Wikipedia:WikiProject Chicago/Stubify

The is a general how to guide to stubifying an ariticle. I.E., it is a brief on how to create a stub. This guide was created to assist the May 9 2007 WP:CHICOTW, which is to stubify the Chicago Landmark page.

There are basically 5 steps to creating a good quick stub
 * 1) Write a brief summary of the topic at hand.
 * 2) Identify proper WP:STUBS to classify your article.
 * 3) Identify proper categories to classify your article.
 * 4) Identify the proper templates to bolster your article with navigational assistance.
 * 5) Properly tag the talk page.

WP:CHICOTW week example
Yesterday, I created Old Colony Building (Chicago), Fisher Building (Chicago), McGraw-Hill Building (Chicago), & Victory Monument (Chicago). These were pages that I had earlier discovered had some ambiguities (which you can see by the parenthetical names). These are all examples of what the most basic Chicago Landmark Category:Stub-Class Chicago articles should look like. Stubs can look better than this, but I hope each page will at least look like these. Following the instructions herein should suffice. If you get adventurous you may also attempt to add Infobox building, Infobox nrhp, and some images and take the article to Category:Start-Class Chicago articles. If you stumble upon something interesting nominate it for WP:CHICOTW by naming it with a 25 word or less explanation of its import here. Also, list all newly created articles from the stubification drive here: WikiProject_Chicago. If any of the landmarks is at least 12 stories please add it to Template:Chicago Skyscrapers like I did here.

Brief text
Text is all that is required of an article. However, to increase the chances of surviving a WP:AFD challenge the following sections will improve the article's viability. In general you want to briefly define the title of the article. For a stub. even a few sentences can suffice. Text such as

XXXX is a building in the YYY community area of Chicago, Illinois. It was named a Chicago Landmark on Month day, Year. It was also added to the National Register of Historic Places on Month day, Year.

is a good start for a stub.

For a Landmark stub just adding an ==External links== section with one or two links would be fine. I would suggest the proper page from

*Chicago Landmark page *Emporis.com page (if it is a substantial existing building)

In order to find the proper emporis page do a google search with the name of the building and the word emporis.

However, proper citation like the examples in the section above would be better.

Stubs
Almost every WP:WPChi stub should have a Chicago-stub tag. In general, you should determine whether the article is about a person place or thing. For the WP:WPChi the general stubs for places are Chicago-geo-stub, which would replace the aforementioned stub. For a WP:WPChi thing (building or structure), generally Illinois-struct-stub is a good stub to add. For a person, many personalized stubs are available based on the persons role. At WP:STUBS, a search on "bio-stub" will lead you through the possibilities. There are no regional stubs listed, but common stubs may be US-business-bio-stub, US-screen-actor-stub, US-film-actor-stub, US-poli-bio-stub, or US-sport-bio-stub. For the Chicago Landmark project a common stub tag would be NRHP-stub.

Thus a typical stub section for a Chicago Landmark article might be Illinois-struct-stub NRHP-stub Chicago-stub

or

NRHP-stub Chicago-geo-stub

In addition, stubs such as US-theat-stub and Music-venue-stub may be common.

Categories
Most articles will fall into several easily identified categories. For WP:WPChi articles, several regional stubs can be found at our categories page which is used to determine article to add ChicagoWikiProject to. There are many other Category:Illinois categories that may be relevant, but in terms of the Chicago Landmark project generally one of the following subcategories of Category:Buildings and structures in Chicago will be included:

In addition one of the following should be added,


 * Category:Landmarks in Chicago

or


 * Category:Former buildings and structures of Chicago
 * Category:Destroyed landmarks

In most cases this gives us two quick categories. For several additional structures, the one or both of the following will also be relevant:


 * Category:National Historic Landmarks in Illinois
 * Category:National Register of Historic Places in Chicago

Then we can go to the footnoted page at Chicago Landmarks to find the date the building was completed which will in most cases give us an additional category such as:


 * Category:1922 architecture
 * Category:1920s architecture

Note that the categories should be alphabetized. Thus, pretty quickly we could have a category section that looks like this

Many other relevant categories can be easily found with some searching at WP:CATS such as


 * Category:Louis Sullivan buildings
 * Category:Frank Lloyd Wright buildings
 * Category:Gothic Revival architecture in Illinois

However, it is often convenient to look at similar buildings and determine relevant categories from them.

Templates
Good template serve as a good navigational aid. In general, a WP:WPChi article should be tagged with

Chicago

In addition, a National Register of Historic Places structure should have

Registered Historic Places

Chicago landmarks at least 12 stories high should have

Chicago Skyscrapers

You will have to edit the skyscraper tag to include the newly created article.

Chicago Landmark templates include the following:


 * Chicago Landmark skyscrapers
 * Chicago Landmark houses
 * Chicago Landmark districts
 * Chicago Landmark places of worship
 * Chicago Landmark performance venues

Thus, a tall WP:WPChi Chicago landmark could have a template section like this

Infobox
Often adding an infobox and a picture can take an article from stub to start class. A decent article with 4 or 5 meaty paragraphs a few good templates might get promoted to start. I am not asking you to create 4 or 5 meaty paragraphs here. In fact, an infobox is a bonus for what we are doing. However, if you are doing a National Register of Historic Places property use this infobox tool to create a Infobox nrhp that you can copy and paste into your stub. Other very useful infoboxes are Infobox building and Infobox artwork. However, most of these take a little time to understand how the parameters work.

Talk page
In general, you want to do your best to seek the attention of the proper interest groups for an article. The stubs, categories and templates all do this. In addition, the talk page can notify WikiProjects of relevant new articles.

For the Chicago Landmark project the following could be added to the talk page if an article is an NHRP property as well as a landmark. Of course, the relevance of lines 3 and 4 depends on the article.

For the Chicago Landmark project the following could be added to the talk page if an article is not an NHRP property as well as a landmark.

Most Wikiprojects have talk page banners. A couple of other common ones could be used as follows