Stub

Stubs are articles which have not yet received substantial attention from the Wikipedia editors. They have been created, but don't yet contain enough information to be considered articles. The community believes that stubs are far from worthless. They are, rather, the first step articles take on their course to becoming complete. ===Identifying a stub=== A stub is an article which is clearly too short, but not so short as to be useless. In general, it must be long enough to at least define the article's title. This usually means 3 to 10 short sentences. Note that a longer article may be a stub if the topic is complex enough; conversely, a short article on a topic which has a very narrow scope may not be a stub. In the past, a category referred to as ''substubs'' was utilised for articles smaller than the proposed minimum stub size, but this category has been deprecated with time. It is important to remember that the Wikipedia is not a dictionary; that is why the Wiktionary exists. If your article is too short to be a stub, consider moving it to said sister project or - even better - with a small amount of research, create a useful stub. Take this into consideration before creating short entries with barely any information. ===Categorizing stubs=== After writing the stub, the editor must insert what is called a ''stub template'' so that the article can be flagged as a stub. These stub templates should invariably be placed at the bottom of the article. Stub templates are composed by two distinct parts: a short message stating that said article is a stub of a particular type and encouraging editors to expand it and a category link, which places the article on a ''stub category''. The need for stub categories arose when the main stub category - - became so full that it got quite hard to find articles on a specific subject. With stub categories, if an editor is, for example, a biologist, he or she can look for stubs with the tag on said category and easily find stubs to which they can add, subtract or modify. In general, the naming convention for stubs is ''topic''-stub; for a complete list of stub categories, please refer to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. When marking articles as stubs, please be as precise as you possibly can - it saves other editors a lot of work further down the road. If an article overlaps two potential categories, two different stub templates may be used, but using more than two is strongly discouraged. It is convenient to note that once the stub has been properly expanded and becomes an article, you should remove the stub tag from it. Stub-related activities are centralized on Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting (shortcut WP:WSS). The project should be your main referential when it comes to this subject. ===Ideal stub article=== When you write a stub article, it is important to bear in mind that its main interest is to be expanded, and that thus it ideally contains enough information to give a basis for other editors to expand upon. Your initial research may be done either through books or through a reliable search site such as Yahoo! or Google. You may also contribute with knowledge you have acquired from other sources, but it is interesting to conduct a small research beforehand, in order to make sure that your version of the facts is, from a neutral point of view, correct. Begin by giving a precise definition or description of the topic in question. Avoid fallacies of definition. Since at times definitions are impossible, you should write a clear and informative description of the subject. State what said person is famous for, where a place is located and what it is known for, the basic details of an event and when it happened; just to give a few examples. Next, you should try to expand this basic definition. The previously mentioned research methods will often fetch you enough information for you to be able to expose the basic points of the subject. Once you have a couple of well-structured and well-written sentences, you should internally link relevant words, so that users unfamiliar with the specifics of a subject can understand what is written on the article. Avoid linking words needlessly; in case you are in doubt, you should use the preview button and read the article from the point of view of somebody who has had no exposure to information regarding the subject. If no word seems hard to comprehend or relevant enough, simply don't link anything. Once you have submitted the article, there are a number of courses it may take. An editor might get interested into it and write further, or you could expand it yourself once you have found more information about the subject or once you have more free time on your hands. ===Locating stubs=== :User:Triddle/stubsensor ''a script which detects long articles with the stub tag attached to them and is used to organize periodic User:Triddle/cleanup'' ::Category:Stubs ''deprecated, but still receives a few articles periodically'' ::Category:Stub categories :Wikipedia:Most wanted stubs :Wikipedia:Shortpages ===New stub categories=== If you identify a group of stubs that do not fit in an existing category, or if an existing stub category is growing too large and might be optimized by creating a narrower category, you might propose the creation of a new stub category. Proposed new stub types are debated at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria#Proposed new stubs. Before you start a new stub category, make sure you consider these six guidelines: #Is there a stub for this topic already? #:Check Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. #Will the new category be well-defined enough to help editors identify articles that they have the expertise to expand? #:Remember that using stubs categories is a way to facilitate article expansion. #Does the new category cover ground not covered by other categories, or create a well-defined subcategory that does? #:A new category might fit as a subcategory of more than one existing category, such as in the case of , which is a ''child'' of both and . #Will there be a significant number of stubs in this category; are there enough article stubs to warrant this new type? #:Typically the threshold is about 100 articles. This threshold is waived if the stub category exists as a tool for use by a Wikipedia:WikiProject. #Would your new category overlap with other categories? #:For example, geography stubs are sorted by country so you wouldn’t want to create mountain-stub or river-stub. #If you are breaking a subcategory out of a pre-existing category, will the new stub reduce the size of the parent category by a significant amount? #:This is not an absolute necessity, but it has been a driver for the creation of most of the existing stub categories. If you think you have satisfied these guidelines, propose the new stub category. If there are no objections within a week, you can go ahead and create the new stub category. ===Creating the stub template=== First, you will need to create the template which will be displayed on the articles which contain the stub. This should be named logically, following this model: ''Template:topic-stub''. For more information please refer to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines. This is the basic format for new stub templates:

''This A-related article is a Wikipedia:Stub. You can Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub Wikipedia by [{{localurl::|action=edit}} expanding it]''.

You might find use in pasting this code into the new template and customizing it by inserting different text into it. Replacing the letters A and B as such: *A: The stub topic goes into this field. For example, ''Road''. The topic must have a developed article, and thus not be another stub. *B: This should be replaced by a proper category, so that the stub will automatically be listed together with other stubs of its kind. Continuing with the previous example, you would replace B with ''Road stubs'' or ''Road-related stubs''. When the page is saved, a new template will have been created. In this example, . In the past, it was standard practice to add a small image to the stub template (the "stub icon"), but this is now discouraged, as it increases the strain on the Wikipedia servers. ===Creating the stub category=== Next, you will need to create a category to hold the articles which will have the new stub tag attached to them. ''Do this before you add your new template to any articles.'' To start editing it, you should follow the red category link on the stub template you have created. In this case, it would appear as :Category:Road stubs. Here's the basic format for stub categories:

*A: Insert the description of the category here. In this case it would be ''roads'', you can expand the description by adding additional terms. So you could, for example, add ''road transportation''. *B: Insert the name of the new stub here. *C: Insert the name of an appropriate higher level category, for this example it would be ''road transport stubs''. If you have broken your new stub out from an existing stub category, it would be advisable to list this category here. This syntax does four things, it: # adds the :Category:Road stubs to :Category:Stubs # provides a description of the category # displays the stub text # inserts this category into a higher level category, in this case the ''Category:Road'' stubs will be a member of ''Category:Road transport''. So, in this example, the formatting would look like this:

In order to increase the categories effectiveness and visibility, it's generally advisable to add your category to several categories. For example, this would add it to the Roads category:

Roads

When you are done, it is important that you make sure that the new stub and the new stub category are linked correctly to other categories. Using the ''road-stub'' as an example, the ''road-stub category'' needs to be a member of :Category:Stub categories (because it's a stub category) and :Category:Roads (because it's a category consisting of roads). If your new category has been made from part of an existing stub category or categories, these should also be listed here (so, for example, :Category:France geography stubs should be part of :Category:France-related stubs and :Category:Europe geography stubs). At this point, you should add the new stub category to this list: Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types If you have doubts or comments regarding any part of the process, don't hesitate to address them Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting. WikiProject Stub sorting

Stub

#redirect Template:Stub

Stub

Help organize stubs! See Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting or Wikipedia:Stub categories for more information, including a complete list of possible by-topic tags. Old discussions archived: * Template talk:Stub/Archive 1 * Template talk:Stub/Archive 2 * Template talk:Stub/Archive 3 ==Categories== Please enclose in each new stub template the message in

and

. == Maybe put a box around it?? == I don't like it centered, maybe it could be distinguished from the rest of the article by putting a little box effect on it? - User:Stoph 03:40, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC) :Maaan but it is annoying centred! Catches the eye when you're trying to read the article. Please can we remove the centring? I know I've suggested it before elsewhere, but why not just make the text a little smaller? it would be less obtrusive, and would still be separate from the main text. It doesn't need to be done through the metatemplate - all it needs is < small> < /small> put around the text (without the gaps, of course). User:Grutness|^{User_talk:Grutness} 05:08, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::My opinion: No image, no centering, no box. Just some simple text at the bottom of an article's main page that regular editors will notice, and casual visitors will most likely ignore. User:BlankVerse User talk:BlankVerse 06:31, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC) :::Yes that would be best for me also. - User:Stoph 06:35, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::::I'm in favour, too. User:Grutness|^{User_talk:Grutness} 01:00, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC) == Protection == I've protected the template - there have been numerous small - and largely unneccessary - changes to it in recent times, as well as some vandalism, and since this is such a heavily-used template, each change puts undue stress on the servers. I have no objection to people making ''neccessary'' changes to the template, but would request that any changed are discussed here on the talk page first. That way there's less risk of trivial changes or reverts. User:Grutness...''User_talk:Grutness 02:30, 18 May 2005 (UTC) *I've removed protection for now, since it isn't used that often any more thanks to WP:WSS. And also, by KBdank's request who wanted to change the category tag in there. If people want it protected once more, please let me (or Grutness) know. User:Radiant!User_talk:Radiant!>|<">meta:mergist 14:52, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC) == New wording for Stub template in respect to the current opinion of the Stub template == I apologize for the long title, but to cut the message short, here's what it should be. : ''This article is an uncategorized stub. You can help by putting this stub into an appropriate stub category, or better yet, adding to this article.'' I'm not going to mess with the coding or the linking, since there's others that can easily do that. Tell me what you think. User:Messedrocker 21:41, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC) :I think it should stay as-is because stub categorization is entirely for the use of Wikipedia's editors, and the vast majority of readers don't much care whether it's categorized or not. 21:46, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC) :: Hmph, good point. But perhaps if we change the wording, we could get more editors? User:Messedrocker 22:38, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC) : Boosh. I won! User:Messedrocker 11:20, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC) == PZFUN's makeover == ([http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Stub&diff=next&oldid=14910647 for reference]) I disagree with the changes to the template's appearance as well as to its wording. The fewer gray boxes per page, the better (many articles are already bogged down with templates), and a simpler message (which matches all the other stub messages) is always preferable. 03:21, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC) :Agreed. Plus, for some reason, they seem to have set the Category to Wikipedia:Stub/2005/June which makes no sense. --User:TheParanoidOne 05:13, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC) :: I have reverted it as I also found fault with it. Very bold, but I don't see it as visually appealing, and the category setup isn't helpful, considering stubs are better sorted by topic. -- User:Netoholic User talk:Netoholic 06:05, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC) :::Too wordy, too boxy, too colorful. I also disagree with PZFUN's changes. Perhaps this template needs to be protected. User:4.232.105.21 10:38, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC) == Space Before == (Sorry, I wasn't sure where the best place to post this would be). I find that all of the stub template text tends to be placed very closely after the element before it, like a ''See also'' or ''External links'' section. I am wondering if I am the only one who believes that an extra bit of space above the stub message might be more aesthetically pleasing? User:FuncUser_talk:Func 01:58, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC) :I'd vote for that. I always add two newlines before the stub template, so that it isn't crammed into the article text. On plain text this is fine, but it has strange interactions with certain other types of elements though, leading to an unpredicable amount of space. --User:TheParanoidOne 12:27, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Stub

''This article is a Wikipedia:Perfect stub article. You can Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub by [{{localurl::|action=edit}} adding to it] or you can [{{localurl::|action=edit}} choose] a Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types.''

Stubs

Stub

There are active discussions on this here and at template talk:stub#Stub Category and Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Should templates be used to add articles to categories? == Implicit membership == Shouldn't articles marked with the stub template implicitly be members of this category? The notice could include a link to it. User:MrJones 11:10, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC) :I'm a little confused. There is a link to the category in the template. Articles marked as stubs are in the category. What part of this do you think is missing? --User:Ssd 03:14, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC) :Note that articles that were marked as stubs before the link was added to the category won't be listed here until their next edit. As many articles are not yet converted from the old msg format to the new template format, so many will be added in the near future as they are converted. --User:Ssd 03:14, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC) Ah, I see. Thanks. User:MrJones 13:00, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC) == Should this category be used == Instead of this category, I feel we should use Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Stub or the stub display setting on Special:Preferences. -- User:Docu :Whatlinkshere only shows a very few number of articles. The stub display setting only shows articles whose links you are looking at. How would you suggest we get a large list of articles from which a potential article writer would pick? --User:Ssd 14:26, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC) ::If you choose the Category of your preference, you can highlight the stubs by setting the "Threshold for stub display" on Special:Preferences. Obviously, if you want them all on one page, a category (preferably defined on (Template:Stub)) may be better, as it's not possible to advance further then the 500 first results on Special:Whatlinkshere. -- User:Docu :::I supose it would be useful if all stubs were put in a category...''any'' category...that in itself would hopefully make it more likely they'd be fixed. (Yes, I do use the stub threshold option.) --User:Ssd 12:52, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC) Actually, I am completely opposed to using the stub threshold as the sole method of finding stubs. Many short articles are complete, as they contain nearly all information available on an important but small topic. Others are very long and yet very incomplete -- for example, authors with complete booklists, but no bio, or complete bio's, but no booklist... You just can't pick out stubs based on length alone. --User:Ssd 03:43, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC) :It works indeed better for short pages and depends on the threshold you choose. Did you try Wikipedia:Shortpages? -- User:Docu ::I hope you are not proposing Shortpages to be a list of all stubs. --User:Ssd 04:12, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC) == Too large? == True or false: this is too large to be a valid Wikipedia category? User:66.245.106.175 16:12, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC) : There's nothing wrong with this category. This will help editors find stub articles that they may be able to add to. It serves a very important purpose, and should not be removed just because of its size. -- User talk:LGagnon 18:34, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC) : It may be big, but its valid. But of course your welcome to make this category smaller by fixing the articles. . User:Krik 08:29, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC) :Very true. You know what else is true, there is no need for this. Who's actually using this to fix stubs? Could that person(s) make do with this Media:dori.20040704.stubs.txt (just copy and paste it in a page to get the links, for me it was timing out since I'm on dialup) instead? User:Dori | User talk:Dori 04:02, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC) ::This category allows us to find stubs based on if they have the message (which contains the link to this category). Does that text file update itself in such a way? If not, then it is not as useful for the same purpose. -- User talk:LGagnon 04:17, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC) :::Do you need something that's up to the minute or would something that's one or two month old suffice? Are you telling me that you'll be done with the 56368 stubs in that text file before two months? Oh, and by the way, despite not being up to the minute, my text file is more complete than the category which only has 11295 articles. User:Dori | User talk:Dori 13:59, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC) ::::I think it is actually more important (for stubs) that things get removed real time than added real time. There are enough stubs (obviously) that if they aren't all listed, it's ok, we'll get to them eventually. But if there's non-stubs in the list, it's pretty frustrating to go hunting through it for something to work on and hit one non-stub after another... It's also very important that the list actually get updated periodically, and not stagnate forever waiting for some person to bother to update it. --User:Ssd 04:39, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC) == Subcategories == How about giving the larger letters their own categories: ''S-Stub'', for example? --User:Ingoolemo :What I mean is, automatically have the template add ''Category:Stubs beginning with (letter). That way, you input it as , and it busts up the category a bit. User:IngoolemoUser_talk:IngoolemoUser:IngoolemoUser_talk:Ingoolemo 04:02, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC) ::This category scheme (splitting by first letter) seems to be not liked in general. I think it is a much better idea to split by topic than split by first letter if it is going to be done manually. If it is going to be done automatically, it should be a software modification that implements it, not a change in the category name. --User:Ssd 15:30, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC) == Wikipedia:Categories for deletion discussion == ===March 6, 2005=== *The category was listed for deletion again but failed to reach a consensus to delete so kept. The following is the discussion up to the point of closure and should not be modified.

Rename to :Category:Stubs. User:Neutrality^{User talk:Neutrality} 17:58, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC) :Question ... doesn't this present a technical challenge considering the number of items in the category? User:Ceyockey 18:28, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC) *''No change''. This has come up before, and it lost before. The stub category is obsolete. The only change that should be made to it is emptying it by either extending articles or sorting stub articles into more specific stub categories. It is not worth the overhead to rename something that really should be slowly phased out. --User:Ssd 20:33, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC) *It's not obsolete. There are always going to be articles that are not easily sorted. I think we should mark it for renaming the next time it is discontinued and then re-added, if that makes any sense. It obviously ''should'' be ''stubs''. If we should end up removing the category from the generic stub template and then re-adding it (as has happened a few times in the past), we should use :Category:Stubs (we actually missed a great opportunity to do this when last this happened). -User:Aranel ("Sarah") 00:16, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC) *One option: Start up :Category:Stubs with a new template (maybe just Template:St) and run the two in parallel for the time being. :Category:Stub is dropping in size, and it would be easy for WP:WSS to change Stub to St for those stubs not able to be subcategorised. Given time, hopefully Category stub will dwindle away. Once it has dwindled sufficiently, then it can be merged with the new category. At the moment, however, I suspect it would cause too much strain on the servers to do one giant changeover. If not, simply keep as is - certainly deletion is the worst possible option. User:Grutness|^{User_talk:Grutness} 05:14, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC) * Delete, no rename - Category for the generic stub template is a server resource problem. Stub sorters can still find items with Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Stub . -- User:Netoholic User talk:Netoholic 18:51, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC) *Keep as is. Throwing in my vote before it is interpreted that there are not enough stub sorters (I'm one) supporting this to keep it from changing or being deleted. Categorization seems to be happening at a brisk pace (based on some random page surveys) and the size of the category will hopefully get more manageable as time goes on. If we knew the rate of stub creation, that would help us to very roughly project when this size might be reached. Also, if we can mount a "merge or bust" campaign that encourages stub mergers over deletion (a significant number of stubs end up in the deletion queues) the rate of decline could be accelerated further. User:Ceyockey 23:57, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC) *Keep as is. Spoke with User:Jamesday, rename or delete doesn't look like a good idea. Rename.Delete. The category doesn't even work properly, because of all the items in it. May as well delete. --User:Jag123 03:50, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC) **What do you mean? It looks like it's working to me. -User:Aranel ("Sarah") 02:58, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC) ***It was turned off a while back because of performance problems or something. Look at Dorama, found using the google search for stubs. At this moment, it's a normal, generic stub, part of Category:Stub, but doesn't appear in the category. There are 18,000 hits in the stub Goolgle search, and only a fraction of that listed in the category. If the stub project ever reaches a point where stubs are controlled, then the category can be re-created, but at this point it's really useless. To clarify, even if a stub can't be categorised by an existing templates, and it's decided that the generic stub template is best, there's still no guarantee that it will show up in the category. --User:Jag123 03:16, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC) ****That's a template problem, not a category problem. Articles will show up in the category as they are edited. (And if we remove the category from the template, all the articles that are currently ''in'' the category will not move out until they are edited. There is a certain amount of inertia at work in large categories like this.) -User:Aranel ("Sarah") 03:25, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC) *****I see what you mean. I changed the category of the archeology stubs and nothing happened, as expected. In that case, Category:Stubs (if created) would contain stubs created after the template was changed (which would give Courtland an idea of how many stubs are created in a given time period) and stub sorters who find a generic stub that should remain a generic stub can make a null edit so the article "moves" categories. It wouldn't take very long for C:Stub to be emptied. Hopefully people won't forget that there are still a few thousand stubs out there that won't show up in either category, though. --User:Jag123 03:50, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC) *Delete, since the opportunity to express my opinion presents itself. I've always disliked the whole stub category heirarchy, it's a meta-category that shouldn't be mixed in with categories that are based on the actual subject matter. Things like :Category:Articles to be merged are fine since they're so temporary, but few things seem more permanent than stub templates. User:Bryan Derksen 05:18, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC) **A quick survey of the last 200 stubs that I have changed to more specialist stub templates shows that over 20% have now been extended beyond stub length. Since I average 100 template amendments a day, that's 40 stubs lost in the last two days. How permanent were you saying that template was? User:Grutness|^{User_talk:Grutness} 05:52, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC) ***Taking the opposite of "few" to be "many," I'd say they're more permanent than many things. A compromise I've been following has been to move all but one stub notice over onto article's talk: pages when I run across articles with more than one stub notice, since I'm not one to unilaterally impose my will when there isn't a consensus, but I still vote to delete the whole lot of them when the question comes up (as it has here). User:Bryan Derksen 00:50, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC) ****OW! Baaaad move! So when the page is expanded beyond stub length, the editor takes the stub notice off the page, but it stays on the talk page permanently. Can we have a list of all the articles you've done this to so that they can be reverted? NOW? User:Grutness|^{User_talk:Grutness} 00:54, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC) *****Sorry, I don't keep track. You can either dig around in my contributions for summaries with "stub" in them or you can look in the stub categories themselves under "talk:" (this will get the ones that others have been doing too). Let me know if you actually go do that, though, so I can follow along and delete the extra stub templates instead. See Wikipedia talk:Template messages#Moving templates to talk pages for more discussion of this issue. User:Bryan Derksen 02:48, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

===December 19, 2004=== *The following discussion was moved from Wikipedia:Categories for deletion (category listed for deletion on December 19, 2004) with the consensus being to keep the category. User:RedWolf 17:45, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)

Should be merged with :Category:Stubs, which has the proper (plural) name. For some reason, most of the articles are in the singular cat, even though almost all the subcats are properly plural. —User:Tkinias 20:09, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC) :It appears that all articles using Template:Stub appear in :Category:Stub and all article using Template:Sect-stub appear in :Category:Stubs. User:Moverton 02:10, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC) :I think it would be an extremely bad idea to touch this category at all. Rather than renaming this category, just empty it by moving its contents into subcategories of :Category:Stub categories. Likewise, :Category:Stubs should be emptied before it is allowed to grow further. --User:Ssd 04:40, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC) :Category:Stubs apparently was already empty, so I deleted it. --User:Ssd 05:18, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC) :I added a note to Template talk:Stub proposing the template be modified to encourage people not to use it anymore and to categorize stubs by topic. It may take a while for this category to be de-populated; once it is, Template:Stub should probably be listed on WP:TFD. -- User:Beland 01:38, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC) :: Bad idea. Very very very bad idea to delete Template:Stub. The stub template is fully part of Wikipedia, and you don't know how many bots and/or people still use it. Even though :Category:Stub is not being updated, if you delete it, it will cause major problems. --User:AllyUnion User talk:AllyUnion 18:42, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC) :::The fact that just four people have apparently made this decision for a very major change without even notifying the group most familiar with the subject, Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting, is, in my opinion, not the way that things should be done. The fact that a change this big wasn't discussed in either Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) or Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) is also "A VERY BAD THING" (official trademark of gK). User:GK User talk:GK 20:40, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC) ::::''If'' this is almost always added by adding Template:stub and ''if'' it will promptly be replaced by an equivalent :Category:stubs and ''if'' someone will take responsibility for tracking down all non-conforming uses (e.g. other categories include it directly), then, I suppose it would be OK to replace it with :Category:Stubs, but my feeling is why bother? To make it a plural? An awful lot of work for something so trivial. I say Keep. -- User:Jmabel | User talk:Jmabel 21:05, Dec 30, 2004 (UTC) :I vote against changing this category in any way. --User:Ssd 15:20, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC) :Keep User:GK User talk:GK 02:55, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC) :Keep: this is a vital part of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting WikiProject -- User:The Anome 10:11, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC) :Keep If anything, sect-stubs should be changed to feed into this. User:Superm401 06:17, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

==Why not in Category== Why do stubs not feed into this category? Is it just because that would make that category too big? If so, how can we get an up to date list of all stubs? User:Superm401 01:09, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC) :They used to. I haven't found the discussion that explains why they now are not. You can find a list of what links to the stub template at Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Stub. -User:Aranel ("Sarah") 23:26, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC) ::No, you cannot. Whatlinks here only shows 500 results. There are ''way'' more than 500 stubs. User:Bacchiad 01:08, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC) ==Some good news at last== At least WP:WSS is making a bit of a dent. At present there are only some 3500 stubs in :Category:Stub - still too many but way down on what it was. Everyone seems to be attacking the same parts of the alphabet, though - over 2000 of those stubs start with S or T! User:Grutness|^{User_talk:Grutness} 06:28, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC) :Whisper it quietly, lest Wikipedia hears us, but there are now only 2441 articles in Category:Stub! User:Grutness|^{User_talk:Grutness} 07:59, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::Now only 1546. User:Remuel 08:07, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC) The category now contains ''under 800 stubs''! User:Grutness|^{User_talk:Grutness} 04:49, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC) (of course,t here are another 10,000 it doesn't contain...) == Whaaaaaa...what happened? == We were getting so close! Yesterday after I had sorted all but a couple all the way through H, there were less than 600 articles marked with just-plain "stub"...but now there are over 200 just in A through C alone! Either people got really busy writing really short articles or they've devised some new way of listing stubs. Which is it? Or something else entirely? --User:Jemiller226 06:28, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC) :the list never contains all the stubs, it gets updated slowly, however i've never seen it jump by such a large amount. google searching for stubs indicates there are probably about 4-5000 stubs left in total, but dont worry it has been going down steadily. User:Bluemoose 07:50, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::It was a very impressive jump. Not sure how it happened - perhaps someone figured out how to do a null edit on every wikipedia article! As I noted in the last section of this page (and Bluemoose said above) the number of stubs in total has dropped considerably overall (WP:WSS has been watching the decline from 11,100 to about 9,200 over the last month). Substub has also been dropping dramatically (down to about 1000). We're getting there... User:Grutness|^{User_talk:Grutness} 07:55, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC) :Oddly, that does seem to be what's happened... a lot of the new stubs haven't been edited for months. Perhaps they're all in the category now... Has someone managed to fix the template-lag problem? There are now about 3100 articles (16 pages) in the category. User:Grutness|^{User_talk:Grutness} 07:59, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC) : all this leads me to belive that the list does contain every stub now, especially as google finds about 8000 stubs, then you consider that google finds stubs that are tagged due to its lag, so maybe its really about 6000, then consider it seems to double search results with its "supplemental results", this leaves you with about 3000... which is a very good thing. User:Bluemoose 12:31, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC) Might well be a good idea, since we're getting close to looking for the last ones anyway. User:Grutness|^{User_talk:Grutness} 22:49, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC) :I've just done a mass of stub -> sportbio-stub changes and many of them had their last modification date being late 2004, yet I had never seen any of them in the stub list. I was therefore surprised to see that the Stub category listing is not all it seems to be. Do any of the other stub categries suffer from this too? --User:TheParanoidOne 10:27, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::No - and it would have been unlikely, since was the only stub template that was decoupled from its category. I suspect that we're now seeing the lot, folks. Don't know how it happened, but it happened. User:Grutness|^{User_talk:Grutness} 11:33, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC) Recently User:D6 edited (edit and save, without change) the some 1000 pages with that weren't categorized yet. This didn't appear in the pages edit history, but resulted in the articles being categorized (and removed from "uncategorized pages"). Possibly, someone did the same with the stub articles or a change in mediawiki resulted in the same. If you are interested, I can check if any remain uncategorized and do for as for . -- User:Docu :That would be ''very'' useful (thanks in advance!). Some more good news... with the category now containing ''under 500 articles'', we can use another hunting technique. We can currently hunt stubs using \"What links here\" from the template! FWIW, :Category:substubs is getting equally thin (only 350 articles now). User:Grutness|^{User_talk:Grutness} 12:03, 5 May 2005 (UTC) ::I ran it on the 490 pages on Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Stub, the number of articles in the category is now beyond 750 (?). At least 25 were categorized while the bot was running. Only 2 of the 490 were in Category:Stubs on April 6. Once a new download version is available, I can check if we have all remaining ones. -- User:Docu ::Of course, clearing them out of the generic categories is only half the battle. Clearing them doesn't make them not stubs anymore =(...Someone actually has to write the things at some point. =) --User:Jemiller226 20:35, 5 May 2005 (UTC) ::True of course - but at least they're going to be where editors in specialist subjects can find them easily. I do recounts of various geo-stub categories every now and again, and am pleased to see that quite a number of stubs are disappearing from them - presumably improved beyond stub level. User:Grutness|^{User_talk:Grutness} 23:46, 5 May 2005 (UTC) Hm .. .. I just did a count on the April 6 dump: there were 28944 articles linking to Template:Stub and only 2678 of those categorized in :Category:Stub. Even if in the meantime you categorized half of them, there should still a lot left. I will try check the categorylinks table of April 21 to see if I can can run the bot on a reasonable selection thereof. -- User:Docu :You are working fast on this category: of those c. 26000 to add, there are just 9962 left. I didn't want to add them all at once. Besides, there are about 1600 currently (May 15) in the category. -- User:Docu From the last dump (May 16), there were just 5700 left to add. The number of articles in the category was down to 100, before I started adding them. -- User:Docu :Man, it's kind of discouraging to see the list get so small and in a matter of hours, return to another ''massive'' list of stubs! Oh well, at least that's one method of ensuring a bit of job (role?) security on here. =) --User:Jemiller226 05:53, 20 May 2005 (UTC) ::once they're all done, you can start on the 10,000 bio-stubs! :) User:Grutness...''User_talk:Grutness 07:19, 20 May 2005 (UTC) :::Does this mean ''all'' the stubs that need sorting are in the list now? User:Bluemoose 09:00, 20 May 2005 (UTC) ::Looks like it. I just did a count of articles in the category and found 23 pages, with 80 stubs on the last page (~4480 stubs total). A search for stubs on Google is reporting 4510 stubs found. Those numbers look pretty close. --''User: Allen3'' ^{User talk:Allen3} 11:59, May 20, 2005 (UTC) :::And that will probably include 30 or so pages like Wikipedia:Stub explaining what the template messagge looks like. yessss!!! User:Grutness...''User_talk:Grutness 13:28, 20 May 2005 (UTC) It should be complete by now. Some of the 5700 might already have been taken care of. Below, there is a breakdown by letter. Of the last 100, 15 were in Wikipedia/Wikipedia talk namespaces, 16 in User namespace. --- User:Docu {| border class="toccolours plainlinks" style="border-collapse:collapse" | |- | Letter || [ A] || [ B] || [ C] || [ D] || [ E] || [ F] || [ G] || [ H] || [ I] || [ J] || [ K] || [ L] || [ M] || [ N] || [ O] || [ P] || [ R] || [ S] || [ T] || [ W] || [ Y] |- | Count || 282 || 362 || 509 || 297 || 219 || 236 || 236 || 242 || 171 || 163 || 205 || 313 || 444 || 282 || 177 || 404 || 253 || 287 || 433 || 182 || 1 |} *Unfortunately, these 5700 aren't the end of it. User:Pearle has continued to find and update even more stubs, which continue to add to the totals shown above. Fortunately, these seem to be coming in tens and twenties, no longer in hundreds or thousands per day, so the end probably really is near. It's just not clear exactly how near. Given this, and the fact that updating the counts was a distraction, I've reverted the Category ToC back to the standard version. User:RussBlau User_talk:RussBlau 13:07, May 25, 2005 (UTC) **That's not grounds to remove the ToC: this was never going to be the end of it because people are still adding the template to new articles (probably at a faster rate than the bot is), but the ToC still gives us an idea of what's to be done. User:Steinsky User talk:Steinsky 15:11, 25 May 2005 (UTC) :::''"the ToC still gives us an idea of what's to be done."'' Assuming of course, it's kept up to date. --User:TheParanoidOne 16:42, 25 May 2005 (UTC) ::::Not really, as the live list is available on the page further down. BTW The 5700 are not the precise count on May 16, but the number of pages the bot tried to add on the 18 when there were just 100 left. It's a reasonable estimate though. Today (May 28), there are just about 950 left .. -- User:Docu == Katz's Deli... == ...is not disappearing from the list, even though there's no stub tag there. Any idea why? --User:Jemiller226 20:12, 3 May 2005 (UTC) :It's probably got a bad page history (accidentally created twice or similar). Admins can normally fix that sort of thing, but this one has block-compression problems, so it can't be fixed at the moment, and will have to hang around for a while. Sooner or later it'll be worth having another look at to fix it. User:Grutness|^{User_talk:Grutness} 01:49, 4 May 2005 (UTC) Brion Vibber fixed it (see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Spurious_article_in_a_category_and_search). -- User:Docu == User pages with stub tags == Does anyone else agree that it is ok to edit user pages to remove the stub tag? as it interferes with our lovely stub list. I'm sure no one would mind, especially if we left an edit note explaining why. User:Bluemoose 10:17, 4 May 2005 (UTC) :What I would suggest doing is creating a new stub that looks exactly like the regular stub template but without including a category (called userpage-stub or something). Then politely suggest to each user on their Talk page that they change from the old stub template to the new one. Although this is a Wiki and you can edit almost any page, it is generally considered impolite to edit User pages except for typos unless they are someone like User:Jimbo Wales who says right on his user page to go ahead and edit it. User:BlankVerse User talk:BlankVerse 10:31, 4 May 2005 (UTC) ::Yes, asking them on their talk pages is a good idea. There are other "stub" pages such as Wikipedia:Yahoo! searching Wikipedia and Wikipedia:Google searching Wikipedia, I personally think these could just be speedy deleted, as they have no useful content, and i doubt anyone knows they even exist. User:Bluemoose 14:06, 4 May 2005 (UTC) :::Check the criteria for WP:SD. I'm not sure they fit. You might have to submit them at WP:VFD. If only those pages could be a form, like the ones that show up when the developers disable the Wikipedia search engine. (Of course you ''could'' just put a Delete because tag on the article and see if an admin will delete it anyway, but I'm not really recommending you do that. ;-) User:BlankVerse User talk:BlankVerse 09:54, 5 May 2005 (UTC) :Asking them is a very good idea. Some of these stubs are there for valid reasons, such as creating dummy pages to use as templates (the other meaning) for real articles. Then again, if we can find the right subcategory for these dummy articles, it would make sense to change them over anyway! User:Grutness|^{User_talk:Grutness} 10:30, 5 May 2005 (UTC) == rename this category == This category should be renamed to "Uncategorized stubs". --User:SuperDude115 02:48, 15 May 2005 (UTC) :It probably should, but it's still so heavily used that any change to the template is likely to cause serious server problems, and in any case due to the way templates work you'd need to do a null edit on every stub in the category to get it to move to the new category. That's one of the reasons why planned moves to :Category:Stubs have never been accepted. User:Grutness...''User_talk:Grutness 06:35, 15 May 2005 (UTC) == Reduction of uncategorized stubs == I have been reducing the list of uncategorized stubs by changing the stub templates on the articles. Will other Wikipedians help me on this mission? --User:SuperDude115 03:01, 24 May 2005 (UTC) :Don't worry - you're not the only one working on this! :) User:Grutness...''User_talk:Grutness 05:18, 24 May 2005 (UTC) :Indeed. You might want to look up Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting. --User:TheParanoidOne 08:25, 24 May 2005 (UTC) == Stub Sorting == How much progress has stub-sorting been making. I've only just started so don't really know. == Stub Sorting == How much progress has stub-sorting been making. I've only just started so don't really know. --User:Bjwebb 15:06, 26 May 2005 (UTC) :A lot of progress has been made. When the project began there was an estimated 25,000 unsorted stubs plus another 4000 substubs. These estimates may have been low, and new stubs come in daily. Currently all substubs have been sorted and the template deleted, while less than 1400 unsorted stubs remain. Next month will probably see the start of maintence mode for unsorted stubs and the start of the main assault on the biographical stubs. --''User: Allen3'' ^{User talk:Allen3} 15:28, May 26, 2005 (UTC) ::Just out of intrest when did the project actually begin? --User:Bjwebb 19:54, 26 May 2005 (UTC) :::15 Nov, 2004. User:Steinsky User talk:Steinsky 20:06, 26 May 2005 (UTC) :In all there are well over 25,000 stubs, since many were already crudely divided (probably closer to 40,000 if the truth be known). The above tally doesn't include items moved from coarsely graded subcategories to more finely graded ones. I know I'm biased on this one, but moving several thousand geo-stubs to separate country and region categories is another example of stub sorting progress - in all there are over 10,000 geo-stubs divided into about 60 different subcategories whereas before they were listed as UK-geo-stub, US-geo-stub or general geo-stub. The same is true with many other stub subcategories (music, history, science and soon - biography). User:Grutness...''User_talk:Grutness 00:52, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

:Important: This category is getting ''very small''.
If appropriate, please give yourself a hearty round of applause for moving content into subtopical categories.

:Heh :) --User:TheParanoidOne 10:48, 30 May 2005 (UTC) To quote Sir Edmund Hillary, on his return to camp after the conquest of Everest: "Well George, we knocked the bastard off!" User:Grutness...''User_talk:Grutness 01:26, 31 May 2005 (UTC) :I go away for the weekend, and when i get back i find a virtually empty stub list!, well done!. User:Bluemoose 13:15, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC) == Brackets == I have put both Water Music %28Handel%29 and The Three Musketeers %281993%29 into an apropiate stub category, but they still appear in Category:Stub. Why? Is it something to do with the brackets? --User:Bjwebb 08:21, 30 May 2005 (UTC) :More likely a page hstory problem. I'll see if I can fix them. User:Grutness...''User_talk:Grutness 10:07, 30 May 2005 (UTC) ::Nope, that didn't work - no idea what the problem is. I suggest asking at the Village Pump. User:Grutness...''User_talk:Grutness 10:17, 30 May 2005 (UTC) :::Probably the "Katz's Deli" discussed further up on this page. -- User:Docu

Stub

Stub may refer to: * method stub, in computer programming. * stub network, a kind of computer network. Stub may also refer to: * a piece of work of a greater calculation. in distributed computing. * a short railway or bus line, in transport. * an unequal first or last interest calculation period, usually as a part of a Swap (finance). * Within Wikipedia, a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stub stub] is an underdeveloped article.

Stub

For older history of this page see Stub/old ---- '''Please don't delete this disambiguation page.''' I created it to help people who may follow a "stub" link in some other context (currently stub redirects to Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub, on which page I have provided a link to this disambig page). I've tried to "fix" the current links to "stub" that have nothing to do with short Wikipedia articles. Others can continue to do this at Special:Whatlinkshere/Stub. - User:Dcljr 03:45, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC) -I'm going to add to the disambig page a link to Wikipedia:stub, so anything that accidentally links here can see that. Any objections? If so, go ahead and remove it. :) User:Flcelloguy 23:33, 21 May 2005 (UTC) -Actually, all I did was move the Wikipedia stub notice to be on top of the disambig notice; this increases visibility (I missed the wiki:stub notice at first). I'll try and find other pages that link to "stub" when meaning to link to "Wikipedia:stub". User:Flcelloguy 23:36, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Stub

#REDIRECT Template talk:Stub/Archive1

Stub

Help: There are over 1000 Wikipedia links to "Find or fix a stub", which now redirects to this page. But this page does not tell you how to find or fix a stub. User:Tempshill 23:29, 21 May 2005 (UTC) :"Finding stubs" section was added, as per request. --User:Sn0wflake 23:59, 21 May 2005 (UTC) ::Excellent, thank you. User:Tempshill 20:56, 22 May 2005 (UTC) Where can I find the discussion about the removal of images from various stub templates? User:Zscout370 User_talk:Zscout370 02:30, 22 May 2005 (UTC) :Wikipedia:Suspend use of stub icons. Cheers. --User:Sn0wflake 01:46, 23 May 2005 (UTC) ::I've added a line discouraging the use of icons at Wikipedia:Stub#Creating_the_stub_template. User:Grutness...''User_talk:Grutness 13:41, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC) == Wikipedia:Stubbing == I considered altering and adding stub tags to articles stubbing. Should we make an article with that name? --User:SuperDude115 15:36, 24 May 2005 (UTC) :I didn't quite understand what you meant, but creating such entry would be the same as shooting our own foot, as the intention of this page is reuniting all information about stubs in one place. The term ''stubbing'' is somewhat of a neologism, also. That page would be better off redirecting to here. --User:Sn0wflake 19:57, 24 May 2005 (UTC) == stub template position == This page says

These stub templates should invariably be placed at the bottom of the article.

Is that strictly required? I prefer to put the stub template above headings such as External links or References, and succession boxes or related concept boxes. This way readers will realise the article is incomplete (and consider adding to it) before they get to the "boring" stuff at the bottom of the page. An alternate wording might be ''These stub templates should be placed at the bottom of the text of the article.'' --User:ScottDavis 04:28, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC) :As things stand, what is said on the article is the rule. Invariably means invariably. However, you might want to bring this discussion up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting. --User:Sn0wflake 04:52, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC) ::[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting#stub_template_position He took your advice]. As User:Grutness pointed out in that discussion, the stub template basically says "this is all we have, and we need more", implying there's nothing beyond it when in fact there is. --User:Elembis 13:43, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC) :I agree with Scott's reasoning - I used to place all my stub msgs above those section, after main body. --User:Piotrus ^{User_talk:Piotrus} 11:28, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC) == Boilerplate index == I've added a line pointing at this page to the end of the See Also list @ WP:BPT User:Ceyockey 17:35, 2005 Jun 4 (UTC) == Ethno-stub died? == Template:Ethno-stub seems to have disappeared for no good reason I can ascertain...any help? User:TShilo12 ^{User talk:TShilo12} 04:49, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC) :For reasons best known to himself, Stevertigo decided to delete the template. It's been restored. User:Grutness...''User_talk:Grutness 06:36, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC) ::Thanky kindly, good sir. User:TShilo12 ^{User talk:TShilo12} 08:18, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC) ==Wikipedia:Stub== Given that the category is now :Category:Stubs, should this page be similarly named? User:Grutness...''User_talk:Grutness 06:23, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC) :Sounds reasonable, provided appropriate redirects. User:TShilo12 ^{User talk:TShilo12} 08:17, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC) == Stubsensor cleanup project == Hello, Would anyone mind if I added a blurb about the User:Triddle/stubsensor cleanup project (example: User:Triddle/stubsensor/20050516)? Perhaps we can also consolidate and try to come up with good criteria for judging when an article is no longer a stub? User:Triddle 21:58, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC) *Hey there, Triddle. Indeed, your Stubsensor would make a nice addition to this page. I will include it right away. Stub size, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely. Our main problem comes from the fact that there isn't much to say about certain subjects and that there is too much to say about others. There are also articles with little content and huge tables/lists which give very little useful information. So the whole discussion becomes a mess most of the time. But please give your opinion on this matter, either here or on the WP:WSS. Cheers. --User:Sn0wflake 01:36, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC) **Yes indeed it is hard to tell what is a stub and what is not. I've attacked this on two levels: in my software and in the organization of the cleanup projects. I believe the proper solution is proper and good communication. Here is what my take is on the matter: A stub is short enough to contain an interesting point or two but overall does not contain enough detail to be a full article but only if it can be expanded by an average person. If its already reached the level of requiring extensive research or college courses it should probably have the tag put on it and list why. Additionally if the article has glaring omissions it should have the expand tag put on it and list the omissions and how to fix it. The more we can improve the signal to noise ratio on the stub tags I believe the more we can let them do their intended job: make it easy for your average person to improve Wikipedia. Thats just my philosophy though. User:Triddle 05:09, Jun 11, 2005 (UTC) ***We must be on the right track then, since that's more or less what is already being said on the article, but the expansion tag is something that hadn't been considered so far. The only problem I see is that this would be a great guideline for WP:WSS, but I don't see the average user "getting" the spirit of the idea. --User:Sn0wflake 17:52, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

See other meanings of words starting from letter:

S

SB | SC | SD | SE | SF | SG | SH | SI | SJ | SK | SL | SM | SN | SO | SP | SR | SS | ST | SU | SW | SX | SY | SZ |

Words begining with Stub:

Stub
Stub
Stub
Stub
Stub
Stub
Stub
Stub
Stub
Stub-stub
Stub/Archive1
Stub/Archive_1
Stub/Archive_2
Stub/Archive_3
Stub/old
Stub/old
Stub2
Stub3
Stubaier_Alps
Stubaital
Stubai_Alps
Stubbekobing
Stubbek�bing
Stubbies
Stubbies
Stubbing
Stubbington
Stubble
Stubble
Stubble_(web_comic)
Stubble_the_comic
Stubble_Trouble
Stubborn_Kind_of_Fellow
Stubbs,_WI
Stubbs,_Wisconsin
Stubby
Stubby_Clapp
Stubby_Kaye
Stuberman
Stuberman
Stublist
Stublist
Stubnitz
Stubnotice
Stubnotice
Stubs
Stubs
Stubs
Stubs
Stubs
Stubs
Stubsection
Stubsection
Stubs_by_region
Stubs_by_region
Stubs_to_be_discussed
Stubthreshold
Stub_(disambiguation)
Stub_(disambiguation)
Stub_and_disambiguation_message_example
Stub_article
Stub_articles
Stub_articles
Stub_categories
Stub_categories
Stub_categories
Stub_categories
Stub_categories
Stub_categories_for_deletion
Stub_Category
Stub_Category
Stub_category
Stub_category
Stub_example
Stub_Makers
Stub_Makers
Stub_messages
Stub_Network
Stub_network
Stub_Saturday
Stub_Series_Terminated_Logic
Stub_sorting
Stub_sorting_guideline
Stub_sorting_policy
Stub_sorting_policy
Stub_sorting_stubs
Stub_templates
Stub_types
Stub_types_for_deletion
Stub_types_for_deletion
Stub_types_for_deletion/Log
Stub_types_for_deletion/Log/Deleted
Stub_types_for_deletion/Log/Deleted/June_2005
Stub_types_for_deletion/Log/Not_deleted
Stub_types_for_deletion/Log/Not_deleted/June_2005