Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria

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This criteria page is going to take awhile to fill out. -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:06, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Is there an article List of famous last words? :) Grutness...wha? 13:53, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Proposing new stubs

New stubs shouldn't be proposed if they won't easily have 100 articles at a minimum. Furthermore, the articles under them should have some potential to be expandable. Even though an article may be short, it does not mean that's it's lacking.--jag123 22:02, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Keeping things organised

Unless anyone objects, I will be moving everything from "New sections and categories" to "Proposed new stubs", since it's outdated and I see no use (if it was useful, it would be updated).

The hierarchy should reflect the current, existing hierarchy. If a new stub is created/deleted, it should be added/removed from the hierarchy immediately.

I don't believe it's necessary to list articles you think should go under your new stub. I think we can all agree that if someone proposes a new stub, it's because they've see a need for it. Perhaps we should agree on a format for proposals, with the name in a header, the purpose/scope clearly stated below, and an estimate of existing articles that would benefit, an expiry date, with the comment section below. Ideally, the scope should be limited to a few lines. If everyone agrees to change the scope, then it should be replaced and not just crossed off. This is simply to keep things organised, so at any time, someone can jump in and see what is being proposed and what it will cover. In addition, proposals should be specific. For instance, the recommendation of state stubs. If a particular state needs a stub, then great, but just because one needs it, it does not mean every state deserves one. The expiry date will allow old or staled discussions to be moved off the page.--jag123 22:02, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] All the stub types

Like me, you may well get fed up with waiting for all the icons and tables to load at Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs when you want to find out which stub to use on a particular article. for that reason, I've added an extra page to my user pages (User:Grutness/Stubs) with a plain-text list of all the stub templates listed as they stand now (00:23, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)). Feel free to amend the list when new stubs are created (but make sure you only list them with SINGLE curly brackets! I don't want my user pages covered in templates!). Also, feel free to advertise this page anywhere where stub sorting is going on. Grutness|hello? 00:23, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

UPDATE: The full plain-text list of stub categories (formerly at User:Grutness/Stubs) is now at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types, complete with links to the templates. Grutness|hello? 08:35, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Substubs

Not sure whether this belongs here or elsewhere(I'm going to cross-post it to Guidelines as well for this reason), but this came up in discussion recently on tfd ater Template:PBS-substub was discovered. The suggestion was made (which I agree with) that substubs should not be subdivided in the same way as stubs.

Substubs seem to fall into four types: dicdefs that should be moved to Wikipedia, scraps of information which should be merged into larger articles, potential vfds that will never amount to anything, and potential articles which should be at the very least expanded into stubs. At some point, some effort from WP:WSS should probably go into sifting through Category:Substubs to work out which ones go where and doing something with them. Those that can be made into proper stubs, all well and good, they can them get changed into whatever subcategory of stub is appropriate. The rest should be dealt with according to their needs. Grutness|hello? 22:56, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've yet to be convinced that there's such a thing as a substub that is a potential article. What's the difference between that and a stub? Why have two words for the same thing, especially as one of them, substub, is also used for things that are candidates for deletion, and even speedy deletion? Let's call any page in the article namespace that is a useful start towards an article a stub. That's what the word used to mean.
The meaning only changed because ages ago some contributors wanted to reduce the standards for stubs, so that things that were previously deletable as substubs ceased to be deletable. Other contributors were unwilling to change the policy to allow this. So we all played word games. For the good of Wikipedia, surely it's time to finish with these. If we're to have no policy as to what is a minimum stub, fine. Let's make that clear. The current situation, where some useful stubs are called substubs and others are just called stubs, is needlessly confusing to everyone. Andrewa 12:58, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
I agree with you 100%, which is why I've been surreptitiously raiding substub for the last three weeks, bailing what I can into the various stub subcategories, and transwiki'ing, vfd'ing and redirecting any which are clearly too pitiful to grow into anything (since I'm at heart an inclusionist, that hasn't been more than about 10-15% of them). We will probably get vfd-obsessive people starting to raid the stub categories if it goes completely, but at least the "substubs" that get into specialist categories will have some opportunity to be seen by any editors who might be able to do something with them, (BTW, Category:Substubs now has fewer than 700 articles). Grutness|hello? 13:22, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree that substub as it is commonly used (a short stub, with short meaning anything under Featured Article status) does not add any value. Unfortunately simply deleting the substub template will not change the fact that there are articles created that are on encyclopedic topics but possess no encyclopedic content. Reading through Wikipedia:Substub, its related talk page, and similiar locations show that one of the major reasons for the creation of {{substub}} was to handle articles that fell into the grey area between speedy delete canidate and meaningful content. It is the defacto use of the category that has rendered substub worthless.
Before removing {{substub}}, we probably need a plan to collect and handle the junk that gets posted to Wikipedia that can not be speedy deleted, but does not deserve the honor of being called a stub. Simply saying that all such items should be sent to VfD probably will not work do to the extra effort required to submit a VfD (three edits, one to a very large page that is slow to load) versus the current system of adding a short tag. This ease of attack is important to consider because the RC Patrol has enough to do already. --Allen3 talk 13:41, May 3, 2005 (UTC)
Why not simply let these items be called stubs? As I said, the people who prowl cat:substub looking for VfD candidates will start prowling cat:stub and its subcategories anyway. And surely putting "substubs" into the stub subcategories will make things easier in many ways. The editors of specific subjects are more likely to know what can be saved and what can't. Because of that, less things will get sent to VfD, but the things sent there will be more likely to be real deletion contenders - rather than getting 50 articles sent to vfd per day with 40% being deleted, only 25 might be sent with 80% of them being deleted. Better all round, really. Grutness|hello? 13:54, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
I agree...can I help you empty out the substubs? I'm assuming you are removing the substub tag and adding a stub category? Rx StrangeLove 16:35, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
For many substubs, normal sorting is all it takes. For the rest, I have found {{move to wiktionary}}, {{cleanup-importance}}, and VfD are also useful. It is normally not hard to tell which are just short stubs and which require a different tactic. A willingness to do a Google search and add one or two bits of info can also greatly aid many of the smaller articles. --Allen3 talk 18:38, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Increasing number of discovered stub templates

Given the large number of new stub categories that have appeared out of the woodwork lately, I've added a sentence to both Wikipedia:Find_or_fix_a_stub and Category:Stub categories saying:

If you wish to create a new stub category, please propose it at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria prior to creation.

Hopefully that will slow down the number of new discoveries a little! Grutness|hello? 09:57, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Slight reorganisation of page

I've rearranged the criteria page a bit, in the hope that it will make it easier to archive and to keep track of when templates have been proposed. The main change is to divide up the new propsals by the month they werre proposed. This will give us a bit more of an idea of which proposals have been hanging around without anything happening to them. I've also tidied up the procedure for proposing stubs section slightly. Hope that by being bold I haven't gone too far... let me know what you think. Grutness|hello? 06:56, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Problem with the new station stubs

We now have two shiny new templates for US and UK railway/road stations - {{US-station-stub}} and {{UK-station-stub}}. Fine and dandy, except that {{Station-stub}} is for Radio and TV stations. My fault as much as anyone else's for not noticing when it was being debated... but this could cause quite some confusion. Grutness|hello? 12:51, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

How about renaming them {{US-depot-stub}} and {{UK-depot-stub}}? —Wahoofive (talk) 15:55, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
Possibly... it's not as common a name for them as station, but it might be better than leaving them as is. Grutness|hello? 01:03, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
Oops, thanks for noticing that. I'll probably rename them to depot shortly unless I can think of a better name. JYolkowski // talk 02:38, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
I've moved US-station-stub to US-depot-stub and UK-station-stub to UK-depot stub. I'll change the stub tags on articles over the next few days. JYolkowski // talk 18:34, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
Conversely, you could change the radio/TV one to {{broadcast-stub}} —Wahoofive (talk) 06:19, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
Mmmm. I like that. Sounds do-able. Mind you, for the sake of removing confusion, we should probably do away with "station-stub" altogether, and there are 1000 or so TV and radio stations listed... Grutness|hello? 06:54, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
I don't like the change from station to broadcast if only because station is an adequate word for the current use and there isn't any reason to say that rail trumps communication and therefore hangs onto station as a term. Courtland 02:52, 2005 May 23 (UTC)
A more salient thought than that last is that we as stub sorters see the template titles more than the category titles while the typical user as stub readers/expanders see the stub category title more than the template title. Looking at it from the reader/expander point-of-view the template title is clearly the less important of the two pieces of information ... therefore, calls for some decrease in priority relative to other matters, in my opinion. Courtland 02:55, 2005 May 23 (UTC)
Divide them into radio-station-stub and TV-station-stub? —Wahoofive (talk) 18:41, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
That's not a bad idea either. Grutness|hello? 01:47, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
I'd second that, I think it's a good idea breaking them out like that. I always thought that "station-stub" was a little ambiguous anyway. Rx StrangeLove 03:17, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
No, don't break them out into radio and tv subdivisions. First, there aren't enough in general pass the 100-article threshold ... and I do think we should at least try to meet that threshold and not just assume it will be met. Afterall, people's hands get slapped all the time now for making a stub template that they might in all good faith have believed could have a hundred or more stubs associated with it but that we (stubbin' crew) deem to have been an incorrect assumption. Second, people who would know about a tv station in a geographical region would also know about one or more radio stations in that same geographical area, so splitting them would just give them more clicks to find the things that they live around. Courtland 02:52, 2005 May 23 (UTC)
Turns out that "depot" has a slightly different meaning in the UK than I had thought. Do you think it would be unambiguous enough if I re-renamed the stub tags to UK/US-railway-station-stub? JYolkowski // talk 21:54, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
I think {{UK-railstation-stub}} and {{US-railstation-stub}} would work better. Firstly they avoid adding yet-another-hyphen, and secondly they avoid the Railway/railroad/subway/underground distinctions. Grutness...wha? 05:57, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Underground stations should have {{metro-stub}} or, in some cases, a city-specific stub. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 06:16, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Ah yes - good point. It still avoids "railway or railroad?", though. Grutness...wha? 08:45, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Maybe we should consider something like {{UK-transit-station-stub}} and likewise US to cover rail, bus, ferry, and other modes of transportation? Courtland 19:17, 2005 May 30 (UTC) A quick look at Google suggests that "transit station" is not an uncommon term. Courtland 20:49, 2005 May 30 (UTC)
    • "Transit-station" is even more clunky (out of context, I probably wouldn't have had a clue what you were referring to - I wonder what proportion of those google hits were outside North America!). Also, the less double-barrelled names the better. I'd still prefer -railstation-. Are there many ferry/bus station stubs, anyway? Grutness...wha? 01:03, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Consistent naming?

I came across this issue, and was redirected here. I'd just like to say that the templates named under Category:Computer stubs are really counterintuitive. For example, if I'm going through recent changes, I'll usually tag stub articles; and as I'm not familiar with the breadth of stub templates, I'll usually guess at what i think it's called, and verify in "Preview". Usually, it's pretty easy, like I'll guess Template:actor-stub or Template:comics-stub, and be right. However Template:compu-hardware-stub and Template:compu-soft-stub is not at all intuitive, consistent, or particularly necessary; I doubt there would be any ambiguity if you called them Template:hardware-stub or Template:software-stub. Just a thought. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 20:52, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm. Hardware-stub - perfect for planks, paint, and nails. it would complement tool-stub nicely! Um, no? Grutness|hello? 08:00, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I can't say that I agree, I'd like to see the naming convention move in the other direction. I find the the templete names are a little sparse, for example Ma-stubb for martial arts, Philo-stub for philosophy, ST-stub for Star Trek etc. I think the general readership would be better served using full words for stub template names. Maybe I'll suggest that as a slight policy change. So in this case, computer-hardware-stub might be better if people are guessing what the stub name might be as they are sorting (though it'd be easier if they had the list in another window) Rx StrangeLove 16:03, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

It all depends who the stubs are for the benefit of. If they are for the benefit of the general readership, then sure, a full name is a good idea. If they are for the benefit of editors who want to sort as many stubs as quickly as possible, then the shorter the name is, the better. Similarly, the more they fit in with other stub names, the better. So, for example, all computer stub subcategories start with compu, for the sake of the very consistency that is being argued is not there. The presnt scheme seems to work pretty well, and short of overhauling the entire system and starting from scratch... Grutness|hello? 05:35, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
True, I generally cut and paste when I'm sorting, referencing the stub list so the length doesn't matter as much for me. Probably a middle road here somewhere, I'm certainly not suggesting starting from scratch :(). Sometimes though the stub text is truncated quite a lot and there are times when it'd be nice for them to be a little more literal (edit summaries, edit fields), but if you're typing in the stub tags by hand I can see your point. Rx StrangeLove 05:57, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
One possibility would be to keep the current names but add redirects from more "category compatible" names, so "martial-arts-stub" would redirect to ma-stub, etc. That's already done for a couple of them (Scotland-geo-stub redirects to UKS-geo-stub, for instance). Grutness|hello? 23:01, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Administrator Approval?

Guys (and girls), its apparent there are some people who feel all stubs should be approved and, to be blunt, I have seen at least three people get jumped on, almost immedieatly, for creating stubs without "approval". Some of this (myself included) was innocent as there was no knowledge of these "procedures". If the creation of stubs is such a big issue that should require consent, review, and approval, then give this to the administrators much like the Main Page is. Im not a newbie, Ive been here for a year and less than 12 hours after my first stub creation attempt I was being told that I was wrong to create it and it was being proposed for deletion. Lets be a bit nicer and assume good faith. Otherwise, make stub creation protected and leave it to the admins to approve. -Husnock 03:55, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Two things - 1) it says on all the Wikipedia pages to do with stubs (e.g., Wikipedia:Stub) that new templates should be checked here first. Surely it is not too much to expect people to check this. 2) There are proposals underway which require exactly the things you have listed (see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting for current drafts of the proposal).
As to assuming good faith and "getting jumped on", apologies if you found what i said was heavy handed, although to be honest I can't see why you would think so. There's certainly nowhere in it where I suggest that anything other than good faith is assumed. If the tone was a little brusk, it's possibly because it was the 48th newly created stub templates in the last week. Extrapolate from that, and you will see why creation of new stub templates without having them cleared first is a problem. Grutness|hello? 05:57, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
I went through several pages about stubs and nowhere did I see a notice stating that stubs should be approved by general consesus and/or approved before they are added to the list. Indeed, on this page: Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs it merely says to list them after creation (there is a notice about approving the changing of icons but not the actual articles). If there is such a problem as suggested, a notice should be advertised of this. it would cause less problems than going to people after they created stubs and tell them that they were wrong to do so. -Husnock 07:40, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
The first paragraph on that page reads: Many of the stub categories in use follow a semi-formal overall structure of categories, which is being created by, and for use by, WikiProject Stub sorting. Before creating any new stub category, please clear the new stub with Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria. This will ensure that any new categories do not cut across the structure in use. Perhaps it's worded too vaguely? Grutness|hello? 07:59, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

I see we are all missing the point here. The point is that Wikipedia does not require consent or approval unless such pages are protected and need to moderated by administrators. Such pages are clearly marked. My point is that going to users and stating to them that they were wrong to create new stubs without approval is not the way to go here since there is no Wiki policy or regulation that states this. Reverting such stubs, without giving anyone a chance to defend themselves (as was the case on the article Allgemeine-SS) causes nothing but bad feelings. That is what made me upswet was that the stub I made was summarily removed from three different articles almost as if it was vandalism.

Okay, again, let's take this one point at a time.
  1. Wikipedia does not require consent or approval...going to users and stating to them that they were wrong to create new stubs without approval is not the way to go
    You weren't told that. I wrote: "Stub categories should normally be cleared by Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting before creation to ensure this sort of thing (i.e., cutting across stub categories) doesn't happen" - i.e., exactly what it said at the top of the Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs page.
  2. Reverting such stubs, without giving anyone a chance to defend themselves (as was the case on the article Allgemeine-SS) causes nothing but bad feelings.
    You were also told: "If you can provide any information on why the stub was created, please add a note to entry for the stub at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria#Newly-discovered stub categories giving the reason for it". This sounds to me very much like being given a chance to defend your creation of the stub template.
  3. ...That is what made me upset was that the stub I made was summarily removed from three different articles almost as if it was vandalism.
    They were amended rather than reverted, and there was nothing "summary" about their removal. Two stub relating to German activity during WWII (military rather than political activity) were given the WWII-stub. The third stub, on a person who was involved in the early Nazi party, among other things, was given Germany-bio-stub. A case could be made that the Nazi-stub should have been left as a secondary template, I suppose, but it woul have been just that - secondary to a more accurate and apt template. Grutness...wha? 07:28, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

I COMPLETELY AGREE that stubs should be discussed and approved. The entire point here is that an innocent user may not know that and then feels wronged with reverts and messages left them. One person did not create the 48 stubs mentioned above, and should not be hammered for an innocent attempt to simply better Wikipedia.

You're right. Which is why the creators of all 48 stubs have, where possible, been contacted in order for them to justify their stubs on the Criteria page, in exactly the same way you were. It is only fair to give them the chance to explain what use the stub template may be. As you have - successfully, as it happens, since it looks like the stub template has been accepted. Grutness...wha? 07:28, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

SO...to solve this problem, and to avoid the "Stub Police" syndrome that I am seeing here, I created this box for everyone.

Stub-sorting Wikiproject

To avoid unnecessary redirects and reverts, please discuss any new stub type you wish to create at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals prior to its creation and placement in articles or tables.

I highly suggest placing this at the top of any page that relates to the creation of stubs. It is very clear and very easy to see and will make everyone happy. ISnt that what we all want! :-) -Husnock 17:09, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Yes it is - and it is an improvement - very similar wording, but in a box, which should make it more readily spotted. :) Not sure about the reason for the category, mind you, but... well, we'll see what happens. Grutness...wha? 07:28, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Geo-stub count

Since we seem to be getting occasional new geo-stubs appearing, and I've been holding off suggesting any more till they reach a reasonable threshold, I went through all the geostubs in "region" classifications (e.g., Central Asia, Caribbean, West Africa), and counted up the actual nunbers for each coutry. it makes interesting reading (if you're really bored...). If anyone wants to see how the "unseparated countries" stack up in terms of numbers of geo-stubs, have a look at User:Grutness/Geo-stub tallying. Grutness|hello? 08:06, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

I proposed a uniformal geo stub. What do you think? It could be improved if it fails to unite all geo-stub categories, let me know whats wrong, it doesnt take me long to fix such stuff -- Cat chi? 22:02, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
I'm strongly, violently, vaguely homicidally against. The new template doesn't reduce the work that editors will be doing, or make it easier to remember what to code. What's more, there are still concerns with the servers about the use of metatemplates (which this basically is) and the use of icons such as flags on heavy-use templates (and consideriing how many US and UK stubs there are, those flags will be on a LOT of articles!). Also, the list changes regularly and frequently when new Wikiprojects come along or when a country reaches the point where a separate category looks viable, so the new stub template would have to continually be revised and tweaked (as far as country-geo-stubs are concerned, for instance, I've recently gone through all the countries that have yet to get their own stub categories, counting how many stubs are listed for each (the result is at User:Grutness/Geo-stub tallying) - there are about four countries that could well be split off very soon, if there is enough call for it from groups associated with editing these countries). This system will be much harder to keep running smoothly, will cause more problems for the servers, and won't actually change the amount of work for regular or casual stub editors. Grutness|hello? 01:08, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

I tend to agree, if it doesn't decrease the amount of work needed then it's probably a good solution looking for a problem, and the way I use them it would increase my work. Plus if it's a country that doesn't already have a category, how would people find the stub after the generic stub is applied? Rx StrangeLove 02:00, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Use and persistance of redirects

discussion moved to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_redirects

[edit] Another page for your perusal

I've put this on WP:WSS talk, but I think it's worth adding here, too: While Snowflake and other were diligently creating the new central project page, I've been working on something else which I think might be a reasonable addition to the project's pages, which I'd now like to present for appraisal and improvement. A lot of recent talk has been about trying to maintain consistent naming of stub templates, and working out which redirects are badly-enough named to reuire deletion. I have written a first draft of some naming guidelines, also including some of the major exceptions, on a subpage of my user page at User:Grutness/WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines. If you think it is a good enough start for such a page, then I will move it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines. Please have a look, make any amendments you think necessary and get back to me (even if only to tell me it was a waste of time and a co0mplete crock of tutae, as they might say in Maori). Grutness...wha? 08:57, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Oops - help!

I've just added a shortcut to the top of the page, but in doing so I've somehow stuffed the table of contents somehow... can someone fix it? (I'm still using one of those ancient editors that complains at things over 32k...). Thanks! Grutness...wha? 12:35, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have moved it as high up as it can go. Hopefully that will resolve the problem. This really comes down to how the browser renders the text. If the shortcut box takes up more vertical space than the text to its left, then the TOC will be squeezed on the right to make room for it. --Allen3 talk 13:33, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] stubbergs

I've split up those tables in order to make sure everything goes into the table of contents. I know it looks somewhat ugly, but that's because the situation is actually ugly :) --Joy [shallot] 16:15, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Heh. It also allows easier discussion about individual entries (as has just happened with chicago-stub). I'm tempted to removed the headings as they're just floating all by themselves. But on the other hand, they do give a bit of context to the otherwise unlabelled sections of the former table. Hmm. --TheParanoidOne 19:59, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
It'll make them easier to clear and archive, too. At the moment they're causing a bit of a blockage there. Grutness...wha? 23:06, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Charitable organisations?

I couldn't place Peabody Trust very well. Isidore 9 July 2005 00:38 (UTC)

Organisation -> {{org-stub}}. Certainly not a geo-stub, since it isn't a place. Grutness...wha? 9 July 2005 04:58 (UTC)
Thanks. Ah yes, there it is, under Miscellaneous in the list... :-> The Trust's terms restrict it to working in London, which is what I wanted to convey. Isidore 9 July 2005 07:31 (UTC)

[edit] Bio-stubs by profession and nationality

A thought that's come to me (and which I mentioned while commenting on the proposed explorer-stub)... If we're splitting bio-stub by both profession and nationality, which we seem to be, it makes far more sense for the standard naming for a profession to simply be "profession-stub" rather than "profession-bio-stub" (i.e., like artist-stub, singer-stub, etc, but not like compu-bio-stub or reli-bio-stub). The reason is simple - if we later need to split it by nationality as well, it is far less clunky to use nation-profession-stub (e.g., UK-politician-stub) than nation-profession-bio-stub (e.g., Australia-compu-bio-stub). Also, for most professions, the name of the profession instantly indicates that its a biography - "artist-stub is a stub about an artist, for instance. I'll admit that some of the exceptions are cases where it's not clearly the name of a profession, but I think that in most cases, an unambiguous profession name should be used if possible. Grutness...wha? 9 July 2005 10:21 (UTC)

Yes, that's the main reason why I've suggested foo-bio- as the prefix for some professions, because in some cases it's hard to decide - witness the recent discussion about "jurist" where some people thought the word *doesn't* refer to judges or lawyers, just legal scholars. --Joy [shallot] 9 July 2005 10:57 (UTC)
Well, that was simply because it only refers to judges and lawyers in the US (and maybe Canada). No-one else uses it that way as far as I know. Certainly until that discussion I'd only ever heard it applying to legal scholars. But that's beside the point. In most cases there is very likely a profession name, but there will be some exceptions. But where there is a clear single name, that should be used. so, for example economist-stub is better than econ-bio-stub, chessplayer-stub is better than chess-bio-stub, and - if it were ever needed, for example - mountaineer-stub would be better than climber-bio-stub. Grutness...wha? 9 July 2005 12:59 (UTC)

[edit] "US"/"American"/"United States"

There are numerous stub categories relating to the United States, and there seems to be no common pattern of naming. Do we need one, and if so, what should it be? I mistakenly told one person that they should use US to name a particular category because it was our standard naming, but I see now I was completely wrong. Personally, I'd prefer not to use "American", as it is ambiguous, and stick with "United States" throughout, but I'm hoping to hear arguments on all sides of this one. If we stick to one standard it will mean a lot of categories coming through SFD for renaming (templates, I'm glad to say, all use US). (Also copying this across to SFD talk page): Grutness...wha? 14:53, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Strong no to using "American". Yes for using "United States". — Fingers-of-Pyrex 15:27, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
Yes to United States (or US). I think you are right that United States (or simply US) should be used. Personaly I prefeer just US (spelling out "United States <foo>" just sound aukward to me somehow ("<foo> of the United States" sounds ok though), that might just be me though). Anyway I'm in favour of either instead of "American". The only reason I asked about this earlier is because as you say most existing categories seem to use American extensively so I was wondering if that was some kind of policy. There are alot of articles involved, but the practical aspect of moving the articles from one category to another can easily be deligated to some bot. If there is actualy a consensus to go ahead with the rename. --Sherool 16:20, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
Part of the reason for bringing this up now is that a similar discussion has been going on at WP:CFD recently. Grutness...wha? 00:36, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
I would echo Sherool, I would prefer either "US" or "United States" to "American" in such cases. "US" is more concise, which is soemtimes a consideration, but there is a general preference for avoiding acronyms and other abrevs. But "US" in context is pretty clear. I don't feel strongly about "US" vs "United States". DES 14:55, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Since there seems to be a reasonable amount of consensus, might I suggest then using "US-XX-stub" for all templates, and "United States" for all the categories? We canmake sure that any new ones keep to this scheme, and gradually convert any that are currently different to this. Grutness...wha? 00:22, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

  • Agree. — Fingers-of-Pyrex 01:20, July 15, 2005 (UTC)
  • Agree. Is a "South American" from Alabama or Argentina? --ScottDavis 09:08, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Agree That seems very reasoanble to me, a longer name is ok in the categories, and havign things spelled out is more important there. DES 14:43, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Chile-stub

FYI: found that the category was not properly formed; fixed this. Courtland 03:41, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Newly discovered" changes

This section is getting a bit large and unwieldy to edit, so I decided to try splitting it up by month. It's certainly helped with the section sizes, but I'm not 100% sure about whether I like it. Feel free to revert if it makes things absolutely horrible. --TheParanoidOne 22:56, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Quite a few of these may go soon - I've ben waiting until a number of them have been deleted or otherwise on sfd before doing the next archiving, and (believe it or not) quite a few get archived each time. Grutness...wha? 02:30, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I quit

Right, that does it. Someone else can take over the geo-stub work. It is clearly too much of a pain in the ass when users like User:Tobias Conradi, after having all the rules explained to him at Category_talk:Geography_stubs, go ahead and create categories that I have expained will be a complete waste of time. If someone else would care to have the geo-stub lists that are at the subpages of my User page, they can feel free to have them - I won't be using them any more. Grutness...wha? 23:04, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Breaking up the page

I am planning to break this page up. The size of this page is astounding, as evidenced by the little notice on top, and its name is somewhat misleading anyway. So, I plan to make Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals (alternative title: Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals for new stub types, Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Discoveries (alternative title: Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Newly-discovered stub types), and Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Clarifications (alternative title: Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Other stub-related discussions). The alternative titles are only here for discussions, I much prefer the shorter ones, but please comment away. "Proposed stub deletions" has been taken over to WP:SFD, and can be discarded.

/Criteria can stay in the same way that the Village Pump is organized, i.e. Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria with links to the three subpages, Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria (full) with the three pages transcluded. Criteria must be kept anyway because of the archives, but I recommend archiving the subpages by themselves in the future. Any links should then go to the relevant subpage, and Citeria only be used as a fallback for incoming links, with Criteria (full) for people who don't care about loading times.

So: Bad idea? Good idea? Are the titles okay? If noone complains I'm going ahead with it in a few days, or earlier if I get some support without anyone objecting. -- grm_wnr Esc 18:29, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Just to throw another idea out there (which hasn't been thoroughly thought through yet), would it make sense to consider pulling off pages by date (kind of like VfD, only not by day)? For example, there could be Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria/June 2005, which would then automatically become an archive when everything on it is resolved. (Or maybe that would be too confusing.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 19:14, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
The two ideas certainly could be combined, as in Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/June 2005, with the monthly subpages transcluded into Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals for as long as they are relevant. The same could be done for /Discoveries. On the other hand, I hope that breaking /Criteria up by topic by itself cuts the pages down to manageable size, and that the shorter pages would be easy enough to archive without resorting to monthly transclusions, which in my opinion makes page editing somewhat cumbersome. If only one of these ideas is put into effect, I would prefer my above plan. -- grm_wnr Esc 19:37, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
Break up the page? Brilliant idea. What the euphemisms at the top of page fail to say, is the page is in fact hideously obese :). Currently it's almost 200k and even when someone has gone through archiving, it's still always over 100k. I feel sorry for any modem users (yes, they still exist!) that wish to look at this page. I like the shortened names better than any verbose form. The only one I'm not to sure about is Clarifications. Perhaps something along the lines of "Other Business" or just "Other"? That's not quite right, either though.
As to the monthly breakdown, I don't think that level of seperation is necessary yet. And even if it were, it would be prudent to see how the proposed high level split fares, before going any further. --TheParanoidOne 21:11, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
Well, we could just leave the "Other stub-related discussions" on /Criteria (since they are by far the smallest group) and only branch out the two large ones. Most of the current discussions there could go under "proposed new stubs" just as well. "Criteria" is not a very fitting name, but we basically have to keep it anyway, as stated above. We might as well use it for something. -- grm_wnr Esc 00:02, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
Yes, that makes sense. --TheParanoidOne 09:38, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
The page is huge. Part of the reason for that is that I went on Wiki holiday, and it had been me who was doing a lot of the archiving. But even when I was archiving every few days, it still stayed over 100k. Part of the reason for that, though, was that it is difficult to tell when a discussion is finished - take a look at the station-stubs section from April. There are still questions hanging in the air about it - does it get archived yet?
I'd suggest a slightly less radical re-shuffle - simply splitting it in two: Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Discoveries and Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals (including general stub discussions, since they tend to be proposals under a different guise. Any that aren't should probably go on the WP:WSS talkpage, anyway). Criteria has always been a dumb name for the page, anyway (that page could be left as a redirect to Proposals or a VP-like portal, though). Grutness...wha? 11:31, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

I went ahead using Grutness' suggestion. Before doing that, I archived the Criteria page to Archive 16 so that the new pages don't start out at a massive size. But still, with only discussions that have been added to in July (and I even cut out the beginnings of very old discussions that had early-July contributions) /Proposals is still over 100k :(. We should decide now how to archive the new pages - We could go on archiving them to /Criteria/Archive, or start /Proposals/Archive and /Discoveries/Archive. I prefer the latter, since it makes archiving easier. The problem with it is that this splits the archive. We could, however, migrate the respective parts of the old archive to the new archives (slowly, since it's a lot of work). Would that be actually worth the hassle? -- grm_wnr Esc 21:55, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

I'd be in favour of keeping one archive. But there's no reason why - for example - Archive 17 couldn't all come from the proposals page and Archive 18 all from the discoveries page. If it's easier to just empty one of the pages into an archive, there's absolutely nothing to stop that happening. I'm not saying we should automatically alternate them, but we've now got two pages and it will be more obvious when either one of them needs archiving than when a new archive could be set up between them. Grutness...wha? 22:55, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
BTW - is it worth adding {{sfd-current}} to the top of the new pages? Grutness...wha? 23:04, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pre-emptive redirects?

Is there any reason not to make redirects like {{Chad-geo-stub}} to {{AfricaC-geo-stub}}, assuming that the redirect fits in with the system? That way, you could just put the name of the country without worrying what region it's supposed to be in, and if/when enough Chad geo stubs show up, they wouldn't have to be manually searched for and moved. Kappa 23:44, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

That actualy sounds like a fairly good idea to me. If a redirect is then "promoted" to a stand alone stub with it's own category, a bot could just go though the "what links here" list and perform null edits and wolla, the new stub category is populated. It might be tricky to get people to actualy use that system and find a way to list the available redirects prominently enough without cluttering up the stub type list too much. Also not 100% sure how template redirects work, creating hundreds if not thousands of new redirects might cause some exess strain for the servers. --Sherool 00:49, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

There's actually a very good reason not to have pre-emptive redirects. It's twice as much work. As things are at the moment, if a chad-geo-stub was made, all we'd have to do is make the template and category, then change all the stubs over. With your suggestion, we'd change the stubs over now, and make a redirect. then later change the redirect and make the category and do null edits on all the articles. That's quite a bit more work. Plus, knowing that the stub name Chad-geo-stub exists might well encourage someone to create the category and change the template to it, without realising that null-edits are neeed for any articles previously marked with the template. That would mean us having to check through all the "What links here" links to see what needs to be changed and what doesn't. Admittedly, some of that work could be done with a bot, but I'd be willing to bet that it would still result in more work overall. So, no, I wouldn't be in favour of pre-emptive redirects like this. Also, you're right that redirects do put extra strain on the servers (which is why we're trying to reduce the number of redirects, rather than increase it!), since rather than one template being called up when a page is recalled, two are - the "real" template and the redirect. Grutness...wha? 05:18, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

  • My suggestion involves less work not more, because existing articles wouldn't need to be changed until the stub category is made. Each stub tag only requires one human edit instead of two, and no guesswork as to what region Chad is in. Kappa 10:40, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
    • Mmmm. You've got a point there, although I'm not convinced that you wouldn't get a lot more categories springing up. It would add more redirects though, when we're trying to reduce them. And let's face it, some countries are never going to get geo-stubs, so would they get redirects? Grutness...wha? 11:08, 12 September 2005 (UTC)