Category talk:Stub categories

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See also: Wikipedia:Stub

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[edit] New Stubs to Use

I'm sorting out the stubs, and as I go around sorting, I'm creating several broad stub categories to use to sort stubs. Please be advised before using {{stub}} to check the stub categories before marking your pages as a simple stub. Thanks! - Allyunion 23:40, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Alternatively, check at Wikipedia:Template messages#Stubs (hint, hint) ;) - 23:49, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
Stub categories are updated more frequently than Wikipedia:Template messages#Stubs. (That's because, I end up having to updating both myself.) -- Allyunion 11:29, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, but ideally, Wikipedia:Template messages should be a quick one-stop shop for (almost) everybody's templating needs. So it's important to try and keep it up to date. - 17:52, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
Isn't there a category for list-stubs? LISTDEV? LISTSTUB. Vaguely remember that these exist... --Tagishsimon
Try Wikipedia:Template messages#Lists. ;) - 17:52, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
Should the University Stub be broadened a little to encompass all education topics (schools, teaching, training etc.)? violet/riga (t) 14:12, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It can be renamed to "Educational stub" instead... - Allyunion 05:39, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
These new stub messages violate Wikipedia:Avoid self-references and should have been discussed first. As for the instruction creep of making us all now categorize stubs when we add a stub message, I suspect a number of people are going to refuse. Besides, all this work will be wasted once it is possible to limit search results by category. Then we can use boolean operators on category tags that are already there (Category:science and Category:Stub = Category:Science stubs). anthony (see warning) 14:42, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The database is already slow, and there are well over 500 pages that use the general stub template. Pardon me by saying, the Wikipedia in house search engine is far more ineffective than a Google search on Wikipedia. Additionally, mind I remind you that not all stub pages have the category already? Half those that I looked at which now use the bio-stub tag didn't even have a category for people, let alone marked as a stub either -- some of them were one liners, so I marked them as substubs. So are you suggesting that we leave the stubs unsorted, when it would be better to have them sorted? I'm only following up an idea already started. This is certainly not a new idea, from what I'm looking at the history. There was the use of a tag called "stublist" which I somehow don't see on the template page anymore, but it still exists. As it stands now, there isn't a good way to look at the current stubs. Plus, there are people who are generally knowledgable in a certain aspect as opposed to other
categories. Why was their time in trying to find stubs even if you have a search engine working? I'd say it's a lot easier to just move the stubs out of general stub category into a specific one. I think this was one of the reasons "substub" was created -- because the general stub tag was overused. Excuse me for trying to clean up the Wikipedia's stubs. There's far more junk in the Wikipedia than you don't know about -- sorting it into specific categories only helps to clean it up. If you feel all the templates I recently added are worthless just because they violate the "Avoid self-reference" policy, please go ahead and list them on the tfd page and go back to revert my changes. -- Allyunion 05:39, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
By the way, Ssd was the one who added the bio-stub tag on 25 Jul 2004. Mike Storm created the substub tag on 20 Jul 2004. The content in Wikipedia changes quite rapidly -- you, as a long time user, no doubtly already know this. On 6 Jul 2004, Patrick wrote this into the policy page on self references: "Self-references are generally considered acceptable when used in the Template namespace, and these templates are referred to from the main namespace." It was on 30 Jul 2004 when the page was changed to as you see now. To me, what it looks like was that starting on 20 Jul 2004, the people who mostly keep track of substubs started to attempt to offload the stub category by adding substub and bio-stub. My additions of the new stub categories were not discouraged by Ssd nor anyone else until now... plus I am only attempting to follow what other users have just started to do... I just happen to add a lot more categories of stubs than they
did. -- Allyunion 05:59, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Anthony, these categories are redundant. There's no reason why looking for subs in a particular category can't be efficient. This is extremely unlikely to catch on, and will become pointless when categories are upgraded (they certainly will, eventually). ··gracefool |☺ 00:26, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • "As far as geo-stub, hm. Could be useful too, since the Stub category is woefully overcrowded. Still, not sure... --Golbez 15:36, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)" -- Allyunion 06:36, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Oh, one more thing. Thank you for calling me a "instruction creep" on the Village Pump page. That's really nice of you despite my good intentions in trying to organize the Wikipedia. - Allyunion 06:36, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Instruction creep is the slow process of adding more and more instructions for a situation to the point where hardly anyone follows them all (WP:VFD regularly gets accused of this, for example). I doubt it was meant as a personal attack. - 11:00, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

I know I'm not alone in thinking that balkanizing the stub message is simply a dumb idea. Am I to understand that "This X article is a stub" is somehow superior to "This article is a stub?" Such policies—as with PokeStubs—have met with harsh criticism in the past, for numerous reasons, and I personally don't take kindly to this unilateral "advisory." I, for one, intend to go on using the same stub message I've always used. Austin Hair 06:51, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)

I believe that I did start the trend of categorizing stubs. I didn't advertise it at first, because I wanted things to go slow to make sure it got the kinks worked out first. Others have done (IMHO) a good job extending this. Now, just to set the record straight, I hate stubs, and I think the stub messasge needs to be removed from all articles! Of course, ideally, this would be done by making them not-stubs before removing the message. --ssd 07:29, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Most of them are good, but who added a KDE-stub? Surely the compu-stub is good enough? violet/riga (t) 07:45, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I might agree, except that there are 18 articles there as of now. Ideally, someone wil expand all those, and we can delete the category. 8-> --ssd 09:29, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

To summarize what this is all about:

  1. Stub articles need to be expanded; we put the message on the article to remind people of that.
  2. The stub categories serve to give people a place to go when they are looking for something to write.
  3. The main stub category has far too many items in it, so we split it. By splitting it into broad topics, this also allows people to narrow down what to write on.
  4. Yes, when a binary search is available on categories, the split will be redundant, but the split is for database performance more than it is for page size, although both are important.
  5. When any category reaches 2000-4000 items, it is past time to split it further! This goes for the *-stub categories too! But oversplitting is not good either.
  6. It is not necessary to change the generic stub message when making a new stub category; however, since we have to make a new template to change the category name, why not customize the message too?

Does that make sense? --ssd 07:29, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Makes sense to me... does that mean standing policy will be changed to reflect that is being done? --[[User:Allyunion| AllyUnion (talk)]] 11:10, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In response to Allyunion regarding the stub template getting to big, I would suggest using a dedicated Wikipedia page or pages rather than the article space to do this work. Perhaps a new stub message (without the category tag) could be made for stubs which are already categorized on that page. Then people who want to look for uncategorized stubs can simply look in the original stub category and move them from there. If instead you want to create new categories for categorizing articles according to whether or not they are a stub, such categories should go on the talk page, not in the article space. The average reader doesn't care to see this information. anthony (see warning) 12:37, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Really, this hilights some of the major flaws in the category system. There is currently no way to combine a category view (Science and Stub) other than manually (create a Science Stubs category). Also, of course, having lots of entries in a category shouldn't slow the database any more than splitting those entries into multiple categories. If that's happening there is a serious design flaw in the category system. anthony (see warning) 12:37, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Question: Is there some way to make the stub template special? Like, redesign the stub tag such that it would automatically insert itself as a stub but list it on a category page or something? --[[User:Allyunion|AllyUnion (Talk)]] 06:53, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] More Stub Categories

The following is a list of suggestive categories. I'm not bothering to create them at the moment, however if anyone sees a need, go right ahead. Please feel free to tack on to the list. --[[User:Allyunion| AllyUnion (talk)]] 12:07, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Biology
  • Chemistry
  • Computer Games / Video Games
  • Entertainment
  • Games
  • Horology
  • Politics
  • Religion
  • Technology
  • Media

I've added several sports-related stub categories in the last few days:

  • Baseball
  • Basketball
  • Ice hockey
  • Rugby union
  • Tennis

I'm sure we can think of more...  :) Dale Arnett 17:08, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Template expansion problem with this page

When I load this page, it doesn't expand all of the stub templates. Some of them just produce the text [[Template:Metastub]] instead, e.g. Mov-stub, Phys-stub, Writer-stub. PhilHibbs 14:44, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That's because of the fact that it's a template message of a template message of a template message. --[[User:AllyUnion|AllyUnion (talk)]] 11:12, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed: Humor stub

How about creating humor-stub as a type?

Evil Overlord List was in compu-stub (because it is provided on a website). I made it category humor, and template stub. Are there other stubs that could be moved to humor-stub?

Please do not forget to sign your username. Well, please ask yourself, when you were stub sorting, how many articles have you ran into that dealt with humor and/or comedy? If this number is less than 10, don't create the category. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:26, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Sorry about that. I haven't run into many other ones (and I've been doing some sorting in stubs). I found Meta-joke just now. Is anyone else seeing things that would be in Humor-stub if we had one?RJFJR 23:23, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Too many types of stubs

There are now over 200 different types of stubs. Which means that the list no longer fits on one page (which makes it hard to find the correct category to use when sorting).

Can we re-group some of these types? For instance: we have 5 different types of stubs dealing with Hong-Kong. There is an entire stub type for Honorverse...but we don't have one for fiction-stubs for general fiction? (Actually Honorverse-stub has 51 articles). RJFJR 06:46, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

We're in the process of that. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:58, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia:Stub categories, which lists them all. (At least, all of the ones that have been added, which is about as good as listing all of the ones that have been added to this category.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 23:12, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

We wouldn't have so many stubs if some of you overclassifiers and compulsive listmakers would do some real work--and stop clogging up the recent changes list and the watchlists of those who do add things with pointless, over-picky, reclassifications of stubs which also make it harder for someone to find a stub they might be interested in expanding, rather than easier. Gene Nygaard 14:45, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There are currently about 1,900 types of stubs. Need I say Ree-Dee-Cuh-Luhs… --meco 09:39, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What is happening to Mammal stubs?

Why are all the Mammal stubs appearing as articles in this category? I've looked at several of the articles, and they do not have this category listed. There doesn't appear to be anything wrong with the template. What is going on? -- Samuel Wantman 06:42, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Kiwi-stub?

kiwi-stub=New Zealand related articles? How weird is that?*Kat* 08:03, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

"Kiwi is the nickname used internationally for people from New Zealand." Just a little humor in that stub category, I guess. MithrandirMage 16:02, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nascar stubs

Do you think Wikipedia could use it? --Numberonedad 17:15, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New template

Here is a new template that will reduce line of code on stubs with recurring parts: Template:Stub-base.

Does anybody think it is a good idea? --SuperDude 03:43, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Instead

With recurring citations to other stub templates, I have made a new template to reduce line of code as a header for stub categories, anyone wanna try it out? --SuperDude 21:54, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

This already exists in {{Stub Category}}. Where do you forsee your template being used? --TheParanoidOne 22:09, 7 September 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Make a Stub Search

Let's just make a stub search page....that would simplify things a bit.

Or just throw them all out. Or at the other extreme, replace them with "This PAGENAME article is a stub" with a different cute little icon for each and every stub page. Davilla

[edit] keep subcategories but don't let them show up here

I think having many (stub) categories is not that bad, if they are well classified. For example, why don't we change, in the Category:1900s_aircraft_stubs, the line

{ { Stub Category|article=1900s Aircraft...

into

{ { Stub Category|article=Aircraft...

?

As far as I understand, this would simply have the effect of the subcategories not showing up directly in the Category:Stub categories. If there are always roughly 5-10 subcategories that can in such an obvious way be "packed together" into a super-category, everything would be fine. What's wrong with that? — MFH:Talk 20:39, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Not like that, but it could be done by removing the category from {{Stub Category}}, and adding it only to thse categories we wished to appear here. But I don't think that's a good argument for retaining very small stub categories; we don't try to avoid those to keep this category small, but to try to ensure that stub types correspond to handy-sized and highly-related chunks, for the convenience of those likely to be expanding such articles. If stub types are made too narrow, in terms of numbers of existing articles, they're more likely to be overlooked by being "out of sight" from otherwise conceptually very similar topics. What makes sense for categorisation purposes isn't necessarily always desirable for stub-sorting purposes (otherwise the two activities would be essentially redundant, give or take a bit of support code). Alai 19:45, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Which Stub?

I recently created an article on Customs racketeering, but am wondering which stub to mark it with. Temporarilly I put the Law and Politics stub on it, but I have a strong feeling thats the wrong stub. Could somebody look over the article and tell me which stub to use? I'd like any responses to be posted on my user page as I often forget where this page is. Thanks! Socom49 16:12, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category size

Are there any plans on how to reduce the size of this category? Would it be practical to divide it into sub-categories that dealt with what a group of stub categories fall under (e.g. Natural science, political science, etc.)? D Hill 14:16, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I think I like that idea - rather than having thousands upon thousands of stubs, why not "generalize it," it under major categories? I like that idea. --Lord X 23:00, 18 June 2006 (UTC)User:Xinyu
I notice Category:stubs by region already exists. But many (if not all) of its sub-categories are also in Category:stub categories! Also, there should be "Category:stubs by year," with subcats like Category:1930s stubs for all those 1930s, 1940s, etc. stubs. I'd start those categories myself, but I'm not sure if I'd be stepping on anyone's toes... --Eliyak T·C 18:30, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stub: Lobbying

I've started a lobbying stub, {{Lobbying-stub}} and am beginning the sorting procedure. There are so many lobbists/lobbying groups out there there is clearly a need for it (especially since Wikipedia is not as strong in the social sciences).

[edit] How the hell do you search stubs?

How the hell do you search stubs, there is no link on the page. I know it is off wiki, but where? This needs to be added ASAP. RWV 05:07, 4 March 2007 (UTC)