Template talk:Stub/Archive 2

converting msg: namespace to template namespace
However it has come to pass that all the msg:stub articles have come to be redirected to template:stub, what this achieves is to post "1. redirect template:stub" on each message that carried the stub message the old way. Fixing each such page will require mighty labours. Smerdis of Tlön 16:22, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * A bot is working on it. ✏ Sverdrup 19:48, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Is the Template namespace initialisation script bot the only one working on it? If so, it stopped around June 6. --ssd 17:38, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Should the stub message link to the stub's edit page?
When I saw my first stub article on WP, I thought that the link in "...You can help Wikipedia by expanding it" should take me to the edit page for the current article (not to Find or fix a stub). But it didn't matter because, as I recall, at the time this wasn't even possible in the MediaWiki software.

But now that we have and other fun variables, it would be easy to link the "expanding it" text to the edit page for the current article:


 * This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by [ expanding it].

What do others think? --Diberri | Talk 15:24, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)


 * It is a very good idea, but perhaps we should rephrase the sentence to include all three links. ✏ Sverdrup 16:52, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

How about:


 * This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by [ editing this page].

Seems that a rephrase isn't entirely necessary. --Diberri | Talk 22:09, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)


 * Very good; I'm tempted to do the change. (Even though I like expanding it better) ✏ Sverdrup 22:47, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * How about: "...by [ expanding this page]."? -- Grunt 22:49, 2004 Jun 14 (UTC)


 * ... but it's not just expanding (if what's on the page is wrong, we want them to remove, too); editing is better (and fits with the overall edit-theme better, IMO.
 * James F. (talk)


 * We always edit pages here and edit pages there; expandning is stub-specific (I like to think). You may of course edit the article (but beware of the slowness of the database) to reflect the opinion of the majority.✏ Sverdrup 23:38, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Problem with CSS
May I add my humble opinion that the new stub message is godawfully ugly. The ugly long URL that gets stuck after the edit link makes every article that has been marked as a stub look stupid. - Cymydog Naakka 19:18, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * I don't see any ugly long url... Do you have a screenshot? --Random|832 13:01, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Here's a screenshot. I wonder why I see the URL if you don't -- I checked the source, it's not my browser that puts it there, it is there. - Cymydog Naakka 18:36, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * &lt;!-- there used to be a screen shot here - Cymydog Naakka 14:33, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC) --&gt;


 * Oh. Your browser must use the print-specific CSS, because that is how the printed version of a stub looks like. (Note that there is no 'printable version' link in monobook, it's embedded in CSS.) Somehow you must change your settings/update your browser to change that. I don't think the long link is a problem in print, because stubs are not very often printed, are they? ✏ Sverdrup 18:43, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * What browser are you using? --Random|832 13:55, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * iCab. But I told you, it's not my browser, it's in the HTML, the HTML, see: ; I don't suppose my browser would add funny things like that to the HTML.


 * Or do you mean the screen-specific CSS would set display none for the URL, even though it would still be in the HTML? - Cymydog Naakka 15:17, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * You're right that the URL appears in the HTML source, but it's not supposed to be visible except when printing. (FWIW, these URL expansions are included in the HTML for all external links in [brackets] .)


 * In particular, the CSS for the MonoBook skin hides the URL expansions by default ("display: none"), and when the print CSS is loaded (which should only happen when you're printing) the URL expansions are made visible ("display: inline !important"). Maybe iCab is loading the print CSS unconditionally, causing the URL expansions to always be displayed/visible.


 * I'll look under some rocks and see if I can make any sense out of this. For now, rest assured that those URLs just ain't supposed to be there! :-) --Diberri | Talk 17:08, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)


 * Take a look at this. Apparently the standard skin now passes a link to the print CSS even when you're viewing the screen version. This explains why the ugly URLs appeared simultaneously with the new MonoBook skin (and I had to register on every bloody WikiMedia wiki there is just to get rid of it) -- someone screwed it up in the "new" Standard skin. - Cymydog Naakka 13:42, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Isn't this so that your browser knows how to render a Print Preview? Every Wikipedia page has this in the HTML. If your browser is using the "media='print'" specification to display the page on screen, then your browser is broken. --Phil | Talk 14:20, Jun 22, 2004 (UTC)


 * Or has been left in Print Preview mode, as Opera can be. I would reccomend using Opera from now on, as it is one of the most CSS-standard compliant browsers in the world. JediMaster16 03:37, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Hmm. Perhaps. But I know I couldn't live without iCab's filter system. - Cymydog Naakka 14:33, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think that would be good style: ''This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by [ expanding it]''. ''This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by [ expanding it]''. One can better notice it. Kahkonen 12:51, 2004 Aug 2 (UTC)

Bug presumably caused by REDIRECT
Some sort of bug... at the bottom of White_cliffs_of_Dover, expands to a red link to Template:Stub


 * I had the same experience once the stub template was modified by User:Sverdrup (not his fault, of course). This probably warrants a post to wikitech-l. --Diberri | Talk 01:47, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)


 * Umm... it works fine here, as expected. Does a forced-reload help?
 * James F. (talk) 02:02, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, the forced reload doesn't seem to help. Try VNET and Florida class battleship (a few stubs from Special:Shortpages).; do they expand properly or just link to Template:Stub? --Diberri | Talk 02:15, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)


 * Nope, those work fine here, too.
 * How odd.
 * James F. (talk) 13:24, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Stub Category
I've noticed that someone has created a stub category. I like the idea, as I have recently proposed to do the same for cleanup articles. The category will provide a clean list of all stubs. I think the easiest way to do this is to add the stub category to the template, so I am about to do that. As per usual, I welcome any tips, comments, and flames. --Caliper 19:39, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * hmm... the server's giving me trouble with this. Perhaps someone else can give it a shot? --Caliper 20:22, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Ya, I tried to put the category into the template when I created the category, and it was stuck then. Some developer will need to unlock the page or something.  Looks stuck. --ssd 22:32, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be easier just to use Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Stub to get a list of all stubs? --Diberri | Talk 22:30, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)
 * No. That only shows the first handful, not all of them. The category will give us a nice alphabetized list, and eventually a nice segmented alphabetized list... I hope...--ssd 22:32, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Having double lists to mark stubs seems like a bad idea to me. I swear it will use three times the work. Let's push the developers to provide better 'What links here' list, or perhaps even a new "article quality markup"-system. ✏ Sverdrup 22:48, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * I think it would be bad to mark articles as stubs by directly putting in Category:stub, that would give you your three lists. But if the category is put in the template instead, it will be no more than you already have -- either the article has the stub template in it or it does not.  I do think a "article quality markup" system would be interesting, however.  As long as it doesn't turn into the voting system like on E2... --ssd 01:43, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Just to emphasize my point here...I agree with ✏ Sverdrup that maintaining three lists of stubs is a bad idea. Having the stub category and adding articles to it manually is therefore a bad idea. However, if the category is part of the stub template, then the stub category does not add a "new list", merely a better interface to an existing list. (what links here from the template) --ssd 03:36, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * This is not a good idea. Please stop adding it. It is not the point of categories and is just plain silly. Every time Template:Stub is edited 45,000 packets sent to squids each time and cur_touched is updated for all 15,000 stubs. Beyond this it is bad to mix things which are in the encyclopedia and things which are part of the encyclopedia (think Wikipedia: namespace versus the article namespace).Maximus Rex 04:04, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * So far, only you have said it is not a good idea. I understand your technical reasons for not wanting to have the change made.  You seem to understand how this works...if this change is made again (or worse, made to a more used template), would it be possible to add the category string to the template without going through the normal update process?  This would mean that the category would not be listed in cached pages (I assume), but any page that was edited would be normally updated.  This would give the behavior I want anyway without the perforamnce hit (I think).  Comments? --ssd 05:02, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure you've adequately explained why this is "just plain silly". I believe that having an automatic list of stubs will help make the encyclopedia better, just as having a list of pages needing cleanup makes the encyclopedia better.  The fact that changing the template takes up a lot of server capacity hardly seems like a good reason to revert... --Caliper 05:43, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Actually, the time taken up only happens when the change is made, so it is a good idea to not revert. Whatever. I outlined the reasons for this in the village pump.  Ironically, I agree with 7 of the 8 reasons I put there. --ssd 11:00, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Adding the category to the stub message is a bad idea, too. ✏ Sverdrup 11:20, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Not adding the category to the stub template is a bad idea too. There, I've also added a content free comment. --ssd 04:51, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

If we add to Template:Stub will it have the same effect as if we would put  on everything that links to Template:Stub ? If so, I think it would be a very good temporary solution until the What links here pages flow into a mode like Category: when they reach 501. --Ævar Arnfjör› Bjarmason 19:12, 2004 Jun 22 (UTC)
 * Yes, that will be the effect. However, they don't show up in the category until the article is touched (even a null edit that does not show in history is enough).  Because of this, I would like to propose that the template be added in a way that bypasess normal mechanisms and does not invalidate the cached copies of the stubs.  This would have less of a server hit with nearly identical results. --ssd 04:07, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Confirmed, see a test i made on test., there is currently one article there besides the Template:, i made a trivial whitespace edit to that one.
 * Agreed, in any case to do this smoothly we would need developer help, either we do it ourselves and put pressure on the squids or we have it updated through SQL. If this is really to be instantly effective though a dev needs to help in updating everything that has the stub message, so that the list on the Category page will be complete, instead of things 'dripping in' over time. In any case, we'll get the same resault in the end, we just wont have a complete list instantly. --Ævar Arnfjör› Bjarmason 16:13, 2004 Jun 23 (UTC)
 * Actually, I was thinking of having a bot slowly trickle them in over several days...although it might be a good idea to bring them in slowly anyway just to see how well the category page scales. --ssd 20:05, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Nothing in 3 days, are we doing this or what? --Ævar Arnfjör› Bjarmason 18:17, 2004 Jun 26 (UTC)
 * I and at least one other person tried changing it, didnt work. It's included in so many articles that the database times out during update. --Ævar Arnfjör› Bjarmason 20:57, 2004 Jun 29 (UTC)
 * It does work...just have to give it time. --ssd 22:24, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Categories should have plural names for cases like this, so I think it should be Category:Stubs or Category:Stub articles. ✏ Sverdrup 10:28, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Little late now. I kinda wish you'd said something when this discussion started. --ssd 00:16, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Don't say it's late, it's easy (well..) to edit the template. If you are bold, you have to be able to adapt to the following discussion.[[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞ ]] 01:28, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The appearance of this category on stub articles is really ugly. Is there a way we can make it not appear on pages within the category? - Mark 14:41, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Why alternatives to Category:Stub don't work to find stubs
Obviously some will work sometimes...
 * Searching What links here at best only gives you the first 500 or so stubs, and in a big long ugly list that is hard to browse. (Can someone address server efficency of categories vs. searching what links here?)
 * Find or fix a stub lists a large handful of ways to search for stubs that the above won't find. (Categories won't fix this unfortuantely.)
 * Manual lists are hard to maintain and not necessarily accurate.
 * Shortpages lists stub-stubs that aren't worthy of being stubs for which almost everyone's stub threshold will work.

Did I miss any alternatives to categories to add to this list?

Category stub
Where was this advertised? You can't expect people to watch every single template for the talk page. I'd say post it on the pump, RC, and start a vote. By the way, the ensuing edit war and probably just the querying of the stub category has the potential to bring the servers to a halt, all the more reason to thoroughly discuss major changes in advance. Dori | Talk 20:11, Jun 30, 2004 (UTC)
 * Where was this advertised!!?! How about on the pump since June 18???  It's been #3 on the list for the last week or more with no comments added since June 29.  Where were you when I needed someone to discuss this with??  What pile of sand have you been keeping your head in?  :)  Please read all the discussion to date and come back and say something useful somewhere.  Thanks.  --ssd 03:24, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Well, I was on a wikivacation since the 15th :) What I don't get is what's the point of this? It will slow the servers down, and I doubt anyone needs a up-to-the-minute complete list of stubs. If someone wants more than 500 of them, I'm sure someone would be willing to run a query on a non-wikimedia server. I'd like to know who's going to be using this feature and why, because we're all going to be suffering the slowdowns. Dori | Talk 04:04, Jul 3, 2004 (UTC)
 * What's the point of this? How am I suppose to find stubs I can fix when I can only see the alphabetic first 500??  Better yet, why are there 500 stubs?  Probably because people can't find  any they can fix.  If you think this category is too big, we should either break it down by letter or better, just try to make more of these not stubs.  I notice a lot are actually not stubs and just never had the tag removed after they were fixed. If you think this category is useless because nobdoy will look at it, then it is silly to worry about it slowing down the server.  8) --ssd 06:19, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * There are better ways to create such lists (in terms of keeping load off the core servers). The point isn't that nobody will look at the category, but that nobody should look at it (on the core servers, at least).--Wclark 03:03, 2004 Jul 9 (UTC)

It does seem, to me, to be unnecessary and cluttered - it surely performs exactly the same function as "What links here"? Due to the length of the stubs it normally looks overpowering and clunky - I can't see any point in having it, whatsoever. I wouldn't mind a category (it cannot do harm) if the category bar did not be displayed... is there any way to do this? --[[User:OldakQuill|Oldak Quill]] 14:41, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Perhaps it would be informative for you to look up one section and read "Why alternatives to Category:Stub don't work to find stubs". Regards, --65.215.78.146 19:00, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Perhaps if you think this looks cluttered, you should go through them and unstubify some. That is the best way to reduce the clutter!!  As many stubs as there are here, I'm starting to wonder if we need to be more picky before we label something as a stub.  Some of the things in there I just can't see very much more ever being written, but then, I'm not that prolific of a writer and get writer's block real quick like. --ssd 03:24, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Just in case someone didn't get my point in comments above, the way to fix the huge size of this category is NOT to get rid of the category, but to get rid of the STUBS! Any solution to the huge size of this probably should directly address a better way to reduce the number of articles marked as stubs. --ssd 06:19, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * There is none. People will not stop producing new articles, nor should they; some will be too short; and so the story continues.  Out of 300,000 articles, if even 1% are stubs, that's a huge number, and I'd suspect our proportion of stubmarked articles is higher than that. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 06:22, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Yep -- don't we have 20-30K stubs? Anyway, they are not to be listed and fixed, because we have come to understand that stubs are always a part of a growing encyclopedia. The best thing to do about stubs are expanding them when you come across them. [[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞ ]] 07:41, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Has anyone thought of why the whatlinkshere feature is limited to 500 links? Hint: It's not because the developers didn't know how to have it display more. Adding the category to stubs is circumventing the performance-related limitation. Ssd, you still haven't given me a reason why this has to be real-time. What's wrong with a static list from a month-old dump? Are you telling me that you're going to have all the stubs fixed and you'll want to know what all the new stubs of that month are? Besides, even with this feature, as I understand it you're not going to get the stubs that have not been saved since the cat was added. Again, what is the point of doing this when it affects performance? Other than the gee whiz factor, I don't see it. As I said when cats were first introduced, just because we can doesn't mean we should use them everywhere. Dori | Talk 12:44, Jul 3, 2004 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying it has to be real time, but it certainly helps! Now that I have even a small list of stubs, it makes it much easier to fix them!  Actually, rather than a list of 20k stubs, or the most recently edited 2k stubs, I'd like to see the most recently visted 2k stubs, or a random 2k stubs... Any idea on how something like that could be implmemented efficently? --ssd 15:11, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Perhaps when a category reaches some huge size, its page would come up more like Allpages/? or something like that. I think "random page within [set of] categories" would satisfy a lot of people's complaints about randompage showing things they don't care about. --ssd

Actually, if you want to get cute, other than the rather hard database hit, we could point it at a slightly new category every week, and then each one would collect a few thousand stubs, and when the old categories start to empty out, recycle...I would not be opposed to that. I just want to make it obvious that there is work to be done somewhere... --ssd 06:03, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

OK, I finally manages to get a dump loaded locally, and I ran a query of the stubs: [[Media:dori.20040704.stubs.txt]]. Now can we get rid of the category? Dori | Talk 23:06, Jul 7, 2004 (UTC)
 * I don't see how your link is even slightly useful. However, if you formatted it nicely, broke it up into smaller sections, and posted it as a collection of pages, and then updated it every month or two, I could see it being construed as useful. 8-P --ssd 02:04, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia would time out at even saving that. It took my idle system (not great, but OK: 1700+ Athlon XP, 768MB RAM, 7200RPM IDE drive) 1 min 20 seconds to run that query. Can you imagine what several hundred simultaneous requests will do to the db? If you like better formatting, you're free to do it, it is a wiki after all. Dori | Talk 03:15, Jul 8, 2004 (UTC)

I support the removal of the stub category from the template until the number of stubs listed in the category drops below 4000. Ideally, we'd find an automatic way to make several stub category pages all with around 4000-5000 entries each. I think splitting the stubs up by subject area will work much better in the long run, however. --ssd 06:05, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Making the category smaller
I see several ways to make Category:stub smaller:
 * 1) (obvously) Do some research work and unstubify articles.
 * 2) Remove the stub template from articles that have already been sufficently expanded but not untagged.
 * 3) Expand the category implementation to auto-split large categories (by first letter) as with Special:Allpages/a.
 * 4) Create multiple templates, as in Template:stub-a, stub-b, etc. to manually do the above.
 * 5) Manually split on area of necessary research, i.e., Category:people stubs or something with the hopes that this would encourage more research activity to fix the stubs.
 * 6) Autosplit with existing template magic

I don't think discontinuing the category would be helpful. Feel free to add to this list. Please comment if you think any of these would be a good idea, or if the status quo is good enough. --ssd 17:49, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * ...How about just doing nothing and continuing to use the current system? --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 18:41, 2004 Jul 5 (UTC)
 * If by "current system" you mean items 1 and 2 above, I'll take that as a vote. :) --ssd 01:08, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Perhaps we could use two (or possibly more) templates to indicate a finer gradation in what needs to be done to an article. It comes down to what exactly is a stub. While there are some articles that may have a paragraph or two or three--depending on the subject I might still consider it to be stubby. Perhaps if there were another template, like, that said something like "There is much more that could be written about this topic. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it." The purpose is obviously very similar to the stub message, but allows us to distinguish really short one-liner stubs from slighter longer, but still in need of expansion articles.


 * Taking it a step further, it might even be worthwhile to consider having "expand-this" templates that specify an area of interest or expertise. For example, someone with interest or exertise in medicine could find a list of mid-level-stub articles related to medicine. I suppose this would serve a similar purpose as the various sub-pages of Pages needing attention but would be auto-generated rather than manually maintained. older ≠ wiser 13:51, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a bunch of good ideas. Anyone here bold enough to try it? :-> --ssd 05:50, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * I still think a category for stubs is a bad idea. There's already a list of stubs in the database (pages linking to the template) so why not just use that?  Yes, the formatting would need to change, but that's not a huge deal.  Even better (in terms of performance and server load) would be to just use static lists... but that loses the auto-updating features of using something db-generated.  So given that we need something automatic, how about just using ONE automatic thing rather than two?  Does anybody have even a single good reason for using a category for this?  I haven't seen one in all the preceding discussion. --Wclark 11:58, 2004 Jul 10 (UTC)
 * I think you've missed most of the discussion here. The list of pages linking to teh template only has 500 out of 30,000 stubs listed.  I have no huge objection to static lists if they are kept up to date, but I'd prefer a solution that didn't require maintainance.  I think mutliple categories might be a better solution, however it happens. --ssd 05:14, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * If you fail to have seen one reason in this whole discussion you havent read it, try reading the four reasons under the .."reasons why category".. heading and get back to us. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 19:12, 2004 Jul 11 (UTC)

A box for the stub?
Check out the finnish stub article. It's this nice little light-grey box. We use those in all the messages, such as disambig and spoiler. --Lussmu 17:15, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * A vote has already been held on that here on en. with the majority wanting to keep the current style. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 17:19, 2004 Jul 5 (UTC)

You can't make links like, there's a bug in MediaWiki which will cause link table corruption if you do. -- Tim Starling 07:21, Jul 17, 2004 (UTC)


 * Thanks...been trying to get an answer on that for days. So sad.  Any other ideas? --ssd 07:33, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

An idea to split up the stubs
I think stubs should be split up by category, that way the stubs are more organized and will make it easier to find stubs to fix. For example for stubs on languages or  for automobiles. What do you think? There is already something like this for pokémon, see Template:poke-stub. Krik 23:53, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Like the pages for 'requested pages' but for categories. Ilyanep (Talk) 23:55, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * I will agree with just about any method to split them up. :)  Of course, it would also be interesting to have a search engine that would give you the subset of two categories... --ssd 00:32, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The new "search" link
...does not work properly for pages with spaces in the names. See Luca di Montezemolo: the search link does a google search for just "Luca" and the "di Montezemolo" gets stuck in front of the word "search." The source is this: "For instance, you might search for material to add here." Is there a way to get to substitute underscores for spaces? Rdsmith4 16:21, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I'm not sure there's a way to do it without substituting characters...better not change it without testing first, for now. anthony (see warning) [edited after reply]


 * We would need + or %20, not underscore, see Template talk:Google.--Patrick 21:47, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)