Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Archive 4

message: I suddenly noticed that almost every remaining unsubcategorised article in :Category:Geography stubs was a British overseas territory stub. So the last one is - .  Grutness|hello?  00:42, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: I was wrong - the final geo-stub

message: I thought of this the other day when I was looking about for stubs in particular categories.  It would be quite useful to have articles that are stubs obviously exposed in the listings of articles in categories.  For instance, in the main article category :Category:Mathematicians, to have an asterisk or some indicator next to the article titles that are stubs would be very useful for both users of the Encyclopedia and contributors to the Encyclopedia alike.  Maybe this has been brought up and rejected before, but I thought I'd unknowingly re-hash old ground nonetheless if that is the case. Courtland 00:11, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)
:There used to be an option in your settings to have stubs (defined as being below a certain file size that you could set) tagged in some way. (I never used it so I don't know what it looked like.) It was removed because it was too much of a strain on the database, I believe. This sounds like a similar concept, as I understand it. -Aranel ("Sarah") 02:46, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flag the stubs in category listings 

message: Should this include Madagascar or is there a better place to stub Madagascar-related stubs to? Courtland 16:47, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)
*Africa-stub. I don't believe considering Madagascar part of Africa is being questionned. --jag123 17:55, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Africa-stub scope 

message: There was a suggestion @ Wikipedia_talk:Template_messages/Stubs#animal-stub_vs_biosci-stub that the dog-stub be expanded to be a general pet-stub.  I'm not very supportive of this, as the dog-category in general hits a specific and active community of both hobbyists and professionals.  Nonetheless, I wanted to transfer that thought here and put it up for consideration.  Courtland 23:18, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
*Dog: keep the stub as dog-stub and don't convert to pet-stub. Courtland 23:18, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
*Keep dog stub as is. If there is enough demand for another separate animal stub (or group of animals) then there would be no reason why not to add it. "Pet" is a bit too ambiguous, though. Do we include iguanas? Alpacas? Tigers? All have been kept as pets...  Grutness|hello?  03:43, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  dog-stub => pet-stub? (won't happen)

message: After some deep thought, more information coming to light, and seemingly endless wrangling on tfd, I've come up with a possible solution to the Taiwan/RoC and China/PRChina stub issues, which I've listed on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria. Please have a look and make any comments you see fit!  Grutness|hello?  11:38, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Taiwan and China

message: Like me, you may well get fed up with waiting for all the icons and tables to load at Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs when you want to find out which stub to use on a particular article. for that reason, I've added an extra page to my user pages (User:Grutness/Stubs) with a plain-text list of all the stub templates listed as they stand now (00:23, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This is SO awesome; I was wrestling just last week with how to view or print the list easily so I didn't have to deal with that huge table-driven page and was having no luck at all. You're a lifesaver!  Elf | Talk 15:29, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: All the stub types

message: hi, i think there are a few more stub categories needed, anyone whos been sorting them much recently will agree, i dont know how to make a new one so would appreciate it if some else could (sorry)! those categories are: business/marketing, sociology, phrases/figures of speech, and maybe jobs/industry. thanks in advance. Bluemoose 10:20, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  new stub categories 

message: Ought there to be a stub category for dance-related topics?  Alai 01:50, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This was suggested on the criteria page and now Template:Dance-stub has been created. -Aranel ("Sarah") 03:04, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  dance-stub? 

message: The full plain-text list of stub categories (formerly at User:Grutness/Stubs) is now at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types, complete with links to the templates.   Grutness|hello?  08:37, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: All the stub categories - UPDATE

message: We seem to have a large number of journalists stub articles.  Are journalist writers (for the sake of writer-stub) or are they currently sorted in bio-stub?  Are there enough entries and is it distinctive enough to warrant a seperate stub category? RJFJR 05:05, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
*I generally stub journalists to Template:writer-stub. Courtland 05:15, 2005 Mar 4 (UTC)
*If they're both journalists and writers, then writer-stub is fine. Just watch out for any photojournalists, who are not writers!  Grutness|hello?  07:04, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Journalist

message: :Category:Comics stubs has grown to a nearly unmanageable size (564 articles and counting). WikiProject Comics would like to create subcategories for Marvel Comics stubs, DC Comics stubs, and comics creators stubs, along with corresponding templates. Any objections?  — Gwalla | Talk 22:04, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Comics-stub subcategories

message: Right now there are only 3 stub categories that are children of :Category:Sports stubs, :Category:American football stubs, :Category:Baseball stubs and :Category:Basketball stubs.
Looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types, shouldn't we make the items in the "Sports" section children of :Category:Sports stubs?
Courtland 07:12, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)
:There are lots more, they just don't show up on the first page of the category. There should be a list of more specific templates to use, as there is with some of the other parent categories. -Aranel ("Sarah") 21:25, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sports-stub children 

message: :Category:Sportspeople stubs is currently a child of :Category:People stubs.
Would it be ok with you if this category were also made a child of :Category:Sports stubs?
Courtland 04:36, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)
:I'm surprised it isn't already set up like that. (This isn't a major enough change that you need to start a discussion first, though. It's easy enough to fix if we decide we disagree.) I went ahead and did it. -Aranel ("Sarah") 04:57, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm surprised as well. That would seem the logical thing to me (like Politician-stubs being in both subcat of People-stubs and Politics-stubs).  Grutness|hello?  05:57, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sportspeople stubs categorization 

message: As I was categorizing some stubs, I came across a digimon stub and came to the shocking realization that we don't seem to have a digimon stub category. Considering the insane number of articles on obscure digimons, shouldn't we have one? DaveTheRed 03:26, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Most of the debate on new stubs is now on Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria - suggest it there - it sounds like it might be a good idea (either that or change the wording on the Pokemon stub to cope with both).  Grutness|hello?  05:52, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: New stub category: digi-stub

message: :Category:People stubs may actually be larger than :Category:Stub now. (I haven't countered the pages, but it's enormous.) I've just been working on it a little bit and it is becoming increasingly obvious that emergency rescue efforts are needed.
With the addition of Template:US-bio-stub and Template:UK-bio-stub, the vast majority of stubs with generic bio-stubs can now be given more specific categories. (So if you're bored or looking for something really easy to sort, you might work on :Category:People stubs.) When sorting generic stubs, please use the most specific bio-stub subcategory you can. (If you can't find one that fits, you might consider whether a new subcategory would be useful!) 
We should probably also be careful about :Category:Politician stubs, which seems to be the end location of a huge number of bio-stubs. -Aranel ("Sarah") 01:37, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I think I'm going to go ahead and create Template:US-politician-stub and Template:UK-politician-stub to help with that last comment. Note that the most difficult part of this sorting is that once you have been typing "US-"  and "UK-" for a while, it is very easily to mistype one for the other! -Aranel ("Sarah") 01:39, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[:Category:People stubs]] is in desparate need of help 

message: I've added a new sign, *W, to a couple of stub listings.  This is meant to indicate association with a WikiProject and I've wikilinked the sign to the wikiproject.  Do you think this would be good to propagate throughout the list?  It would not need to be updated frequently but could help explain low stub counts (or even empty ones) which might otherwise be called into question. I've not modified the introductory information on the stub types page yet until there's affirmation (or not) of this particular addition.  Courtland 15:50, 2005 Mar 19 (UTC)
:Nice touch. I've added info about this to the page's introduction.  Grutness|hello?  23:49, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: WikiProject sign, *W

message: Well, everything's counted and dated, from the tiny (a unique Runescape-stub) to the positively scary (14,000 bio-stubs). Now it's juts a case of adding any *Ws and keeping it updated.  Grutness|hello?  11:00, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: First-pass count completed

message: A bot has just gone through and added information to a huge number of geography items - many of them stubs. For that reason, :Category:Stub has just experienced a huge influx of geo-stubs (I've just cleared over 60 Australian national park stubs from the first page!). Please, if you sort these stubs make an effort to assign the specific country-geo-stub templates. On a normal day a dozen or more stubs are simply changed to geo-stub (and I go through and correct them to their specific country or region geo-stub templates). If as many geo-stubs as I think have come through, I don't want to discover 500 new generic geo-stubs tomorrow! Even if you don't know for certain whether a particular country has a geo-stub, at least try "countryname-geo-stub" in preview, and chances are you'll hit lucky. Thanks!  Grutness|hello?  06:50, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Who's Bot was it? Should be be talking to the person running the bot to see if they can do a better job of classifying the stubs as they are added? BlankVerse ∅  08:38, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: User:Docu (and the bot's called D6). Not sure it would make much difference - the stubs being done are geo-stubs from all over (he's adding a geo-coordinate template to them). The best that it could probably do is add geo- to the front of stub, so they'd still need to be edited regardless.  Grutness|hello?  10:06, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It is probably better to have a (temporarily) large :Category:Geography stubs (which is mostly empty right now since most of the stubs have been moved to more specific geo-stubs) than add to the already huge (but shrinking) :Category:stub. BlankVerse ∅  13:06, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: It had largely done its dash before I noticed what was happening, and much of it has been picked over anyway, so hopefully it won't be as troublesome as I feared.  Grutness|hello?  00:06, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that it is part of an ongoing project, so the odds are that there will probably be more runs that are similar. BlankVerse ∅  12:05, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: Good move. Thanks! As for D6 not adding stubs, it's simply that the category was turned off Template:stub for a while, so any edit of these stubs will make them suddenly appear in :category:Stub  Grutness|hello?  23:46, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Huge geostub influx

message: A few days ago, User:Burgundavia created the :Category:Aviation stubs and added :Category:Aircraft stubs, :Category:Airport stubs, and :Category:Airline stubs to it (not :Category:Bomber stubs, though.  Rather than just changing things I thought I'd bring it up here.  First, the text for :Category:Aircraft stubs doesn't match that for the template .  Second, there might have been a long discussion before on what to call this top-level category and if so do you recall what the arguments were for not naming it :Category:Aviation stubs rather than the current :Category:Aircraft stubs?  One problem with the new category is that it has no corresponding template; rather than having it deleted, though, I'm wondering if the opportunity might be taken to either a)change the category name associated with aero-stub or b) create an "aviation-stub" template that is categorized the parent of all existing related categories or c) delete this and create a :Category:Aerospace stubs that would replace both :Category:Aviation stubs and :Category:Aircraft stubs?  I like that last one, myself.
Thanks for thinking on this. Courtland 16:11, 2005 Mar 19 (UTC)
:Do you see :Category:Aerospace stubs as including :Category:Rocket and spacecraft stubs?  Grutness|hello?  22:33, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As someone who does a lot of work on aircraft-related content, I'd really like to see: (A) the aircraft-related stubs separated from more general aviation-related stubs (indeed, this is what I created the aero-stub for in the first place, but stub-sorting creep seems to have taken place), and (B) the bomber-stub category deprecated and absorbed into the aero-stub. Sorting aircraft stubs according to the type of aircraft they describe is of no practical value as far as I can see. --Rlandmann 05:56, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aircraft stubs categorization 

message: When you enter into the Stub category, you see alongside the subcategories (the types of stubs), some star trek stubs in the "article" section. Why is that? 500LL 23:02, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)
:A null edit on each fixed it. Probably left over from an old version of the template; categories in templates are bad about updating. --SPUI (talk) 23:20, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Error in the stub category 

message: This is the type of thing we struggle against: according to the original author, the article Dawn Powell is still a stub.  Is that reasonable, really?  Courtland 05:05, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
:Not something I'd have slapped a stub tag on if I'd happened across it, anyway.  I suppose it's hard to set an fixed criterion on, as in some people's minds it may relate to "what is there on this topic that's still to do?", as much as actual length.  Alai 05:18, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I have occasionally been expanding or writing articles on Swedish scientists, and when I wrote the article on Gösta Mittag-Leffler, I put a stub tag on it. It was later exchanged for another one, and finally deleted by User:Aranel with the edit comment that it is "not really a stub". The problem is that the article, although it is a few paragraphs long, really doesn't cover what he is famous for: his work as a mathematician. I know nothing about mathematics and don't even want to attempt to explain it in my own words, thus I limited myself to the "Life" part of the biography and left out the "Work". The biography could still be substantially expanded by someone into mathematics and would benefit from remaining in the Mathematician-stubs category. There are, I think, other examples like this one. / Uppland 08:57, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've simply re-added math-stub to it. That way it's obvious that it's the math that is missing, not the biography. --Joy [shallot] 11:10, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  When's a stub not a stub anymore 

message: I propose adding the following fourth point to the project goals:
4. The ultimate goal of this project is to get stubs expanded to full articles by making it as easy as possible for other editors to do so.
Sometimes I get the feeling there is to much stub sorting for sorting's sake going on... Not posting this on the project page right away, because it is a major change and might be worded better. -- grm_wnr Esc 16:50, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Addition to project goals 

message: was recently harshly redesigned by the folks over at WP Chemistry for "complying with other Chemistry templates". I am of opinion that the wider stub templates class is more important in this case than the chemistry one (and besides, only a few Project use such "part of" boxes, and they make them much less obvious), and WP chemistry should be told. Circeus 21:29, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
: The div tag with: div class="boilerplate metadata" id="stub" must be kept on all stubs.  It identifies the template that it is a stub. -- AllyUnion (talk) 17:15, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Something we should consider to add to the policy/guidelines too... -- AllyUnion (talk) 17:19, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  keeping an eye on stub designs? 

message: I write a lot of stubs.  If I know what stubs exist for the article I've just written, I put them on, otherwise, I just use [stub].
Just recently, I thought of putting a stub msg on even if the stub does not yet exist (or there's another one in use that I don't know).  E.g., I just posted Tallong Midge Orchid.  I used "stub" and "Australia-stub" (way too general for this, but I didn't know of another), but when I placed "flower-stub" there wasn't one.  Hmmm...is there a "plant-stub" or "pretty fragrant growing thing-stub" or where is it?
My question is, should I leave something like "flower-stub" using the logic that the stub sorters will see it and know what stub to use without having to read the whole article, or is that making things worse?  Is it more helpful just to put "stub" and leave the stub sorters to it?
Quill 23:39, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The closest stub would be "plant-stub".  -- AllyUnion (talk) 23:59, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: I realized that, Grutness.  I was wondering if red-links were useful in addition to the "stub" msg--I realize that the "stub" message is needed so the new stub can be found. So it's okay--I'll just put "stub".  Quill 10:28, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: only rarely is "stub" the only option, if you look at the list of categories there is one for nearly every possible article. Bluemoose 11:14, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  How to be helpful? 

message: A week ago I googled Wikipedia for all uncategorised stubs, and there were 16,000, that has steadily gone done and today it is 11,700, and if you consider google always seems to over estimate the amount of stubs, then we really are making progress!, well done everyone, keep it up and we will be finished soon! Bluemoose 11:22, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: lets keep a record of the stub levels, to monitor progress and enable a prediction of project completion;
* 16th April 2005 12.30 GMT 11700 stubs
* 18th April 2005 12.15 GMT 11400
* 20th April 2005 07:45 GMT 11100 - dropping at 150 per day. Theoretical empty point: July 3rd!
* 22nd April 2005 14:23 GMT 10600
* 24th April 2005 12:30 GMT 10800 - weekend always seems to bring an influx of stubs
* 26th April 2005 14:00 GMT 10700
* 29th april 2005 08:50 gmt 8510 -  2190 drop, not bad!
This under the assumption that the stub tag's use won't grow by that time... as we're always adding articles... -- AllyUnion (talk) 10:33, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: yeah, but 11100 includes "supplemental results", which seems to approximately double to number of counted stubs. Bluemoose 15:00, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's keep a positive mindset here. :) The important thing is that we are making a lot of progress. --Sn0wflake 15:29, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: Whisper it... under ten thousand! 9,120, to be precise!  Grutness|hello?  09:07, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Real progress 

message: I offer the following statistic:  I printed Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types and it was 16 pages long. (well, th last page was only half a page and the table of contents took1 and a fraction pages.  But it is still really long to try to find anything). RJFJR 03:04, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
:I have proposed before that any geographic subdivision be NOT listed there. Geo and country stub need to be under "stub by countries" stubs themselves sorted as * Circeus 15:33, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
:oopsies! i though this was relative to :category:stub categories (which is a nightmare to navigate, by the way, with the flood of geo stubs!). It is expectable for the list to be that long: there are dozens of thousands of stubs to sort into cats that (we hope) should eventually stands between 60 to 200 articles... And the text list is merely a more usefiul version of the humongous list at wikipedia:template messages/Stubs. Circeus 16:17, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
::Oh please don't start breaking the list into multiple pages! It's useful to me (and I'm guessing others) only if all the possible stub msgs are in one place. I just won't be able to manage if they're in multiple pages and I have to keep bouncing from page to page.  Elf | Talk 23:22, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There was a reason why the stubs were subpaged by category.  You can make two pages, one that has a list of the stubs as a link to the specific subpage categories, and one as it stands. -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:40, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Not really the point I was trying to make. The main problem with wikipedia:template messages/Stubs (for me, at least) is that it has all the icons, all the stub messages are directly linked, and it is in table form. These three things make it a monster to load (hell, it takkes long enough to load the subpages!) and considerably longer than the list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. And none of those three things is really necessary for general-purpose stub-sorting.  Grutness|hello?  09:15, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  How about placing an ID tag and a style for the image so that one can suppress the stub image depending on their stylesheet preferences??? -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:19, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: Hate to admit it, but I know so little about the technology that you're gonna have to spell that option out for me in words I understand :) Sorry!  Grutness|hello?  12:21, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Stub list too long

message: Neat project!  All these stubs are driving me mad, though.  Forming category names with lots of adjectives in them is just evading a serious metadata problem... I'm content with carpentry stubs --> joinery stubs... which isn't to say they're quite the same subjects.  +sj + 07:29, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That last bit was address to grutness :) +sj +
That was part of the point for the change - the articles were about joinery (smaller items, furniture, cabinets etc) rather than carpentry (big items, houses, ships etc). As to the categorising of stubs it is very useful for editors. Consider this - there's a wiki project working on the geography of Italy. Do they want to look through all the geography stubs, or all the stubs related to Italy? Or everything that is simply listed as "stub"? Or would they prefer a stub category especially on Italian geography?  Grutness|hello?  08:30, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Madness

message: Please help finalize this policy.  Leave the comments on the talk page of that page.  -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:37, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Deletion of useless stub templates and stub categories]] 

message: The deletion proposal doesn't seem to be going anywhere.  There is any easy alternative that doesn't require a vote: we just don't use the the stub types we don't want.  We can even leave them off the list so we don't think about them (and they don't lengthen the list). Maybe take votes in the stub sorting project before adding new stub types to the list.RJFJR 16:41, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)
:Mmm. Where I come from this is known as "burying one's head in the sand". Sure, we won't use the new stubs - but other people might, especially the creators of them. Which means that a number - possibly a large number - of articles will disappear off into unrecognised stub categories (if we're lucky and their creators actually attach dedicated categories to the templates), or worse, will be lost because they were never categorised. And new categories will spring up parallel to ones we've created, so that, for example, history editors might need to look for articles in :Category: Historical stubs, :Category: History stubs, :Category: History-related stubs, :Category: Ancient stubs, :Category: Past stubs, :Category: Historic stubs, :Category: History stub, and :Category: History stub articles. Sorry, but this sounds like a non-solution to me.  Grutness|hello?  09:27, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alternate to stub deletion proposal