Wikipedia:MediaWiki messages/Archive 3

Content of the stub text
I would like to suggest that we change the text that is associated with the stub message. Currently, it reads:

''This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by fixing it.''

My suggestion is:

''This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.''

It (rightly) states in Perfect stub article: "...try not to call someone else's work 'wrong'". Yet we affix a message to a stub article that clearly says that it's in need of "fixing."

Believe me, I am in favor of eliminating stubs -- by adding content. But I'm also in favor of encouraging first-time contributors to become regular contributors. It seems to me that very often a "newbie" will create an article that someone else will call a stub. Fine, but let's not tell the newbie that he/she did something that needs "fixing".


 * -Anthropos 05:03, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * I would be OK with that. The only problem is that the first message has been used a lot, and consistency is good. Dori | Talk 05:44, Dec 18, 2003 (UTC)


 * Yes, this usage of "fixing" is a hacker term - "the program was fixed by adding 34 new options" :-) Perhaps a script to change all the existing notes to stub ? Stan 09:15, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Stan, I'm guessing you meant to suggest changing all existing notes to ? If so, I heartily agree! -Anthropos 15:02, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Absolutely right! --Ilya 04:58, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Come to think of it stub is a techie term, isn't it? I think that among the non-techies, stub probably conjurs to mind kicking a table leg in bare feet, or the part that remains after an amputation. Perhaps we should consider rephrasing the who message, or coming up with a different word for stub -- say "seed" maybe? -Anthropos 18:24, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Take a look at the that expands as  I think we need to add some sort of distinguishing style to the standard  so that it becomes "meta"-data to an article, and not a part of an article, itself. Bevo 18:37, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * (stubnote message now deleted as per request on Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki custom messages)

"What links here" solution without additional coding
Click on any stub message. It takes you to Perfect_stub_article through the redirect at The perfect stub article, which has very many links, because we link to it all along.

So, the solution is pretty simple. We include an inconspicous link (like Angela's dot talk link) to pages used only for that purpose, say .. We never link to that page from outside the message, but rather link to a redirect to it:, say List of vfds.

Use what links here for those pages to find articles that contain the message. Done.

Well, not quite. The caveat is that what links here shows just 500 links. While this is not really a problem for vfd, copyvio and such, it's a big problem for stubs, as there are way too many of those. The caveat of the caveat is that what links here shows 500 direct links plus links to redirect pages, sorted in alphabetical order of direct links. There's many ways of taking advantage of that :)

One is to be more specific about kinds of stubs we're talking about and use msg:stub, msg:substub, msg:copypaste, msg:wikify, etc, which would be helpful anyways. Make these messages link to wikipedia namespace pages and make those redirect to stub index (which is to be never linked directly), and its "what links here" can show very many stubs.

Other ways are changing msgs daily to point to different pages, so we can group stubs by last edit. Yet another is too create and use a different message every day (say, msg:vfd-22-dec-03, msg:vfd-23-dec-03 or msg:vfd-monday, msg:vfd-tuesday...), to keep track of when the page was put on vfd.

How does this sound? Zocky 05:15, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * How does this solve VfD? VfD is there for discussions on articles to take place within a certain time frame. Just having a list of articles that link to VfD doesn't seem to fit into the process somehow. Perhaps you should bring that one up at talk:Vfd instead. Angela. 05:22, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Having a list of articles that link to vfd is pretty useless. Having a list on articles that have a vfd notice (and only articles that have a vfd notice), OTOH, may not fit in the process, but is very useful.
 * Any other thoughts? Zocky 05:36, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Changing msg daily is great for vfd. Everybody will know that vfd-15-dec-2003 should be deleted on 20 Dec 2003.And the last 5 could be redirected to Votes for deletion subsection. --ilya 06:51, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

New Stub Message text -- again
Now that there seems to be agreement on the use of, I've started replacing "spelled-out" versions of the message that I find in articles. I think we can hope for some software tools to make this process faster and less labor intensive.

But, now I'd like to suggest again that we change what msg:stub expands into. I am particularly interested in getting rid of the phrase "fixing it", because it implies that the article is "broken" as it is -- and even if you think it is broken, we still want to encourage newbies, and newbies will often create stubs.

I like the phrase "expanding it", but I'm open to suggestions.

Less urgent (in my opinion), but still important, is the use of the word "stub" in the message. Stub is a rather techie term, and in the non-techie world it has meanings of "remaining part" (e.g. ticket stub, check stub, etc.), or of "painful toe encounters."

I like the word "seed" instead, though I'm not as enthusiastic and I hope someone finds something better.

Note that I'm only talking (for now) about the msg:stub text itself. The links would remain unchanged, and other places we can still talk about "stubs" (though we may want to review those pages to which msg:stub links, to see if they're newbie friendly).
 * -Anthropos 00:27, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * I think that changing "fixing" to "expanding" is a good idea. So good in fact that I've already done it myself. But I also think that "stub" is by now a well recognized term within the Wikipedia community and shouldn't be changed. It's reasonably intuitive, IMHO. A word like "seed" is just as arbitrary as "stub" and has other connotations (like, we'd be spilling seed all over the place) so I see no real advantages.


 * One thing that always bothered me is that "stub" links to The perfect stub article. It should be at least guessable from a link title or the surrounding text where a link leads. IMHO that link should point to Stub (which links to "the perfect stub article"), and maybe "expanding it" should link to Editing FAQ, that is:


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


 * What do you think? On a side note, the editing FAQ could really use some reorganization ..&mdash;Eloquence 01:32, Dec 23, 2003 (UTC)


 * Thanks for making the change! I think it's a real improvement. The "stub" thing was less important, and I agree that within our community it's fully accepted (at least I've heaard no complaints). I'm most concerned about how a new contributor might react to having such a message slapped onto one of their contributions. Like you, I don't really like "seed" -- I'm hoping someone has a better suggestion.


 * As far as changing the links -- I agree that where they point now is less than optimal.


 * Let's see...your new links still include one to Find or fix a stub, though through an redirect. This is actually an advantage, as it increases the number of links that will currently be listed by "what links here". One question is, does anyone rely on the link to Perfect stub article? Or will anyone rely on the (proposed) new link to Editing FAQ? Also, I've seen some pages that only include the sentence: This article is a stub. There's some link associated with "stub", but I don't know for sure what it is.


 * Perhaps, if we're going to change the link from wikipedia:Perfect stub article to somewhere else, it should be to a simple overview page that references both "Perfect stub..." and "Editing FAQ'", and perhaps a few others prominently, such as one on copyrights, NPOV, etc.


 * Thanks again for the change! -Anthropos 13:43, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * As said above, the notice should also have a link to a page like Stubs - index (it has to be something ugly), which is never to be linked directly from anywhere else but the message. This way we can rely on the what links here for that page to find pages with the stub notice.


 * That page could be linked either through the main link in the notice (which would then redirect to "find or fix a stub") or a non-obvious link, like the dot at the end of the sentence. Zocky 17:30, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * BTW I even now don't understand the meaning of 'stub' - I've firstly encoutered it on Wikipedia (and certainly here I understand it absolutely clear). I support new text with two hands up and I would even more like This article still needs expanding. And it's clear for me that this message should be msg: and in the near future - special mark like category. ilya

I think stubs (very short, not properly formed) and articles that need expansion (short, properly formed) are two separate categories that should be treated and marked differently. But I think this is a wikipedia-wide topic, so it should probably be discussed in the Village pump, where I've also posted a question about it. Zocky 17:22, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Current discussions
If you leave a message on another MediaWiki talk page, please link to it here so people know what is being discussed without hving to track all 500 pages.
 * MediaWiki talk:1911
 * MediaWiki talk:Legal
 * MediaWiki talk:Blockedtext
 * MediaWiki talk:Risk


 * I think it's easier to just track them using Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:All messages in the MediaWiki namespace and Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:MediaWiki custom messages. Dori | Talk 05:29, Jan 4, 2004 (UTC)

See Disambiguation_and_abbreviations for a message to be added to pages expanding/disambiguating abbreviations. -- User:Docu

Table formatting of custom messages
Does anyone know enough HTML to fix the table in MediaWiki custom messages so it doesn't widen the page? thanks, Dori | Talk 18:10, Jan 20, 2004 (UTC)

Transclusion usage
It would be good to be able to use a custom message to achieve transclusion of the textual (HTML table) figure found on the right on such pages as Internet Protocol, Transmission Control Protocol, Address Resolution Protocol and so forth.

However I don't know if this is the intent of custom messages. Do you have any ideas/opinions before I try it? Nixdorf 15:25, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Custom messages at the moment are used to just plug in a specific, static text. So you will not be able to use the same message to generate different content. The tables do look different based on which page you're looking at, so I would say no. Dori | Talk 15:31, Feb 8, 2004 (UTC)


 * Well, perhaps I was being unclear: the tables look different on the different pages, and that is the problem -- they should all be identical -- to which transclusion is the solution. My question was whether the MediaWiki namespace is the apropriate place for this. Nixdorf 15:37, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Looking at the tables, they seem to bold and not link the current page (which obviously varies). But if you want to use the same text, then yes MediaWiki messages are appropriate. Just create a new message, add it to the custom list. Dori | Talk 15:42, Feb 8, 2004 (UTC)


 * Yes, this makes me wonder if it would be apropriate for the MediaWiki software to replace self-linkage with bold text as a rule. That would solve many self-reference problems too I guess. Nixdorf 16:33, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * works that way to some extent. I once read the proposal that if a link on the msg would link to the page it's displayed, it's to appear bold. If this implemented, your table would nicely integrate on the different pages. Up to then, it would just look less perfect, but definitely reduce redundancy. -- User:Docu


 * OK, I'll go for it. Nixdorf 16:33, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Self links are now replaced by bolded text! Makes me want to replace the table that fills up A, B, C, etc. with a msg.
 * BTW at Template:numbers_E0 and Template:numbers_E1 there are two samples being discussed for inclusion at WikiProject Numbers
 * --- User:Docu
 * note these two messages have been replaced by Numbers_digits, Numbers_10s, Numbers_20s, etc. +sj+ 12:55, 2004 Mar 17 (UTC)


 * Hey! Utterly cool! This makes transclusions of this kind very smooth and nice! Good work! Nixdorf 23:11, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

stem cell treatment transplant
moved to Reference desk

Discussion of policy: "msg" vs. "subst"
"Discussions about the MediaWiki namespace should take place mainly on this page to avoid confusion". Aha. Why didn't I see that earlier? Personally, I think that discussing the MediaWiki namespace at Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki namespace is the most intuitive thing to do, and therefore less confusing, but maybe that's just me. ;) Anyway, I've started a discussion on the policy of using "msg" as opposed to "subst" on that page. Please feel free to join in. -- Oliver P. 03:19, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)