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| ===Categorising stubs=== | ===Categorising stubs=== | ||
| After writing the stub, the editor must insert what is called a ''stub template'' so that the article can be flagged as a stub. These stub templates should invariably be placed at the bottom of the article. Stub templates are composed by two distinct parts: a short message stating that said article is a stub of a particular type and encouraging editors to expand it |
After writing the stub, the editor must insert what is called a ''stub template'' so that the article can be flagged as a stub. These stub templates should invariably be placed at the bottom of the article. Stub templates are composed by two distinct parts: a short message stating that said article is a stub of a particular type and encouraging editors to expand it and a category link, which places the article on a ''stub category''. | ||
| Stub categories are needed due to the fact that the basic stub template - {{tl|stub}} - has become so large that it became very hard to find articles on a specific subject. That is why stub categories were created. If an editor is, for example, a ], then he or she can look for stubs with the tag {{tl|biology-stub}} on said category and easily find stubs to which they can add, subtract or modify. | Stub categories are needed due to the fact that the basic stub template - {{tl|stub}} - has become so large that it became very hard to find articles on a specific subject. That is why stub categories were created. If an editor is, for example, a ], then he or she can look for stubs with the tag {{tl|biology-stub}} on said category and easily find stubs to which they can add, subtract or modify. | ||
Revision as of 20:03, 19 May 2005
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Stubs are articles which have not yet received substantial attention from the Misplaced Pages editors. They have been created, but don't yet contain enough information to be considered articles. The community believes that stubs are far from worthless. They are, rather, the first step articles take on their course to becoming complete.
Identifying a stub
A stub is an article which is clearly too short, but not too short to be useless. On a general manner, it must be long enough to at least define the article's title. This usually means stubs are about the length of 3 to 10 short sentences. Note that a longer article may be a stub if the topic is complex enough - conversely, a short article on a topic which has a very narrow scope may not be a stub.
In the past, a category referred to as substubs was utilised in case articles were smaller than the proposed size of stubs, but this category has been deprecated with time. It is important to remember that the Misplaced Pages is not a dictionary. That is why the Wikitionary exists. In case your article is too short to be a stub, consider moving it to said sister project or, even better, with a small amount of research, create an useful stub. Take this into consideration before creating short entries containing close to no information.
Categorising stubs
After writing the stub, the editor must insert what is called a stub template so that the article can be flagged as a stub. These stub templates should invariably be placed at the bottom of the article. Stub templates are composed by two distinct parts: a short message stating that said article is a stub of a particular type and encouraging editors to expand it and a category link, which places the article on a stub category.
Stub categories are needed due to the fact that the basic stub template - {{stub}} - has become so large that it became very hard to find articles on a specific subject. That is why stub categories were created. If an editor is, for example, a biologist, then he or she can look for stubs with the tag {{biology-stub}} on said category and easily find stubs to which they can add, subtract or modify.
In general, the naming convention for stubs is topic-stub; for a complete list of stub categories, please refer to Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types. When marking articles as stubs, please be as precise as you possibly can - it saves other ediotrs a lot of work further down the road. If an article overlaps two potential categories, two different stub templates may be used, but using more than two is strongly discouraged.
Stub-related activities are centralized on Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Stub sorting (shortcut WP:WSS). The project should be your main referential when it comes to this subject.
New stub categories
If you identify a group of stubs that do not fit in an existing category, or if an existing stub category is growing too large and might be optimized by creating a narrower category, you might propose the creation of a new stub category. Before you start a new stub category, make sure you consider these guidelines:
- Is there a stub for this topic already?
- Check the list.
- Will the new category be well-defined enough to help editors identify articles that they have the expertise to expand?
- Remember that using stubs categories is a way to facilitate article expansion.
- Does the new category cover ground not covered by other categories, or create a well-defined subcategory that does?
- A new category might fit as a sub-category of more than one existing category, such as in the case of {{Baseballbio-stub}}, which is a child of both {{Sportbio-stub}} and {{Baseball-stub}}.
- Will there be a significant number of stubs in this category; are there enough article stubs to warrant this new type?
- Typically the threshold is about 100 articles. This threshold is waved if the stub category exists as a tool for use by a WikiProject.
- Would your new category overlap with other categories?
- For example, geography stubs are sorted by country so you wouldn’t want to create mountain-stub or river-stub.
- If you are breaking a sub-category out of a pre-existing category, will the new stub reduce the size of the parent category by a significant amount?
- This is not an absolute necessity, but it has been a driver for the creation of most of the existing stub categories.
If you think you have satisfied these guidelines, propose the new stub category here. If there are no objections within a week, you can go ahead and create the new stub category.
Creating the stub template
First, you will need to create the template which will be displayed on the articles which contain the stub. This should be named logically, following this model: Template:topic-stub.
This is the basic format for new stub templates:
<div class="boilerplate" id="stub">
''This ]-related article is a ]. You can ] Misplaced Pages by ''.
</div>
]
You might find use in pasting this code into the new template and customizing it by inserting different text into it. Replacing the letters A and B as such:
- A: The stub topic goes into this field. For example, Road. The topic must have a developed article, and thus not be another stub.
- B: This should be replaced by a proper category, so that the stub will automatically be listed together with other stubs of its kind. Continuing with the previous example, you would replace B with Road stubs or Road-related stubs. When the page is saved, a new template will have been created. In this example, {{road-stub}}.
At this point, you should add the new stub category to the following lists:
Creating the stub category
Next, you will need to create a category to hold the articles which will have the new stub tag attached to them.
To start editing it, you should follow the red category link on the stub template you have created. In this case, it would appear as Category:Road stubs. Here's the basic format for stub categories:
{{Stub Category|article=]s or ]|newstub=B|category=C}}
- A: Insert the description of the category here. In this case it would be roads, you can expand the description by adding additional terms. So you could, for example, add road transportation.
- B: Insert the name of the new stub here.
- C: Insert the name of an appropriate higher level category, for this example it would be road transport stubs. If you have broken your new stub out from an existing stub category, it would be advisable to list this category here.
This syntax does four things, it:
- adds the Category:Road stubs to Category:Stub
- provides a description of the category
- displays the stub text
- inserts this category into a higher level category, in this case the Category:Road stubs will be a member of Category:Road transport.
So, in this example, the formatting would look like this:
{{Stub Category|article=]s or ]|newstub=Road-stub|category=Road transport}}
In order to increase the categories effectiveness and visibility, it's generally advisable to add your category to several categories. For example, this would add it to the Roads category:
]
When you are done, it is important that you make sure that the new stub and the new stub category are linked correctly to other categories. Using the road-stub as an example, the road-stub category needs to be a member of Category:Stub categories (because it's a stub category) and Category:Roads (because it's a category consisting of roads). If your new category has been made from part of an existing stub category or categories, these should also be listed here (so, for example, Category:France geography stubs should be part of Category:France-related stubs and Category:Europe geography stubs).
If you have doubts or comments regarding any part of the process, don't hesitate to address them at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting.