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Changes to Opera stubs

I understand changes are being made to opera stubs. Can you please tell the editors at the Opera Project what you propose to do? Up to now one simple stub has been used (most of the time) and that has met the needs of editors perfectly well. Changes to stubs, especially the creation of new ones, can cause problems with categorization etc. Stubs are not just for aesthetic appreciation! Thanks. --Kleinzach 02:45, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Outreach

Grutness raises a good point in the ongoing Opera stub split discussion which I feel deserves further discussion: Perhaps no-one involved in opera editing said that the stub category was close to being broken because none of them are regularly involved in stub sorting. If they had been, they would probably have proposed some form of split here themselves. It got me thinking we could do more regular outreach so other WikiProjects understand what WikiProject Stub sorting does before a lot of their stubs are sorted. The way I got involved in stub sorting was that I saw a lot of stubs on my watchlist sorted and wondered what was going on. Although they shouldn't be, a lot of folk are possessive over pages on their watchlist. I was thinking we could post a standard message on the WPJ talkpages every six months (say) and bumpf up the pages here about what WPSS does. Projects who are already involved we could either put on an exclusion list or post a different standard message. SeveroTC 10:06, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

It's a good plan. I aim to canvass for any time any time I propose anything a related WPJ might consider "novel", but frequently the will falters. We might want to try working our way down the "by size" list, making sure that we've had at least some sort of contact with related projects, even if we aren't currently proposing a split. Something on the lines of, "you have a stub type that's so oversized we haven't worked out what to do with it for the past year and a half", or "you have a large but not (yet) oversized stub type; at some point you may wish to consider splitting it up".
One idea I had -- but never did anything to implement -- is that where we're starting with an existing oversized type, we have some sort of "tracking template" on the category talk page -- or perhaps even integrated in some way into {{verylargestub}}. Basically indicating whether a splitting scheme is needed, proposed, approved, underway, etc, ideally linking into the relevant discussion. It would be useful for our own purposes, and it would also provide a "heads up" for anyone actually bothering to use the category page in person. It might be better than explicit "come comment" messages, which often fall on deaf ears, result in a discussion in the "wrong" place, or else a "let's not bother" grade of response. Alai (talk) 23:57, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
sounds like a good idea. A standard message to Wprojects when they are likely to be involved in a splitting process is easily templatised, too (something like {{Projectstubannounce|foo stubs}} returning "Hi - a debate is about to start at WP:WSS/P about a possible split of Category:Foo stubs into subtypes..."). That could easily be placed on WProject talk pages. Grutness...wha? 00:51, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
My story is very similar to Severo's and I think outreach is a very good idea. Prioritizing oversized stub categories' wikiprojects is a good idea, but also those projects with lots of stub categories. The api.php and Category pages have made it much easier to see category sizes. I wish it was easier to make "active" pages on the wiki without admin (to add global javascript) or developer (to tweak special pages) status. I wrote some XSLT that snags things from api.php and combines them into a report, but it has to have a base document to run from, which requires some sort of external link or javascript. JackSchmidt (talk) 05:33, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
WPJs with lots of stub types are likely to be somewhat more aware of the whole splitting/whoops-too-big routine. But if they haven't done it for a while, or indeed if they have the opposite "problem" (lots of marginally-sized stubcats), it might be a good idea to remind them of the size clause of the stub guidelines. What sort of "active" page had you in mind? Something to track size status with respect to the size threshold? It'd be possible to handle that by bot... Alai (talk) 16:43, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Yup. One important part about WPJs is that the people involved actually change, so talking to them every 6 months to a year is probably a good idea, just to introduce our project to the new members. As far as active pages, yup. I make pages that load a little slowly (5-10 seconds), but are "live" in that they query api.php to get the information. I usually just make them standalone webpages, since it is hard to make them as wikipedia pages (a little javascript or xslt or something is usually needed to combine/filter/sort the information). Definitely they can be done by running a bot, but I don't have a bot account, and it seems like there is a lot of red tape involved for each task (I'm happy to comment on a bot approval if you want to have AlaiBot do this). JackSchmidt (talk) 15:00, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

A proposal has come up at Bot requests to make WikiProjects automatically aware of happenings at AfD, Featured/Good articles and peer reviews when an article is connected to their project scope. I've suggested happenings here are built into this as well. I think it would be good to get WPSS stuff onto the same newsfeed as it were. SeveroTC 07:51, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Delinking dates in template scoping statements?

Does anyone see any logic whatsoever in edits like this? This looks like a programme to remove overlinking from the article space that's wandered somewhat blithely into the arena of stub templates. Alai (talk) 02:47, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Seems like another AWB bug. I wish they would deactivate their more brutal fixes outside of the main space. I think we've all seen AWB attack a stub category page (for instance, taking a nice list of refinements of the stub category and moving them all to the bottom). Looking at Lightmouse's contribs, there are quite a few that might need to be reverted. JackSchmidt (talk) 05:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
1980s probably shouldn't be linked there... either way as AWB is user controlled you can't blame the programme for something an editor has decided to do. SeveroTC 08:41, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
It's user controlled but there are a set of fixes it will offer to do, which the user only needs to cast a quick eye over (like changine [[Cat|cats]] to [[cat]]s, so it's unhelpful if this set includes things which on balance shouldn't be done! But, like Severo, I'm not sure why or whether 1980s needs to be linked within stub description. PamD (talk) 09:29, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
"Need" would certainly be putting rather strongly: it's not a huge deal either way. But the norm seems to be to link defining elements of the scoping statement, and I certainly don't see a need to remove them: I certainly don't think that it's wise to apply article-text MoS considerations unqualifiedly here. Alai (talk) 13:16, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Are there any wires in the area, like a TV wire? Is there an A-frame? 24.109.207.40 (talk) 14:25, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
I think what the IP is suggesting is that the problem User:Alai pointed out could be solved, if only there were a type of virtual A-frame and some connecting wire. It's not at all a bad suggestion, technically speaking, but it's impractical for use on Wikipedia. Perhaps someone could construct a Whisper Gold? Swamilive (talk) 18:22, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm strongly inclined to believe you're both, in technical terms, attempting to pull our legs. If not, you're making yourself distinctly obscure. Alai (talk) 12:37, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context#Dates - Linking to a generic decade isn't really contextual and is discouraged. Linking to something like 1980s in Journalism would be appropriate, if it existed. JohnnyMrNinja 06:52, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

id="stub"

copied across from WP talk:Stub. Grutness...wha?

Because the box standard for stub templates is apparently to wrap them inside a <div class="boilerplate metadata" id="stub">, XHTML errors are generated by pages containing multiple stub templates, as all id attributes on a page should be unique. This concern was raised at the village pump and I offered two possible solutions, so I invite everyone interested in stub template formats to comment here. — CharlotteWebb 13:42, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

User:Atomican/Wikicite+

Copied across from Category talk: Stubs

I have been testing this out and I recommend other stub sorters test and try it out as well. I've found it to be of great use thus far. Its simple and easy to use, and is being updated constantly. — MaggotSyn 09:21, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I spoke to Atomican while he was testing this, and it sounded quite useful at the time. It may still be in "beta mode" though, so there may well be a couple of glitches still with it. Grutness...wha? 01:35, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
The main issue at the moment is getting all the stub tags into the program (my current build has nearly a thousand, there's lots more to go). I do hope members of StubSorting will find it useful. It's written with .Net 3.5 but it should work with 2.0 or 3.0 --Atomican (talk) 04:15, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Problem with SfD template

Pardon me if this has already been addressed, but the SfD template does not appear to link to the discussion, just to WP:SFD. So when somebody comes across an old one, and clicks to find out more, they get nothing (as I did [1]). Is there a particular reason for this? JohnnyMrNinja 06:33, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

The main problem is that individual deletion discussions don't have their own subpages. If they did, it would be far easier to link them. There are proposals underway (or at least, there were some recently, IIRC) to make all xFD debates individual transclusions. if that happens it will become pretty easy to link the SfD templates directly to the individual debates. Whether it happens or not, there's little point in changing this until we know the outcome of that proposal (saves potentially having to change things twice in quick succession). Grutness...wha? 07:06, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
However, we could have them link to the individual day subpages fairly easily. Caerwine Caer’s whines 04:52, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

{{Salem-stub}}

This stub is being used by the WP:Massachusetts/Salem Witch Trials Task Force WP:SWTF. There are only 35 stubs using this template. What Category do I put it under, Christianity or United States History?. Kathleen.wright5 23:45, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

US history, I'd say - the witch trials had far more to do with mass hysteria than they did with Christianity. Mind you, ideally the stub shouldn't exist at all - it doesn't "do what it says on the can", since it's not a stub about Salem per se, and since it's not the WikiProject's main stub template it should have 60 stubs to have its own category. Even if that same threshold is used on task forces (which is still open to some question), those "35 stubs" included the template itself, a WikiProject link, and five articles that werfe clearly no longer stubs - it is used on just 28 real stubs.. Unfortunately, when it was brought to SfD last year it was kept by a very slim margin, due largely to !votes from the SWTTF. It still needs cleaning up and still has a non-standard redirect ({{Salem Stub}}). It may be time to return to SfD with it. Grutness...wha? 00:15, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Notification templates

I've finally got round to making a suite of templates for notifying the creators of unproposed stub types that their creations have been either sent to SfD or reported on WSS/D. Have a look at {{Sfdnotify1}}, {{Sfdnotify2}} and {{Wssdnotify}} and tell me what you think. It';s likely someone with more technical skill could parameterise the sfd ones so that only one template is needed, but I'll leave that to someone more skilled than I am. Grutness...wha? 01:32, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Germany film stub

It seems that the {{Germany-film-stub}} is somehow different from {{France-film-stub}} and the like, with the result that Germany-film-stub articles go into Category:Film stubs. I haven't investigated what's wrong or different, can someone do this? shreevatsa (talk) 14:38, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, this was a non-issue. User:Pegship explained it to me. shreevatsa (talk) 20:16, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
Whew! I've just spent the better part of the last two days examining each of the 350ish articles in Category:Film stubs, moving a bit over 200 of them to a stub more specific than {{film-stub}}, fixing a whole bunch of typos and formatting errors, then tagging the remaining 140ish articles with country-specific stub tags to make future sorting easier. Oh, and while I was in the midst of this project User:Navy Blue took it upon himself to create {{Cuba-film-stub}} without any trace of discussion and a clearly insufficient number of articles for even a unique template, never mind a stub category. And, yes, he left the WPSS template at the top as if the proper procedures had been followed. This bears investigation or at least a strongly worded note from a person less tired than I am at the moment. - Dravecky (talk) 19:29, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
Already there! Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Discoveries. SeveroTC 19:41, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
Yup :) I go through Special:Newpages template list everty day to see what unexpected new stub templates turn up (that's why my name crops up so frequently at SFD and WSS/D :) Grutness...wha? 02:16, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Music theory stubs

Hi there. I am from the recently developed Wikiproject Music Theory and we are currently in the process of organizing basic formats for the project. I was wondering if this project would like to help/ advice us in creating and/or revising exsisting stubs related to our project. One current concern is that the exsisting Category:Music theory stubs includes articles not related to Western music. Our project scope only concerns Western music and we would like a new stub organization to reflect that division. Thanks.Nrswanson (talk) 16:48, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for engaging here! I'm probably a bit unsophisticated with this, but I don't see what's wrong with Category:Music theory stubs. It seems to me your project is incorrectly titled if it's scope is limited, maybe it should be WikiProject Western music theory (note capitalisation) instead? SeveroTC 21:18, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Not exactly. The term music theory is technically a "western designation" in itself and one could argue that it shouldn't be applied to music notation and terminology outside of western culture (as some ethnomusicologists have done). Within American and European Conservatories the study of music theory encompasses a set knowledge base with which this project reflects. The musical structure and terms used in other cultures is generally relegated to the area of ethnomusicology. Similar divisions already exist in other wikiprojects. The classical music project only covers Western Music and does not cover Indian classical music and the opera project does not cover Chinese Opera. Nrswanson (talk) 04:24, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikiproject Music Theory currently only has one member. Maybe it would be better to wait and see if it develops before creating a new stub? --Kleinzach 03:32, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi there, Nrswanson, and welcome to WikiProjectLand! Once your project is more active and defined, and there are sufficient stubs within its scope, a stub type may certainly be in order. Until then, how about a talk page banner? This would help your project track articles until a stub type is appropriate, and has the added advantage of optional assessment parameters. Good luck - Her Pegship (tis herself) 03:59, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Stub Sorting Bot

Ok everyone. I'm actively seeking out a bot creator, to help make a bot for this page, and the project. I know in the past there have been attempts at contemplating a bot, to alleviate the work load. I now think I have come up with a decent idea. The bots functions:

  • To check for a category; sort accordingly to that category
  • Check for multiple cats; add additional stubs with a max. of 3 or 4
  • Check for length; remove stub tag when the page is no longer a stub (ignoring templated information)

With this, as soon as an editor puts an article into a specific category, it will sort to its rightful place. I'm hoping it will even take care of sorting the son and daughter (for instance: {{bio-stub}} --> {{Historian-stub}} --> {{Art-historian-stub}}) stubs. But who knows. Any thoughts? Synergy 21:08, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

  • I hate to be the naysayer on this, but I have some reservations. It sounds a good idea, but what happens, say, if a stub article is in six categories - how does the bot choose which four to use for stub templates? Also, what if the article is wrongly categorised (as many - stubs are) or has no category at all (as most stubs have)? Also, givent hat you cannot tell what is a stub or not just from length alone, how would the bot judge that a short article such as an unmarked dab page is not a stub whereas a very long article with a short paragraph of text followed by a list of examples, two infoboxes, a navbox and a bunch of photos (such as esplanade) is a stub? Or how can it deal with what I call the "Croughton-London rule" - an article the size of Croughton, Northamptonshire isn't a stub - but an article of identical size on London would be. Doing this all by hand does take a lot of effort it is true, but with a large proportion of stubs actually seeing the article is still be far the best way to tell how an article should be marked. I'm pretty sure this is why we haven't used bots in the past - they simply don't do the job as well as manual sorting. Grutness...wha? 23:22, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
Conversation is what I want firstly so... let me address each question one at a time.
  • If the article is in more than one category, the bot could possibly act on a more preferred stub type and stop there. Or it could sort by each individual sub category. Likewise, supercats should be ignored unless there is one or more other categories (if you gave me an example I'm sure we can figure it out). If its in the wrong category, the bot will sort it the moment its placed in the correct one. Overall, the bot would recognize the cat and add a maximum of 3 or 4 and stop there, so it doesn't add too many.
  • For disambigs: Unless its in a category, the bot would do nothing. This would prove to be a margin of error for the bot, but its easily corrected once someone finds it and changes {{stub}} to {{disambig}}.
  • For navboxes, infoxes and the like: All these should be ignored because its window dressing. Its not the content of the article. So basically, anything following templated code, or the templates themselves wouldn't constitute as article content.
As for the Croughton/London law: The bot won't pick up on it, since it shouldn't have a stub tag on it in the first place. Synergy 00:07, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Well, that's just the point - some of them will, and some of them won't, so the idea of having the bot check for length and removing stubs from any that are "too long" doesn't fly. And as for the navboxes, infoboxes and the like, my commentsinclude lists of examples, which don't follow templated code - check my example of Esplanade again - it's still (marginally) a stub, despite having a lot of untemplated text. With regard to the "best categories" situation, it should be possible to find in the archives of this or related pages some early examples of overstubbing, where it was difficult even for a human editor to work out which stub templates were most appropriate. I'm sure a considerable amount of this work could be done by bot as you suggest - it's simply working out what can and what can't and trying to set limits accordingly. Grutness...wha? 01:18, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
But of course. I am open to suggestions.... Synergy 01:33, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Sad news

This is sad news for WP:WSS, IMO... Grutness...wha? 05:48, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh this is not good. I hate how some of the most petty disputes (U.S. vs US, seriously?) can blow up into such enormous battles on Wikipedia. Caerwine will be missed. - Dravecky (talk) 06:41, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Why isn't 1910s novel stubs a subcat of 1900s novel stubs, etc?

Apologies for what might be a perennial question, but why aren't some of these temporally-related stub categories organized like the non-stub ones? For instance, 1910s novels is a sub-category of 1900s novels—they're not both directly under novels (or novels by year). Why do the corresponding stub categories have a flatter structure? Thanks, and sorry if this is answered in some obvious place that I missed. —johndburger 18:33, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

1910s novels is properly a sub-category of Category:20th century novels, not 1900s novels. Perhaps the 10 stub cats for the 20th century could be placed under a Category:20th century novel stubs cat to mirror the Category:19th century novel stubs cat but I'm uncertain that this level of organization is required. - Dravecky (talk) 18:51, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Oops, I see now—there are stub cats for the decades in the the 20th century, but none for the 20th century itself. But there is one for the whole of the 19th century, though none for those decades, hence my confusion. Never mind, and thanks! —johndburger 19:34, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Category type

Hi, I have just come across an article with 2 stubs on it {{powerstation-stub}} and {{SouthYorkshire-geo-stub}}. The first places the article into a hidden category, the second a normal category. Should the subs be in hidden categories or not? Keith D (talk) 22:46, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Definitely NOT hidden. There's no point in trying to get editors to edit stubs if they can't navigate to the stub categoy to find them. It's also far easier for stub sorters to check that templates have been formed correctly if the categories are visible. I've fixed it up. Grutness...wha? 01:03, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
Looks like we had one editor who decided to hide a few cleanup categories - I've fixed the half a dozen or so changes (s)he made. Grutness...wha? 01:21, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for quick response. I will keep an eye out for any others that appear as hidden. Keith D (talk) 09:28, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
I disagree. This is exactly the sort of thing hidden categories were designed for - a maintenance category that describes the current state of the article. What encourages contribution is the visual message, otherwise we would just put Category:Stubs on the articles and be done with it. Hiding the category would remove the (sometimes many) stub categories from the list of categories, and would encourage people to put them in the appropriate place in the article and not right at the end (to avoid preempting the actual content categories). Editors at the stub sorting template creation level should have the "show hidden categories" preference option turned on anyway. If you want others to go to the category, put a link to it in the message - the thing which people read. GreenReaper (talk) 08:20, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
No - that wouldn't be as effective, for several reasons: 1) it is the category link, visible to the editors, that is the most obvious way to encourage editors to hunt for more stubs to expand - the template itself simply suggests that such a task is desirable, and is deliberately limited in the number of links it has, and the obvious places for those links to go are to the general subject of the stub types, to WP:STUB, and to the edit link of the article; 2) the "sometimes many" stub categories is limited to a maximum of four, and usually fewer than that - as explained at WP:STUB. Any more stub templates than that should be removed. 3) "show hidden category" doesn't work with all browsers, so the option is simply unworkable for many people using older or more obscure software. Grutness...wha? 23:31, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

National stubs

There are a squillion UK stub categories but hardly any of them are in Category:United Kingdom stubs. Shall I fix this? And if so, does the same go for other countries? — Hex (❝?!❞) 22:12, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Which ones are not in Category:United Kingdom stubs and it's subcats? Random ones I pick are all in a UK stub subcat. SeveroTC 22:28, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
{{UK-newspaper-stub}}}}, for one. PamD (talk) 22:42, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Having done a full search, the following UK stub categories are not in Category:United Kingdom stubs:

They should all be in the most relevant subcategory of Category:United Kingdom stubs. The same would apply to any other national stub category. SeveroTC 23:24, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Tool for Marking Articles as Stubs?

I was wondering, is there a tool that can be used to quickly mark articles as stubs, and so on? Something along the lines of Twinkle or Friendly? It would be incredibly useful. Alinnisawest (talk) 15:05, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Entertainment / performing arts

There seems to be a stub-less gap here: I struggled to classify Cardistry, before deciding it wasn't actually a stub. But seriously, folks, should there be a new stub in this sort of area, to include circus skills etc too. I don't know how I would set about finding 60 stubs which belong there because they would be so widely scattered among desperate near-miss categories. Any thoughts? PamD (talk) 14:14, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Mmmm... maybe, though there is a stub type for stage magic (as opposed to occult magick), which that one could have used - {{Magic-stub}}. Grutness...wha? 23:17, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
I thought about that... then noticed someone had already left a hidden comment beside the {{stub}} tag, saying: "No, this is not a magic stub, and there seems to be not performing arts stub category. Not sure how that is possible..."! The article stresses that it's not about illusion, just impressive techniques. PamD (talk) 06:57, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Not sure I quite understand the commenter's point - yes, it's about impressive techniques, but it's about impressive techniques used in the creation of stage magic, so it would still have been the right stub to use. Grutness...wha? 13:11, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
No, the article makes it clear it isn't about techniques used in stage magic, but stand-alone feats of dexterity. PamD (talk) 14:15, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
What about {{performance-stub}} for various performance techniques? It could be a child of Category:Performing arts. Her Pegship (tis herself) 16:17, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
Seems a useful suggestion. PamD (talk) 19:27, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Non-stub categories for stubs

I just observed that {{Nebraska-stub}}, {{Nebraska-geo-stub}}, {{Nebraska-politician-stub}}, {{Nebraska-railstation-stub}}, and {{Nebraska-school-stub}} are all included in Category:Nebraska templates. Is this normal? Nyttend (talk) 11:50, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Stub templates should always be in stub categories. Sometimes they are also added to WikiProject template categories. I don't see anything particularly wrong in this. SeveroTC 12:11, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, that's fine as long as they use noinclude so that it's only the templates that end up in those categories. It's fine for stub templates to be in categories for templates, but stub templates should only put articles into stub categories. Grutness...wha? 23:09, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

exercise

Another editor and I have been hammering away at the Stubs category the last couple of hours - but both seem defeated by Suspension training (currently the ONLY unsorted stub). I can find nothing under Health, Sport, Miscellaneous, Culture-other: is there a stub for exercise / physical training? OK, so it's been nominated for AfD, but we should still be able to sort it somewhere! PamD (talk) 10:14, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Nearest I can see is Category:Bodybuilding stubs, which seems to have several general exercise stubs in it (and even then is somewhat undersized). Perhaps its scope should be widened to officially include exercise-related stubs... Grutness...wha? 11:02, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

stub template glitch?

There seems to be something weird about either {{2000s-novel-stub}} or {{crime-novel-stub}}. Added in that order to The Watchmen (Robert Crais novel), they look OK. I previously added them in the reverse order, and the "2000s" appeared below the last line of text, the "crime" below the bottom of the infobox - looking very odd. Or is it just that "crime" is a couple of characters longer so forces to the bottom, while "2000s" is shorter? PamD (talk) 10:55, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

There was an extraneous break tag at the head of the "2000s" template (which I have removed). - Dravecky (talk) 11:58, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks - I knew someone would be around with the technical knowledge to peer into the innards of the tag code! PamD (talk) 12:31, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/2008/June

June proposals have still not been closed. Is this project now inactive? --Kleinzach 00:39, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Nope, it's still one of the busiest around, and with lots of work that needs doing. The more straight-forward stuff always gets closed first - anything where there's lots of discussion with varying points of view tends to get left open longer in the hope that opposite sides can come to some agreement. Ones where there is extremely lengthy discussion and no sign of any consensus tend to be left indefinitely, especially if there's no obvious urgency in the actual stub splits involved, and even more so when it's been a contentious issue. In the case of opera-stub, the various sides of the debate seem entrenched enough in their views that it's not going to ever reach consensus in its current form - if it's decided that the split is needed, then it will surely be re-proposed at some point. Then there's the added problem that those of us who would normally close a WP:WSS/P proposal were either involved in the debate to the extent that they theoretically shouldn't close it - that rules out Alai, Pegship, Waacstats and myself, as well as Caerwine (who has since left the project). We're the five who generally close these things. Perhaps if you left a note on the talk page of one of the other more regular WSS participants who wasn't involved (User:Blofeld of SPECTRE, perhaps?). Grutness...wha? 02:00, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
OK. I will do that. --Kleinzach 00:44, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

My 2c

Just FYI, I have left this message on the Opera Project's talk page, in response to their treatment of Blofeld's closure.

Blofeld was asked in good faith to close the discussion, as the rest of us involved in the discussion were following procedure by not closing it. Once he closed it, the Opera Project members immediately started questioning his methods, his understanding of various aspects of WP, and his good faith. Leave him alone.
Many Stub Sorting Project editors have made attempts to accommodate the goals and methods of the Opera Project in regard to stub articles. There is no evidence that the Stub Sorting Project is trying to undermine the Opera Project's efforts. We are tired of having our efforts reprimanded, criticized, micro-managed, and belittled. I can hear it now: "What on earth could you mean by that? We're just...We were only...!" Spare me. I guess Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit...as long as they don't touch the articles under the Opera Project's scrutiny.
The only thing that will apparently satisfy the Opera editors is to have the Stub Sorters leave all "their stuff" alone, so I suggest that Opera create only full-sized articles henceforth, and keep the opera stub categories under 200 articles. Good night, and good luck. Her Pegship (tis herself) 15:20, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I;'ve added my own 2¢ worth to that, pretty much in the same sort of vein. We've had a few problems with one or two other WikiProjects over stub types in the past, but in the three years or so that i've been sorting stubs, I don't think I've run across another project so hell-bent on WP:OWNership of "their" articles. It makes groups like the pro- and anti- Kosovo POV-pushers look tame by comparison. Grutness...wha? 00:02, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Three questions

Hi, I'd like to see if I can wrap up the discussion at the Opera Project, get some more focused responses from the other members (especially those who haven't participated in the discussion yet), and hopefully move forward to implementing the new stubs. But I need to make sure what the state of play is at the moment...

1. Below are the new stubs that WPSS has created so far. Am I right in assuming that at this time WPSS is not planning to create any further stubs?

2. As of now, 217 articles have been sorted into the new cats. With all the brouhaha over there, I'm unclear what WPSS is doing now. Are you going to continue with the sorting, or are you waiting until the discussion is wrapped up over at the OP? I'm not implying that you should hold off. I'm just asking if that's what you're doing.

3. At Wikipedia:Stub, it says:

"Ideally, a newly-created stub type has 100-300 articles. In general, any new stub category should have a minimum of 60 articles."

What happens if after all the current stub-sorting is finished, there are opera stub categories with less than 60 articles? Or if the category eventually falls below 60? Hopefully, WPSS won't delete the category and re-tag the articles in it with different stubs? I'd like to be able to make an argument over at OP that this new plan will bring some stability.

Best wishes, Voceditenore (talk) 17:48, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Voceditenore, other members of the project will probably know better than I do about this but:
1) to the best of my knowledge no further splits are planned at the moment, though it's possible that some of them may be split further if there seem to be a reasonable number of one subtype (for instance, there may be 60 opera-struct-stubs in Italy, in which case it would make sense to have a stub type for them that is a subtype both of opera-struct-stub and italy-struct-stub).
2) There are always so many splits on the go at WP:WSS that it may take a while to get round to this being sorted thoroughly - it has been (or will be) added to our "To do" list, so some sorting will be done on it at some stage, but it'll largely depend on when an individual stub sorter decides that it is the next one he or she is interested in working on.
3) It largely depends on how much below 60. If it's clear that a stub category is very small (30 stubs, say), then it's likely that the template will be upmerged (that is, the template will stay but it will point to a more general category). So it won't be re-tagged even then - the template will stay the same in case the number of stubs rises to a high enough level to have its own category again. Even in those cases it usually takes a long time to get around to thinking of deleting a category that's fallen below threshold, and if there are good arguments for keeping it (e.g., it has subcategories, or it's likely that other stubs exist which haven't ben sorted into it properly) it often gets kept.
Hope that helps, Grutness...wha? 22:57, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

A proposal to end stub sorting

I made a proposal on the Village Pump to end stub sorting and use categories to browse stubs instead, as this seems to be the most relevant project, maybe some of you would like to comment there: see WP:VPR#The ever growing list of stub templates & categories Equendil Talk 11:01, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

The discussion is ongoing; if you have any interest in the future possibilities, please feel free to pitch in. Her Pegship (tis herself) 21:19, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Incoming...

Following a request from someone in the uncategorised articles project, I'm currently bot-populating those. As an inevitable side-effect, this will dump several thousand additional articles into Category:Stubs. Just thought you might like to know. Alai (talk) 16:20, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Done, currently around 2200 of 'em. Alai (talk) 01:43, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Deleting Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub redirects?

I'm reviving this discussion instigated by Caerwine back in March. I'm all for deleting any sub-page that has languished this long with little or no consistent use. Shall we act on the proposal? Her Pegship (tis herself) 21:08, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable - I don't think it gets much use (if any) nowadays. Grutness...wha? 23:45, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
I've tagged it with {{historical}}; my next question is, does that mean all the *R notes have to be removed from the list of stubs? Or should we engineer that to somehow link to whatever redirect template exists? (No idea how to do that, just wondering.) Cheers, Her Pegship (tis herself) 23:12, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Proceeding cautiously, I've created Category:Stub template redirects, to be populated (I guess) with the addition of 
<noinclude>[[Category:Stub template redirects]]</noinclude>
to each template...maybe I better see Alai about a bot task for this. Any further input? Once it's populated, I think the next step would be to link the category to the *R characters on the list. Her Pegship (tis herself) 04:42, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Problems with Category:Volcanology stubs

Hi all - we have a big probnlem with Category:Volcanology stubs, and seemingly with one specific editor. The same editor who recently insisted on giving earthquakes geo-stub templates, since clearly earthquakes were locations, has now added {{Volcanology-stub}} to several hundred articles about specific volcanoes, even though it should only be used on articles relating to volcano science. I'm goping to start to clear the backlog, but I'll need help...Grutness...wha? 01:52, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

What's a stub?

Any views on this one? (I came across it while stub-sorting, unstubbed it, that's been reverted) PamD (talk) 06:43, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Personally I'd leave it as a stub, but it's borderline. If the people working on it consider it still a stub, then that's probably extra weighting in that direction. Grutness...wha? 22:32, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Nominated for deletion...the whole shebang

Take a look. Her Pegship (tis herself) 22:09, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, it would free up a lot of our time if it didn't exist. Would make it very difficult to find stubs on WP, though. Grutness...wha? 00:20, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
The nomination smacks strongly of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. - Dravecky (talk) 02:32, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Even more so when taken in combination with Ryulong's recent alltempts at making a WP:POINT at SFD - the nomination pointed to was re-opened as a courtesy to Ryulong after he unilaterally re-created a deleted stub type which had been debated a few days earlier. Rather than debating the point he immediately launched an attack on the whole WP:SFD process. On reflection, a combination of speedy deletion and reporting to WP:AN/I might have been a better move. Grutness...wha? 05:25, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Well, it seems the forces of good have once again triumphed over the forces of, um, just as good but with a different opinion as to the value of this project. - Dravecky (talk) 14:57, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Meta-stub template

I was thinking about creating a template that would ensure consistency among the stub templates. I created this.

So instead of the coding being: 

<div class="boilerplate metadata" id="stub">
{| style="background-color: transparent;"
| [[Image:Baseball (crop).jpg|25px]] || ''This article relating to [[baseball]] is a [[Wikipedia:Stub|stub]]. You can [[Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub|help]] Wikipedia by [{{fullurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|action=edit}} expanding it].''
|}</div>[[Category:Baseball stubs]]

it is: 

{{Stub template
|topic=[[baseball]]
|image=Baseball (crop).jpg
|width=25px
|category=Baseball stubs}}

And then in future if a decision that affects all stub templates is made you can make the change to one template instead of 100s or 1000s. I suppose something could also be added to the meta-stub template to allow for demonstrations, i.e. demo=yes (e.g. {{baseball-stub|demo=yes}} ), and the stub templates displayed on WikiProject pages would not be categorised.

Any thoughts? —Borgardetalk 14:14, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

It's an interesting start but you'll need to able to easily add multiple categories as upmerged templates need to feed the stubs into two categories. For example, {{Africa-radio-station-stub}} feeds stubs into both Category:Radio station stubs and Category:Africa stubs until such time as there are sufficient stubs to require a separate category for African radio station stubs. - Dravecky (talk) 14:55, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
I'll take a look at what I can do. You could always add the second category in manually as well, for instance using the category parameter for Radio stations and then adding [[Category:Africa stubs]] after the template code. Which would still categorise into both. —Borgardetalk 15:09, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
Like what I tried here: Template:Stub template/sandbox. —Borgardetalk 15:13, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
It would be better if there were category1 and and category2 fields since manually adding the categories would seem to defeat the purpose of the template. Also, the type of sorting fix you manually applied to the Africa stubs category should be applied automatically to any category used by the template. Otherwise, I think it looks good but I'd try for a bit more consensus from other members of the project before you roll it out. - Dravecky (talk) 16:52, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
It looks like a reasonable start for a metatemplate, but I see a couple of problems, one of them pretty major: we've already got a {{metastub}}, but we've gradually been moving away from using it, largely for server reasons (using metatemplates is generally frowned on when they're heavy use, since they create huge server load - see Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates).
Less important, but still worth noting - the topic line as you have it isn't nearly flexible enough. Many stub templates don't appear to be standard in their wording simply for reasons that a stanbdardised wording doesn't allow for the necessary tact or diplomacy that some templates need (e.g., those for subjects like disputed regions), or for some of the actual subjects (most geo-stubs, for example, are worded "this article about a location in..."). As far as it's use to replace multistubbing, I'm largely against it - simply addding two templates, as we do now, allows for far more flexibility when it comes to sorting and splitting sstub types. Grutness...wha? 22:53, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
That policy was failed.. We are told not to worry about server performance. But I suppose the text can be changed to accommodate different wording, so it's not really an issue. I didn't realise there was already a meta-stub template, simply because I've never seen it used. I'm not just going to go and start using a meta-template unless there is a clear consensus that the project likes the use of it. And about your comment Grutness, I'm not trying to replace multistubbing at all, I don't see where you got that from.. —Borgardetalk 05:31, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
Uhhh. Sorry - I misread Dravecky's "category1/category2" comments (thought it was trying to feed two stub templates together into the metatemplate). Grutness...wha? 06:47, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually looking at the link I was given, Template:Asbox looks like it is trying to accomplish this already. —Borgardetalk 05:33, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

I have also requested speedy deletion of the tmeplate I created after knowledge of {{Asbox}} which is a better template in my opinion. —Borgardetalk 05:39, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
Mmmm - well, Asbox isn't much liked by a lot of stub sorters (I know that Alai grumbles about it every now and again, for one). Grutness...wha? 06:47, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
(*grumblegrumblegrumble*) I have no objection to the likes of this, {{metastub}}, etc, so long as their role is to serve as models, or to be subst'd. I do object to their use as metatemplates, since IMO they complicate what they purport to simplify (every one of these that gets written is yet another possible way one might encounter a stub template being coded), they potentially introduce a "single point of failure" into hundreds of thousands of articles, and yes, they do have performance implications. I realize that the devs tell us "above your pay grade" when such matters are raised by mere editors, but that isn't to say that they're the people either experiencing the consequences (long job queues, delayed category updates, and occasional outright job queue failures), or that they're in any rush to do anything about it. Alai (talk) 02:22, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

parent categories

Hi. just created a category for all stub parent cats. it is Category: stub parent categories. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 16:08, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Steve: Could you explain your criteria for these? Why "American people stubs" but not "Canadian people stubs"? I don't really see how this list is useful - what might be useful would be a category, or just a list, for "top level parent stub categories", ie the stub categories which are not themselves children of other stub categories (eg Category:People stubs). PamD (talk) 16:35, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

what might be useful would be a category, or just a list, for "top level parent stub categories", ie the stub categories which are not themselves children of other stub categories (eg Category:People stubs).

that's exactly what this is. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 17:38, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
So why is Category:American people stubs in it, when it's child of Category:North American people stubs which is grandchild of Category:People stubs? And Category:Book stubs which is child of Category:Literature stubs? etc. PamD (talk) 17:48, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Hi. this is a category to group all parent categories. that's pretty much my full statment on this. thanks. everything else can take shape as time goes on. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 18:03, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
by the way, re book stubs, there is still a benefit to making that category easier to find for the average reader, by placing it here, since it does encompass a huge area of its own. there is some leeway here as to how we do this, based on what we may find to be actually beneficial and convenient. We can choose the approach to use. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 18:06, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Since the vast majority of stub categories are parents to some extent or another, this new category is g0oign to be extremely confusing unless rules for its use are put in place before it starts getting any old category put in there (which seems to already be happening, in the case of categories like Category:American people stubs). Somethign this far reaching would have been far better discussed before being put into action. Wouldn't it make far more sense to reorganise Category:Stub categories rather than creating a whole parallel organisation for parent categories? Grutness...wha? 22:39, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Steve, I said "category ... for "top level parent stub categories", ie the stub categories which are not themselves children of other stub categories ". You replied "that's exactly what this is" but then go on to say that "this is a category to group all parent categories", which is not the same at all - it's a much wider category. I don't see the point of this wider category, though I would see some use in a category which identified only top level parents (ie those stub categories which are parents but not children, such as Category:People stubs). PamD (talk) 22:55, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I can see that too, though Category:Top-level stub categories or similar would then be a far better name. Grutness...wha? 23:10, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
you don't see a use for a new category which takes a category with over 6,000 items, and narrows it to 46? I think you do see a use, since you do agree with me on the need for a category containing parent categories. Again, that is what this is. I think it's better if we don't take minute differences in approach and escalate them to the level of huge enormous gigantic issues. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 14:14, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
With its current wording, it could be a category with 3000 subcategories, and for that there would be no use. As I said, if a better idea in that case would be to reorganise Category:Stub categories.If it is just for top-level parents, then it should say that. Calling it one thing and expecting it to be another - especially without any form of before-the-fact consultation as to the organisation of the category - I certainly don't see any point in. Grutness...wha? 22:37, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

it could be a category with 3000 subcategories, and for that there would be no use.

well, it's not. furthermore clearly it has a scope which is useful, valid and beneficial. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 14:19, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
To whom, exactly? Her Pegship (tis herself) 19:09, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
to users of Wikipedia and readers. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 19:29, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
"well its not" doesn't satisfy anything. Just because you've only added top-level parent stub categories doesn't mean that others won't come along and fill it as it is described in its title. The categories title is grossly misleading and simply saying that the category is not currently used in the way its name implies it should be is not going to stop it from being grossly misleading. As to "useful, valid, and beneficial". If the name and the actual purpose are conflicting, then it clearly is not "valid". if it requires work to keep it in the state to which you intend it to be, despite its incorrect name, then it certainly isn't "beneficial" - anything requiring more work than it saves is clearly not of benefit. As to it being "useful", it performs exactly the same work already covered by part of the canonical list of stub types. As such, it is of no use that is not already covered elsewhere. Grutness...wha? 23:46, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
The problem is that Steve hasn't "only added top-level parent stub categories": that would include Category:People stubs but not Category:American people stubs. I don't see the logic of selection for this category as it stands. A category which actually included top level categories only might well be useful: one could look at it and be sure that if a stub exists it would be in a hierarchy below one (or more) of that well-defined finite set of top-level stubs. This complete set isn't apparent from the existing lists of stub types, as far as I can see. PamD (talk) 00:17, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
the benefits are obvious. this category now contains only stub categories which are of broad scope, not the numerous individual stub categories which now number over 6,000 items. I understand your points too as well. thanks for the input. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 14:20, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
by the way, the parent category has now been proposed for deletion. i feel that this is unwarranted. I would like to request comments by others on this topic. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 14:28, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

new input from outside sources

Steve, I've come here from your post at WP:AN and I must be honest, it doesn't look like you're being very helpful in this thread. The question seems to be, do you intend this to be a category for:

  1. All parent stub categories, or
  2. Top level parent stub categories only?

The two are very different things and at the moment the category seems to be neither of the above. waggers (talk) 15:00, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok. thanks for your helpful input. it is good to have some outside feedback on this. thanks. right now i intend for this to be all significant parent categories, meaning those which encompass an entire significant conceptual area, not divisions of an area. in other words, category:book stubs, but not category:Young adult novel stubs. Or category:military stubs, but not category: United States Army stubs.
I think the overall idea speaks for itself. the contents can evolve and change based on how others feel as well. Isn't that how we normally do things here at Wikipeduia? I never said I don't want it to change; anyone at all can edit it. i just don't see a a reason to question the need for the category itself. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 15:14, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
The problem is, everyone's idea of what is "significant" will be different. The category needs a really firm, bullet-proof definition of what can go in it and what can't in order to avoid edit wars and arguments in the future. waggers (talk) 15:28, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Ok. if any changes or related discussions are needed, i am happy to go along with any such process. In fact, i have been happy to do so all along, and have not indicated anything to the contrary. i would have said that more emphatically, but due to the nature of the tone which has emerged here, which has varied from brisk and abrupt to almost demeaning, it was not always possible to do so.
This forum needs a little bit of work in learning to be more collegial, approachable, and how to assume good faith. However, be that as it may, i welcome your input here and am happy to have it. In fact, i have been looking for someone to simply collaborate with and simply couldn't find the opportunity to do so. Yours seems like a good, neutral and even-handed approach. If it's ok, do you mind if i throw this whole thing over to you? I don't have a dog in this fight and never did. If you read my comments above, i never expressed any disagreement of the points made, and was unclear as to why this did not go forward in a simple straightforward way, instead of continual second-guessing, scrutiny and allegations over what should have been a minor procedural matter. So I welcome your involvement. it's all yours. thanks very much. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 17:57, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Sm, what you see as abrupt and second-guessing is really just the tendency of stub sorters to be technically inclined and less likely to come across as sympathetic, particularly when we don't understand the purpose or the explanations of something we're apparently expected to use. So far everyone has been begging for clarity and you keep responding with vague generalizations like "it speaks for itself" and "people will find it useful". It's like being a computer programmer (stub maintenance people) and hearing a user say, "My computer doesn't work", without any further explanation. Her Pegship (tis herself) 19:59, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Ok, i appreciate your open and forthright answer. Frankly I thought you were all asking me only for my personal input on this. In most wikipedia discussions, once an opinion is offered, the people take that as just that person's individual vote on the matter (even if he is the creator of the page/category in question), and discussion moves on to the whole general question/topic from there. so i didn't quite understand why the floor kept getting turned over to me again and again. i greatly appreciate your helpful reply. In other words, just to reiterate, generally one person weighs in and the discussions moves from there towards finding consensus, through balancing of all views. whether one person sufficiently handled all the issues is not generally considered a reason to revisit their comments on the matter. i appreciate your help with this. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 20:04, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Category:Film editor stubs - approved stubtype, category page doesn't show project banner

Category:Film editor stubs is listed in the official list of stub types, but the category page isn't formatted with the green banner. Could someone have a look at it? Thanks. PamD (talk) 15:20, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I've boldly added the {{WPSS-cat}} template to this category description. - Dravecky (talk) 15:29, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Stub category emptied!

Wow - first time for weeks - we've sorted them all. For the moment. Well done all of us! PamD (talk) 16:16, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Nice job, folks! -- KathrynLybarger (talk) 17:30, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Has this project been superseded by assessments?

Is there any reason to have, for instance, Category:New York City transportation stubs when we have Category:Stub-Class New York City public transportation articles? It seems that this project has been mostly superseded by the assessment structure, and it might make sense to start a project to convert stub types that don't have projects into project task forces. --NE2 01:44, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I see your point, but frankly there are so many stub types and so few projects (relatively speaking) that the majority of stubs would either have to continue under this project or be dumped into a vast sea of unsorted types. And what if a project atrophies and the stub types are not maintained? I think the two (assessments and stub types) run parallel in some instances, for better or for worse. My hope is that there will be a bigger drive to expand stub articles so we won't have to have [as many] stub types (I can dream, can't I?!). Cheers, Her Pegship (tis herself) 06:02, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
If the effort that were spent here on sorting stubs were applied to sorting the talk pages on inactive projects, the active projects would (as they do now) take off some of the workload. --NE2 07:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes, and it would mean we would have a number of articles with all sorts of assessment levels sorted - assuming that stub sorters knew anything about the subjects that those inactive projects dealt with - but would leave us with a major backlog of stubs still to be sorted, since, as you point out, other projects already help with the sorting, so our workload on stub sorting would be unlikely to drop further. What you're suggesting is either to abandon what articles we are currently sorting (and the number of new stubs per day is considerable) in order to assess the level of completion of articles we may know very little about - or alternatively to increase our workload by taking on a second unrelated body of work. It's analogous to saying to Wikipedia: WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles "please stop making new articles and help us improve all Stub-Class articles to Start-Class". It's not the job they do, or even remotely connected with it - any more than its our job, say, to assess whether an article on dentistry (a random dead project with assessment templates) is B-Class or C-Class. Overall, you'd probably be far better off trying to form a separate WikiProject called something like "WikiProject Dead project assessment rescue", since that work is so dissimilar to what we do here that trying to cover it as well would be nigh on impossible (especially given the size of our current workload). Grutness...wha? 08:27, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't understand what you're saying. If someone can change {{stub}} to {{rail-stub}}, someone can add {{WikiProject Trains|class=stub}} to the talk page. I'm not saying you should assess beyond whether it's a stub. --NE2 09:22, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Another reason to maintain both is that the two types of categories function and are created very differently. The stub categories are created from stub templates that appear on the article page and create links to the article page. The project class-stub categories are created from the Project Templates that appear on the article talk pages and create links to the article talk page. It also should be noted that your example above is not an exact duplication. The stub category includes both public and private transportation articles, while the the Stub-Class category is only for public transportation articles. Following your example a bit farther, consider Bradley Beach (NJT station) which is part of Category:Stub-Class New York City public transportation articles; it does not use Category:New York City transportation stubs but actually uses Template:NewJersey-railstation-stub, which strangely does not add the article to any stub category. The talk page project tags adds the article to 4 separate class-stub categories Category:Stub-Class New York City public transportation articles; Category:Stub-Class rail transport articles; Category:Stub-Class New Jersey articles; and Category:Stub-Class National Register of Historic Places articles Dbiel (Talk) 06:36, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
If anything, that seems to be a problem; the duplication has caused nonmatching parallel structures. If the point is to get editors to stubs on topics they can improve, shouldn't that be done through WikiProjects? --NE2 07:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Also - as has been brought up before - the assessment templates, with their links to specific Wikiprojects do not actively encourage one-off editors in the same way that stub templates do. In fact, it's often the opposite; a talk-page banner indicating some form of article ownership by a project - no matter how tenuous - may discourage the casual editor. As for the NJ template, it should have added articles to a category, and does now (it had been mis-edited by a newbie - I've undone the edits). Grutness...wha? 07:04, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm not suggesting that we should get rid of the stub templates, just the categories (and the individual flavors of templates). We could still do something like {{sectstub}} inviting readers to help expand it. --NE2 07:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
The categories are in many ways the most important part. And "sectstub" (that is, {{expand-section}}) is nothing to do with stubs - which is why that old name for it was changed and is actively discouraged. But that is largely irrelevant - the important point is that talk-page assessment templates perform an entirely different function to stub templates, one that only overlaps with it to a very small extent. Each has its advantages and disadvantages - talk-page assessment templates, for example, allow the assessment of all articles, not just stubs; stub templates, by way of contrast, allow the uniform labelling and categorisation of all stubs across the entirety of Wikipedia, irrespective of whether there is a relevant WikiProject related to its subject. The argument of whether we should have one but not the other is as pointless as the argument which occasionally rages as to whether we should have list articles since we have the capability of adding articles to categories - the two serve similar but far from identical purposes, and as such, both are a benefit to Wikipedia. Grutness...wha? 08:12, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the categories are important because they (supposedly) help editors find articles to expand. But for topics with a WikiProject, that already exists. For other topics, it's debatable whether the topic is cohesive enough to merit categorization of stubs, but that can be handled on a case-by-case basis. --NE2 09:22, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Indeed so - and that "case-by-case basis" would change almost daily depending on the creation or discontinuation of specific wikiprojects. The actual boundaries for what areas would be covered by stub sorting and what areas would be covered by individual projects would be constantly in flux, and as such if areas covered by talk page templates weren't to be covered by stubs it would be impossible to work out what sections would and what sections wouldn't be covered. As for it being debatable whether an area was cohesive enough to require stub categorisation, what would you rather have happen in those circumstances? Either no stubbing at all, or having them given a generic stub tag that would make it virtually impossible for editors to find them? Grutness...wha? 22:26, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

The stub template could be added by bot, based on project assessment. Yes, it would be slightly less precise, but do we really think editors are going around saying "Well, I would have turned that stub into a featured article, but the stub template just said the article was about a baseball player... I really needed it to tell me it was about a baseball pitcher born in the 1950s..." I mean... really... what else do stub accomplish? Simply adding the little stub message to the bottom of articles could be done by bot... freeing up human editors to do much more useful work, if they're going to spend time on cleanup/sorting work. --Rividian (talk) 13:41, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I see no way a bot could do the job. Consider Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools, there are 100's of stub categories that are covered by that one project. How would a bot know which one to use? Dbiel (Talk) 15:34, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
{{school-stub}} seems easy enough to add if an article is in the schools Wikiproject. These elaborate stub categories are great for stub sorters, but I don't understand what the benefit is for anyone else. {{school-stub}} communicates the message to readers just fine. Aside from stub sorters, is there any evidence of anyone getting much benefit out of {{Wales-school-stub}}? I have never seen anyone going through the super-precise stub categories for any purpose except further stub sorting... it seems like a lot of busy work that no one uses for anything but more busy work. --Rividian (talk) 15:44, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Expanded reply: each stub category has a different set of editors which are interested in that particular subset of the project and those editors also come from multiple different projects or may not be a member of any project. Stub categories are far more refined and broken down than are the projects which tend to overlap each other in countless different ways. Some projects are location based, some are subject based, some are subsets of other bigger projects. There is just not direct relationship between the individual stub categories and the associated projects. They just serve different purposes. Both are important to Wikipedia Dbiel (Talk) 15:43, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
I understand that highly precise stubs/stub categories are important to stub sorters, but Wikipedia? I've never observed anyone using the highly precise stub categories for any purpose except further stub sorting. I guess there's the theory that someone, one day, might be out to quickly work on every stub article related to schools in Wales... but I mean, in reality, you just never see that. People quite realistically might be doing work on every school article in Wales, but the existing categories are sufficient to quickly identify those articles. Super-precise stubs/categories only are useful to non-stub-sorters in a way that, as far as I've ever observed, is purely hypothetical and never really comes up. --Rividian (talk) 15:47, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Since we're discussing this anecdotally, I personally use the stub categories all the time to find similar articles in need of improvement. I'd much rather be able to browse through the 279 articles tagged with {{Alabama-radio-station-stub}} rather than try to pick out the Alabama articles from the many thousands of radio station article stubs. I also know other editors who use the stub cats this way, but perhaps we know different people. Given the scope of Wikipedia, anything that makes improving articles easier is an unalloyed good. - Dravecky (talk) 16:25, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Well fine... I guess I've just always been annoyed that few people care about critical maintenence tasks, like for example, verifying unreferenced articles (2+ year backlog), yet there are legions of people who do stub sorting, which is really one of the least important things to getting an article right. No one really comes to Wikipedia for our superbly sorted stubs... but they do come to us in the hope that our articles are not just completely made up by random editors. So, just consider me an annoyed guy whose done too much thankless cleanup work... but it would be nice to find someone not enmashed in this project who claims that highly precise stub categories are very helpful to their efforts to improve Wikipedia. --Rividian (talk) 17:41, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
I think if you look at my edit history you'll find that while I'm involved in stub sorting as a way to make sure articles get noticed and improved, I'm far more interested in expanding and referencing articles along with a bunch of maintenance and plumbing work of my own. What you're unlikely to find on this talk page is anybody uninvolved in stub sorting. Oh, and from my experience the "legions" of people working on stubs are actually a handful of folks like Grutness and Her Pegship who are each doing so much good work that it only looks like a legion. - Dravecky (talk) 18:08, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Reinserted due to edit conflict (also I would agree with Dravecky's post above)
Remember that different users have different tallents, desires and enjoy doing different things. Face it, stub sorting is a lot less difficult than working with verifying unreferenced articles. Users are going to work where they fell confortable. This is not a debate on which is more important to Wikipedia. Following your logic of getting rid of anything that is less important we should then put an end to creating new articles so that what is already here could be turn into better articles. Well it just does not work that way. Stub sorting serves a very useful purpose, just maybe not to you. Dbiel (Talk) 18:19, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Well, fair enough... but isn't it theoretically possible that project/task force assessments could do the same job as stubs, with a bot copying the stub over to the article, or vice versa? It seems like we could eventually kill two birds with one stone... currently we spend a lot of time stub sorting and a lot of time project sorting, and the two don't help each other out at all, even though they are quite similar, and often identicle (e.g. {{louisville-stub}} and WikiProject Louisville stub class, in my case). It might mean doing stub sorting differently... but overall, it would be more efficient. --Rividian (talk) 18:32, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Theoretically possible, maybe. Practically possible, no. Actually occurring, absolutely and definitely no. Grutness...wha? 22:26, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
this project has NOT been superseded by anything or anyone. stub-class assessments are for specific projects. therre are many many articles which do not fit into ANY project. the "stub" designation is Wikipedia's procedure to officially note that some crucial part of the article's topical scope is missing. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 18:49, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
I would strongly disagree that "the two don't help each other out at all" Speaking for myself and a few others in WPSchools Project, we do update the stub templates when working with the Project Template. The two do go hand in hand, but it is not possible for a bot to do it without getting into extremely complex programming that is simply not worth the effort if it is even possible, as we are moving into the area of artificial intellegence to actually make it work. There are just too many different variables to consider. Dbiel (Talk) 19:33, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Having a bot add {{louisville-stub}} when the project assessment is Louisville project stub class seems quite easy... it seems like this idea is being automatically dismissed as impossible because it upsets the stub sorting status quo people are used to. At any rate, when I said "the two don't help eachother at all" I'm sorry, I meant there is no automated way they help eachother. So human labor is increased doing a task robots often could; I didn't mean to say no one who does stub sorting helps with project sorting. --Rividian (talk) 19:43, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
That would actually create more work for humans rather than less; take a look at the following diff Article categories are frequently added at the same time as stub categories are sorted. Partially sorted stubs are much harder to locate and sort out than those that have not been sorted at all. Dbiel (Talk) 20:10, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
So if I create an articles and tag it {{rail-stub}}, it makes more work? --NE2 21:11, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Depends what it is, but it's likely to, yes. If it's an article for which there's a more appropriate or finely-tuned stub tag, then yes. If you create an article which isn't a stub then tag it, then yes also. If you create, say, an article on a Japanese railway station and simply tag it with rail-stub, then it will either require retagging to the appropriate railstation-stub for its prefecture, and it will also require checking to make sure it is a stub. What's more, most stub sorters also check other things about the article at the same time, to add other maintenance templates such as {{uncatstub}}, {{wikify}}, {{deadend}} and the like. Grutness...wha? 22:26, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
(de-indent) And while Grutness is completely correct, don't let anybody discourage you from adding a stub tag to a stub article if you believe that it needs one, even if it's not the perfect tag. It's easier for me to find an article tagged {{radio-stub}} that really belongs in {{NorthDakota-radio-station-stub}} or {{UK-radio-show-stub}} and sort it than to have to find it myself in the first place. Obviously, the more specific tag is strongly preferred but I'll take "some sorting" over "no sorting", but other people's mileage may vary. - Dravecky (talk) 23:01, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Oh, exactly - I'm not advocating you not adding a more general stub template, or making an new stub article. Just saying that making a new article is automatically likely to make more work. Grutness...wha? 00:01, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

hi —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.0.132.203 (talk) 09:32, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Stop the make-work to keep stub-sorters busy, and maybe they'd have a couple of minutes to fix some stubs

It is time to back up and let some of the people who spend their days sorting and resorting stubs, and creating an endless array all those handy-dandy little templates to make it easier for them to do so, then having to look through long lists to find those templates, spend a little bit of it actually doing something constructive, like expanding some of those articles so that they are no longer stubs.

The over-specification of stubs has reached such an extreme level that even someone looking to see if they might fix a stub is just going to spend all their time just moving down from one subcategory to the next subcategory before they even find any stubs to sort, and finally they'll reach a level where they need to either give up, or pick a subcategory at random.

For example, do we really need {{Baseball-left-fielder-stub}} and {{Baseball-right-fielder-stub}} and {{Baseball-center-fielder-stub}} and {{Baseball-outfielder-stub}}? Is it an efficient use of our resources to have some people spending their days creating these templates, and others who have nothing better to do than go through the stubs using the outfielder-stub template to see if they can reclassify them as right-fielder-stub, or left-fielder-stub, or center-fielder-stub? Gene Nygaard (talk) 14:20, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, shoot, if people would quit creating thousands of stub-sized articles, many of them by bot for crying out loud, and actually contribute a decent-sized article to Wikipedia, we wouldn't have to try to make order from chaos. If you want to address a systemwide problem, set up a Stub Expanding project. Her Pegship (tis herself) 15:51, 22 December 2008 (UTC) P.S. I have plenty of other stuff to do, even on WP, and I'm about burnt out trying to do my part to organize stubs. My goodness. Her Pegship (tis herself)
The stub sorting project is a great help to those of us expanding stubs in our subject area of expertise. Organizing the work to be done is at least as important as doing it. Every person on earth is desperately trying to succeed, but at disparate, uncoordinated goals. Their noble efforts at improving life, the universe, and everything are lost as imperceptible changes in a sea of change. Only when a group has clearly expressed, uniformly understood goals can the efforts come together and the work be divided into understandable pieces. The editors at wikipedia that create articles often do not sufficiently integrate them into the encyclopedia, and so the articles remain uncategorized, orphaned stubs. Stub sorting is an excellent time to do a first pass at categorization so that some wikiproject can integrate the article into the encyclopedia. In the projects I am involved in, it is not uncommon for articles from pre-2004 to suddenly appear within our scope because of some kind stub-sorter either doing a *first* categorization ever, or because of some nice stub-diffuser moving it from an overly general (and overpopulated) stub category into something specific enough to be interesting to the project. JackSchmidt (talk) 17:10, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
Very few things on Wikipedia piss me off more than people assuming that people who sort stubs only sort stubs and don't do any work on expanding articles. Do we do things that are constructive? Hell, yes. You wanna check the list of 1747 articles that I have created, or the 152 photos I've added to Wikipedia, or all the maps and diagrams that I have uploaded to help expand articles, or the articles I have saved from AfD through expansion? You wanna check out the two articles which I have helped get to front-page FA status, one of them as main author? No? Perhaps you want to check the similar sorts of lists for other stub-sorters - because most of them also have long resumés of work done outside the stub-sorting arena. We do a ton of productive work - and that's even if you don't see anything productive in stub sorting. And if you don't see anything productive in stub sorting, I'd suggest you listen to what workers in other WikiProjects have to say (check Jack's comments above). I'd say it's more a case - to paraphrase your own words, Gene - of being time to back up and let some of the people who spend their days whinging and complaining about stub sorters spend a little bit of it actually doing something constructive. Grutness...wha? 23:31, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
So what are you going to do? Do you depend on a whole different set of references to find information on a left fielder than you do to find information on a right fielder?
Category:Living people has a third of a million articles in it; it is a useful category. The overfragmented categories such as Category:Baseball left fielder stubs accomplish nothing that wouldn't be better accomplished if it were subsumed in its parent category. Gene Nygaard (talk) 02:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I don't know - I'm not a baseball fan. But I used to play soccer as left wing, and know a lot more about wingers than I do about goalkeepers as a result. I don't see any reason why there shouldn't be experts here in left-fielders. As to Category:Living people being a useful category, it's very likely that it is - for readers. I seriously doubt that it's any use at all for editors looking for articles to expand. Are you suggesting we should leave everyone in Category:Living people stubs, and hope that editors just happen to be able to find someone they know something about in the first few hundred entries? And if we did have a category like that, with a six-figure number of stubs, what would happen if we needed to change the template? Editing it would be just about impossible without doing major damage to Wikipedia. In any case, the point is quite simple - many, many editors find sorted stubs to be of great benefit to them. One or two don't and for some reason see a need to complain about it. Why is a mystery. if ssomething benefits a considerable proportion of Wikipedia's editors, it is worth doing - especially as it doesn't cause the lack of effort on other articles which you seem to suggest it does. Grutness...wha? 03:12, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I don't see a ginormous category like Category:Living people as any more or less useful than a smaller, easier-to-browse Category:Baseball biography stubs. Others do. I think that those who enjoy, are good at, or otherwise prefer expanding articles should do so, and let the gnomes do what we do best. To put it plainly, no fair telling stub sorters to stop participating in their chosen area of WP editing and telling them to go participate in another in which they may not be interested or good at. You play in your backyard, we'll play in ours, we'll visit each other occasionally like good neighbors. Her Pegship (tis herself) 04:15, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I don't have any problem with Category:Baseball biography stubs. It's the zillion and one subcategories of it that are the problem.
But then, I don't recall ever seeing any edit or any claims on a talk page that someone ever came to an article to expand it because they found it is a stub-sorting category. How many times has that ever happened? A hundred? More than that? Gene Nygaard (talk) 04:39, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Given the fluctuating numbers in many stub categories, I'd say it's very likely it happens a considerable amount of the time - my gueess would be several hundred times per day. Also, given the number of people who say they find such stub-sorting useful, it would seem very likely. But we haven't run any opinion polls or surveys to find out - perhaps you'd like to? Unlike stub-sorters, you seem to have time on your hands - otherwise you wouldn't be querying this now. As to Category:Baseball biography stubs, if it had no subcategories, it would have close to 10,000 stubs. The letter B wouldn't start until you were several 200-article pages through the category. that's far too much to reasonable expect any editor to search through while looking for articles on their specialist field. As it is, the average number of stubs in any of those subccategories is around 300 - almost exactly on the "sweet spot" for searching purposes. Grutness...wha? 08:10, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
If you assume there is no duplication, maybe. That isn't a reasonable assumption; many of these articles are in more than one stub category. That's pretty obvious when you look at the category for left fielder stubs and see Freddy García (infielder) among them. In any case, that's what they have the navigation templates for. If your favorite letter is Q, you can just click on it and start there. And it would be reasonable to have a category for players, another for managers and coaches, maybe even for the business end, owners and commissioners and front-office people.
Or do you just have to try to hoodwink people into thinking we don't have so many stubs, in order to get them to take some action and not be overwhelmed by the numbers they are seeing and just throw up their hands in hopelessness? Gene Nygaard (talk) 09:10, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I have the utmost confidence that we'll eventually have Category:Left-handed Australian baseball right fielders in Major League Baseball stubs and Category:Left-handed Australian baseball right fielders in Japanese baseball stubs. Just keep up the good work in dreaming up new ways to keep the stub-sorters occupied. Gene Nygaard (talk) 04:49, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
That you have confidence in such things is good - though as a stub-sorter, I'd say that confidence on such categories is misplaced. Given that I doubt there have ever been 60 left-handed Aussies in MLB in total, let alone right fielders (the same is true with Japan), the chances of having a category for it would be nil. If we did eventually need one, it would only be once the number of stubs on baseball players increased 50-fold or more on what it is now... which would presumably be approximately when Wikipedia is 50 times its current size - 100-150 million articles. But you don't expect that comment to be taken as a serious suggestion, do you? It's a mere straw man argument, of the type made simply to stir when there are no other reasonable effective arguments that a person can think of. Grutness...wha? 08:10, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
"I don't recall ever seeing any edit or any claims on a talk page that someone ever came to an article to expand it because they found it is a stub-sorting category." -- since when does anyone make some kind of statement as to why they edited a particular article? Actually, we do shoot down quite a few proposals as overcategorization, just like over at CfD. As far as I know, we're not trying to hoodwink or convince anyone of anything. I am puzzled, however, as to (a) why you seem to believe the stub sorting project is responsible for the creation of stub articles, and (b) why you started this discussion in the first place. Is the creation/maintenance of stub templates and categories somehow affecting your ability to use or edit WP? Is there such a thing as stubophobia? Do you have anything constructive to suggest besides, "Quit making all those stubs, my head hurts"? Her Pegship (tis herself) 20:48, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
It's just something Gene does every now and again. Without running some sort of poll among editors, it's hard to disprove his points, so even though there's an enormous amount of circumstantial evidence that a huge number of editors find stub sorting useful, they keep being made, with no practical suggestions for alternatives and no evidence - definitive or circumstantial - that his points have any validity at all. The suggestion that stub sorters do nothing but sort stubs is just as offensive as ever, but you get that no matter what you do, unfortunately. I guess he'll just keep making the same comments every year or so with the same lack of success for as long as he's a Wikipedian (which I for one hope is a long time - in every other respect he's one of our best editors. This just seems to be a blind-spot of his). Grutness...wha? 22:38, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Her Pegship seems to be assuming something that makes no sense whatsoever. There is no good reason for a one-to-one correspondence between regular categories and stub categories. Gene Nygaard (talk) 23:38, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Indeed not, and as far as I can see she hasn't made that assumption here. Having stub categories arranged in a fairly similar manner to permanent categories does, however, make a good deal of sense. Or perhaps you'd prefer a stub system that is organised in a manner that tries to reinvent the wheel by paying no attention whatsoever to the organisation of permanent ccategories? Grutness...wha? 00:14, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
(de-indent) You want an example of an editor that uses the stub categories to find and expand articles? Okay: me. I've personally expanded thousands of radio station and other articles because I'd found them tagged as stub. Stub tags have also allowed me to rescue countless hopelessly malformed articles and give them proper categorization, real content, and a chance at a productive life as a useful Wikipedia article instead another candidate for speedy deletion. I too do some stub sorting but I came to it from content creation and content remains my primary focus. Folks like Her Pegship and Grutness are doing yeoman's work here, mostly out of the spotlight, and if there aren't enough editors singing their praises on a daily basis then the shame is ours, not theirs. - Dravecky (talk) 00:23, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
I figured somebody must use them. I just pointed out I've never case across a case where I could say that they had been. But then, I guess there'd usually not be any reason for it to be pointed out. It's probably best I just retract my statements along that line; It wasn't a wise thing to do and it distracted from the point I was trying to make.Gene Nygaard (talk) 00:53, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
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