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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by AllyUnion (talk | contribs) at 12:27, 2 September 2004. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Notice!!! When creating a new stub category, please use: {{Stub Category|[[CATEGORY NAME]]|STUB REPLACEMENT}} [[Category:stub categories]][[Category:RELATED CATEGORY]]

Example: {{Stub Category|[[Mythlogy|myths and legends]]|myth-stub}} [[Category:stub categories]][[Category:Mythology]]

New Stubs to Use

I'm sorting out the stubs, and as I go around sorting, I'm creating several broad stub categories to use to sort stubs. Please be advised before using {{stub}} to check the stub categories before marking your pages as a simple stub. Thanks! - Allyunion 23:40, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Alternatively, check at Wikipedia:Template messages#Stubs (hint, hint) ;) - 23:49, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
Stub categories are updated more frequently than Wikipedia:Template messages#Stubs. (That's because, I end up having to updating both myself.) -- Allyunion 11:29, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, but ideally, Wikipedia:Template messages should be a quick one-stop shop for (almost) everybody's templating needs. So it's important to try and keep it up to date. - 17:52, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
Isn't there a category for list-stubs? LISTDEV? LISTSTUB. Vaguely remember that these exist... --Tagishsimon
Try Wikipedia:Template messages#Lists. ;) - 17:52, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
Should the University Stub be broadened a little to encompass all education topics (schools, teaching, training etc.)? violet/riga (t) 14:12, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It can be renamed to "Educational stub" instead... - Allyunion 05:39, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
These new stub messages violate Wikipedia:Avoid self-references and should have been discussed first. As for the instruction creep of making us all now categorize stubs when we add a stub message, I suspect a number of people are going to refuse. Besides, all this work will be wasted once it is possible to limit search results by category. Then we can use boolean operators on category tags that are already there (Category:science and Category:Stub = Category:Science stubs). anthony (see warning) 14:42, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The database is already slow, and there are well over 500 pages that use the general stub template. Pardon me by saying, the Wikipedia in house search engine is far more ineffective than a Google search on Wikipedia. Additionally, mind I remind you that not all stub pages have the category already? Half those that I looked at which now use the bio-stub tag didn't even have a category for people, let alone marked as a stub either -- some of them were one liners, so I marked them as substubs. So are you suggesting that we leave the stubs unsorted, when it would be better to have them sorted? I'm only following up an idea already started. This is certainly not a new idea, from what I'm looking at the history. There was the use of a tag called "stublist" which I somehow don't see on the template page anymore, but it still exists. As it stands now, there isn't a good way to look at the current stubs. Plus, there are people who are generally knowledgable in a certain aspect as opposed to other
categories. Why was their time in trying to find stubs even if you have a search engine working? I'd say it's a lot easier to just move the stubs out of general stub category into a specific one. I think this was one of the reasons "substub" was created -- because the general stub tag was overused. Excuse me for trying to clean up the Wikipedia's stubs. There's far more junk in the Wikipedia than you don't know about -- sorting it into specific categories only helps to clean it up. If you feel all the templates I recently added are worthless just because they violate the "Avoid self-reference" policy, please go ahead and list them on the tfd page and go back to revert my changes. -- Allyunion 05:39, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
By the way, Ssd was the one who added the bio-stub tag on 25 Jul 2004. Mike Storm created the substub tag on 20 Jul 2004. The content in Wikipedia changes quite rapidly -- you, as a long time user, no doubtly already know this. On 6 Jul 2004, Patrick wrote this into the policy page on self references: "Self-references are generally considered acceptable when used in the Template namespace, and these templates are referred to from the main namespace." It was on 30 Jul 2004 when the page was changed to as you see now. To me, what it looks like was that starting on 20 Jul 2004, the people who mostly keep track of substubs started to attempt to offload the stub category by adding substub and bio-stub. My additions of the new stub categories were not discouraged by Ssd nor anyone else until now... plus I am only attempting to follow what other users have just started to do... I just happen to add a lot more categories of stubs than they
did. -- Allyunion 05:59, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • "As far as geo-stub, hm. Could be useful too, since the Stub category is woefully overcrowded. Still, not sure... --Golbez 15:36, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)" -- Allyunion 06:36, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Oh, one more thing. Thank you for calling me a "instruction creep" on the Village Pump page. That's really nice of you despite my good intentions in trying to organize the Wikipedia. - Allyunion 06:36, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Instruction creep is the slow process of adding more and more instructions for a situation to the point where hardly anyone follows them all (WP:VFD regularly gets accused of this, for example). I doubt it was meant as a personal attack. - 11:00, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

I know I'm not alone in thinking that balkanizing the stub message is simply a dumb idea. Am I to understand that "This X article is a stub" is somehow superior to "This article is a stub?" Such policies—as with PokeStubs—have met with harsh criticism in the past, for numerous reasons, and I personally don't take kindly to this unilateral "advisory." I, for one, intend to go on using the same stub message I've always used. Austin Hair 06:51, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)

I believe that I did start the trend of categorizing stubs. I didn't advertise it at first, because I wanted things to go slow to make sure it got the kinks worked out first. Others have done (IMHO) a good job extending this. Now, just to set the record straight, I hate stubs, and I think the stub messasge needs to be removed from all articles! Of course, ideally, this would be done by making them not-stubs before removing the message. --ssd 07:29, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Most of them are good, but who added a KDE-stub? Surely the compu-stub is good enough? violet/riga (t) 07:45, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I might agree, except that there are 18 articles there as of now. Ideally, someone wil expand all those, and we can delete the category. 8-> --ssd 09:29, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

To summarize what this is all about:

  1. Stub articles need to be expanded; we put the message on the article to remind people of that.
  2. The stub categories serve to give people a place to go when they are looking for something to write.
  3. The main stub category has far too many items in it, so we split it. By splitting it into broad topics, this also allows people to narrow down what to write on.
  4. Yes, when a binary search is available on categories, the split will be redundant, but the split is for database performance more than it is for page size, although both are important.
  5. When any category reaches 2000-4000 items, it is past time to split it further! This goes for the *-stub categories too! But oversplitting is not good either.
  6. It is not necessary to change the generic stub message when making a new stub category; however, since we have to make a new template to change the category name, why not customize the message too?

Does that make sense? --ssd 07:29, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Makes sense to me... does that mean standing policy will be changed to reflect that is being done? --[[User:Allyunion| AllyUnion (talk)]] 11:10, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

More Stub Categories

The following is a list of suggestive categories. I'm not bothering to create them at the moment, however if anyone sees a need, go right ahead. Please feel free to tack on to the list. --[[User:Allyunion| AllyUnion (talk)]] 12:07, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Biology
  • Chemistry
  • Computer Games / Video Games
  • Entertainment
  • Games
  • Politics
  • Religion
  • Technology
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