Template talk:Metastub

This template can be used to produce a custom stub message.

For example,  is a simplified version of Template:Aero-stub. It produces:

''This aircraft-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by [ expanding it]''.

If you want your stub to have an image, see Template:MetaPicstub.

This provides a standard format for stub messages, which can be updated from a single location (instead of becoming unmanageable when changes are inevitably made).

Usage instructions originally written by &eta;   [ &upsilon;&omega;&rho; ] 00:16, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The whole "(select the "Edit this page" link)" looks messy. I think the expand it link looked cleaner and nicer. --AllyUnion (talk) 21:15, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Only use this template with subst:
Please. I beg you. It's the clear message of the article mentioned in the section above. r3m0t 21:17, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

Noinclude
I believe there's fairly general agreement not to use noinclude with stub templates. The other changes I don't know about, but at any rate they should be co-ordinated with the text of WP:STUB, as it includes discussion of what format to use for this. Alai 23:03, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Help
When I used subst:metastub in Category:American poet stubs, it produced a code that looked like this, when my "category" parameter was "United States writer stubs" in addition to creating the Category:Stub categories tag there too: If you go to the very last page of the category Category:United States writer stubs, my subcategory is there, under the "µ" symbol. Does anyone know why this happened or how to fix it? J. Finkelstein 19:58, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
 * That's due to the "µ" in the sortkey, which sorts to the end of the (Roman) alphabet. I've edited this on your stub type;  it should probably be changed in metastub too, possibly to "*µ", so that it sorts to the end of the top-sorted sub-categories, but not to the end to the articles in the category.  I'll wait a while to see if anyone else has any bright ideas.  Alai 20:09, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Why don't we just let the subcategory fall where it may based on the first letter of its title, i.e. why don't we use the default? So instead of putting it under a "µ" heading or a "*" heading, just let it fall under the "A" heading (in this case it's "A"&mdash;"American poet stubs"). That's just my suggestion. J. Finkelstein 18:03, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
 * The thinking behind top-sorting is so that for a large category, all of the sub-cats appear on the first page. There's some discussion of this at WP:CGZ.  The thinking behind "bottom-sorting" of stub types is to put them at the end of all the other categories.  I'm not much bothered about the latter, but I think the former is a good idea:  it's a bit vexing to find a sub-type on the 12th listing page of a 17 page category that one didn't know about earlier...  Alai 18:52, 1 May 2006 (UTC)