Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion/Log/2007/January/6

Problems in British Columbia
We've just had a flurry of stub-type creation for British Columbia-specific subjects, all of them without proposal, all with redlinked categories, and all of them either with incorrectly-formed names or split along lines we don'tnormally split along (or both). All oif them also have encoded sort-keys, something which has been rejected as an idea more than once in the past. I present for perusal. Grutness...wha?  04:31, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I apologize for being bold and going ahead creating these stubs; I thought it was like Userboxes and other kinds of templates, make-as-needed; I didn't realize there was a procedure or rule-sets governing their structure/naming and I was going to try and figure out the categorization issue so the redlinks wouldn't be there. I made these as part of article-organization efforts for WikiProject British Columbia with an eye to knowing how many stubs of various/certain kinds we "need" in order to establish some kind of consistency and thorough coverage of the province and its history/geography/people etc.  And I was also gung-ho because of my creation of a nifty and appropriate logo, as used in the Userbox for the project visible on my userpage, which uses the provincial flower (the Pacific Dogwood) instead of variations on the provincial flag.  I'll comment on the why and wherefore of each stub below.  Should I wait, also, until this SFD is resolved/decided before making a request for these stubs to be created in the appropriate stub-creation-discussion arena?Skookum1 08:18, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It's interesting that people who quote WP:BOLD never actually look at the page.It says that being bold editing articles is fine, but not categories or templates! Personally, I'd wait - some sort of consensus here will conme as to what's best to be done with these, then you can see whether that makes some things more or less likely for proposal. Grutness...wha?  10:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

BritishColumbia-bio-stub with redlinked

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the stub template and/or category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any).  No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was delete

We don't normally split people by subnational region except in the rare case of politicians (who are always associated with their constituency). Only two stubs, and no need. And that's without even mentioning that the category name should be British Columbia people stubs". Delete. Grutness...wha?  04:31, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Again, I'm sorry I didn't know about the naming convention, or would have made this BritishColumbia-people-stub. Our history and even our current society is full of notable people who aren't politicians - as several historians have commented, BC's history is remarkable for its cast of "characters" - outlaws, publishers, mountain men, prospectors, flim-flammers, cultists, and so on; most of whom haven't been heard of - much less conceived of - east of the "Granite Curtain" (aka the Rocky Mountains; if that's a redlink I'll figure out what kind of article it has to be and write it; it's very citable and is as much a slang term as a state of mind...).  So that's why I created the "bio-stub" - for biographies of non-politicians.  If all these have to be in the Canadian people stubs, so be it, but "subnational" is a relative term for Canada...but perhaps only a Canadian from outside Central Canada would know what I mean by that...I've often had difficulty giving Canada stubs to things/people to do with BC before 1871, as we weren't part of Canada until then...Neutral but still would like to see BritishColumbia-people-stub.  But hopefully I'll be diligent enough that I'll write articles, instead of just stubs, so the stubs won't be needed (?).  Besides, why do the politicians get special treatment anyway? Lord knows they get enough special treatment as it is ;-| Skookum1 08:32, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You misunderstand. The template would be at the name it currently has, but the category should be . Except, as I said, we don'tusually divide people by subnational arrea - we go for nationality first, then occupation. Politicians are the exception partly because there are so damn many off them with articles, and partly because they are just about guaranteed to stay connected to one area forr their entire careers. Grutness...wha?  10:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete, mobile people issues. Alai 05:12, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this section.

BritishColumbia-politics-stub with redlinked

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the stub template and/or category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any).  No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was rename to -poli-, upmerge to Canada politics stubs

A better possible split, but if we were to split on this basis, it would be BritishColumbia-poli-stub, by naming precedent. Only one stub. Delete, or possibly rename as upmerged template. Grutness...wha?  04:31, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * These stubs would not be for people but for issues/arguments and political events and various crises/scandals and so on -of which we've kind of got a monopoly, historically, even worse than Quebec (!). One such example is Solidarity Crisis, and for that particular "event" there's perhaps another five or six stubs that are needed; such that somebody wanting to look these up, or wanting to write on them, will find the definitions of the various articles already laid out.  There's a good twenty scandals that are in need of at least stub creation, and a double that many of major political eras/quarrels, all of which have a name of some kind (e.g. BC Legislature Raids, which is still really only a stub despite having some content).  The "split" here would be off the main BritishColumbia-stub, rather than off the people hierarchy.  Adjust and keep (i.e. to BritishColumbia-poli-stub ).
 * I never suggested that this was designed to be for politicians. When I said "upmerged template", I meant to . Politics stubs take the form poli-stub, not politics-stub. Grutness...wha?  10:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Upmerge on size and naming precedent, move per -poli- precedent, but keep redirect. Alai 05:12, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this section.

BritishColumbia-transportation-stub with redlinked

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the stub template and/or category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any).  No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was delete

A road stub I can understand, or a rail stub, but I don't think we've ever had a single "transportation stub" per se. Possible renam to -road-stub as an upmerged template, other than that, delete. Used on one article. Grutness...wha?  04:31, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Because I just put it there, as I happened to visit that page to check on something right after I craated the transportation stub. Transportation is a big theme in our history, as well as in current infrastructure, and as far as Material history goes we have a plethora of existing stubs and potential articles on the means and business of getting around our most difficult geography.  Ferry routes, steamers and ships (including on at least 100 lakes and about thirty rivers), docks and ports, as well as historic routes, shipping companies etc.  We're talking in the hundreds of stubs, perhaps well over a thousand.  Marine highways are necessarily the same thing as ordinary highways here, and the ports that go with them are equivalent to bridges - do bridges get the roads stub, or nothing special at all (even though they're technically, after all, roads).  As for railways, during the period a few hundred licensed, chartered railways were enacted under provincial legislation; up to 50 of them got built, most fairly short but each with a history and article-worthy material.  So I thought a general "transportation" stub would cover the whole lot - rail, road, marine routes as well as their infrastructural components.  Some also could get the "scandal" stub (poli-stub), by the way, but that's a longer story...undefined would do, although there's still no stub name for lists of ships, ports etc., nor the various freighting companies (many of which used roads as well as trails and steamers and even camels and hand-packers on trails where "road" would be a huge exaggeration...i.e. they were "intermodal").  Prefer to keep; again, if you want the Canadian stub cats cluttered with a few hundred new items, that would be the consequence of not creating a separate stub for BC for this stuff.Skookum1 08:41, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Shipping companies, ferries,s hips, etc, would all take a BritishColumbia-shipping-stub, if such existed. Roads ((I note the only stub using this stub template was a road) should take a BritishColumbia-road-stub, and railways would take a BritishColumbia-rail-stub - if there were enough for any of these three stub types. Personally, I think that there are likely to be enough for some of these... but lumping them together into a transportation stub is something that has never been done at a national level,let alone a subnational revel, hence things like Canada-road-stuband Canada-rail-stub. Grutness...wha?  10:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually that would be BritishColumbia-water-stub not -shipping- going by the example of the existing water-stub for water transportation stubs. Still, I'd like to see a viable Canada-water-stub before even considering a NC specific variant. Caerwine Caer’s whines  23:20, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Unless the border has moved south a few miles, i take it you mean BC not NC ;) And yes, it was water-stub I meant. Grutness...wha?  07:18, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, given that we've got, according to our popular/national mythology, 3/4 of the world's fresh water, and more lakes than I care to count....the Canada-water-stub is a pretty good idea all by itself; but knowing how many water bodies and streams there are in various provinces that are going to have articles (and in the case of streams, BC especially: see Category:Rivers of British Columbia and also Category:Lakes of British Columbia, both of which are far from complete. Other provinces have more lakes, and far less named streams of significance; out here a "creek" is often ten times the size of a "river" in other parts of the continent...(that's not a boast).Skookum1 08:16, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I think you misunderstand - water-stub is used for water transport - boats, ferries, etc. Rivers and streams would all take a regional geo-stub, as with everywhere else. Grutness...wha?  11:48, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh...well, we're gonna have a lot of BC geo-stubs, then. Lots and lots of them....just started a discussion, I hope, among BC WikiProject members, for my idea about historical regions vs the unworkability of regional districts; have a look at the project's talk page and look for "historical regions of British Columbia" (it's very late or I'd link that directly; tomorrow am), because of this subdivision issue, if we can/want to do it.  As for this water-stub, how is that different from the shipping-stub?Skookum1 11:52, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That was my mistake - it's water-stub, not shippingg-stub (there isn't a "shipping-stub"). Grutness...wha?  02:50, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete, not the way these are split; re-sort to -road-, -rail-, etc, if those are viable. Alai 05:12, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this section.

BritishColumbia-communities-stub with redlinked

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the stub template and/or category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any).  No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was delete

Cuts smack through the middle of BritishColumbia-geo-stub, which would be further split by subregion, not by towns, which are one of the types specifically listed as beihng no-nos. Strong delete for this one, irrespective of the fact that it has quite a number of stubs. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  04:31, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It has "quite a number of stubs" because I started working my way through geo-stubs after creating it, although I only finished "A" and "B" in the category listing; any others that have it are incidental because I found them while looking up something else. Similar extreme-content issues apply here as for the other three stubs above.  We have hundreds of small rural communities, including Indian Reserves, which will have to have separate articles, and they're located in such a way, and distinct enough from each other, that they can't be lumped together in articles covering a bunch at once.  Dividing up the geo-stub by subregion then requires a BIG discussion about which subregions we use for that - because the Regional district system flexes all the time (virtually with every change of regime, often within eras of given regimes), and some Regional Districts that were around in my youth ('50s-'70s) are no longer extant.  And nobody thinks of where they're from here in terms of Regional Districts.  So that leaves "historic regions", not all of which have precise definitions and also which freely overlap in most cases, e.g. the Boundary Country is seen by some to be part of the West Kootenay, while in other reckonings it's part of the Okanagan.  Even a discussion we had about what "Lower Mainland" means (the most populous part of the province, Greater Vancouver and then some) required an arduous discussion about exactly what definition it has; so "subregions" won't work here.  Now, the further bit is that, in addition to the extant few hundred rural communities and Indian Reserves, British Columbia also has more ghost towns than the rest of North America put together, and a good couple of hundred of them are going to get articles, a good few dozen already have at least a stub.  So this "geo-stub" cat, which also apparently must include rivers, islands and a host of other features, is also going to have over a thousand initial entries that are just towns and settlements (historical or current).  And we have something like 15,000 islands....(PS I'm not meaning to be long or flip in all these comments; those familiar with my posts know I write this way naturally, and not to be ponderous or overblown; I just can't help it).  So given the volume of communities articles, and the need for other subdivisions of the geo-stub cat, I must necessarily vote and plead Keep.  And why are towns "no-no's"?  Just asking....Skookum1 08:51, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Because overall about 80% of all geography stubs are for towns and communities. As such, it makes little or no sense to separatee them out from other geography stubs. Yes, there are likely to be big discussions about what subregions woould be best to use - similar discussions have occurred for about thirty countries so far, and also for some other parts of Canada (Ontario is divided by subregions). But that doesn't mean that consensus isn't possible on that. And given that people who are interested in geography tend, for the most part, to know about a particular area, it makes far more sense to divide geography stubs down by region and then subregion. The very few exceptions to this aare things hat specific editors aree likely to know a lot more about - nationalparks and ecoregions, for instance. It would be far more likely that an editor who knows about communities around Kamloops would also know about the mountains and rivers around Kamloops than they would about communities around Fort Nelson. This is why it says at WP:STUB: For example, geography stubs are sorted by country so you wouldn't want to create mountain-stub or river-stub. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  10:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete, split the -geos up by regional districts, or any generally recognised coarser-grained sub-regions if those are currently too small. Alai 05:12, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this section.