Category talk:Stubs

message: Suggest removal of stubs category from all the UTC pages - they are really linked redirection pages. Scottkeir 04:41, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You're more likely to get a response by taking this request to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting, or maybe Wikipedia talk:Stub. The category talk page isn't really the place for it.  Grutness...wha? 04:46, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Many thanks, suggestion now at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting. So many talk and discussion pages, hard to know which to pick! Scottkeir 19:14, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: removal of category from UTC pages

message: Change the stub template to make it say something about how you categorize stubs now, and link to the stub categorization page?
:A lot of editors dislike referring to the inner workings of Wikipedia in articles, so it would quickly be reverted. In fact, there's a specific guideline not to link more than is necessary to Wiki-space - Wikipedia:Avoid self-reference). Grutness...wha? 01:04, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Heh, the subtlety is what got me intrigued in wikipedia in the first place :) Xhin 22:30, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the whole idea of stubs is a self-reference, no?  A slightly more explanatory version, though, might encourage better self-stub-sorting.--Pharos 12:04, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I fully agree. If you added something to the stub template saying something like "this template is deprecated, please choose one of the recognized stub types instead, then the stub sorting work would be way reduced. Stifle 16:05, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I at first had similar thoughts, but on the discussion page for the template, it was basically suggested that it remain this way so as to prevent inexperienced users from trying to be too helpful and in essence make things harder. Besides, don't you want to do some fun sorting anyway? Jfingers88 03:48, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

text: There is some truth to that (the first part :) - Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion is frequently flooded with invientive new stub templates which some newbie has decided to create in order to help out. And there are definitely quite a number of stubs which have been assigned to...erm, shall we say surprising stub categories. Though it's good to have as many people helping out with stub sorting as possible, the whole stub system has got so convoluted that it's good if people have some idea of what categories there are before they start. Some might point out that this is a flaw in the whole stub-sorting system, and it's a justifiable comment, but given that there are an estimated 1/3 of a million stubs on wikipedia, the classification system is necessarily big (which is why WP:WSS/ST takes so long to load!). The fact that we managed to keep all but a couple of hundred stubs categorised at any one time is quite a feat in itself. Grutness...wha? 04:50, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why don't you just 

message: Is this really necessary?  By all accounts, this category is not large, let alone "very large".  Using the template only serves to dilute the impact it might otherwise have. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:17, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Especially since the stub category is empty right now. Jfingers88 00:03, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Very Large Stub Category" notice addition 

message: I'm new here to the project, and I've been working like crazy getting rid of all these stubs. I just thought I'd never see it blank :p Amazing. SynergeticMaggot 03:07, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It happens every now and again (but not often enough :) Good to see yet another new stub-sorter, BTW! Grutness...wha? 05:32, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well as long as I have nothing in particular to do, I'll be a-stub sorten :p SynergeticMaggot 06:16, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Awesome. Keep up the good work. It's nice to see the "Empty Category" notice here once in a while, though it usually takes a ton of work. Jfingers88 19:39, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yawn.  Finally I emptied it. Too tired to shout hooray. :D Picaroon9288|ta co 04:04, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

text: It's gotten big again... NauticaShades(talk) 16:00, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Empty again --Skapur 16:25, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

text: And empty again --- Skapur 03:45, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Empty once more --- NielsenGW 18:04, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No offence folks, but... it fills, it empties. Unless it suddenly gets really big, we don't really need to keep reporting its size here! Grutness...wha? 21:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

text: For those keeping track, it's been macheted back to 800 stubs. We're getting there... Grutness...wha? 00:52, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zero 

message: If, like me, you get fed up with having to subst stub templates on user pages, you might like to know that I've just made  - a template that can be subst'ed onto user talk pages to quickly explain what you've just done. Grutness...wha? 01:02, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Stub on user pages

message: Cleared on Saturday, March 31 2007. Just thought I'd show off a little. ;) Thanks to everyone else went through these articles. Black-Velvet 06:44, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's 1,000+ again. :( MahangaTalk 01:00, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleared 

message: Well, I've cleared out quite a few of these over the last couple of days (not that the list seems to be shrinking much - lol), but I thought I'd just apologise in advance, if I've put any in the wrong stub. I don't think I have, but it's not always easy to tell exactly which one it should be, is it? Cheers, --Midx1004 19:26, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Even very experienced stub sorters like myself get them wrong every now and again. But even if only 90% are right, then it's a good load of work done :) Grutness...wha? 00:58, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleared a load...

message: We seem to be back to just over 600 again. Grutness...wha? 00:58, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: ...and again, for the first time in nearly three months. Grutness...wha? 00:08, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: One can now see as far as "R" on the first page - it's been a while... GregorB (talk) 21:50, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Now were only at about 160! :) Icestorm815 (talk) 21:39, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

text: I feel bad about single handedly putting it back in about 2 hours with AWB :S. --Nn123645 (talk) 05:36, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: (Sh)it happens - we just keep bailing. :) Grutness...wha? 22:40, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Coming down...

message: last one just done! PamD (talk) 15:31, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  cleared the page 

message: Backlog is cleared again! —BradV 01:30, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice work!  I'd been working to keep the first half of the alphabet clear this week but it's been hard to push all the way through -- nice job finishing it off!  -- KathrynLybarger (talk) 04:22, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Many hands make light work. I would have given up earlier if I didn't know you were there working from the other end. Kudos. —BradV 05:53, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm one of the many hands Kathleen.wright5 23:28, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

text: ...or leave a message on the editor's talk page saying "next time you edit this, could you...?" :) Grutness...wha? 21:34, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleared again 

message: Why is there an article in the above Stub Category? Kathleen.wright5 11:02, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think because someone got very muddled! I've unpicked the damage and left a message on both the userpages used.  PamD (talk) 11:44, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re:Article in [[:Category:Nursing stubs]] 

message: What do I do with the above article which is not in English? I removed the Stub which has been put back by User:Kubek15 . Kathleen.wright5 04:51, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Check the "whatlinkshere"s. One of them says it's a Somali clan. I've put a somalia-stub on it. Grutness...wha? 05:27, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: [[Reer Mohamed Arab]] 

message: Could someone tell me what is a suitable stub for the above article?, and there is a backlog of a 105 articles at the moment. Kathleen.wright5 05:39, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Mmmmmm. Probably something like . We don't have a stub type for the actual writing process, unfort5unately. Grutness...wha? 22:21, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Help! The backlog is now 264. Kathleen.wright5 11:10, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: ...and many of them seem to be dab pages, which shouldn't have been marked as stubs in the first place... :/ Back to about 210 now. Grutness...wha? 23:17, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: My bad there, I think:  someone'd tweaked MW page-rendering in such a way as to subtly break my bot's check for template-populated categories.  Fixed, and added a double-check for the most common such templates, to mitigate the damage if the same thing happens again.  Hopefully not too many articles were affected:  fortunately I only ran a small portion of the batch before the issue was pointed out to me.  Everything from the mid-March db dump's been tagged now, btw.  Alai (talk) 06:08, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No, the main problem was a number of dab pages which weren't marked with , so it wouldn't have spotted them anyway. Grutness...wha? 21:51, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, that's a more long-running issue.  It may be that I can tag some of these that seem to "partly match" what a dab page ought to look like with disambig-cleanup, but it seems to me that such cases are generally going to need human eyeballs one way or another.  Alai (talk) 06:13, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  What Stub is suitable for [[Writing bump]] ? 

message: The backlog is now 1,093 and climbing. Kathleen.wright5 08:16, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Backlog now 1,200 Kathleen.wright5 07:43, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Done climbing, though. :)  (Give or take whether anyone tops up from the special page, which tends to be much less all-at-once.)  Alai (talk) 08:18, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Backlog now 1,568 Kathleen.wright5 07:53, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  All hands to the pump ! 

message: There is a technical problem at the above page, please see Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#WikiProject_Stub_sorting.2FStub_types Kathleen.wright5 24:46, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems to be OK now Kathleen.wright5 14:00, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I was wrong, its still continuing. It happens after I list new or recently discovered Stub Types. Kathleen.wright5 12:42, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Technical problem [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types]] 

message: How do I turn the above page into a Link so that it can be put onto members User Pages instead of the usual link (parts of which don't work). Kathleen.wright5 23:42, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Problem solved. Kathleen.wright5 08:18, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re:Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/List of Stubs 

message: No wonder there's such a backlog.  I stop clearing out A-J for 36 hours and the number of uncategorized stubs goes from six hundred some to over 1300.  Gah!  Powers T 17:10, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There's a huge dump of new stubs into the category about once per month. Last time it took the total to over 1500, and it usually takes it past 2000. if it only climbed to 1300 we got off lightly this time! Grutness...wha? 00:43, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Holy crap 

message: Category is now empty! PamD (talk) 07:33, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: To be accurate... it was empty 10 minutes later.  I found, and sorted, 3 stubs in the first part of the alphabet, forgetting that my bookmark points to "P"! But it's still empty now... I wonder for how long? PamD (talk) 09:01, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

text: Nice work everyone! -- KathrynLybarger (talk) 12:29, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

text: AGAIN!! -- KathrynLybarger (talk) 04:56, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleared again 

message: There's a discussion started at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting#Auto_Stub_Tagging_Bot which could affect the influx of new articles into this category. Might want to check it out... Grutness...wha? 02:34, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regular influx of new articles 

message: I have been testing this out and I recommend other stub sorters test and try it out as well. I've found it to be of great use thus far. Its simple and easy to use, and is being updated constantly. — MaggotSyn 09:21, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I've copied this across to WP talk:WSS. Grutness...wha? 01:34, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

text: I've added this note on the main page to allow Atomican to continue his updates and tests. Revert me if you don't think its needed. — MaggotSyn 21:47, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:Atomican/Wikicite+]] 

message: I think we should be using __HIDDENCAT__ (or ) on this category and its subcategories. My argument for this is on the main stub sorting talk page. GreenReaper (talk) 08:27, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Using hidden categories for stubs 

message: The number of unsorted stubs is starting to climb again... about time for some clearing? Grutness...wha? 23:40, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Getting to work... LegoKontribsTalkM 03:49, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  200 and climbing... 

message: Something odd is going on with the number of articles in . At the top of the list it says "The following 200 pages are in this category, out of 517 total." Yet page 2 of the list only contains three articles. The template's whatlinkshere lists only about 205 articles, as well. I know that there can b server delays with adding items to this category, but it's the first time I've seen it differentially affect the number of articles and the list of articles. I've commented about this at VP (Technical), but got no satisfactory reply as to what's going on. Anyone have any idea? Grutness...wha? 00:38, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Its a caching error on Wikimedia's side.  Null edits to every page would empty it, or you could just wait... LegoKontribsTalkM 00:35, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strange numbers... 

message: Shouldn't this category have a  (Template:CatDiffuse) tag? I mean, the whole purpose of this category (original intention or not) is pretty much a place to hold stub articles until they can be relabeled with a more descriptive stub, isn't it?--98.114.243.75 (talk) 23:03, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diffuse Tag? 

message: Can we stick a redirect to here on Category:Stub? CorporalStone (talk) 21:46, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redirect 

message: almost cleared the list
increased my edits from 267 to 305
first time stub cleaning--Umar1996 (talk) 15:12, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Keep up the good work :) Grutness...wha? 22:11, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  almost cleared 

message: Here is a stub suggestion: Gabriella Hoffman. I think by making it a stub more people will see it but I'm not sure how I can do this. Can someone do it on my behalf and also is there a place to request such things. The article's talk page is relatively empty.--128.54.231.9 (talk) 08:01, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. There are two ways - one is to add a note on the article's talk page, the other is to register as a user, which is free, easy to do, and recommended :) Grutness...wha? 21:53, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Any way for an anon to request stub status for a protected article? 

message: After a long period when there have been a lot of entries in the category, it's now cleared. Not for long, obviously! PamD 10:05, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: And again, after another backlog. PamD 20:46, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleared - 8 Jan 2012 

message: After a massive influx from a bot chasing up old untagged stubs, we've got it down to zero. Well done to all stub-sorters! PamD 21:55, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleared 21 Jan 2013 

message: Today the template :Template:Stub is suddenly appearing in the category :Category:Stubs. The template doesn't appear to have been edited since Sept 2011, so something else has changed. Any ideas what's changed and how we can change it back? 
I'm asking this both at Template talk:Stub and at Category talk:Stubs. PamD 22:59, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I can't see it in there at the moment? -- Patchy1 REF THIS BLP 00:00, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: No, because  raised about three threads all for this one problem, and  (who fixed it) replied at only one of them: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting#Template:Stub in Category:Stubs. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:56, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template:Stub 

message: I don't know how many active participants WP:WSS has, but if anybody watches this talk page, just wanted to note that :Category: Stubs had grown to over 700 entries in recent weeks. Anyone who stub-sorts regularly might want to check in from time to time to keep it manageable. Thanks. Woodshed (talk) 10:10, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Congratulations to Woodshed for both quantity and quality of stub-sorting in recent days - thanks! PamD 08:00, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't worry, I'll soon help to get it back to the 700 mark. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 13:46, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Keeping an eye on Category: Stubs 

message: Just to let you all know my Bot runs through this category, periodically, performing two tasks;
# It removes the  tag if there is a 'better' one on the page i.e. 
# It tries to identify biography articles, through categories the page is in and the presence of  amongst others. If it identifies one it changes the stub tag to 
The reason I let you know is that if you notice the category is very long or seems to have a lot of possible biography articles, feel free to leave a message on my talk page and I'll run the bot as soon as I can! Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 13:53, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Following this up I was surprised to find >1000 articles in :Category:People stubs, ie those with the less-than-helpful . I cleared it out finally this morning, after spending way too much time on it in the last month. A very small trickle of articles seem to get there manually, mostly as part of AfC. I'll keep an eye on it now. PamD 12:43, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:MoohanBOT|MoohanBOT]] 

message: *Support as proposal initiator. SFB 21:29, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

message: The category was empty earlier this morning - well done all stub-sorters! PamD 08:45, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: And again today (and a few times in between!). Well done all of us. PamD 07:52, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  cleared 

message: Season's greetings to all stub-sorters: we're at zero stubs for the moment! (If you get withdrawal symptoms, have a go at :Category:People stubs or its subcats) PamD 08:27, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Empty again. PamD 10:07, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Empty category! 

message: The_Omen_5
I've done a bit of work on this one... anyone wanna have a look and neaten up my roughness, suggest any edits. let me know if it's worth continuing or will just be deleted.. cheersPanglossx (talk) 08:00, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Now deleted. Sorry.--DThomsen8 (talk) 12:49, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[The_Omen_5]] 

message: Maybe I missed something, but until I saw it in the Spotlight I didn't know about the discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Get_rid_of_stub_tags which began on 21 June. Other people interested in this category may find it of interest. PamD 14:45, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Get rid of stub tags"? 

message: I regularly visit  in order to apply more specific stub tags to the articles therein. In the last few days I have found at least 2 dozen articles where  has been applied as a category without the use of a stub template. I can't seem to track this trend to a particular editor - can anyone think of a place where we could make it clear that template use is preferred? Hope this makes sense - Her Pegship (?) 23:29, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent raft of articles being assigned "stub" as category manually