Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines

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[edit] HYPHEN MINUS is the most useless character in Unicode

Can someone please explain to my why words in stub template names are separated by the HYPHEN MINUS character? It is an illogical choice from several standpoints:

  • The words should be separated by spaces as they are in the English language; im-sure-you-wouldn-t-like-it-if-all-words-were-separated-by-HYPHEN-MINUS-now-would-you? {{some stub}} is eminently better than {{some-stub}}
  • HYPHEN MINUS is the scourge of the universe. Neither a hyphen nor a minus. It is a legacy of the US military's ASCII data exchange format and is not part of said English language.
  • The HYPHEN MINUS character is almost always much harder to type than a space character (Option–KpdMinus versus the Spacebar in my case).

— Nicholas (reply) @ 11:28, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The "hyphen minus" is - on almost all computer keyboards - simply a hyphen (lower case, next to the zero, and as easy to type - if not more so - than the space bar). The hyphen became standard for stubs back in the days when spaces caused problems in templates. It is still widely used in templates in general and is so widely used for stubs that it would be one hell of a hassle to change everything. It is also very useful to reduce ambiguity in stub types - a combination of camelcaps and hyphens provides a clear differentiation between the levels of a stub split that using spaces would not. A hyppothetical example: if we had {{Canadian football stub}} would it be for football stubs from Canada, or for stubs related to the distinct sport of Canadian Football? Now comsider Canadian-football-stub (a direct child of football-stub, and CanadianFootball-stub (a direct child of stub). All ambiguity vanishes. Grutness...wha? 01:48, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
I realize the topic is a bit moribund (and I can offer some theories as to why, but that's another topic), but I have to strongly agree with Nicholas on using space instead of dash (ie. changing WP:WSS/NG, from both a usability and language perspective. Have to disagree with Grutness (again!); the proposition that it is easier to reach all the way to the top-right of the keyboard with the hand's least-flexible finger than it is to tap downward with the thumb, requiring no other motion, not only defies basic logic, it's been amply disproven by ergonomic studies. Let's not be silly, please! If you're going to defend a counterintuitive and user-unfriendly naming convention full of odd hyphenation, please do so with real reasons. PS: No opinion on the where-it-is-on-keyboards issue; there are a very wide range of keyboards in use around the world, and many of them are radically different from "typical American" ones; I think it unwise to make assuptions about what other people's computing environments are like... Also no opinion on its usefulness in Unicode; I'm not sure I get the point with that one. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:16, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I can think of several minor reasons, such as the undesirability of trying to defend the space as a hierarchy-indication, as against... an actual space (the same issue does arise with hyphens, but less often), but mainly, after 3000+ stub templates, I think this has greater inertia than Imperial units, and simply isn't worth the trouble of changing them all over. And the idea of "let a hundred flowers bloom" would be unutterably horrible, even for just a 'transitional period'. I think that's very much a "real reason", contrary to the above dismissive broadside. Alai 02:28, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
The "too far to turn back" reasoning kind of works for me (I suspect however that a bot could do this without too much trouble); still the "investment" level is already high, so fair enough. The hierarchy indicator take doesn't work for me, because as you point out yourself it doesn't actually do what it should; the naming conventions would have to change again, presenting the same "rename a zillion things" problem, so in a twisted way the 2nd argument almost works for me, too). NB: I didn't say there could be no real reason, I asked for one. So, thanks for more-or-less providing one (not so much thanks for the misinterpretation and such, but I'll chalk that up to fallout from our arguments elsewhere.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 11:17, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
Re: {{Canadian-football-stubs}} - there are other ways to deal with this amiguity when it arises to such an extent that is has to be addressed. One is simply avoiding constuctions that are ambiguous. If the WP:CUE articlespace were rich enough to need all sorts of new stubs, e.g. for the game of English billiards, I'd follow the permcat nomenclature, which seems to have evolved to be "NATIONALITY players of NATIONALLYAMBIGUOUS game" (I came up with that for English billiards in particular, and then it spread to either American or Canadian football or both, at CfD about a month or so ago.) So, if there were ever a need for a stub and stub cat for Cat:Australian players of English billiards the stub would be {{Australian-Englishbilliards-bio-stub}} and the stubcat would be Cat:Australian players of English billiards stubs by my reckoning (I don't personally care at all for the running-together practice, as in Englishbilliards, but I recognize that is has some buy-in). In the Canada example, I think we'd have {{Canada-footy-stub}} for soccer in Canada and {{CanadianFootball-stub}} for the different game of Canadian football (the latter "Canadian" not "Canada" because the game is "Canadian football" not "Canada football", and the stub isn't necessarily identifying nationality; there are in fact American-born players of Canadian football, mostly pros who didn't make the NFL/AFL cut any longer. If there were so many of them they needed their own bio stub, I guess it would be {{US-CanadianFootball-bio-stub}}.)

[edit] Singular vs plural

In the interest of centralizing the discussion, please bring the discussion of {{sport-stub}} and its relatives here. Her Pegship (tis herself) 15:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Um, not under that topic, please. It is too binary and adversarial. The issue has already been far, far too polarized. I'm presently thinking on a more flexible way to address the topic, maybe/maybe not with specific WSS/NG revision ideas. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:53, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Went a completely different route. I think that these sorts of angsty issues ought to be dealt with somewhere around the 3rd level of re-drafting of this document; won't even touch them right now. Instead I produced re-draft level 1, detailed below! — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 10:53, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Redrafting, stage 1

Its become clear to me after being on this Wikiproject for a while, and trying to actually use it as a general Wikipedian more recently, that WSS/NG is is sore need of a total overhaul:

  • It is outdated
  • It is confusing
  • It is open to misinterpretation
  • It is open to differing but equally valid interpretations
  • It isn't finished
  • It would never survive the WP Guideline Proposal process
  • It is directly generative of strife and discord
  • among other problems.

Rather than just start editing it with my views on how it should work, and engaging in a load of argumentation, I'm proposing a totally different route. The back-and-forth editing and kvetching-on-the-talk-page process can work when editing a "live" guideline or other document, and even when it works poorly (cf. WP:N from Nov. 2006 - Jan. 2007) it can still produce good results (compare WP:N of Oct. 31, 2006, to the present version! Wow, what a difference.) But it's a slow, antagonistic, painful process, that mingles basic horse-sense edits in with highly controversial changes, and pits gnomes against opinion warriors.

Instead, I think this should be undertaken in clearly defined stages, and be done in draft copies of the real projectpage, which when consensus is reached on the current draft, the "live" page can be replaced with that draft, a new stage discussed and planned, and another draft begun starting with the text of the previous one, to achieve the goals for the next stage, and so on, until a very solid document is arrived at, reflects broad consensus, and is ready to become a real Guideline.

The first stage is obviously Cleanup. It calls for a total moratorium on substantive changes, i.e. changes to the nature, specifics, intent, purpose, scope, etc. of the document and the process it documents. It will be tempting to say "hey, while we're at it, let's fix this", or "I don't agree with this bit at all, and think instead it should require that", or "maybe we should expand this to include..." This temptation must be resisted or this process won't work, and the experiment will fail.

I, like the rest of us (or we wouldn't be in WSS!) get tired of "someone ought to...", "I wish it was like...", "why isn't this better?" kind of thinking. So I've just gone and done it.

The resulting first re-draft is a total overhaul, in almost every way. Yet (unless I made a mistake) has not changed any of the sorts of things under the moratorium (the closest it comes is that it replaced a totally implausible justification for something with a plausible one, without changing the "something"). Every major change has been documented here in great detail, so that the process and reasoning for the changes are independently clear (which is very rarely the case when someone makes a major edit to a "live" document). The goal was to take an old '72 beater and do the bodywork to turn it into a hot rod (on the ouside; haven't touched the engine at all, and it runs exactly as it did before, but will just turn heads now). Aside from inevitable quibbles, I think WSS at large will really like it.

Process: Please read it over, preferably after or while looking over the log of edits, fix up issues you see with it without making any substantive changes to its guts, and at some point hopefully soon, we can have a formal or informal consensus discussion about making it go "live". Discussions of process, or even the merits of the entire "WSS/NC 2.0" idea I'm proposing belong here, I would suggest, while those regarding the particulars of the new draft should go to its talk page.

PS: I would offer that the 2nd stage will be basic policy-functionality improvements that are not controversial (there are HTML comment notes in the source code suggesting some of those improvements); the 3rd, resolution of the controversial bits (such as mentioned on WSS/NC's talk page and which are raised, including by me, at WSS/P and WP:SFD); and the 4th, Guideline Proposal. I believe that getting this document to the level of a Wikipedia Guideline is very important.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 10:51, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

A perspective note: I did this redraft while pretending it was a copyediting job from a commercial client, a really good client, whose flagship product I felt disagreeable about in some aspects, and that I was not empowered in any way to change any facts, marketing strategies, intent of spin, slogans, or other pre-determined aspects, only copyedit to present the facts, distill the marketing strategies, wordsmith the spindoctoring, and highlight the slogans. Try it! — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 11:30, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Given no objections, let's make current re-draft go "live"

Resolved.

Since there's no disagreement here or at the first re-draft's talk page I plan to replace the content of the "live" WSS/NG with the first re-draft within the next day (and without the "let's fix this" HTML comments in it). I think this will be a good step forward for WSS and it will enable the next round of naming convention improvements to proceed post haste. Huzzah! — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 09:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Working on it now. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 00:57, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Done. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:31, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Redrafting, stage 2

At Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines/Redraft2 I have listed a bunch of unlikely-to-be-controversial improvements for the NG document. Most of these were already clearly identified in Redraft1 as HTML comments, while a few come from Redraft 1 discussion. The HTML comments just mentioned are still (as of this writing) present in Redraft2, to indicate likely insertion points. Depending on when you read this, some of them may have alread been replaced with new text, or removed because controversial. I would propose that any item on the list that anyone feels is controversial in any way should be struck out and saved for Redraft Phase 3, the dealing with controversial stuff. Several of them may require a consensus discussion to determine what exactly they should say/advise. Let's do it! — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:50, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

No one's pitched a fit about this. I suggest that the current draft #2 and the current real page can be merged pretty easily, and taht draft #3, forthcoming, would resolve the issue below and some other non-controversial bits, leaving only (ta-DAAA) a debate about contentious details like sport vs. sports and other bones to pick (and see WP:SFD - I for one am much less contentious about some of those points). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:47, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Major" vs. "subdivisional"

The latest redraft has promoted (at least section-structurally, and seemingly in significance, too) the "major" "subdivisional" distinction. On reflection, I don't think this made much sense in the first place, and hence making it that bit more prominent isn't at all a good idea. What do we actually need to say here, beyond that stub templates have a number of components (there's no shortage these days of instances with three or more), that they're approximately speaking hierarchical (though sometimes permutations of the actual hierarchy, it must be said), and that each component is a noun (phrase) echoing the language of the corresponding category, or some standardised abbreviation thereof. Alai 02:09, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. The instructional/explanatory text in the two sections is pretty different. It seems to me that the "major" ones are all or mostly from the top level of the WP category hierarchy or one level deeper, while the "subdivisional" ones are mostly geographical. I get what you are saying, but I'm not sure what to do about what the text says. Probably bears re-reading it a couple of time and sandboxing with alt. text. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
PS: Did you see proposed idea on Redraft2's talk page about renaming them, since the "major" and "subdivisional" names aren't all that helpful? — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:53, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Hard to suggest how to redraft (or rename) if I don't know what the intent is, and I'm far from clear on that. My suspicion is that there's a large degree of holdover from the Good Old Days when there were a lot of X-Y-stub templates, but not much that was longer, so a "binomial classification" was at least somewhat sustainable. But at present, it'd be a bit odd to suggest that {{US-stub}} had no major components, and one subdivision, and that {{1860s-baseball-pitcher-stub}} had three major portions, and no subdivisions. Or are 'decades' and 'pitchers' subdivisions, too? (I don't think the "major" parts are are high up the category tree as you suggest, nor even any higher than the 'subdivisions'.) Alai 04:11, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure either. As I 'splained in "Phase 1", my redrafting intent was to simply clarify the existing material w/o changing anything substantive. That included the nomenclature. I agree that the descriptions of these things don't really fit reality any more, it just wasn't my intent to address that at the time. If you think it is time now, I don't see any reason to put it off. May require some headscratching as to what precisely to do in place of the existing dichotomy, but so it goes. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:16, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Those are the hazards of taking on said tasks. :) (I'm not sure to what extent it's a matter of you making the distinction more prominent, or just having drawn attention to it by the very fact of having made changes.) Essentially as I see it, sometimes we have an X-stub and a Y-stub, with child in common X-Y-stub (or equally, at Y-X-stub...); sometimes we have a top-level Y-stub subdivided into X-Y-stubs of various sorts (though occasionally actually at Y-X-stub for 'natural usage' reasons -- see above example, in fact). In the latter case, one can argue that there's a "major" and "subdivision" distinction, but given that it has no significance per se, and no strict implications for naming...
Perhaps we should just first, state the general principle of hyphenated elements corresponding to category hierarchy (except when re-ordered); then, enumerate those elements that are especially common, and/or that have 'standard' abbreviations; state some principles about the forms of some generic components (countries/nationalities as nouns, not adjectives; decades in full, not just last two digits; etc); and lastly, make some observations and give some examples about what order those elements come in, when there's an exception to the 'hierarchy' principle, or where the hierarchy could be read either way. Alai 04:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
That's making sense in my reality-tunnel. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 05:13, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Countries: adjective or noun?

Seeing as how this gets discussed at SFD seemingly constantly, I thought I'd bring it up officially here. In creating categories, is the country considered an adjective or a noun? I've created a table with a bunch of different examples to illustrate.

Ex. # Permcat Stub cat (noun) Stub cat (adjective)
1a Cat:Canada Cat:Canada stubs Cat:Canadian stubs
1b Cat:Canadian law Cat:Canada law Cat:Canadian law stubs
1c Cat:Geography of Canada Cat:Canada geography stubs Cat:Canadian geography stubs
1d Cat:History of Canada Cat:Canada history stubs Cat:Canadian history stubs
2a Cat:Israel Cat:Israel stubs Cat:Israeli stubs
2b Cat:Israeli law Cat:Israel law stubs Cat:Israeli law stubs
2c Cat:Geography of Israel Cat:Israel geography stubs Cat:Israeli geography stubs
2d Cat:History of Israel Cat:Israel history stubs Cat:Israeli history stubs
3a Cat:Burkina Faso Cat:Burkina Faso stubs Cat:Burkinabe stubs
3b Cat:Burkinabé law Cat:Burkina Faso law stubs Cat:Burkinabé law stubs
3c Cat:Geography of Burkina Faso Cat:Burkina Faso geography stubs Cat:Burkinabé geography stubs
3d Cat:History of Burkina Faso Cat:Burkina Faso history stubs Cat:Burkinabé history stubs
  • Example 1 shows a country with a fairly common adjective form.
  • Example 2 shows a country with a less common adjective form. Still guessable, but not as obvious.
  • Example 3 shows a country with a very rare adjective form. This is not guessable.
  • Examples (a) show the base country cat. Following the permcat is easy in this case. We just add "stubs" to the end.
  • Examples (b) show a permcat that uses the adjective form. Following the permcat is easy in this case as well. We just add "stubs" to the end.
  • Examples (c) show a geography-related permcat that uses the noun form at the end.
  • Examples (d) show a non-geography-related permcat that uses the noun form at the end.

Examples (c) and (d) (at least in Example 1) show that we are interpreting the "<blah> of/in <country noun>" permcat differently.

The question is: Which is more important?

  1. Following the permcat and using the noun forms?
  2. Being consistent with other stub cats and using the adjective forms?

[edit] Idea #1

  • "<country noun> <blah>" permcats → "<country noun> <blah> stubs"
  • "<country adjective> <blah>" permcats → "<country adjective> <blah> stubs"
  • "<blah> in/of <country noun>" permcats → "<country noun> <blah> stubs"

This would seem to create the most consistency with the permcats. While, it does not create 100% consistency among all stub cats, at least all stub cats of the same type (history, geography, etc) will be internally consistent.

[edit] Idea #2

  • "<country noun> <blah>" permcats → "<country noun> <blah> stubs"
  • "<country adjective> <blah>" permcats → "<country adjective> <blah> stubs"
  • "<blah> in/of <country noun>" permcats → "<country adjective> <blah> stubs"

This strays a bit from consistency with the permcats. However, it creates stub categories that are all similar (save for high-level country stubcats, (Cat:Canada stubs which can remain as they are).

[edit] Idea #3

(Proposed by Caerwine)

  • "<country noun> <blah>" permcats → "<country noun> <blah> stubs"
  • "<country adjective> <blah>" permcats → "<country adjective> <blah> stubs"
  • "<blah> in/of <country noun>" permcats → "<blah> in/of <country noun> stubs"

This creates the most consistency with the permcats. While some people would find the construction Cat:History of Canada stubs awkward because it requires context to know whether it is a category for stub articles about the History of Canada or a category for article about the history of stub articles about Canada, the fact is that the context here and in all similar cases is blindingly obvious.

[edit] Discussion

I marginally prefer idea #2 because it creates consistent stubcats. Permcats often change, so it may be hard to keep up with their naming convention. As long as each stubcat is still linked to the appropriate permcat (using {{Stub Category}}), then we're okay. ~ Amalas rawr =^_^= 16:41, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

  • As you'll know by now, I strongly favour option 1 (in fact, it'/s basically what I suggested as a system to parallel the permcats). Part of the reason I favour it over option 2 is that quite often permcats have deliberately avolided the use of the adjective for a good reason. As such, to use the adjectival form for the stub cats defeats the purpose. Option one uses the adjectival form where such has been deemed the most acceptable usage for permcats, and keeps a noun form where adjectival forms are avoided in the permcats. Sure, it's not 100% grammatical, but no system is likely to ever be 100% grammatical when we're trying to add the word "stubs" onto the end of an existing phrase. It is however logical, consistent, and easy to keep track of. What's more, although it doesn't completely remove the weird and often unguessable adjectival demonyms, it does remove them in those cases where they can't be instantly checked by referring to the permcat. I for one would prefer not to have to look up some of the weirder adjectival forms around (Kittitian-Nevisian? Burkinabé? Equatoguinean? I-Kiribati?) whenever I need to find out what to call a stub cat. Grutness...wha? 00:51, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
    • I see there's now a third choice - I'd favour that over option no. 2 as well, though I realise there have been objections to it on grammatical grounds in the past. Still, as I said above, nothing we do is likely to be 100% grammatical. Grutness...wha? 23:26, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
  • I strongly favor Idea #3 (proposed above) but marginally prefer Idea #1 over Idea #2 for the reasons Grutness gives. Caerwine Caer’s whines 04:26, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
That didn't entirely parse. Grutness prefers #1 over #2; Amalas preferred #2. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 00:05, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
Fixed so that it parses. Caerwine Caer’s whines 06:39, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
  • I'd go with #3, too; just seems much easier to remember and is less format futzing for format futzing's sake. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 00:08, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
  • The problem with #3 is that we would have to rename nearly all of our geography categories. The permcats are at "Geography of <place>" and all of our stub cats are at "<place> geography stubs". I loathe to see that SFD... ~ Amalas rawr =^_^= 15:31, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Sounds like this was simply an early mistake (or different way of thinking), and that rectifying it can be done by a bot. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:12, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
It would mean a lot of bot-work, but if we can fix on one of these three options as the convention then a blanket nomination (and it wouldn't just be for the geo- categories!) probably wouldn't cause much fuss in itself - it's just the changeover that would be a pest (but no worse than removing all those "-related"s a year or so back). I suggest that we should advertise that this discussion is going on with some kind of infobox on WP:SFD, though (perhaps like the one being used for the NOR policy change which is appearing on watchlists at the moment). Grutness...wha? 02:18, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Actually, a cat rename cannot be done by bot easily. The new name would have to be created and the old name deleted. Very time consuming. But, I imagine no matter which way we choose, there will need to be a massive rename, so that point is pretty well moot anyway. ~ Amalas rawr =^_^= 13:52, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
I prefer option 1, myself. Option 2 has the problems with unguessable adjectives, and option 3 just sounds clunky and confusing. Crystallina 02:18, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
Can you elaborate? I don't understand what you mean by "clunky and confusing" with regard to #3, which to me seems the simplest and most straightforward. Maybe you are thinking of hypothetical examples that haven't occurred to me or something. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:44, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
  • 2¢/2€: Wherever feasible, use an adjective as the adjective, otherwise "topic of noun" (e.g. for sake of indexing, consistent hierarchies, etc). At least, that's what seems to work most of the time. Regards, David Kernow (talk) 06:26, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
For me it's pretty much tie with options #1 and #2. Monni 13:40, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
In general, I suggest that we should prefer <country noun> formats, whether those are of the "<blah> in/of <country noun>" or "<country noun> <blah>" type. Country adjectives cause problems in far too many cases: there are those such as Burkina Faso for which the adjective is obscure, and other such as the New Zealand and the Democratic Republic of the Congo where there is apparently no adjectival form. Then there are those for which the commonly-used adjective is inaccurate, e.g. British for the United Kingdom. So I'm favour of whatever solution which gets rid of the greatest number of adjectival categories. -BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:59, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
  • The first principle should be that stub category names are reasonable as category names. This is especially true given that while they're not "normal" article-space categories, they do appear in the same hierachy (unlike out-and-and maintenance and wikiproject categories). Accordingly, I don't think it's acceptable to have a "scheme" that "generates" category names that would be instantly zapped if they were permcats ("France geography", etc), due to an serious lack of compliance with normal usage, which fly just because stub types have a separate life cycle from permcats. That for me rules out #1, at least in all cases where the noun isn't an acceptable attributive (everyone is happy with the noun "New Zealand" as an attributive; the goat intestines seem to yield mixed messages on "United Kingdom" and "United States", though that's more related to how precisely to follow the permcat, as opposed to whether it's a reasonable usage in and of itself).
  • Option #3 sometimes seems awkward not because of any contextual ambiguity, but because it really is awkward: a noun phrase with propositions isn't commonly used attributively, especially if it's clearly "rewritable" to use an adjective (or pile-on attributive) instead. But sometimes the #2 equivalent is as bad or worse, so I don't think it should necessarily be avoided in all cases (and if it's that or #1 in an "instant run-off"/STV, it certainly beats the latter). It's also less obviously inconsistent that having two different attributive phrases (or prefixes that aren't ordinarily used attributively).
  • I'd favour "modified #2": rather than insisting on a full-fledged adjective, I'd consider any phrase in attributive use to be acceptable, with the choice of which to be made according to style, frequency of usage, scoping clarity, neutrality, and maximal horizontal consistency. In the cases where the supposedly canonical adjective is obscure, or has scoping/neutrality issues, then typically use of the noun phrase is an acceptable and somewhat frequent usage, for that very reason.
  • Bear in mind that stub category names rarely have to be "guessed", especially compared to permcat names, so some theoretical irregularity is less onerous than in the permcat space (where it's nonetheless fairly rampant), and is to be weighed against the many more people who experience them as readers (whether or not they're also editors, since fewer editors edit them directly at all, and even those that do will almost always do so much less often).
  • Note that -- at least in theory -- none of these changes (in any of the directions) would require any bot edits; the recatting would go onto the job queue, and as long as it's not b0rken that day, the categories'd eventually be changed on all the articles. It's still potentially quite a lot of edits by hand, though. (At least two edits and a deletion per category, often many more, when there are subcats, links, and the occasion mistakenly "hand-catted" article to take care of) If we decide against #1, we'd probably want to leave the geographies until last, just through sheer weight of numbers: we might after all start doing it, and then get a flood of late-breaking input saying something different, after all. If we want to make geography a "protected exception", I could even live with that. Alai 04:36, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I'd favor the all-nouns names myself. If only because of the sometimes hard-to-predict noun -> adjective mapping. Consistency is good, but not at the cost of clarity. — Coren (talk) 19:56, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Conclusion

I have read over all of the votes/discussions by everyone and have found that #3 seems to be the consensus. I used an "approval voting" type of system, so people could in essence vote for any number of ideas they thought would work. If anyone wants the breakdown, I can provide it. I'm not sure what the next step is, but I'm sure it involves lots of renames at SFD. ~ Amalas rawr =^_^= 15:33, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stubs "per-project"

I was surprised to see {{UK-waterway-stub}} so quickly nominated for deletion. While I wasn't aware of these guidelines and related process when I created it (they don't seem to be very well advertised), it seems to be me sensible that it should be possible to have a stub type with a 1:1 relationship with each WikiProject (in this case, WikiProject UK Waterways). A meta-category such as Project related stubs might be a useful accompaniment. Andy Mabbett 09:16, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Definitely not. Stub types are not specifically for use by individual WikiProjects - they are for use by all of Wikipedia, and as such it is necessary for them to adhere to as uniform a scheme as possible. Individual projects have their own entirely different mechanism for marking articles relating primarily to them - the talk page WikiProject grading system. This system is far more adaptable to the needs of individual WikiProjects, and also enables all articles relating to it - not just stubs - to be assigned a rating. As such, it makes far more sense for WikiProjects to use this than to try to force a stub template to conform to a purpose for which it is not optimally suited and in doing so to bend the overall stub hierarchy to accommodate it. If a WikiProject runs across the WP-wide stub system, then it doesn't automatically mean that it is a good idea to create a stub type for it - numerous WikiProjects do not have specific stub types for this reason. Given that the UK Waterways WikiProject is one such project, I'd suggest looking into the use of the talk page grading system rather than a stub type. Grutness...wha? 10:29, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Headline text ashish stubs

kindly write more about Indian revolutionaries &heroes

This is Wikiproject stub sorting, not stub writing. We sort already written stubs. If you want more articles about a specific topic, the best thing for you to do is write them. Grutness...wha? 09:44, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Conclusion

Someone who can find their glasses and not have the eyestrain I'm having right now needs to read this whole thing and summarize a conclusion. The last edit on the projectpage was 19 June 2007. We are long overdue for this proposal to be closed either with a consensus to do something, or with a "no consensus" result. And either way with the blaring yellow alert boxes on the main pages removed so people stop coming here and yawning when they realize how moribund the debate is. >;-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:39, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

PS: My initial take is that #Countries: adjective or noun? can be acted upon, as can the topic immediately preceding it, #"Major" vs. "subdivisional" — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:44, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I've posted a conclusion and removed all the alert boxes. ~ Amalas rawr =^_^= 15:38, 7 August 2007 (UTC)