Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/Archive/2006

message: Many parts of wikipedia use a reverse chronological order: the most recent edits at the top of the page, and the older contributions at the bottom. Would it be an idea to use that on WP:WSS/P as well? After all, the top of the page is the first thing of the page that many people see. I believe it would stimulate outsider input if they could immediately see where to propose a new stub type. I also don't think it's very convenient to have to scroll through the entire page, or to have to sift through the content box, for ongoing discussions. Many of the discussions in the top of the page (the proposals from October, November and early December have already come to an end, so I don't see why they should clutter up the page this way. What pushed me to come to this proposal/suggestion is the recent reformatting of Proposed mergers, which has gone from an alphabetical order to a reverse chronological order. Aecis Mr. Mojo risin' 00:45, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it doesn't really matter, if the page is archived regularly and thus kept at a moderate size. Conscious 18:17, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That leaves the issue of how the page will look in between archiving sessions. You will probably agree with me that the page was barely readable prior to the current round of archiving. I believe that a reverse chronological order can prevent such a mess, instead of having to clean up after it. Aecis Mr. Mojo risin' 18:34, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

text: wouldnt it make archiving more fiddly or will that become reverse order too? BL kiss the lizard 22:38, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why would it become any more fiddly? It would simply be done from the bottom up, instead of from the top down. In other words: anything that is archived is already on the bottom of the page and out of sight. Aecis Mr. Mojo risin' 22:42, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

text: If it indeed does make archiving more fiddly, I don't think it should matter. After all, WP:WSS/P doesn't exist for the sake of archiving, but for the sake of proposal and discussion. And archiving could also be done in reverse order. Aecis Mr. Mojo risin' 09:00, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Reverse chronological order makes sense to me. Can we do Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Discoveries at the same time? (Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion is already rev-chron.) — Fingers-of-Pyrex 19:00, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Doing so for WP:WSS/D would probably be an especially good idea, as things get very little input there and it tends to be quite long. --Mairi 22:16, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I will be missing the time I used to spend scrolling down the page, but I think I will get over it, so I would support the proposal.  I guess it will make archiving a bit more fiddly, but I think it's worth it.--Carabinieri 21:33, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

text: A good idea. As suggested by Aecis, the archiving can simply be done reverse order as well. It should be done for WP:WSS/D as well. --Valentinian 23:37, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Assuming we're going forward with this (and I think we ought to unless someone says otherwise shortly), I've written a script that'll reverse the sections, so no one has to do it by hand. The output from it (using a fairly recent version of WP:WSS/P) is in my sandbox. Maybe this'll spur us on to actually implementing this :) Mairi 06:12, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: When are you able to run that program? I think we can now take the final step and get the reformatting done. I don't think we need to go through RPP for this. Aecis Mr. Mojo risin' 00:16, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If we want to get it done tonight, I could run it anytime in the next hour or 0300 - 0700 UTC. (The latter time slot also works tomorrow too.) I don't see any need to thru RFPP, it shouldn't be protected for long... Mairi 00:22, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think I'll be able to assist you in the reformatting, as I'm about to go to bed. It's 1.30 am here now :s Aecis Mr. Mojo risin' 00:29, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Ahh, ok. I should be able to manage tho. I'll wait til I get another response from anyone (or until tomorrow night), before going ahead with it. Mairi 00:59, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reverse chronological order 

message: I just saw the following quote on the internet : 
<jkl> "This pornography-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it."
<jkl> That's the worst pickup line ever.
-:)
Aecis Mr. Mojo risin' 10:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  We've made it all the way to QDB 

message: See Talk:David Hassinger. Two issues:
1. If anyone knows a better stub flag for this than bio-stub, obviously that would be good. But engineer-stub isn't right IMO, and I can't find a better one.
2. Is there a call for an unsortable category? One for articles that would otherwise go into categories like people stubs, as they are in a subject area for which there are too few stubs to justify a stub category? Depending on the answer to (1) above, this may be a case in point. If it stays in people stubs it will probably waste a lot of people's time. Andrewa 21:18, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: there are an estimated 200000+ stubs, and only a few days ago  was completely empty. so obviously they can all be sorted.  is the only place needed for unsortable stubs. if we make a seperate  then lazy people will simply put things in there rather than sort them further and itll simply become a new  BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 03:32, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: ''Unsortable'' stub category

message: As per the above discussion, I've gone ahead and reversed the order of this page. I'll hold off on reversing WP:WSS/D until there's more feedback on the new order. Mairi 00:57, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page reversed 

message: I hope I'm not spamming the page excessively with these;  if it's any comfort, there's only about another five of those that meet the basic criteria I've been using, and that look basically sensible.  After that, I'll upload the remainder of the raw data, if people want to check if some of the overlaps of size < 60 are 'under-tagged', which is I suspect extremely likely.  Alai 03:17, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: They're all perfectly logical ideas for splits, and in almost all cases it makes perfect sense to do them. So I've certainly no objection. Grutness...wha? 04:38, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  My double-stubbing based proposals... 

message: I'm done with the trawl through the over-threshold double-stubbings of oversized categories:  the complete list is here, if anyone wants to review the data, or propose any of the ones that I skipped.  I've also just compiled a secondary list, also where one potential parent is oversized, but where the overlap is <60 (but >=30).  In many of these cases I'd imagine that there's "under-double-stubbing" and some of these will actually be viable, should anyone wish to propose these semi-speculatively, or do a more accurate count.  Alai 03:23, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yet more lists of things 

message: I'll grant that we're often behind the game on archiving this page, but I'd prefer if we could avoid archiving proposals that aren't "finalised":  in particular, proposals that are "approved", but not yet created.  Unless we flag those in some other fashion.  Otherwise, chances are the creation queue will get even more ad hoc than it is at present...  Alai 14:30, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archives 

message: :*Somehow I've been missing that -- probably 'stuck mentally' in 'Article Think Mode' if I ever saw that low on a Cat Page. 
:*Most I see are fairly large, and you have all the edit fonts, buttons, summary windows, et. al., all in the way and I conjecture I never saw that low on a category page, or at least never noticed while scanning what was there for inspiration on what might lead up the tree... talk about perverse irony!
:*'One' has commented on my talk that the idea of Main Article logging is meritorious, and in fact, running across several of those in the last two weeks is what triggered the idea. Thus the annotation like Main Article: History of Canada it is a sub-category of: :Category:History of North America. still seems a good idea, especially in long Category pages. 
:*I can't be the only editor that has never caught on (without being hit with a 2-by-4) about the parent category hiding off along the page bottoms!  Well, at least I hope so!
:*Thus the modified proposal would be we all do that for long cat pages at the least. The added benefit of the Main article or list of same is that an editor can    quickly cross check it's categorization—which tends to be thorough— and copy back as needed into the side (related) article without a lot of digging.
Since I do a lot of those side article fix ups, I admit to bias... but the idea has merit.  Even if it's nothing to do with sorting stubs per se. Those checking in here must be traversing a fair number of articles, so there's a thought with merit, do as you will with it!
Best regards, <B>Fra</B>nkB 03:58, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Egg on Face

message: I apparently never saved out on the edit I was recommending. It should have looked like This example or when polished for presentation and organization, the current: :Category:History of Canada . Apologies <B>Fra</B>nkB 20:59, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: More Egg, et. al. next day!

message: People of WSS, come help sort . There are too many of them and I have finals coming up. Thanks. - CrazyRussian talk/contribs/email 22:31, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Add it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/To do - that way it'll get more people noticing it! BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 05:45, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  {{cl|University stubs}} 

message: A thought I just had while recording a vote: should we have some sort of speedy creation policy for obvious splits of oversized categories?  --CComMack 11:30, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: although I can see that it would be appealing, I'm against it - there have been several seemingly "obvious" splits which have been improved after a couple of days of debate. We tend to turn a blind eye to the more obvious ones being created a couple of days early though, so the "one week rule" is fairly flexible. It's definitely worth leaving a few days between proposal and creation, though. Grutness...wha? 12:17, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Speedy policy 

message: One of my activities in WP:WSS is adding stub categories to :Category:Stub categories. In many cases, this is a pretty obvious and straight-forward activity. I'm not sure about one kind of stub categories though. Should categories like :Category:People stubs by nationality and :Category:People stubs by occupation be moved to :Category:Stub categories, or should they be kept as they are? Aecis Appleknocker Flophouse 22:02, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stub categories 

message: At some time recently, we seem to have lost this section from the bottom of WP:WSS/P.... which makes this an ideal time to suggest a very slight reorganisation of the page. If you're like me, you often fail to notice any changes to the "other discussion" section, and having one part of the page "new at top" and the other "new at bottom" has always seemed a little clumsy to me. I'd like to propose that we change the system slightly so that, while proposed new stubs are still at WP:WSS/P, any other stub-related discussions come here, to the talk page. I think they'll be far more easily seen here and be far more likely to get an active discussion. Any thoughts? Grutness...wha? 09:52, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "Other stub-related discussions"

message: We currently have a fair amount of double stubbing with science fiction and fantasy related stubs.  Over in the main categories they've adopted the use of the superset speculative fiction to desl with essentially the same problem.  I propose that we do the same here in stub sorting, however thereis one big issue to consider. What do we do with the abbreviation "sf" in our stub template names?
# Shift science fiction over to "scifi" and use "sf" for speculative fiction.
# Keep science fiction over at "sf" and use "specfic" for speculative fiction.
# Phase out the use of "sf" and use "specfic" for speculative fiction and "scifi" for science fiction.
:Options 1 and 3 have the disadvantage of requiring the existing science fiction stubs to go to SFD for a mass rename of the templates.
:Options 2 and 3 have the disadvantage of using the clunky "specfic" element for the spec-fic abbreviation sometimes used for speculative fiction.
Given that option 3 suffers from both disadvantages, I think we can discount that.  From the standpoint of naming, if we were starting from scratch. option 1 is the best choice, but the inertia of people who think sf = science fiction would be a problem, but not a large one since scifi is a subset of speculative fiction.  Right now I favor option 1, but could be persuaded otherwise.  In any case, I'm in no rush here, but would like to get some sort of consensus. Caerwine Caerwhine 07:27, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Speculative fiction, science fiction, and fantasy stubs 

message: AKA, multi-stub templates revisited.  Anyone not completely burnt out on this idea, please have a quick look at User:Alai/A Hypothetical Stub, to see if this might be a possible basis on which to tweak the appearance of multi-stubbed articles, via a meta-template.  (Before anyone goes sub-orbital, note that none of this is "bleeding into" the template, category or article spaces at present, this is purely a testbed (hence the uncategorised pseudo-templates, awkward inclusion syntax, etc).)  To summarise:  this works by testing for "short" versions of each of the included stub templates, and if they all exist, including them in a single horizontal row, following the generic portion of the stub canned text, on a separate line.  If any are missing, it instead just includes and stacks up the "normal" stubs.  What's key here is that:  it uses existing template names, not "freeform" parameters, or category names, hence no extra stuff to remember;  and it fails in a graceful way if there's no "short" version of the associated template (as is bound to happen, both initially, and as new templates are introduced), and gives the usual template redlink if it doesn't exist at all, rather than a category redlink.  Beyond that, I'm not wedded to any of the details, and if people can improve the appearance or whatever, please fire away (just not with live ammo, in my direction).  It would need to be tweaked or duplicated to deal with treble- and quadruple-stubbing, but that's straightforward.  Let me admit up front that this doesn't address the possible massive inclusion issue, which I'd basically suggest we deal with by tweaking the code in advance, discussing it with the devs, and then super-duper-protecting the thing.  OTOH, even if this gets some sort of support, it won't instantly appear on 60,000 articles, so it's not going to be an immediate crisis in that regard.  Alai 05:18, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So for example, the "production version" would use code like  to double-stub as both a UK-stub, and a bio-stub.  (I know, silly example, as obviously there's a UK-bio-stub.)  Alai 06:11, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not the face! 

message: I realize this month may be an extreme example (mea maxima culpa), but I wonder if the monthly sections aren't getting to be so far as to be a hazard to navigation.  Would sub-headers by date (or even by week?) be to anyone's liking?  Or indeed, to anyone's intense disliking?  Alai 17:33, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Finer-grained section headings? 

message: *Possible, though labor-intense, solution to archiving can be seen here.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Pegship (talk • contribs) 
**Works for me.  I've added a link at on the Archive page.  If you're archiving only approved-and-created proposals (which I think is clearer than having them mixed, so my all means continue that way), it might be a good idea to put it at an archive name that makes that explicit, as we'll presumably end up with more than one archive per month.  Alai 05:13, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Both WP:WSS/P and WP:WSS/D are somewhat messy (WP:WSS/D still lists discoveries from December last year). This looks like a good way to go. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 09:12, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So which items from WP:WSS/D should go in the archive? ♥ Her Pegship♥ 15:27, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That should be archived separately, as Caerwine is-or-was doing of late.  Someone that wants to make a lot of work for themselves could of course cross-reference the two, but that sounds like masochistic territory to me.  Alai 02:47, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archive solution? 

message: The "old business" marker is a good start, but I'm wondering if we need something more to help go through the old Proposals.  I put together a few dummy templates and an example of how they would be used.  My idea uses 3 different templates: one for "create", one for "do not create", and one for "other/no consensus".  In theory, I'd like for there to be only one template that would change the color based on what parameter you put in, but my wikicoding skills are severly lacking.  The idea was that the templates would be color-coded so that you could easily go through the proposals page and help create things that were approved, but no one got around to actually creating.  Also, if you had proposed something, you would know the result of the debate quickly.
This was just my first crack at it, so feel free to offer suggestions, changes, comments, whatever.  This may not be a great solution, but it was just an idea.
Example page
~ Amalas rawr =^_^= 19:34, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  completed proposals idea 

message: I copied all the discussions to the July archive page. I've left copies of those still needing creation on the Proposals page, so if you create one, please feel free to delete the discussion. Cheers, ♥ Her Pegship♥ 19:27, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archived July 

message: Hello, excuse me butting in on this page.  The philosophers would like a way of searching philosophy articles that need expert attention.  So how do I query for articles that are both in the 'Philosophy' category, and 'Need expert attention'?  If there is a way of doing this, of course.  Dbuckner 15:41, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Category:Philosophy stubs would be a good place to start. --TheParanoidOne 20:35, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

text: There isn't really a tool for this at present, as far as I'm aware.  The CatScan tool can do this, but it isn't currently able to handle the English Wikipedia.  Similarly, we had Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Philosophy, which was to have been updated by User:Pearle, but that seems to have fallen through.  A messy but surprisingly effective solution is a Google search on en.wikipedia.org for the word "philosophy" and the phrase "pages needing expert attention."  -- Visviva 05:50, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question 

message: I've been tagging and moving sections to the archives, as it becomes clear what the consensus is (if any) and once the template has been created (if approved). Some of these discussions, though, I find a little hard to follow (mommyhood has limited my ability to follow a train of thought very far...), so if someone has a better feel for whether something is "create", "nocreate" or whatever, please feel free to tag it as such and I'll do the heavy lifting (i.e. moving sections to the appropriate archive page). Cheers, ♥ Her Pegship♥ 04:15, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Feel free to archive 

message: I'm not sure what the outcome was of the proposal to delegate responsibility to the above-named WikiProject, buf if the proposal was rejected could you please mark that page as rejected or historical? I have some doubts about the organisation at the moment and would counsel against accepting the proposal at this stage. --kingboyk 14:03, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What proposal? This is the first I've heard of one - can anyone remember this ever having been mentioned? I can't find any sign of it in the archives, either. I'm against it, too, BTW - decentralising stub sorting will only lead to confusion. Grutness...wha? 23:23, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians/Stub sorting]] 

message: I've added a "New poposals" header to the page, as is done on other process pages like CFD - it seems to make the process work a little more smoothly there, so why not here, too? Grutness...wha? 00:50, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "New proposals" header

message: I've been itching to move the August old business off this page. Shall I shift concluded discussions over to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/Archive/August 2006 completed, even if the approved stub types haven't been created? They can still be found on the archive summary page. Or shall I let August linger on Proposals until the page length begins to annoy? No rush, I'm sure, just a yen for tidiness on my part. ♥ Her Pegship♥ 18:25, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archiving 

message: Hi my suggestion is that right after it says "Good number means about 60 articles or more, or 30 or more if associated with a WikiProject, though this figure may vary from case to case." you include the link to the "stub sensor". This page does not mention "stub sensor".  If I had only known about stub sensor 2 months ago...  Goldenrowley 21:31, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What is the link to stub sensor? --Ohms law 09:18, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestion on Instructions

message: I just ran across a good example of waht appears to be a common problem with stubs. :Category:African writer stubs uses the plural form of African, which I think is appropriate. However, the template to place articles within:  uses the singular "Africa". Is this appropriate? Could the template name be changed? Should the template name be changed? It can be difficult finding some of these stub categories, and it seems to me that a lack of standardisation in this respect is one reason why.--Ohms law 09:19, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Singular/Plural name nouns? 

message: Please forgive the newcomer for asking the silly question, but i'm not about to go digging through month's or even years worth of discussion to try to decipher the answer to this. The simple question that I have to ask is, why not simply allow the creation of a foo-stub subcategory for each and every existing category? It seems logical to me that each actual category would have a coresponding foo-stub subcategory to it. I don't see what's so special about a stub that differentiates them from the normal wiki categorisation policies/procedures. It appears to me that we're duplicating and creating extra work for ourselves, when it would be easy enough to create a foo-stub subcategory to any category that has use of a stub tag. --Ohms law 17:39, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Match stub to Category Proposal 

message: OK, I guess that i'm restarting this discussion. The point that I am trying to make here is that I beleave that we should be attempting to match the existing permanent category structure, as closely as is reasonable within the current guidelines for creating stubs categories. As an example of how we are not currently doing this, I'd like to point out this example:
 contains within it a sub category . This is good (the stubs cat matches the perm cat).
 and now  have been created as cub categories of . This is a mistake, in my opinion. For one thing, having stubs categories that are children of other stubs categories creates an atmosphere of permanence (in categorising the articles) that I don't beleave we should be encouraging.  has been established as a permanent category, and therefore is where stub articles about a city in texas should be. Therefore, there should be a  category/template. If such a category becomes too large for some reason, we could then create (for example) a  category and sort out those articles tht need to be in it.
Simply put, I don't understand why we have our own category structures (stubs categories that are sub-categories of other stubs categories). Any stub category should, in my mind, be a dead end and have as it's parent the most relevent permanent category that otherwise exists.--Ohms law 11:52, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: restart, clarification

message: I Just saw/found this, which seems to be somewhat topical: --Ohms law 18:55, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: similar discussion

message: is not entirely helpfull in answering this question, from what I've read. I have my own opinion, but I'd like it to be verified by my peers. Simply stated, is the act of stub-sorting by itself (editing an article simply to change the -stub template) a minor edit? --Ohms law 19:52, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I usually code my stub sorts as minor if that's the only change made because it doesn't significantly change the article's content. Slambo (Speak) 19:55, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: ok thank you, that's what I wanted to know. FYI, i had forgotten that I had turned on the "minor edit as default" option earlier. I guess i'll just leave it in the normal 'not-minor' option, since i'm obviously used to it that way... --Ohms law 20:00, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minor Edit? 

message: Hi folks - could someone look at October and tag the discussions, if they are indeed concluded? Sometimes I have a hard time working out what was said, done, or decided...thanks!! [Mommy Brain] Her Pegship 00:36, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Concluding discussions - help! 

message: How much of a rule is the 60-article threshold for new stub types? I'd like to create a , but by my count, there are only 54 articles that qualify. There is, however, a  that would theoretically be a subcategory of the one I'd like to create. There'd also be a lot more stubby articles in :Category:Cameroonian people, but, well, I don't like writing stub-length articles. So, is 54 articles okay in some cases? Should I wait a bit before proposing the new stub type? — BrianSmithson 08:54, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's more a guideline than a hard-and-fast rule, and varies from case to case. In a case where a parent category has only 150 articles, splitting out 50 on a vaguely-defined topic is less likely to be approved than if the split is from a heavily populated category where a split is more obvious. In this case, Africa-bio-stub is pretty full, and splitting by country is a standard form of split, so I don't think there'd be too many eyebrows raised if a 54-article category was proposed. Certainly it's the sort of circumstances where it wouldn't be SFD'd if we discovered an un-proposed stub type. It sounds like a pretty reasonable stub type to create to me. Grutness...wha? 11:47, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, Africa-bio-stub isn't full - but it should be. For some reason, there's an instruction in the category telling people only to use the nation-stub but not the bio-stub if no nation-bio-stub exists (contrary to what's normally done with such stubs). Wonder why... Grutness...wha? 12:02, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I was puzzled by that, too. In preparation for proposing the bio-stub, I went through and added Africa-bio-stub to several articles in the Cameroon-stub category only to be told on my talk page not to do so. No idea what the deal is. Thanks for the pointers on the stub proposal. — BrianSmithson 13:01, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

text: I think 54 is perfectly OK where there's an existing (viable) subtype.  There's no formal guideline-within-guideline about that, but for my money a well-formed sub-category is worth about twenty articles' "credit" (i.e. stub category with 40 articles and a sub-cat, 20 and two, or three or more subcats are all OK, if they make hierarchical sense).  As Grutness says, even lacking subcats no-one is going to much object to types at that level, especially where there's either a splitting need, or a structural predisposition for them to exist.  Alai 15:19, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Cameroonian template sounds fine to me. No problem with a category either since it is so close to the normal threshold. I realize  is a bit unnormal, but the problem was that it was not only full; it was completely bloated. On the other hand, you-have-no-idea how much material was only tagged with this template and / or an occupation stub, so searching for further splits was next to a mere waste of time. When I began adding nationality templates, I realized that much of this material would end up with a total of four templates in order to cover the occupation side properly, at a time when we were being criticized for adding too many stub templates. So as I went through the the lot, I sorted everything according to nationality and replaced  with a nationality template wherever possible. Given that next to all African countries now have national templates, this emptied  pretty quickly. I pretty much figured that if I had to nuke one of four potential templates, I'd rather keep both nationality and occupation. Finding new splits was impossible anyway since I had to go through everything by hand which took ages. Just splitting off the 800 politicians was bad enough. As I see it, the problem is simply that the African material is way bigger than many people probably think. Remember that we used to think most of these countries would never get a nationality template? Now many of them have both generic, -bio and -geo templates. Some even have more than this. I'd really prefer if we could avoid bloating this category again. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 19:47, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

text: That makes sense. Perhaps it's one we should keep a closer eye on for more by-country splits. Grutness...wha? 23:25, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We should indeed keep an eye on it, but I just rechecked the list and the only African entities without a national template are (drumroll): Réunion, Mayotte, and Saint Helena. So the potential for new country-level splits is somewhat limited. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 00:00, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  60 articles for new stub 

message: I realize this will do little (if anything) to satisfy the "just do it" school of thought that reckons the whole proposal system is completely intolerable, but I've been thinking that we might somewhat reduce the "waiting time" on this page.  It's rare that a discussion continues full-tilt for a whole week, and even when it does there's nothing to stop "closure" being delayed in such cases until it's clear there's consensus (or a clear lack of same).  I'd like to suggest five days, on the basis of this being the timescale of AfD, and having the advantage of being the interval from the end of one weekend, to the start of the next, if people are inclined to do a chunk of stub-sorting and analysis at same.  Lest anyone be caught out by such a breakneck pace (sic), I'd also like to suggest we initiate a practice of placing notification of proposed "splits" on the category talk page of the parent (a single subst'd template would suffice for this, parameterised by section header).  (I think this latter is a good idea in any event, regardless of the waiting period, I just mention it here by-the-by.)  Alai 15:52, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Speed(y)ing things up, slightly. 

message: :Category:Probability stubs should perhaps be merged in :Category:Statistics stubs. --MarSch 17:23, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  probability stubs 

message: I just noticed that Alai had suggested back in October to create subcategories for two of the Swedish regions.
:Cat:Stockholm County geography stubs 78 
:Cat:Western Götaland geography stubs 69 (both figures from October)
Nobody commented on this suggestion and I missed it myself. The problem is that a few of the Swedish permcats are oddly named. Almost all of them use the Swedish name, but "Western Götaland" differs for one reason or another and its "twin",  (Eastern G.) is named "correctly". Do we really have to go through the entire process again just to correct the second category name to ? The corresponding article is called Västergötland, btw. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 02:04, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If the permcats are inconsistent, perhaps it's more a case of them being taken to CFD first, and see what happens there - we can always (speedily) rename things if necessary to conform with whatever the decision on the permcats. Grutness...wha? 02:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Swedish regions 

message: Fairly recently the  and  had all of the California counties added as daughter stubs (e.g. ), but currently the county stubs still point to the two main California-geo-stub categories (e.g. :Category:Southern California geography stubs). There are now over 80 LA County geo stubs, and I've probably only found about half of them to convert from SoCal geo stubs to LA County geo stubs. Since the county stubs have already been proposed, approved, and created, do I still need to propose its accompanying category, or can I go ahead and create :Category:Los Angeles County geography stubs and then modify  without having to get additional approvals? BlankVerse 03:26, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You should propose them, but it's a formality only, really. If there are over 60 stubs, I don't think anyone will object to the creation. Best to just run it past the proposal page to make sure, though, in case there are any unforeseen problem with naming conflicts or the like. Grutness...wha? 05:25, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  California geo stub categories