Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/Writing a good stub

A stub is a short article that gives only a brief introduction about its subject. In the assessment scale, it is the lowest class assigned to an article. A stub would usually contain only a few sentences, so it does not provide a considerable encyclopedic coverage of the subject. However, a stub does provide some useful information on the subject.

If you don't have enough sources to write a more detailed article, but think that a subject is notable enough to be included in Wikipedia, you can go for a stub. On the other hand, if you feel you can improve an article beyond this, by all means do so.

Initial research

First of all, search Wikipedia to see if it already has an article on your selected subject. This search should include a few alternative titles, just in case it is listed under one of these instead. Next, make sure that the article can be included in Wikipedia. If the subject does not qualify Wikipedia's notability criteria, the information may be better suited as part of a bigger article and not as a separate article.

Before starting on the article, the first thing you have to do is find out more about the subject. Even if you have detailed knowledge on the subject, you need to add reliable sources to back up the information you are going to include.

Do a simple Google search (or use any other search engine you prefer) on the subject to find some sources. If you get too many irrelevant results, you can narrow down your search by using more specific keywords. Pick the sources that are reliable, and avoid blog-like sites. You can generally find high quality sources if you conduct a search at Google books, but this may not always be the case depending on the subject. You don't need a lot of sources since you are not going to write a full article, but it's better if you can include at least two or three sources. It is also helps to have a few key books, even if you don't have access to them, as they can be included in a Further reading section, which will help future editors expand your stub. As such, if you have access to a good library, a catalogue or database search can aid future researchers.

If you don't know much about the subject, pick some sources that describe the subject in detail and go through them first. You should get a general idea about why the subject is important, what the subject is known for etc.

Writing the stub

Type the name of the article you want to create in the search bar and follow the red link that appears. Then you can start writing your article. The Wikipedia Article Wizard is also an option for creating the article.

First, give a short but comprehensive description of the subject. This description could be just a single line or a few sentences. The essential thing here is to clearly show what is important about the subject and why it is notable to be included in Wikipedia. If the article has no mention of this, it's likely to be tagged for speedy deletion. Once you have done this, you can add some more information or give it in more detail. Since your article will probably have only a few sentences, make sure they are all given in a neutral manner. A bias in a single sentence can make the whole article look unbalanced because of it's length.

Next, you have to add your sources to the article. It may be easier for you to add them as you work on the prose of the article itself. There are several ways to cite sources (see WP:CITE) and you can choose whatever method you like. You can even add them as a list in section named "References", or you can add inline citations (which is generally preferred, since it shows which source is used for which part of the article). You can also add an infobox to the article, and images if there are any.

After writing

After you have written the stub, go to the article's talk page and add the {{MILHIST}} template to it, which brings your article under WikiProject Military History. Also add the project templates of any other relevant Wikiprojects. You can add any relevant task forces to the MILHIST template. Search for other articles in which the subject of your article is mentioned, and add wikilinks to your article from them if appropriate. When searching, remember to click the "Search" button rather than "Go", since that will just take you to your newly created page now. Create any appropriate redirects as well, and you are done with your stub article.

Categorizing

A lot of editors look for stubs to expand. One of the most common and easiest ways is to go through a stub category and find something that they can work on. So be sure to add your newly created stub article to relevant categories. After all, your stub article can't stay like that forever, and other people should be able to find it to improve it.

Someone will eventually come along and assess your article, and if it is a stub, it will be classified as such using the MILHIST template. This will automatically add the article to Category:Stub-Class military history articles. However, it is better to add the article to more specific stub categories by adding stub templates at the bottom of the article (see here, here and here for military related templates).