User:Peteforsyth/Stub: The Minimum Viable Article

In Wikipedia jargon, a stub is an article whose scope falls short of our "encyclopedic" standard, but which is considered sufficient to remain as part of Wikipedia's main "article space" pending expansion and improvement. It might be thought of as the standard for a "minimum viable article" on Wikipedia -- the lowest standard that, if achieved, is sufficient for an article to withstand a possible deletion request.

Many useful, high quality Wikipedia articles got their start as "stubs." An enterprising Wikipedia writer might decide to expand a stub after it has sat mostly idle for hours, months, or even years. If the alternative is not publishing an article at all, it's often best to publish a stub, because it helps the reader get a rudimentary understanding about a topic, and invites other Wikipedia editors to improve and expand the article.

Why it's important to document the minimum standard
Information scarcity does not promote knowledge ubiquity

Wikipedia is built by the good faith contributions of numerous volunteers. When a contributor does the bare minimum to attain a desirable result (like successfully publishing a page), it does little to build the encyclopedia. If an editor develops the habit of creating minimal stubs, he does little to advance Wikipedia's knowledge sharing mission, and instead generates the need for other Wikipedia editors to fix up the stubs they leave behind.

Wikipedia editors invested in the quality of the encyclopedia tend to prefer that editors put more work into an article than the minimum, and generate something of real value to a reader, instead of relying on the collaborative contributions of other editors to make an article useful. This may explain the spotty documentation of the minimum standard for a Wikipedia article.

But newcomers to Wikipedia are often just as passionate about the project's lofty goals as anyone else, and they have to start somewhere. No problem, we often say, as we encourage newcomers to start off by editing existing articles. We tell them this will provide a gradual and manageable introduction to our policies, norms, and values. But sooner or later, they will likely want to start an article; and various forces nudge them in the direction of sooner. News stories on Wikipedia's content biases, classroom assignments, and events run by campaigns like Women in Red and Wiki Loves Monuments often inspire thoughts about a gap that needs to be filled; personal motivations, such as a desire to share one's own esoteric knowledge, also come into play. When a good faith contributor seeks guidance on how to avoid that dreaded deletion notification on their talk page, she may be disappointed.

The standards for Wikipedia's highest quality articles (featured articles and good articles) are clearly and explicitly articulated; the pages about them, in addition to guiding experienced Wikipedia editors, are valuable learning resources for newer editors; an understanding of what constitutes the best content can help one generate content that may eventually grow into a featured article. But new contributors are often more eager to understand the minimum standard one needs to attain when publishing an article. What are the qualities that will tend to get an article deleted rather than improved? How can they be avoided? These are important questions for a new (or new-ish) Wikipedian.

This doesn't mean a new contributor will necessarily stop after attaining the minimum, and we should encourage them to aim higher. But breaking a task like article writing into manageable steps is an important technique for developing a new skill.

The relevant information about what constitutes a sufficient stub is scattered in many places on Wikipedia. In addition to the page about stubs and various WikiProject definitions of a stub, relevant standards are defined on the pages documenting deletion processes.

The purpose of this page is to collect the information about what constitutes the minimum criteria for a stub and present it in an easy-to-digest format, with reference to relevant policies and procedures where possible.

Minimum Viable Article (aka "stub") criteria
The criteria that permit speedy deletion provide many clues about what a stub should or shouldn't have. Some of these should be obvious to anybody dedicated enough to Wikipedia to read a page like this; we will skip, for instance, the need for a stub not to be "patent nonsense." But some of these criteria provide important clues.

A stub must:
 * Contain sufficient context to identify the subject of the article for a global and diverse audience
 * For articles about people, animals, organizations, web content, or events, it must indicate the subject's importance or significance.
 * It must provide enough information that the subject's notability is apparent to Wikipedia editors. The notability standard is higher than mere significance, but it's also a more nuanced concept. Veteran Wikipedia editors may disagree about whether or not an article establishes its subject's notability. A good rule of thumb is to ensure that your article includes at least three footnotes to high quality sources, and at least two of those should treat the article's subject as a central topic, or devote a section, paragraph, or chapter to the article's subject. Remember, here we are discussing the minimum standard; to be more confident that your stub will not be deleted, find and include more sources.
 * It should be reasonably free of bias; what it states should be somewhat comprehensive. It should give some attention to one or more of the broad attributes of the subject: its age, its size, its area of influence, etc.
 * If it's about a living person, it must comply with the biographies of living persons policy.

It must not:
 * Be an "attack page"
 * Contain unambiguous promotion for a product or service
 * Contain copyright violations

Exceeding the bare minimum: The next steps for a stub
Despite efforts to codify and express what constitutes a minimum viable article, the standard remains somewhat subjective. If your goal is for the stub you publish to remain on Wikipedia and grow over time, it's a good idea to exceed the standards expressed here. How much effort you put in is of course up to you; but you may wish to incorporate some of the attributes of a "start-class" article (the next higher article quality standard).

See this page for tips on how to expand on your stub and integrate its contents into the wiki, for instance:
 * Add an image
 * Add categories
 * Add incoming links
 * Add an infobox
 * Add a short description
 * Create a Wikidata entry
 * Add a navigation box