Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion/Log/2008/January/14

Sturgeon-stub /

 * 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 and upmerge

Unproposed, misnamed, and unlikely to meet threshold. It is misnamed, since all other fish stub categories are named for the order or family, not for the common name. As such, if needed, this should have been at Acipenseridae-stub /. But it's really not needed - not as far as size is concerned, anyway. It contains 14 stubs, but the permcat (which is not linked - in fact, virtually none of the categories that should be linked are) and its subtypes contain only 30 articles, so there's no way it could reach threshold as things stand. And at some 600 stubs, only borderline as far as further splitting is concerned. A case could perhaps be made for a larger upmerged Acipenseriformes-stub, but even then, contains only 36 articles in total. So basically, not a useful split for the purposes of stub sorting. At the very least this would involve scrapping the category and starting from scratch with a new upmerged template, but deletion may well be the simpler option. BTW, I notice that has an incorrect parent  which seems to indicate yet more confusion by a WikiProject as to the difference between stubs and Stub-Class articles... Grutness...wha?  12:58, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm the sturgeon-stub culprit. I was completely unaware of the stub-proposing protocol, threshold issues, etc.  I thought it might be a way to help highlight the fact that the sturgeons are very poorly covered, and dropped a note off to that effect on the Fish Project page.  While I don't have very strong feelings either way, and obviously committed a neophyte mistake, I don't entirely understand why a stub-category with 30 stubs is "too small".  It's quite convenient to a person who's working their way through the sturgeons to see on a single page which ones urgently require content, whereas they are lost in a sea (if you will) of fish-stubs.  Perhaps I am somehow misunderstanding the purpose of categorization.   Either way, it was a good exercise just to make a template.  Besides, as the most proportionate and lovely of all possible fish, surely the sturgeon deserve special treatment ;).   Best, Eliezg (talk) 13:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Look at it from two points of view. There are currently some 700,000 stubs on Wikipedia (a conservative estimate). From the point of view of stub sorting, if there is no minimum limit on stub category size, then the current 3000 or so stub types would quickly balloon to a completely unmanageable number - far too many for stub sorting to be a task anyone could reasonably undertake. Look at it also from an editor's poit of view. Stub cateories are kept to sizes where an editors can find a moderate number of stubs on a specialist area - not so many that they are swamped with them, and not so few that they have to hunt through several categories to find any articles that they can edit easily. Over time, the size of 60-800 stubs has become regarded as an optimum for both these tasks. Easy mistake to make, though it is mentioned on quite a few Wikipedia pages (WP Fish really should have a note re stub template creation on its project page - a lot of wikiprojects do). Yeah, sturgeon's are lovely (though sadly I'm both allergic to and too poor to regularly taste their most famous product). Unfortunately, that's not enough in itself for a stub type, though :) Grutness...wha?  14:34, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
 * These are good points. No resistance from me if the category is deleted.  I can go through and change all the sturgeon-stubs back to fish-stubs if you like.  Best, Eliezg (talk) 20:10, 14 January 2008 (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.