting is very labour-intensive, but no-one has come up with a better system that actually does the job as well as manual sorting. Grutness...wha? 00:13, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Which stub should I use?

I wish to start new articles about some my favorite television sports commentators. I am looking for appropriate stubs to use for articles about the following types of people: "play-by-play announcers or color commentators (basketball, golf, etc.)"; "television sports pundits or experts; sports-related talking heads, etc"; "sports columnists and journalists". If no specific stubs exist, I'll just use a general "Broadcaster" or "Television personality" stub. Thanks!--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 11:48, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] {{diplomat-stub}}

I just created this per a discussion a while ago, but I've no idea where to put it other than in Cat:Diplomats - including on the list of stub templates. Someone else care to step in here? Aelfthrytha 21:23, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bored stub sorter looking for something new?

User:Draicone/WikiProject Reference Help is a project Draicone is starting to get citation and reference tags properly sorted. There's a byzantine maze of citation templates, which most editors may not remember but which will help a lot in getting referencing up to scratch. Anyone bored? - David Gerard 23:10, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I've mainly been working on uncategorized articles lately. It's the same sort of thing, just with non-stubs rather than stubs. There isn't much I've found to do until we get the next database dump. Crystallina 18:32, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

It's getting to be a long wait, isn't it? There's still a number of things pending at /P, but in a lot of cases it's getting hard to sort the wheat from the chaff without more recent info. Alai 04:00, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

And here it is...with definite progress, too! Crystallina 19:55, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WARNING STUBS

There are currently 137 uncatogorized stubs. I'll help to fix that, but any help would be apretiated, -Royalguard11(Talk)(Desk) 03:10, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

How about an update? The total is now a whoping TWO HUNDRED TEN STUBS That's 210. -Royalguard11(Talk·Desk) 03:24, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

yeah, I mentioned that at the bottom of this page a couple of hours ago :) Grutness...wha? 03:41, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Biography sorting

I was just looking for Polish Biography stubs.Theyare all sorted by FIRST name, not LAST name. So if you don't know the first name it's very difficult to find.

How can this be corrected? There shoulb be some bot that would do this. I haven't checked other categories but assume the same problem exists.

Syrenab 19:21, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Stub sorting already wastes too much time and resources, sorting by surname will use a disproportionate amount more. Martin 19:26, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, I understand that it takes too much time to go back to old stubs. But how can this problem be avoided in future, on new stubs?

Syrenab 14:02, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

There isn't currently a system set up to handle a sortkey for last names and such. I believe it's been discussed before and it's been pretty well decided that it's more of a hassle than it would help. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 15:50, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

At the risk of opening up another can of worms, I think it'd be possible to change the coding of bio-stub templates (each on an individual basis) to sort by the second "word" of the article title, rather than the first. (Better would be the last word, but given the lack of suitable parser functions, it'd take a pretty ugly hack to implement that.) Alai 06:55, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Why not do this the same way as categories are done - give the stub template a parameter, then use it as a sort key? I've done this for {{rpg-bio-stub}}, and it works well enough. Percy Snoodle 10:09, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Because it would mean wasting hours of time adding parameters to existing stubs, just to make them slightly easier to find, plus they would never all get done, because most people will forget to add the parameter, and then we will have a mixture of sorted by first and second name, which will be even worse. Martin 10:23, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how a solution which, granted, will only be partially implemented, is worse than a hardcoded surname-detection hack which can't be corrected when it fails. Percy Snoodle 09:19, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Victory!

We've gotten rid of the backlog of uncategorized stubs. As of the time I'm posting this, there are only 17 uncategorized stubs. We should try to keep up at this pace. Toonmon2005 01:30, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

This is about the level the main stub category is normally at - the only reason there was such a backlog is that a bot has been hunting for untagged stubs lately. Grutness...wha? 05:37, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Size of stub "thumbnails"

Isn't there a standard for the size of those stub thumbnails? Right now, on Mummy 3, there are 3 stub templates, one with a 40 px pic, one with 32 px and one with 30. The templates could be edited when/if a standard for image size exists... --Azertus 16:14, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I believe the "standard" size is 30px. I've corrected those 2 templates. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 16:29, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

There isn't a standard, due to the fact that the icons are all different shapes - but in practice anything from 30-40px is used, with larger numbers for horizontal icons like flags and smaller ones for vertical icons like towers. 30px is often too small to really show what an icon is - I tend to use 36px for a lot of icons. Grutness...wha? 23:58, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I think ideally there would be a standard height, as Grutness alludes to. (Probably 25 or 30px.) But as far as I know, it's only possible to specify the width directly -- something to bug the devs over, shouldn't be hard to do. So what I tend to do is tweak it until it's a) not outrageously over-deep, and b) looks somewhat like what it's supposed to look like. Obviously choosing graphically clear icons in the first place is a useful ploy. Alai 06:28, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

It is a bit tricky, but I think there is a way to create a standard image size, e.g.:

[[Image:Flag of Denmark.svg|9999999999x35px| ]] and

[[Image:Flag of Latvia.svg|9999999999x35px| ]]

gives:

and

See? Both images have the same height. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 10:20, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Nifty! I suggest we do exactly that, then. 30px at the most, though. Any other bids? Alai 11:22, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I was just trying to make it extra obvious. 30px sounds like a good idea. The only problem I can see is the flags. A fixed height will give them a very different look, and 30 px will be fine for most image, but will make the flags look pretty dominating. On the other hand, I wouldn't like to shrink Pegship's icons more than they already are (30px in length for the movie icons).

[edit] 30 px examples

(Physics-stub)

(Scientist-stub)

(Economist-stub)

(Tolkien-stub)

(UK-stub)

[edit] More examples: Flags at 25 px height

If the flags were changed to 25 px, that would give this result:

(UK-stub)

(Latvia-stub)

(Germany-stub)

(Denmark-stub)

So as I see it, the only problem is the flags. {{Physics-stub}} needs cleaning up, btw! Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 15:36, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

• I failed to take account of the various 2:1 ratio flag images. What about (a maximum of) 40x30px, then? Possibly even 35x30px. Alai 18:51, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea about a standard height, if only we can fix the flags somehow. Perhaps we should simply specify a standard height for all non-flag images and a standard length for all flags? We'll probably have to do something clever about Switzerland, the Vatican and Nepal later. This would avoid the problem of some of the -geos suddenly stubbed with three templates using flags of different length. Different heights for flags looks much less odd than different lenghts. Just my 2 cents Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 20:43, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't the above suggestion do that? At least for any flag that's no more "square" than 4:3. Alai 20:54, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Reading it a second time, I guess it would. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 21:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

FWIW, I've always used a standard length of 40px for flags - the only ones that are a problem that way are those which are close to square (for which I usually use 30px, though I neglected to do so recently on the Niger-geo-stub) - IMHO the 50x25 flags are uinnecessarily large. Grutness...wha? 23:01, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Agree. This is why I suggest a standard length for flags and a standard height for other images. But I'm open to suggestions. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 07:01, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I just have a strong instinctive aversion to case analyses when they don't appear to be necessary. Why make flags a special case? Could we simply say "no larger than either 40x25 or 30x30"? Actually, I'd probably prefer 35x25: flags are just about the last things to need extra size for clear identification: that's rather the whole point of them. (With one or two unfortunate exceptions.) Alai 17:14, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I was thinking about having a standard flag length of e.g 30 px (or 35px) while giving all other images a standard 30px height. I wasn't arguing for bigger flags. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 18:46, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting you were, I'm just a bit puzzled why we'd want to have one "rule" for flags, and one "rule" for everything else. Various other images will have aspect ratios similar to flags, after all. Alai 22:00, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

The only reason is that a lot of -geo articles are stubbed with a number of national templates each using a flag. I just think it looks really really horrible seeing three or four flags next to each others having grossly different lengths. I am a bit inspired by the system used in front of the UN building where all flags have to use the same proportions as it makes the countries look more equal. In this case, the same length would probably do the trick. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 22:24, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

The UN system is actually a massive kludge that many of the nations involved don't actually approve of that much (and very few if any vexillologists do) - they simply make every flag the same dimensions, irrespective of the actual specificiations of each country's flag design. On Wikipedia it would create an extra problem to do that, since we'd need to make a whole new set of icons of identical dimensions. As far as what to do with the flags, I'd suggest making all of them except the four problem dimensions (Vatican, Switzerland, Niger, Nepal) have a length of 36 px - 36 allows for tribands and bicolours to have good hard-edged images, which 35 doesn't). With the other four, 30px would make sense (they'd be 30x30, 30x30, 30x27 and 30x40 respectively). Grutness...wha? 00:13, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

V., why is this any different from having three or four photographs, or other images with different widths? I'm not asking why we want a "rule"; I'm asking why we'd want a rule with built-in exceptions (and even exceptions to the exceptions). G., I'd be happy to stipulate to 36px rather than 35, but I'm not at all keen on creating 40px high images, for flags or otherwise. On the whole I'd still favour my earlier suggestion (or some similar bounding box or short list of possible bounding boxes), both on the basis of relative uniformity, and on results. I'd have no strong opinions either way about which image, and hence aspect ratio, to use for any given flag. Alai 03:19, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Note that my comments were for flag length, not height. I feel that the comments about keeping the length of flags as consistent as possible is preferable to making them all a set height. I've no objection to having a minimum/maximum range rather than a set figure, though having several fgas of different sizes does look a bit rough. Grutness...wha? 05:19, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

"Portrait" images that use an initially-reasonable-looking width, and end up with an excessive height are exactly the problem with this approach though, and made no better by having one standard for "flags" and one for "everything else". Anyhoo, my "bounding box" suggestion would have the net effect of making the vast majority of flags, with a typical range of aspect ratio, have the same length, without making a separate rule (with separate exceptions, and still ending up with oversized icons). The "range" was only for images with a different aspect ratio, not for arbitrary variation from case to case. Then again, on second thoughts, perhaps it might be just as well to use (something like) 36x30 for everything, No Matter What. Flags of radically different aspect ratios are going to look "wrong" when lined up, no matter what. You should also consider the aspect that if you make flags a special case, 'everyone else' will want one, too. Alai 06:27, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

...which would mean a lot of stretched or squashed images (and not just flags), which people would come along and fix irrespective of what "rules" we try to impose. Mind you, I wonder if we're really making more instruction-creep and work for ourselves where no problem really exists. We haven't had actual numbers for size before now, but have gone ahead and changed image sizes when they are obviously too big or too small. What's wrong with carrying on in exactly the same way? It isn't just flags that are the problem here, BTW - have a look at the icons used on some of the Australian WikiProject-related stubs and imagine how big the icon on Perth-stub, for instance, will be at 30px height. Grutness...wha? 06:44, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Stretched, how so? Remember that it doesn't change the aspect ratio of the image, it does a constrained resize to the "tighter" fit. They'd also be squashed if they were either too detailed, or too "portraity", both of which are bad ideas anyway, so the ideal "fix" in such cases is to get a more suitable image. At any rate, the objective isn't 100% "compliance" (is anything on WP:STUB?), but a reduction in the number of jarring clashes (which "we" get blamed for, of course), and of doing so in as simple a manner as possible. I know people are quick to call us Evil Processist Trolls, but all the above applies whether or not we're guidelineifying this; come to that, even if it doesn't get beyond this talk page, I'd like to think that all the people going from here to "fix" icons were "fixing" them in a way that was consistent, and made some sort of sense. Perth-stub would get about 3% wider (and hence, 3% higher) under my suggestion above: is that a problem in some way that's not clear to me? Alai 15:36, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cat:overpopulated stub categories

After long threatening, I've now split out the above from what's now Cat:very large categories. The latter has suffered progressive drift in meaning (if not an outright semantic coup), and now claims these are "very large by design", which is expressly not the case for stub types. It might still be worthwhile also having a separate Cat:stub categories requring diffusion, as this might be better suited for stub categories that are unlikely to need much in the way of further (direct) subcats, but do need frequent re-sorting, such as Cat:people stubs and Cat:American people stubs -- both currently very large again, btw -- as well as Cat:stubs itself. Alai 06:07, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] {{Struct-stub}} and all its child-struct-stubs → {{Structure-stub}} &c.

Have proposed at SfR, fyi. - CrazyRussian talk/email 14:56, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Instantnood and "Hong Kong" stub hierarchy issues

I note that User:Instantnood is on one of his "Hong Kong is not part of China" kicks (insofar as the previous one can be said to have ended), in particular as regards to the stub hierarchy. See [2] [3], [4], [5], [6] and [7] I'd welcome some additional input, rather than immediately getting into a revert war, or kicking this up to ANI or measures under his existing probation. Alai 16:26, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Don't put your words in my mouth. Hong Kong is, as according to its constitutional document, "an inalienable part of the People's Republic of China". Demonstrate you have the most basic familiarity, or else don't come up with your own conclusion. — Instantnood 21:40, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] All hands to the pump!

Cat:Stubs is back over the 200-stub mark... Grutness...wha? 00:24, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Which is light relief compared to Cat:people stubs and Cat:American people stubs, no...? Alai 02:36, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

You do know that by "all hands to the pump!" Grutness means that we all need change those articles' {{stub}} tags to something more fitting to their bases (like {{stub}} to {{film-stub}} or to {{bio-stub}}). The only reason (s)he says that is because the articles are less likely to get expanded by people who know what they are doing if they are just in Cat:Stubs (meaning if there are bio articles there, you are definately less likely to expand them than if they are in Cat:People stubs). Cbrown1023 02:45, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorting stubs? What a concept. Alai 03:22, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Ha-ha, but I was just trying to point out that Cat:Stubs is the only stub-category that is only the jurisdiction of WP:WSS, the others are the jurisdiction of WP:WSS and one or more other WikiProjects. Cbrown1023 03:53, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Where "jurisdiction" typically means a vague sense of entitlement and ownership, whether or not they bother doing any of the effort of re-sorting them, in my experience. (The term "scope" might be a little more neutral.) I don't see how that's pertinent, or otherwise how a two-listings-page stub type is ever worse than a 12-page ones. Alai 05:03, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah - basically without sorting, Cat:stubs will just grow and grow - if there's only a handful of stubs there's not much effort emptying it, but once it gets up to the 200 mark it needs more stern attention from WP:WSS. Oh, and it's a he, BTW Grutness...wha? 04:46, 10 October 2006 (UTC) (a.k.a. James :)

Side note: Please if you can help it try to find something more specific than {{bio-stub}} - that category got huge in a short amount of time. Crystallina 13:06, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Main geo-stub category

I've attempted to clean up the wording at the top of the main Cat:Geography stubs to be clearer and lower maintenance. Before it simply listed a large number of (but nowhere near all) the geo-stub types. If anyone can think of a way to simplify it still further, it'd be good - in any case, I'd like a few comments, positive or negative, on the new look. Grutness...wha? 00:09, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• Why don't we get rid of the exceptions, or as many of them as would be sensible, by creating redirects from what-they're-exceptions-to? I agree that we should keep these summaries as simple as possible: having to scroll down a category pages multiple times to get to the actual contents is a tad vexing. Alai 21:13, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Not a bad idea... that would get rid of a few of them anyway. Grutness...wha? 23:23, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Am I on drugs? And if so, are they the right ones?

Could someone have a look at User:Alai/Psychoactives -- which is a list of all the pharma-stubs which are hypnotics, sedatives, opioids, stimulants, anxiolytics, antidepressants, antipsychotics, alkyl nitrites, psychedelics, dissociatives, deliriants, mu-opioid agonists, semisynthetic opioids or mood stabilizers (according to their permcats). I've already attempted to sort these by bot into the new Cat:psychoactive drug stubs, and had most of them reverted by a user who was less than communicative about what he was up to. Some indication of whether these need to be re-sorted by hand, or just re-stubbed as-was would be useful. Alai 03:56, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd be useless. I don't know my aspirin from my tylenol, sorry, Goldenrowley 22:06, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Multi-stubbing rogues' gallery

I checked the numbers of stubs tagged with more than one tag (or more precisely, in more than one category), and here's how it looks.

+----------+----------+
| num_tags | count(*) |
+----------+----------+
|        2 |    83797 |
|        3 |     9102 |
|        4 |      872 |
|        5 |       99 |
|        6 |       18 |
|        7 |        5 |
|        9 |        1 |
|       15 |        1 |
+----------+----------+

In case you're wondering about the fifteen... [8]. Other than that, doesn't seem too bad, really. Alai 21:19, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Not bad at all, though the 7 and 9 are also a bit of a worry - have you fixed them too, and if not, what are they? Grutness...wha? 22:23, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Here they are:

+--------------------------------------+----------+
| article                              | num_tags |
+--------------------------------------+----------+
| Peace_and_Security_Council           |       15 |
| Jacob_Esterline                      |        9 |
| List_of_Celts                        |        7 |
| National_Computer_Camps              |        7 |
| Newfoundland_in_Fiction              |        7 |
| Oregon-California_Trails_Association |        7 |
| Treaty_of_Paris_(1814)               |        7 |
+--------------------------------------+----------+

If anyone wants to review the 6s (or the 5s, or the 4s), I'll upload those off-page. Alai 22:27, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

One good thing about the rogue 15 is it shows us a couple of non-standard-sized flag icons (which I'll fix). Grutness...wha? 22:30, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that's got rid of the worst of the multistubbing. Might be worth running that check every month or so... Grutness...wha? 00:27, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

It won't be any more often than every db dump, which currently could be every fews days, or every few months... Other than that, I can run it any time I remember/am reminded. Alai 01:43, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

This may sound stupid, but why does it matter if articles are double tagged as stubs, if the tags are different. It is actually helpful because it gives different people a chance to access them. That's only if they're completely diff... there shouldn't be a {{bio-stub}} and a {{US-bio-stub}}. Do other double-tags matter? (by double I mean multi) Cbrown1023 01:50, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

If done to excess it's a pain, since for one thing, 15 tags, and 15 stub categories look completely ridiculous, and increases the amount of booing from the sidelines. For another, it's counterproductive to sorting effort if a stub is "overreported" in multiple stub categories, and ends up having to be re-sorted in several of them. Broadly I'm in favour of tagging something with everything related to its primary notability, and have help "drift" the language on WP:STUB in that direction, but as with everything, there's a point of dimishing returns. Alai 03:56, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree - there's nothing wrong with double or triple stubbing something, and 4x is okay on occasions, but anything beyond that just ends up with a mess in the bottom of the article. it's very rare that a stub article really needs huge numbers of stub categories - the one which had 15, for instance, didn't lose much at all as far as categorisation was concerned by being reduced to one stub type. Most of the sevens reduced to two or three very easily, too. Grutness...wha? 04:52, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 14:21, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:WikiProject Anti-Stub

Don't worry - it's not an anti-WSS group! I came across this while looking for illegitimate stub templates - looks like a good scheme, but how come we haven't heard of it before? Grutness...wha? 22:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

From the looks of it, it's very inactive. The most recent project talk post for it was April 16. I'm not counting the project directory post, since that has been posted on all projects and isn't by a member or someone trying to help the project. What's the tag or template for deleting projects? I can't remember. I think the members of it should be notified first, then if there is no objection...the project should be removed. It was a good idea, but it simply doesn't appear to be that interesting in the long run. People that know enough about certain topics do improve stubs, a project isn't needed for it. RobJ1981 22:47, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Shame. Sounded like a good idea. The deletion process page you're looking for is WP:MFD - the right tag will be listed there somewhere. Grutness...wha? 23:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Splitting the WSS list page

I wasn't fully aware of this page when I changed Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types to use transclusion rather than one enormous page; I just mentioned it on its talk page. (It is now in the history[9]) It seemed to me as a reasonable thing to do, but apparently I was too bold. Anyway, the problem I tried to address is the fact that the SS/ST page is so big that it is hard to handle. Someone complained that he can't even load the page without crashing his browser. I was going to mention that my browser doesn't like the page either when I saw that I wasn't the only one. The only disadvantage that I could think of is that interested WPSS editors need to watch the transcluded pages as well as the main page. The advantage is that non-WPSS editors would be able to opt for only seeing one section rather than the whole pile, which is a heavy load for both the wikipedia servers and the editor's computer. I know for my part that I avoid looking at the WPSS/ST page because it is so slow. It is easier to just add {{stub}} to a stub and let someone else sort it out. Han-Kwang 22:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't doubt that you have good intentions, but this issue should really have been taken up with WP:WSS first. Feel free just to use {{Stub}} and let us do the rest, that's why we're here. I do however believe that this was a pretty bad idea since it is already a terrible mess maintaining just one page. It will be next to impossible doing so if this material is split over multiple pages, since some entries turn up in two lists. We know from experience that in such cases both entries aren't always updated at the same time, and this problem will only get much worse by splitting the page. It will also mean that we will have to keep more pages free from vandalism and the addition of non-approved material (WP:WSS/ST is only intended for templates and categories actually approved by WP:WSS, but some editors ignore this and add oddly-scoped/-formed material we'll have to clean up later.) Multiple lists have been suggested before and - so far - rejected. A second problem is - as far as I can see - that your list presumes that template names and category names are identical. This is sometimes the case, in other cases not. Thirdly, this page has no links meaning that it is not possible to use our easy "spot-the-redlink" method of maintaining the page. The fork page is currently listed on Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types index. What I've written above are my own thoughts on this matter, but I'd love to see more input on this one. Regards. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 22:51, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Valentinian on this, and for pretty much the same reason. It's pretty hard to keep track of the information as far as updating it is concerned when it's on one page - splitting it over several will make that task far harder. Also the whole purpose of creating this page initially was to have an untranscluded page showing all the stub types - transcluding it defeats that purpose. admittedly, the page was created when there were far fewer stub types, but the same idea basically holds. I will admit that the current page is pretty cumbersome (especially for folks on dail-up like myself), but this isn't a particularly good way of splitting it - though I too am certain your intentions were good, and I'm sorry I went ballistic when I discovered what had happened! Grutness...wha? 23:06, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Valentinian, you address several points here.

1. Mere mortal editors are apparently not expected to try to find the right stub type themselves. I personally find that a strange approach in Wikipedia, but if the WPWSS members are really happy with it... But at least mention it explicitly on [[Category:Stubs]] and WP:Stub so that I don't need to feel guilty when I put a {{stub}} tag on an article.
2. Is it convenient or not for WPSS members to have the sections transcluded from separate pages? I see your point. However, given the growth rate of Wikipedia, I doubt that you will be able to sustain this method for more than one or two years (see Wikipedia:Modelling Wikipedia's growth). The HTML is already almost a megabyte now, a factor 3 bigger than one year ago.
3. Is an index page without links a good thing to have? I didn't spend much time on it; I wrote a perl script to generate a lightweight page with the idea of improving the script if it turned out to be useful, or possibly removing all the bare text and just leave the links to the stub-type sections. One could even turn the script into a bot to do this automatically on a daily basis.

Han-Kwang 23:19, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

1. Valentinian makes no such point as this. If you read what he actually says, which is "Feel free just to use {{Stub}}", that carries a totally different implication. If you can't use WSS/ST, there are other ways of obtaining the same information, and you're not precluded from creating others, and so far as I know none of them require immortality, or some other blithely supposed sort of elitism or "ownership". But if all else fails, the wiki won't collapse just because some people use stub, some or all of the time.
2. The main problem I foresee with transclusion is breaking automatic updates. At the very least, a change in page structure should be run past the person doing the legwork of the updates, which is Conscious. If doing so would break the script irreparably, or increase the burden of updating multiple pages to the point where no-one can or will actually do it, then I'd much rather have updates, than restructuring. I've found him to be very helpful and open to suggestions, though, so perhaps he can facilitate this.
3. I don't see much harm in an index page; on the other hand, I don't see much benefit to it at present. It's the stub template that people need to actually find, and an unlinked, abbreviated list of the categories gives only the vaguest indication of this. If the main page does get split, or a split "fork" of it is created, then I could see the value of the point of something like this, though once again there's the burden-of-update issue. Alai 20:30, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Re 3, I could write a bot to generate "split" pages automatically from the master version on a regular basis. Then everyone can be happy: the maintainers of the main Stub types page have everything in a 500 kB page source, and people like me and Aceslead who just want an efficient way to find an appropriate stub template can use the derived page. How about that? Han-Kwang 21:16, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd be happy with any solution that both preserves feasible updating of the counts, and gets the info accessible in page sizes within sane sizes: whether that be a single page, updated from User:Conscious/Subpage, and then split and mirror as you suggest; or a modification of same to update split transcluded page in the first page. Ultimately I suspect the latter route will be necessary, since the number of types will grow indefinitely, and it's clearly problematic if a single page does so. Alai 23:02, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Why does vandalism trumps user access? As I mentioned at the beginning of the comments, that were clearly ignored, my browser crashes every time i go to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types.--aceslead 18:01, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

If we're going to over-simplify to that sort of trite summary, "why should ancient browsers trump other people's stated preferences, and manifest issues of maintainability?" Alai 20:30, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

i have Firefox 2.0--aceslead 21:19, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, wrong diagnosis on my part, same basic syndrome: strike "ancient", insert "bleeding edge". Alai 22:23, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

i had the same problem before i updated.--aceslead 00:14, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I've tried five configurations (covering two OSs and four different rowsers), and the page size doesn't cause any problem for me. WP:SIZE has been progressively tweaked to downplay (and now more or less eliminate) mention of browser problems as any sort of constraint on page size, as opposed to style consideration: if you can't resolve your browser issue locally, you might want to flag it up there, or at the technical section of the village pump, as a problem, lest it be a problem for others too. FYI, at the time of the last db dump there were 213 pages longer than /ST, some of them very much so, so your difficulty may not be localised to this one page. Alai 06:39, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal for new index format

OK, second try for a script. This time in my own sandbox space. See User:Hankwang/sandbox/stubindex. What do you think? It should be little effort to change it into a bot that runs on a daily basis. As I said above, this should make everyone happy. Han-Kwang 22:31, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

First observation: This version is definitely much better than the first. The use of the template names rather than the category names is a big plus. In some examples, a template name might not be completely obvious (e.g. footy = European-style football) but that one sounds pretty impossible to fix. I don't know if you've noticed it, but it seems to me like your script doesn't like non-English characters; e.g. I noticed the incorrect "Ã…land-stub" rather than {{Åland-stub}}, "SørTrøndelag-geo-stub" instead of {{SørTrøndelag-geo-stub}} and "Neuchâtel-geo-stub" instead of {{Neuchâtel-geo-stub}}. This problem affects both the French, Scandinavian and Czech material (e.g. {{Košice-geo-stub}}). On the positive side, it does sound a lot more appealing to have a bot do this kind of work automatically. The thought about more manual work and the use of category names were my two main problems with the first draft. Unless Conscious says anything to the contrary, I still believe we should keep the original WP:WSS/ST list in one piece to avoid any unexpected problems with that page. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 01:54, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Might not be a problem with the script as such: I found similar problems when trying to copy'n'paste from a terminal window to a wikipedia edit window. Doing so from a Unicode-savvy (UTF-8) editor fixed the problem for me. Alai 06:39, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

BTW: one of the methods I had in mind for finding a stub type is looking through the stub categories themselves (especially with the spiffy new view-as-tree thing). That somewhat presumes one has a reasonable place to start looking, though. (e.g. if you're looking to tag an article on a person, the numerous subtypes of {{bio-stub}} / Cat:people stubs are presumably what you want.) We could facilitate this by creating a list, or indeed a category, of "top level" stub types to start browsing from. (Another is the somewhat shorter -- though ironically, more inclusive, as it also includes the numerous unproposed and unlisted stub types -- list at User:Alai/Stub-counts (which I could at some point move to a more centralised, official-looking location, if anyone's minded).) Alai 06:58, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

---

I have fixed the unicode -- indeed it was my editor which assumed a different encoding. Now I don't completely understand Alai's latest remarks. In the current proposed index page, the section headings link to the full, big index page. I could build the robot to autogenerate pages for the sections (that will be about 12 sections in total), but I don't think that's what Alai means. Assigning every stub type to a stub category means updating some 3000 stubs. Easy enough for a bot, but then we're back to the (perceived) problem that editors could "sneak in" new stub types without an easy way to find out.

Anyway, do we have a consensus that I can write a bot to generate and maintain smaller pages from the main stub types list? In that case I will start a bot registration procedure and expand/test the script. This time in the sandbox until everybody is happy with the details of the format, of course. Han-Kwang 23:24, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

The new version is considerably better, although I'm still not convinced of its worth unless there's some way to make it editable only by script (otherwise there will very quickly become discrepancies between the lists). Oh, and Alai - don't get me started on the new category system that makes it impossible to see subcats in some forms of software. I only have access to a Mac/IE combination sometimes, and the new category system doesn't work at all with that. Every subcat simply appears as an unclickable "[+]" with no accompanying name. Moving your stublist to a more central location might only see other people edit it - but adding User:Alai/Stub-counts to Cat:WikiProject Stub sorting (like I did with the geo-stub splitting pages) might be a reasonable compromise. Grutness...wha? 23:26, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Script-editable-only is impossible, unless you protect the page and give the script admin permissions (not very likely). But my idea was to put a big warning on the generated pages that they will be overwritten on a daily basis, and run the script from a server that is online 24/7. Discrepancies would not survive more than 23:59:59 hours. Han-Kwang 23:33, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

In which case, I tend towards being against the page - warnings don't work, as we know full well from people adding items to the current stub type page despite never having followed the instructions on that page. And whereas now we can at least keep track of any new unproposed stub types that are added to the stub type page, a daily over-writing will make it much harder to find any such templates if they are surreptitiously added to that page. Also, listing the templates without their categories will make it more likely that people will create stub templates without categories. But see below. Grutness...wha? 00:17, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

If you want, I might also generate a page that summarizes all recent non-bot edits to all the autogenerated pages. Of course I don't have months of experience with stub sorting, but aren't you a bit too pessimistic? The purpose of the index page is to find an appropriate stub to put on an article page. You are worried about unwanted side effects, namely (1) additions of unapproved stub types and (2) if an unapproved stub type is added that it will be without a category. Han-Kwang 14:23, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

No offence, but if you did have months of experience at watching the stub type page, you'd now why I'm being pessimistic - on average I'd say we get about 2-3 additions per week to the list that haven't gone through the proposal process: the length of WP:WSS/D (which lists such discoveries) gives some indication of that. Grutness...wha? 21:49, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, but is (2) also happening, and is it a problem in that case? Han-Kwang 23:31, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

It is happening, but to a much lesser extent, and it's less of a problem than it used to be, though still a concern. I'm just worried that it will happen more often if a listing page doesn't have the two things automatically shown next to each other. Grutness...wha? 00:04, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Fwiw, I like the category-tree format myself. At first all the little + signs bugged me, but now I wouldn't part with it. Pegship 22:15, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

HK, I'm not sure I follow what it was you didn't follow. All the (well-formed) stub types are already in a category; by my remark about top-level stub categories just meant creating a list along the lines of Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Top level stub categories -- or else a category Cat:Top level stub categories, say -- containing only those stub categories which are themselves not sub-categories of other stub-cats. The idea being, you could pick one of those, and nav down the category hierarchy until you get something you like the look of. (Grutness, my condolences about your forcible use of IE, but you're in effect no worse than before (other than in "relative information poverty" terms.) I've no objection to the "summary style" mirror (caveated, as you say, with 'please don't update directly, it'll only get overwritten' disclaimers), though it's a little too terse for my tastes. At the very least, I'd like to see template links, and some remnant of the hierarchy left in place in the form of indentation (which would doubtless be somewhere intermediate in size between your page, and G's suggestion). Alai 05:41, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

On the contrary, I'm in a considerably worse position than before. Before, when I opened up a category, I had the names of the subcategories and could click on them to get to the subcategories. Now all I have is a list of [+]s that don't do anything, like the strange column of [+]s further down this page. I can't see any subcategory names, and I can't get at any subcategories. It's a right royal pain in the ass. Grutness...wha? 11:52, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I'd misunderstood what you meant by 'only seeing the +s'. Poor reading comprehension on my part. Is this the case with IE in general? Alai 08:19, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A possible compromise option

One option which might work as a compromise is to strip back the current page considerably by de-linking the templates, redirects, and any child types (but leaving the category and WikiProject links) and removing the size counts. The size counts can probably be handled more effectively via Alai's subpage anyway, especially if that is run by a script (is it?). So, for instance, instead of each line reading something like this...:

• Color stubs *R | *W | {{color-stub}} - <200 on October 14

...it would read simply:

• Color stubs (color-stub) | *R | *W

This would considerably reduce the page's coding without losing any information which isn't fairly simple to find elsewhere - hopefully it would reduce it enough to prevent some of the loading problems that some people are encountering. Grutness...wha? 00:17, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

That would reduce the page size from 1.3 MB to 0.6 MB. (based on 427 bytes/line vs. 205 bytes/line). It helps, but User:Hankwang/sandbox/stubindex is still considerably less with 0.15 MB. Han-Kwang 14:29, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I suppose if the proposal in your sandbox goes ahead we could do both anyway. Dropping the main page down by 55% of its size sounds a pretty good move. Also, since more stubs have redirects than WikiProjects, it's likely the cut will be slightly greater than that (though still nowhere near 0.15 Mb). Grutness...wha? 21:49, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

To those involved: please tell me whether you would in principle support a robot maintained by me that generates derived pages from the stub types list. If yes, I will register a bot account and build a sandboxed prototype so that we can discuss the details of the page format without me having to do endless copy/pastes. If not, then I don't think it is meaningful for me to invest time and energy in discussing the details. Han-Kwang 08:57, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

See my comments a section heading and an hrule above. (I also vote for phasing hrules out of talk page markup.) With those provisos, I have no objection to the principle. Alai 08:25, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

The hrule is gone now. :) I have been rather busy with life outside wikipedia lately, but I placed a request here: [[10]]. Han-Kwang 08:51, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bot-generated mirror pages available: please comment

My bot StubListBot (talk • contribs) has now made a successful test run to generate what I originally had in mind. See User:Hankwang/sandbox/Stubindex2. As was requested, the sections are indented to show their place in the hierachy. It links to a number of smaller pages with fully linked categories and stub templates, which are just partial mirrors of the WSS:ST page.

Open issues:

• Alai's request for a Top level stub categories page. I'm still not exactly sure what it means. Would that mean having the a separate page that just lists the first stub category of every section in WSS:ST? Once you find the top-level category, you can follow the links to sub-categories. This is something that could be done manually; the bot would just help to prevent "sneaking in" of unapproved categories.
• A page to check whether anyone tried to add stub templates to the autogenerated index pages. I'd propose to let it be, and if after a month or so it shows from the page history that unauthorized changes are actually being made, I can extend the bot to create a page showing "unauthorized edits".

Could you please comment whether this is acceptable or needs modificiation? Han-Kwang 19:59, 2 December 2006 (UTC) Han-Kwang 19:59, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Anybody there? Han-Kwang 21:09, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] {{US-mall-stub}}

Why is the icon for mall stubs a bridge? Shouldn't it be a mall or something? --Transfinite 01:12, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

that... is a very good question. I've changed it, but a better one would be good. Any suggestions for pictures we can use? Grutness...wha? 01:18, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm looking through Commons, but there isn't a mall category as far as I can see, so I have to do a manual search. I'm hoping to find something that works at that scale. --Transfinite 01:44, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

There's some OK pictures on the mall article, though none from the US. A non-US mall might be a bit better than a US non-mall, though -- who'll ever know at 40px, anyway? Alai 04:11, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Pure carelessness on my part. Sorry about that. Crystallina 03:43, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bio-stubs?

Normally, I'm not in doubt as to the proper use of -bio-stub templates, but regarding this article I must admit to be in two minds ... :) Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 19:43, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I've added that article to Wikipedia:Unusual articles :) Grutness...wha? 22:17, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categorytree

_→AzaToth 12:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

What's the purpose of this? --TheParanoidOne 13:09, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Looks like a demonstration of what a category tree of stub cats would look like...? Pegship 19:19, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

It's the "Why" of it that I'm confused about. --TheParanoidOne 23:21, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Not much of a tree; Cat:stub categories is completely flat. Alai 23:41, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A little help for us mid-level tinkerers

Howdy all! I keep running across references to "db dumps", StubSense, etc. and would like to put together a little list of tools for use in stub sorting. I grasp tenuously the concept of a database dump, but not how Alai uses it for proposing stub types. I have a vague idea of how to use StubSense, but could use something spelled out (in as simple terms as possible). I am crushed that CatScan still cannot use the enwiki copy on the toolserver, but I hope for its restoration...someday...Anyway, anyone have a favorite tool and a brief idiot-friendly description of how to use it? Feel free to add it to my sandbox and I'll doll it up to add to the project page.

Of course, if someone has already done this, please point me to where and ...never mind...Pegship 17:50, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

By db dumps, I mean [download.wikipedia.org these fine fellows], or more specifically in my case, the "page" and "categorylinks" table thereof. Using same basically involves downloading these, using them to build offline copies of the tables in question, and then running SQL queries on those, much as one would on the 'live' database, were that possible for mere mortals. I'm not really in a position to set this up as a web service, so I'm afraid the best I can do is to offer to run such queries by request, where it's possible for me to do so. In particular one thing I can do fairly readily is to upload lists of candidates corresponding to a particular permcat, which are often much too false-positive-ridden to be any use for 'bot-restubbing, but might be handy for AWB users. A summary of the different tools along the lines you mention sounds like a good idea, though while the toolserver is unwell, somewhat moot. Here's hoping, as you say. Alai 04:52, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stubs and categories

I have cross posted this from Wikipedia talk:Categorization.

I have noticed a few users "categorising" articles by simply adding stub tags, (often replacing the {{uncategorised}} tag with a stub for example). Can we formally add a sentence explicitly explaining that a stub tag (or any maintenance tag) does not categorise an article (in an encyclopedic sense), despite the fact that it does add a category.

Please reply at Wikipedia_talk:Categorization#stubs_and_categories. thanks Martin 17:26, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] {{HeBible-stub}}

awfully named. Ideas on renaming? {{tanakh-stub}}? {{hebrew-bible-stub}}? {{Judaism-bible-stub}}? - crz crztalk 17:25, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I've wondered that for a while. Problem is that it's the Hebrew Bible but also the Christian Old Testament, so any name used needs to reflect both. Which, come to think of it, the current one doesn't. Perhaps Tanakh-stub with redirect at OldTestament-stub? Grutness...wha? 21:53, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Tanakh is not quite the same thing as the old testament BTW... see {{Books of the Old Testament}} for the full list of differences - crz crztalk 22:38, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

True - I should have said almost the same. The point is, though, that the template is used to some extent for items mentioned in both the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament. I don't see any way the two could be split from the point of view of stub-sorting. Having both names (perhaps Hebrew-Bible-stub rather than Tanakh-stub) would solve any potential overlap/exclusion. BTW, I don't know how big this category currently is, but if it were to be split, then Torah/Pentateuch would make a likely subcategory. Grutness...wha? 23:13, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

388. Most of these are useless importations from Easton's PD bible dictionary (which is awful) and will eventually be deleted. - crz crztalk 23:19, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NO {{stub}} ARTICLES

As of the time listed below, there were 0 stub articles. All of them have been sorted into categories!!!!

YAY!!!

(I think i'm just happy, There are normally a lot of stubs on that category.)

Tyson Moore es 01:10, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bio-stub

Can some one who knows more about templates than me have a look at this template because there appears to be no articles in the category when yesterday there was 100's if not 1000's. I'm sure not all have been cleared out and the template was changed receently. Waacstats 09:23, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. The articles should be showing up again soon. Slambo (Speak) 12:12, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stub thumbnail size, part two

Hello all. I read the lengthy section above on this issue, but failed to see a consensus on a set thumbnail size. Is there a set standard in practice today or is the size determined on a case-by-case basis? The reason I ask is that I'm planning on standardizing the size of the shields on the WP:USRD stub templates, which right now are anywhere between 30-40px. Regards, TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 19:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think we really reached a consensus. I'd say that as long as the longer axis is around 40 then there'll be no complaints. Since we're talking shields in (mainly) square boxes, a width of 40 is probably fine. One thing I didn't mention in the earlier debate but which i've just thought of, BTW, is that with flags divided into three equal bands 40 can look a little messy, so I'd be tempted to suggest either making them 36 or 42, or keeping a constant height of 21 or 24 (which will make most flags a multiple of three in length). Grutness...wha? 22:52, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Munich stub templates

I have a bunch of templates for Munich-related articles. You can find them on the main page of WikiProject Munich. Kingjeff 19:24, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• I hate to burst your bubble, but were any of these proposed? That's an awful lot of stubs for one WikiProject. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 19:58, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

*Nope. I've been the primary editor on the project so far. There is actually less on this WikiProject then WikiProject Germany. I'm the extreme opposite of a deletionist. So, I'm not going to try and delete any. For anyone who wants to do stub-sorting for my WikiProject, go ahead. And to answer your question, none of them were proposed. I really didn't have anyone to proposed them to. Anyways, a WikiProject of this nature is very broad. So it should be expected to have a lot of stub sorting.Kingjeff 20:59, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• • I really didn't have anyone to proposed them to. That's what Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals is for. Please bring any stub ideas there first before creating them. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 21:03, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm not going to propose them to another WikiProject nor will I let another WikiProject dictate what goes on in WikiProject Munich. Since this is a stub sorting WikiProject, I thought that this project might be interested in helping. Kingjeff 21:07, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Ah, the spirit of cooperation is alive and well on Wikipedia. We're supposed to cooperate with your wikiproject without you cooperating with ours. Good thinking. Grutness...wha? 22:50, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

It's your WikiProject that lacks spirit of cooperation. I've tried to compromise. But you guys are stubborn to the bone. Kingjeff 15:09, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I remember your attempted compromise. We told you how no other wikiproject had more than a couple of stub types and that seven was going to cause you and us too much work, so you offered to change the name of two of them. Meanwhile, we have offered the compromise of creating an overarching stub for your project that covers all the ground that your seven do and more, and also offered you the suggestion of a parameterised WikiProject template which would allow you to categorise as many different types of article as you want in any way you want. Which seems the better compromise solution to the current problems? Grutness...wha? 22:02, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I notice that part of the problem is that when you created this WikiProject, you didn't use the standard WikiProject creation template. If you had, you'd have seen the information relating to stubs and how they should not be created prior to proposal. Mind you, so too do things like WP:STUB, and a wide number of stub categories, such as Cat:Bavaria geography stubs, Cat:German people stubs, and Cat:Germany stubs. it's not as though there are no notices around. Grutness...wha? 23:01, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Forget I even brought this here. I'm starting to find this WikiProject untrustworthy. Kingjeff 23:03, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Virtual classroom

User:The Transhumanist has recently started an interesting project, a "virtual classroom" giving handy tips and quick summaries on how parts of WP work. (S)he asked me to write something for it, so I've written a run-down on how stubs work for it, which can be seen here. Feel free to have a look and make any comments you think necessary, and also if you feel it's worth putting a link to it from pages like WP:STUB, and WP:WSS, feel free to do so! :) Grutness...wha? 01:03, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How many stub cats do we have?

Do we know? I couldn't find a number anywhere, and the stub category is so large counting the pages even with the 200 interval will take a while (and counting subcats would be rather annoying).-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 20:34, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Not sure that anyone knows for certain, and the number changes every day. At a rough estimate, 1600-1800. Grutness...wha? 23:12, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

At the 31st Oct db dump, there were 3485, though some of those aren't "officially" listed (either through omission, or bootleggery). The live db has 17 listings pages in Cat:Stub categories, roughly agreeing with the above. Alai 13:20, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Whee - off by a factor of two! Grutness...wha? 04:29, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks - perhaps we should add those stats to User:Dantheox/Stub percentages?-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 00:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] {{Stubbed user}}

Quite often, when clearing Cat:Stubs, I come across cases where the user has thought it would be a neat idea to put a stub template on their user page. When that happens, I subst the stub then explain on their talk page what I've done. After having written the same explanation a or more dozen times in the last few months, I've finally decided to make a subst'able template to add this information: {{Stubbed user}}. Use it as you wish! Grutness...wha? 01:05, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

When I saw the section header, I thought you might be referring to this. <g> Her Pegship 02:57, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Heeey. I like that! :) Grutness...wha? 05:41, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cat:Stub templates

Just discovered this deletion review debatre. Others may be interested in commenting... Grutness...wha? 04:47, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Note: this category has been sent back to CFD; Deletion Review felt that it was worth seeing if consensus has changed since the very minimal discussion back in March. Please feel free to provide any input on the new deletion discussion, as this touches on an aspect of the Stub Sorting project. -- nae'blis 19:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Forced sort works with categories but not stubs?

I know with categories you can force an article to show up under the right letter by adding a parameter to the category code -- for example [[Category:American horror writers|King, Stephen]] to make it show up under "K" rather than "S". I tried this with a stub (specifically with horror-film-stub on The Aftermath (film)) and it had no effect. Is there a way to do this? --Bookgrrl 22:07, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

This has been discussed many times before, including earlier on this page (I would also suggest going through the archives of this page as well). It's a lot of extra work, not everyone does it, it messes up bot renames, the list goes on. In general, we pretty much avoid doing that. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 23:12, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes - change the coding on all 3500 stub templates, and probably grind Wikipedia's servers to a halt while you're doing it. Which is why it's never been done. Sorry, but until there's an easier way to do this, sort is by title pure and simple. It isn't perfect by a long way, but it saves both coders and probably techs several weeks'-worth of full-time work. Grutness...wha? 23:17, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Since articles are supposed to eventually "grow out" of the stub size, there's little point in investing a lot of energy into making sure the stub categories sort correctly, is there? The same effort could be put into writing a longer article... -- nae'blis 23:20, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

well, it would be nice - it'd make it easier for editors to find the stubs. But it is a lot of work for not much reward, it's true. Grutness...wha? 06:03, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Since it has been discussed many times before, and consensus suggests that for stubs it should be in "article" name order, why not make this an explicit part of the stub sorting instructions/guidelines? I came here today for exacty this information (my preference being LN,FN, for reasons already enumerated) and it was not an easy route to enlightenment. Thanks to those who asked, and those who answered (with their reasons). I will now go forth to help order the wiki--and, as always, hoping not to screw it up myself! RCEberwein | Talk 02:11, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiproject links on stub templates

I've tried again to raise this issue at the stub guideline page; please comment there, if you have any views on this. Alai 02:44, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Odd problem win NZ-geo-stubs

This one's an odd one - I'm not sure what's causing it... I'm busily replacing NZ-geo-stub with the region-specific templates. I started by going through Cat:new Zealand geography stubs, but then realised that, since a lot of the regional templates still feed back into there, it would be easier to work from the "whatlinkshere" of {{NZ-geo-stub}}. The odd thing is that a lot of the articles in that whatlinkshere list, ones transcluded with the template, don't show up in the category. I've no idea why not, but the two attached thumbnails (fuzzy though they are - sorry!) should show you what I mean. Where in the cat is Alfred River, Allen River, Boulder River, Blind River or Aorere River? Since these will soon have different templates, the problem will disappear from these particular articles - but if it's a widespread problem elsewhere it's quite concerning. Grutness...wha? 01:46, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

No idea what's happend but using a null-edit on them worked. Interesting. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 02:04, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Did you make sure to scroll through the entire "what links here" list? I've found that the "what links here" is NOT in alphabetical order. In fact, it's not in any order that I can discern. It's hard to tell from the screen shots if that is the case, but I just thought I'd throw that out there as a possibility. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 02:43, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

That's not the point. There are things in the Whatlinkshere which aren't in the category - and the category is in alphabetical order. None of those I mentioned above was in the category. In fact, I'd guesstimate that 1/4 of those in the whatlinkshere list weren't in the cat. Grutness...wha? 05:05, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

In the past, changes in a template weren't implemented until the article using the template was edited. The updating can be accomplished on an individual article basis by those null edits mentioned by Valentinian. Not very long ago, something changed so that this is no longer necessary, but it takes mayb a couple of hours for the updating to happen.

Whether that is done by the wiki software, or some bot, or whatever, I don't know. But I suspet that what happened in this case is that the last edit to the template is moving it back into the Template namespace after somebody had moved it out. So the software/bot/whatever didn't recognize it as being a change to a template (it started outside of template namespace), so the automatic refreshing wasn't done. I just did a null edit to the template itself; don't know if that will be sufficient. But I strongly suspect that if you do a nearly null edit to the template, something like adding a space, which will show up in the edit history unlike a completely null edit, then come back in a few hours and your articles will be listed in the category. Gene Nygaard 20:34, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I just checked the template's log. Somebody did indeed make an unauthorized move of this template back in September, moving it out of template namespace. This was reverted a few days later. So the lesson seems to be that if ever a template is moved, we have to edit the result as well. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 21:11, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Thaks for that - it's moot as far as this category's concerned anyway - as i said, I'm going through them all subcategorising them - I was just worried it might be happening elsewhere, too. You're right, it could well be the recent attempted move of the template that caused the trouble. Grutness...wha? 21:46, 9 December 2006 (UTC)