Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Guidelines

message: I sincerely believe that we really need to lay down the law in stub sorting, and really provide a guideline.  I believe that we should all attempt to reach a general consensus by April 2, 2005 in a set of rules that we can follow.  Once we have built a set of guidelines, we can formally create a policy out of those guidelines.  We need to define what a specialized topic stub is, how many articles it should cover, when is it appropriate to create it, what defines its need for its creation, what defines its need for deletion, what criteria it should follow, what are the general steps should one take when sorting a stub, whether or not to start using subst: for all templates, whether or not use subst: for all templates created by the meta-templates, and any other matters that may come up in consideration.  I thank jag123 for initially creating the subpage for the project at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Guidelines.  Even though they have been discussed, I feel that we really need to confirm everything.  For that, we should discuss each issue with its own sections, and raise a list of issues that we need to nail down before really continuing on.  The English Wikipedia is nearly at 500k articles.  Either the MediaWiki software needs to handle stubs such that they can be found with a simple union of categories, or the sorting is done manually by Wikipedians.  Personally, I think the latter is less taxing on the server load, especially when we use subst:, which I think would help the Wikipedia out, performance wise.  Please make your comments at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Guidelines.  I apologize for making this somewhat of a spam notice, but since the project has more members, the project can finally decide on these important issues at hand. -- AllyUnion (talk) 23:22, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stub sorting guidelines 

message: I've added some topics that should be discussed. I'm not really sure if we should set up a new page for every entry or if every point should be discussed on this talk page. I don't want to make this too bureaucratic or complicated that people won't be participate, but I'd like to keep it organised. I'm sure no one will agree on a definition of stub, but I'm sure we can all agree on some points of what should be or what isn't a stub. At the very least, that will narrow the definition. I'm not sure if you all want to vote on every point or just discuss the topic and take it from there. Suggestions would be appreciated. Feel free to add your definition/criterias under each point. --jag123 02:43, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: New topics

message: ===Subst:stub===
I propose that "subst:" not be used. There does not appear to be much support for it's use and other alternatives should and can be explored.
Any objections? If no objections are made regarding this proposal within 10 days, it will be added as a guideline for this project. --jag123 15:50, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops - my bad. Please ignore my comments above (although the thread that developed from it does indicate that there is some antipathy to Template:substub as well!). I hope, for that reason, that Courtland and YixilTesiphon do not mind that I have split this section into two separate parts and moved their comments into the next section to reflect the two different topics!  Grutness|hello?  07:31, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Use of subst

message: I propose that "subst:" not be used. There does not appear to be much support for it's use and other alternatives should and can be explored.
Any objections? If no objections are made regarding this proposal within 10 days, it will be added as a guideline for this project. --jag123 15:50, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops - my bad. Please ignore my comments above (although the thread that developed from it does indicate that there is some antipathy to Template:substub as well!). I hope, for that reason, that Courtland and YixilTesiphon do not mind that I have split this section into two separate parts and moved their comments into the next section to reflect the two different topics!  Grutness|hello?  07:31, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Subst:stub

message: I propose that "subst:" not be used...jag123 
(User:Grutness misread this as "I propose that "substub" not be used - the following thread resulted)
*good move. All that substub does is break :Category:Stub in two according to length of article - hardly the most useful criterion.  Grutness|hello? 
*Agree I've wondered why someone would use "subst:" when "stub:" seems to cover things all the way down to a handful of words.  Will a bot be run to convert them, or will this be a manual re-categorization process? Courtland 04:00, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)
*I don't know; though I do Agree to a certain extent in that subst just seems to be a more pathetic plea for expansion. --YixilTesiphon 23:00, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
Update: It seems, from inspection of the :Category:Substubs for the last month, that few new substubs are being labelled as such - the category's population seems to be a stable 3000 or so. I am trying to work through at least ten a day, merging, vfd'ing or upgrading to stub subcategory wherever appropriate. See also note below at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Guidelines#Substubs.  Grutness|hello?  07:31, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Use of substub

message: A suggested addition to the "what is a stub" - irrespective of length, any article is a stub if it hasn't got at least one category (Ideally, a category should be found rather than a stub message added, but this isn't always possible). This ensures that all the articles are listed somewhere other than the complete list of articles, rather than "free-floating in cyberspace". This, technically, could come under "article missing important information", since its place in the category hierarchy is important information.  Grutness|hello?  02:39, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Categories are cheap and easy to make and I'd seriously be surprised if there is a topic that doesn't already have related categoriess. I believe there is an uncategorised pages project (if not, there are definitely people who do this) which handles the task of categorising pages. If anyone finds an uncategorised page, I certainly encourage them to categorise it but I think stubs should be left for articles that are lacking content. --jag123 02:57, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Category criterion

message: As a brand new user of Wikipedia,I would like to say that it is an amazingly wonderful and valuable thing you are all creating.  I came here for information on English pronunciation, particularly phonology and I found a lot of useful stuff.  I also found some valuable related info on a page noted as a "stub," which I followed to get a definition and later encountered this discussion.  I have no technical expertise to offer, but in the debate on whether to kill stubs or not, it does not seem like a good idea since much valuable information might be lost. Would it be wishful thinking to hope for gathering this related info into a master document?  Remember, I said I brought no technical expertise, but perhaps there is something in this beginner's perspective that can help you in this complex discussion. Keep up the good work!  --Lamusette 19:41, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't worry - at least on this page the people are involved with sorting stubs rather than removing them - to make it easier for editors to find the articles and expand them. Wikipedians tend to have what are known as 'inclusionists' (who want to keep as many articles as possible) and 'deletionists' (who think that tiny articles are worthless and should be deleted). Thankfully there are enough inclusionists that most of the articles deleted have something majorly wrong with them (like vanity pages) or are so small as to have no information at all. Oh, and thanks for the compliments!  Grutness|hello?  01:53, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Beginner Mind 

message: Not sure whether this belongs here or elsewhere(I'm going to cross-post it to Criteria as well for this reason), but this came up in discussion recently on tfd ater Template:PBS-substub was discovered. The suggestion was made (which I agree with) that substubs should not be subdivided in the same way as stubs. 
Substubs seem to fall into four types: dicdefs that should be moved to Wikipedia, scraps of information which should be merged into larger articles, potential vfds that will never amount to anything, and potential articles which should be at the very least expanded into stubs. At some point, some effort from WP:WSS should probably go into sifting through :Category:Substubs to work out which ones go where and doing something with them. Those that can be made into proper stubs, all well and good, they can them get changed into whatever subcategory of stub is appropriate. The rest should be dealt with according to their needs.  Grutness|hello?  22:56, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Substubs

message: I've started sorting Bio-stubs for porn actors/actresses into the Porn-stub rather than double-stubbing them to Porn- and Bio-stubs.  What do you think about the merits of this decision? Would you do the same?  Thanks for your input. Courtland 21:43, 2005 Mar 24 (UTC)
Sounds fine. RJFJR 22:51, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)
:I'm beginning to think that anything that reduces the size of :Category People stubs is a good move. Go for it.  Grutness|hello?  00:41, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Porn-stub and Bio-stub: sorting between these