Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/Archive2

{{aero-corp-stub}} and {{telecom-corp-stub}}

Category:Corporation stubs is getting very large and could do with cleanup. There are many aeronautical and telecommunications corporations in this category. I propose these new stub categories, of which {{aero-corp-stub}} (created) should then become a daughter of {{aero-stub}} and of {{corp-stub}}. I haven't yet had the time to take stock of all the articles that would be covered by these new categories, but both would be substantial categories. More details and more related proposals coming up soon. Aecis 22:43, 18 July 2005 (UTC) (Proposal slightly edited since posting.)
Comment: under A alone, there are at least 41 articles about aeronautical corporations, and it doesn't slow down under B. Aecis 23:01, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Looking through the food stubs recently it seemed that there were a lot of food-corp-stubs and restaurant-stubs. There are probably a lot of them in corp-stub too - would they be worth splitting off as well? Grutness...wha? 02:34, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

They could very well be worth splitting off as well. A few other options (I don't know if they'll be big enough to deserve a category of their own, but it's close): {{tech-corp-stub}}, {{entertainment-corp-stub}}, {{oil-corp-stub}} or {{petroleum-corp-stub}} (all created), {{industry-corp-stub}} (a daughter of {{industry-stub}} and {{corp-stub}}), {{media-corp-stub}}, {{energy-corp-stub}} (created), {{distri-corp-stub}} and {{holding-stub}}. The Category:Corporation stubs is too big to check just how many articles would/could be moved to these categories, but they would all be substantial. Aecis 15:49, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I think that holding-stub and distri-corp-stub need better names... I take it the second one is for corporations that only operate in a particular district? other than that, they look fine. Grutness...wha? 01:26, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Distri-corp-stub was meant for corporations in the distribution sector (shipping, express, perhaps mail/postal services) :s Do you have a better name in mind for holding-stub? Holding-company-stub? Aecis 08:57, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Among the stub categories were a few hidden subcategories of Category:Corporation stubs. I've edited their entries, and now they're shown in the Category:Corporation stubs. This could help us out for now. The {{media-stub}} I proposed is largely covered by {{publish-stub}}, and what isn't covered by that tag could be covered by {{entertainment-corp-stub}} (created as {{leisure-corp-stub}}. Many {{aero-corp-stub}}bable articles are covered by {{airline-stub}}). Aecis 16:19, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

It's been a week now since I first proposed daughters to {{corp-stub}}. After Grutness' very valuable input and after adding several stub categories as daughters of Category:Corporation stubs, my final proposals are these:

• {{aero-corp-stub}} - For corporations in the aeronautical industry. (created)
• {{telecom-corp-stub}} - For telecommunications providers. (created)
• {{leisure-corp-stub}} - For corporations involved in entertainment, leisure and perhaps sports and hotels. (created)
• {{energy-corp-stub}} - For corporations involved in wind energy, solar energy, nuclear energy, water energy and conventional (non-durable?) forms of energy. (created)
• {{industry-corp-stub}} - For corporations in the second economic sector: industry.
• {{oil-corp-stub}} - For corporations involved in extracting, refining, processing, distributing and selling oil and related products. (created as {{petroleum-corp-stub}})
• {{food-corp-stub}} - For corporations producing candy, food and drinks, and for restaurants. (created)
• {{tech-corp-stub}} and/or {{ict-corp-stub}} - As the names say: for technological and ICT-related corporations. There is some overlap between the two categories, so I'm not sure if there need to be one or two stub tags.

Any views on this? Aecis 14:44, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. This will also help relieve my consternation with {{disney-stub}} (see discussion elsewhere on this page) being a subcategory of {{corp-stub}}: it can go under {{leisure-corp-stub}} after the split. — Fingers-of-Pyrex 15:03, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

What about arms manufacturers? Could they be moved to {{weapon-stub}} or should they stay in {{corp-stub}}? Aecis 17:53, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

• I'm not sure about the proper wording for the stub tags. My ideas:

{{aero-corp-stub}} - This article about an aeronautical corporation is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. (created)

{{telecom-corp-stub}} - This article about a telecommunications provider is a stub... (created)

{{leisure-corp-stub}} -

If sport-related companied and hotel chains are included:

"This article about an entertainment-related, leisure-related or sports-related corporation, or about a hotel or a chain of hotels, is a stub..."

If sport-related companied and hotel chains are not included:

"This article about an entertainment or leisure-related corporation is a stub..." (created)

{{energy-corp-stub}} - This article about an energy producing corporation is a stub... (created)

{{industry-corp-stub}} - This article about an industrial corporation is a stub...

{{oil-corp-stub}} or {{petrol-corp-stub}} /{{petroleum-corp-stub}} - This article about a petroleum-related corporation is a stub... (created as {{petroleum-corp-stub}})

{{food-corp-stub}} - This article about a corporation producing candy, food and/or drinks, or about a restaurant or a chain of restaurants, is a stub... (created)

{{tech-corp-stub}} - This article about a technological corporation is a stub... (created)

{{ict-corp-stub}} - This article about an ICT-related corporation is a stub... (created)

Especially "Leisure-corp-stub" needs attention. Aecis 15:21, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

{{country-stub|CountryName}}

I created {{country-stub}}. Given a country name as the first parameter, emits stub template for that country. Note that the following are equivalent: {{country-stub|USA}}, {{country-stub|United States}}, {{country-stub|United States of America}}. I'm sure there will be comments. (SEWilco 08:21, 19 July 2005 (UTC))

Nooooooooo!!!!!!!!! This was tried a couple of months back, and didn't work, and some of the damage it caused is still awaiting clearance at sfd! The reason? Not every country has a stub category, nor does it need one. Furthermore the categories are not named in any consistent way (although they should be...). Often countries are bundled together into regions, to make the categories a useful size. Stub categories are not equivalent to ordinary categories (it would probably be useful for them, but are only created to fulfil editorial needs. Stub categories are only created when there are a certain number of stubs - deliberately, so as to stop near-empty (and therefore useless) stub categories. We've still got a couple of near-empty and useless categories hanging around from last time this was tried, - it was seen as a perfect way for anyone who wanted to to suddenly start zapping off a SanMarino-stub or Andorra-stub. It's also a bad use of metatemplates, which we've been trying to reduce the use of for reasons of server problems (not sure whether it's still as big an issue with MW1.5, but no-one's said anything to the contrary). See here for details of the previous attempt. Please please please get rid of it before it does any damage!!! (By the way, any reason why you've listed this here as a found stub rather than a proposal?) Grutness...wha? 10:13, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

• Country stub groups? I can make the templates know the proper category for a specific country, so if the proper stub for the Bahamas should be a Caribbean-stub it will display that. This should reduce problems with an unwanted Andorra-stub by predefining the "stub group" for that country.
• How does one now find the proper stub for a country? One has to browse Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types#Geographical, and note whether a regional Caribbean-stub or specific Cuba-stub is proper?
• The previous GCS template had a problem with image names which is not present in this template. This was listed in Found because Stub instructions guided me there, but now moved to Proposals. (SEWilco 17:44, 19 July 2005 (UTC))

I'm still very very strongly against it. A major reason the previous proposal was rejected was that it would have ended up creating far more work for stub sorters. This looks to be very similar in that regard. I repeat: please please please get rid of it! Grutness...wha? 01:48, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

• In what way would preassigning all countries to a certain stub create more work? How likely is creation of Andorra-stub if Andorra is already assigned to a regional stub? For that matter, country-stub could replace existing stubs and thus there would be fewer actual stubs to deal with. (SEWilco 03:07, 20 July 2005 (UTC))

1. More typing - consider the lengths of {{US-stub}} and {{country-stub|US}}. Trivial, maybe, but over hundreds of stubs it adds up.
2. Considerably more work when categories are split or otherwise need changing. Currently that only requires either changing the template and doing null edits on articles (category change) or adding a new template (category split).
3. It's also more work for the servers. There has been no word yet on whether MW1.5 is any better than MW1.4 when it comes to heavy use of templates. That's one of the reasons stub categories are kept small. If, say, you were to use country-geo-stub plus modifier for all geography stubs. You'd be putting one template on about 30,000 articles. Recommended template use for MW1.4 was under 1000 - even if 1.5 is considerably better it would still be a major strain.

You also still haven't addressed the problems with the incosistency of category names. Will it work equally well for Category:Sri Lankan stubs, Category:France-related stubs and Category:Lebanon stubs, and for those where no flag is used so as to avoid political concerns? Grutness...wha? 03:33, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

• 1. Shorter name can be provided, particularly if there are many people typing hundreds of stubs.
  2. Only each country's "stub group" would have to be edited to change or split assignments. For example, Iraq-stub did not exist until January 2005. If the stub template had the name of the country in them, all Iraq stubs could have been changed from MEast-stub to Iraq-stub by editing one entry in a template array. The same way that Bahamas information can be changed by editing arrays:

Name: "Bahamas"
Item	Usage	Content	Edit	Description
Flag		{{country_flag_alias_Bahamas}}	Edit	Image of flag
Article	[[{{country alias Bahamas}}]]	{{country_alias_Bahamas}}	Edit	Article name
Label	{{country_label_alias_Bahamas}}	{{country_label_alias_Bahamas}}	Edit	Short label (ie, ISO abbrev.)
Common name	[[{{country shortname alias Bahamas}}]]	{{country_shortname_alias_Bahamas}}	Edit	Common short name
Stub usage
Stub region image		Caribbean	Edit	Image for Bahamas stub articles
Stub region	Caribbean	Caribbean	Edit	Stub region for Bahamas

• 1. I haven't referred to server load because there is no word. And it only matters when a template is edited. And the behavior is likely to change with changes in template abilities.
  2. It could handle a variety of category names, but it would seem that the categories should be made more consistent. There are several ways to deal with that situation.
  3. Flags are not a problem, because the same mechanism which will assign a country to a stub-group also assigns it an appropriate image. Including no flag if needed. (SEWilco 04:26, 20 July 2005 (UTC))

One minor point: The server load matters every time a template is edited, AND everytime an article with the template is edited. For a meta-template that is on many articles that are regularly edited, this is a much bigger hit on system performance, because templates are usually rarely edited. BlankVerse ∅ 04:11, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

The more you talk about it, the more complex it seems to get. Now we've got the option of a multitude of names for the same stub, providing a multitude of images. I've moving slowly from strongly against this to extremely strongly against. If this had been set up at the beginning of stub sorting, it would probably have been a good idea, but this far down the track it's extraordinarily bad. PLEASE do not do this! Grutness...wha? 06:01, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Where did you find "a multitude of images"? One image would be shown, it would be whatever image is associated with the stub-group for that country. The stub-group would either be for a region or for a specific country, depending upon whether a separate stub is needed for a country. (SEWilco 16:32, 20 July 2005 (UTC))

I changed the sample table above to refer to Bahamas. Here is the current display from {{country-stub|Bahamas}} (SEWilco 20:25, 20 July 2005 (UTC))

THIS TEMPLATE IS FOR TESTING ONLY, NOT FOR USE YET.

Category:Caribbean stubs

I would like to point, bty, that all stubs at the spanish Wikipedia are actually following this format Circeus 21:47, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough. Each Wikiproject is free to choose its own way to do things. This project has repeatedly rejected similar such moves. Grutness...wha? 11:21, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

So far the rejection by "this project" consists of one person saying Nooooooooo. (SEWilco 18:57, 11 August 2005 (UTC))

And only one person is arguing in favour, and they're not even a regular stub-sorter. The indifference of the rest of the project makes it clear that this proposal doesn't generate any support among the parts of the community who would be using it. As such, it's pretty obvious it's got no use here. What's more, it's a metatemplate of a type that the developers still haven't given us clearance to start using again. There is no guarantee that MW1.5 will in the long run be any more robust thatn MW1.4 when it comes to high use templates, and here you are suggesting a template to use on all country-specific stubs! I'm not prepared to sit by and watch this template cripple Wikipedia. Grutness...wha? 03:08, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

The indifference also shows this proposal hasn't generated any complaints from the parts of the community who would be using it. Although actually one of the benefits would come from random editors being able to correctly mark stubs without having to hunt down the proper regional stub, thus much of the user community are not readers. Readers of this discussion are those likely to clean up the mess created by difficulty in finding the proper stub. (SEWilco 15:29, 12 August 2005 (UTC))

There has been concern that this template encourages creation of new stubs, such as as Liechtenstein category. The reverse is the case. Right now, when a user is aware that stubs exist they have to hunt for a relevant stub and invoke it. The present system displays many stubs and thus encourages creation of "missing" ones. This template only requires specification of a country name, and if it is recognized then the proper regional Category will be used. If Liechtenstein is not defined, someone may define it as being in the wrong region but this can be fixed by editing one template array entry and afterwards all additional references will be to the correct region. (SEWilco 15:29, 12 August 2005 (UTC))

As for MW difficulties with templates, what are these difficulties? Many articles using a template? Is there a problem with links, or updates? My understanding is that there are concerns over frequently edited templates which are used in many articles. Even then, that the overhead happens when an article is updated and not at the time a template modification is made. This is a utility template that can be locked, not Picture_of_the_hour. What is the most-used template? (SEWilco 15:29, 12 August 2005 (UTC))

I will go ahead and try this on the Belarus related stubs and see how it works out. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 19:23, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

It's working for the country. Can you make it work for a larger region, as if Belarus had no stub category of its own? Don't change the call, just change the stub country definition. (SEWilco 21:25, 11 August 2005 (UTC))

Category:Belarus stubs

The Belarus stub category of over 70 articles, but I am switching them from the old category to the new one. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 21:43, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

For a test, only a few is sufficient. (SEWilco 02:20, 12 August 2005 (UTC))

It works. And if a category needs to be changed, or an image, it can do so in an instant. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 03:21, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Category:European Union stubs

Zscout370's test is done. Removed country-stub references. (SEWilco 04:15, 12 August 2005 (UTC))

{{Washington State Highway Stub}}

I'm sorry... I sort of jumped the gun and created this already. It is used with Wikipedia:WikiProject Washington State Highways. It is just like {{California State Highway Stub}}, it is just for Washington. I will be adding this stub template to more of the WA state route articles, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. --Rschen7754

{{California-south-geo-stub}} *created*

Currently Category:California geography stubs has 400+ articles, and roughly 2/3rds of the 60 Category:California-related stubs are also geo-stubs and should be re-stubbed. My guess is that there may also be at least 50 more short Calif. geography articles that don't have stub tags or are inappropriately tagged. Then there are a huge number of community articles that have not been created yet (see the red-links at San Diego, California#Neighborhoods and San Diego County, California#Cities and towns in San Diego County for just the San Diego County examples). Since there is now a Southern California WikiProject (as well as a new California WikiProject), I'd like to divide the Calif. geo-stubs into Northern and Southern Calif. geo-stubs. If approved, I'll let you guys suggest the most appropriate template and category names. BlankVerse ∅ 08:16, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Split sounds good to me. Make sure the boundary between the regions is well defined with words and picture(s) so stub sorters know where to put articles. If we follow the US-geo-stub split model, the names would be California-north-geo-stub and California-south-geo-stub. Could the larger cities be broken out instead? LosAngeles-geo-stub, SanDiego-geo-stub, SanFrancisco-geo-stub? Would that make California-geo-stub more manageable? — Fingers-of-Pyrex 18:00, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

A split is reasonable, but - as with Fingers-of-Pyrex - I wonder whether this is the best way - wouldn't having a separate LosAngeles-geo-stub by itself reduce the category considerably? Other than that, what F-o-P says sounds right on the money. Grutness...wha? 02:56, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

For the two regions, there is a nice map of Southern California at the Southern California WikiProject, plus a listing of the counties involved under the "Scope" section. Northern California would be everything else.

I had also thought about breaking the Calif-geo-stubs into smaller regions. If things went that way, I would suggest probably by county for Southern Calif., and by region for Northern Calif. (which has a bunch of small counties). The main reasons that I didn't suggest going that route right away are 1) There are only the two WikiProjects 2) I'm not sure, except for a few of the very large counties like LA County and San Diego County, if there are enough stubs. Even Orange County, because it has a moderate number of medium-sized cities without many separate communities worthy of an encyclopedia entry, probably doesn't have enough stubs to have its own stub category.

However, I have a BIG problem with just a "generic" LosAngeles-geo-stub. Los Angeles is a city, a county, a region, a flood plain, etc. (which is one of the reasons the Los Angeles article is such a mess because it conflates all of those entities). That's another reason that I prefer the all-encompassing SoCal-geo-stub. BlankVerse ∅ 08:15, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Might I suggest that the obvious thing to do might be just to have a Category:Southern California geography stubs (with {{California-south-geo-stub}}) as a subcategory of Category:California geography stubs. Don't bother with a Northern California one for now. It will probably take the category from 500 stubs to 250 plus a subcategory. Why double your work moving the remaining stubs from a well-defined category to a less-well defined one? Grutness...wha? 09:16, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Since it has been a week and there were no objections, I have now created {{California-south-geo-stub}} and Category:Southern California geography stubs. I then added the info to Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types, as per the instructions above. I did not, however, try to add the info to Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs/By region (I know just enough about Wiki Tables to occasionally create simple ones without problems and usually @#$! up anything more complicated). Would there be any objection to me creating a redirect from {{SoCal-geo-stub}} (although I know that redirects are usually frowned upon)? BlankVerse ∅ 11:08, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Mmm. We are reasonably strongly against abbreviations. The redirects we have are largely being orphaned. It'd be preferable if you could use the full name (I realise it's long, but if you're just copying and pasting, it shouldn't make that much difference how long it is). Grutness...wha? 10:52, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, I just sorted one: Orange curtain.

What is the northern boundary for purposes of stubs? According to Southern California, it is vague.

The northern boundary is more difficult to define. One generally accepted 'physical' boundary between Southern California and the rest of the state is the Tehachapi Mountain range located about 100 miles north of Los Angeles . Another useful boundary is the San Gabriel Mountain range located about 10 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. Depending on which of the two mountain ranges is used for the northern boundary of the region, different communities/cities and counties are included in, or excluded from, the area called "Southern California".

I also created Category:Southern California geography — Fingers-of-Pyrex 20:33, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Take a look at the map and the scope section of the SoCal WikiProject which uses the widest definition of Southern California that is commonly used. For my first sort through the Calif-geo-stubs, I will probably only re-stub for those counties south of the San Gabriel mountains, except for Ventura County, which is still pretty much within the Los Angeles sphere of influence. On second thought, since the SoCal WikiProject has already got one participant from the northern counties, I may just go ahead and re-stub the few additional stubs associated with Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Kern County as well. BlankVerse ∅ 03:53, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Splitting Mythology Stubs

{{Myth-stub}} category is getting very, very full. Perhaps split by continent, eg: {{Euro-myth-stub}}, {{Africa-myth-stub}}, etc, or even by country/region: {{Greek-myth-stub}} would probably be handy GeeJo 00:45, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

By continent first would probably be the best way, since several countries share similar mythologies but few are common to more than one continent. I'd suggest Euro, Asia, Africa, Americas and Oceania as being the obvious five. Might be worth going through a sample of the myth-stub category (say the first page) to see what sort of count is likely for each category. Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Norse may be worth separate categories too, but I'd stick with the continents as a start. Grutness...wha? 01:54, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Breakdown of the first 200 stubs in the category goes like this:

• Africa (Not counting Egypt): 8
• America: 22
• Asia: 24
• Europe (Not counting Norse, Roman, or Greek):39
• Oceania: 12
• Greek: 68 (!)
• Norse: 7
• Egyptian: 4
• General: 7 (Ranging from Abrahamic Mythology to a Demonology article)
• Roman (Not counting Etruscan): 11

From this I'd say Greek definitely deserves its own among the europeans. The others could probably go into their respective continents. GeeJo 05:18, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Looks like you're right. In that case:

• {{Euro-myth-stub}}
  • {{Greek-myth-stub}} (or Greece, to keep it in line with other categories?)
• {{Asia-myth-stub}}
• {{Africa-myth-stub}}
• {{Oceania-myth-stub}}
• {{Americas-myth-stub}} (plural AmericaS -to allow for both north and south)

...seems reasonable to me. The others could remain in the general category for now, although the demonology one probably needs a different stub to myth (occult-stub, maybe?). Note three other things: 1)many myths may be in individual country-stub categories. 2) A lot of Roman mythology stubs may be stubbed with Roman-stub. 3) There is already at least one subcat of Americas-myth-stub - Inca-myth-stub. Does this seem reasonable to everyone else? Grutness...wha? 06:08, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Greek and European would appear to reduce the category by half, so I'd definitely go for them. As to the others, the logical breakdown makes sense but I have no strong opinion about them one way or another. --TheParanoidOne 09:50, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Might be as well to create them first then... go through the category, re-stub the Greek and European ones, and see what others are there as we go. Grutness...wha? 11:57, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

I just added {{myth-stub}} to 70-some articles on Polynesian mythology, so {{Oceania-myth-stub}} would definitely be useful. --Mairi 03:59, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I've noticed a few Maori ones in the past, too. I think it might be a useful one. Grutness...wha? 13:47, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I created the Oceania and Asian myth stubs. --Admiral Roo 18:54, August 2, 2005 (UTC)