Botl:Find or fix a stub

**This article, Botl:Find or fix a stub, is part of Botl Wiki's "Guide" articles. It is treated as a community project and serves as both hints and guidelines. You are free to edit it, if deemed appropriate.**

A **stub** is an article which still needs improvement or that which is not complete. A stub template/tag is a placeholder indicator or marker for an unfinished article in a wiki.

Its purpose is to inform visitors that they've arrived at a very unfinished page (as opposed to a normal wiki page which simply never gets finished), and also to automatically classify the page to make it easier for contributors to find and fill out.

The other implication of a stub is that the editor who added the stub marker probably doesn't intend to fill out what they think is missing in the near future.

## Overview

### What are stubs?

Stubs are short articles that require additional work to make them complete.

### Some Reasons for a Stub Tag

1. Lack of content in an article.
2. Images relevant to the article are not available at the time of creation.
3. References for the article's content are not included.

However, please not the following:

* Do not create pages containing a stub tag but absolutely no content, e.g. a page of article management templates and empty sections. Stubs are for expanding info currently present, not a method for removing red (broken) links.
* Similarly, do not add sections that contain a stub tag, and no actual content, to an article.
* Do not stub pages that cannot feasibly be expanded in the near future. If no more information exists, it's not a stub.

### How Do You Find Stubs?

To find stub articles simply click on the
[[Category:Botl stubs]] link in the category below to find a list of incomplete articles of flesh out:

* **Category:Botl subs**

### How Do You Fix Stubs?

Simply choose a stub to fix on the main category page and edit the page. Save the changes and make a note on the reason for your changes in the box on the edit page.

### Note

This page is not where you post your stub information.
It is for instructions on what, why, and how to find and fix stubs. All changes should be integrated into the stub article.
Any page content posted here will be deleted. If you need space to test out your page layout, etc, you can use the Botl:Sandbox.
For information on how to create and use your own Sandbox please refer to Botl:How to make and use a Sandbox.

## Marking a Page as a Stub

Add an appropriate stub template *at the top* of the article. These are templates that add the article to a stub category so that they can be tracked down later for further addition and expansion.

The `{{Stub/*<sub-category>*}}` tag can be used at the top of pages, as well as inside sections of the page.

## Dealing With a Stub

It's simple: add information to the article! You can remove the stub template if you think the article or section has been sufficiently filled out.

Throughout Botl Wiki there are articles with little or no content that have been created with the intention of filling them in. These are referred to as **stubs** and are tagged specifically to tell visitors that they are, in fact, stubs, and to make it easier for other contributors to find them.

### Finding stubs

If you created a stub previously and need to find it again, or just want to help fill out some stubs, start looking in Category:Botl stubs. It contains a listing of all the *stub categories* – each of the different stub templates place articles in their own category, e.g. "Stubs/Item", "Stubs/Quest", etc.

### Fixing a Stub

* If you see a stubbed article you'd like to work on, feel free to add to and edit it, but keep in mind the editing policy.
* While working on the article, you should generally leave the {{Stub}} tag in.
* If you think the article you worked on is complete enough (has the basic information the article's title suggests), you can remove the stub tag.