Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/Archive/2008/June

This is an archive of discussions from WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals for the month of June 2008. Please move completed June discussions to this page as they are closed, add discussion headers to each proposal showing the result, and leave incomplete discussions on the Proposals page. After June, the remainder of the discussions will be moved to this page, whether stub types have been created or not.

Those who create a stub template/cat should be responsible for moving the discussion here and listing the stub type in the archive summary.

Stub proposers please note: Items tagged as "nocreate" or "no consensus" are welcome for re-proposal if and when circumstances are auspicious.


 * Discussion headers:
 * sfp create
 * sfp nocreate
 * sfp other (for no consensus)
 * sfp top for customized result description (use ).
 * Discussion footer: sfd bottom

I was just adding to the article Monotonix, an Israeli band, when I decided to see if there was a specific stub for Israeli bands. Noting that the existing stubs are as far flung as Danish and Korean bands, I nearly created it before noticing this area. There are 61 articles in the category for Israeli musical groups with four subcategories and surely many of those can only be stub class.  Red157 (talk • contribs) 23:53, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Changed stub name to what the cat would be, not the actual stub.  Red157 (talk • contribs) 00:06, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd certainly support an upmerged template (Israel-band-stub) - if there prove to be 60 or more stubs using it, a category could easily be speedied later. Grutness...wha?  03:36, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Speedy an upmerged template, per Grutification, and the existing by-country pattern. A stubsense/catscan/(whatever tool actually works this week) maven may be able to give you a fairly accurate count in advance, though, if you're desperate for the category too.  (To quibble, the concept of a "stub class article" is one that this project's never quite sussed out what it's supposed to mean, and the WP1.0ers have (IMO) never been in the least clear on, vis a vis "stub" per say, though it would be fair to say that for 99% of people, and 99% of articles, the two are treated as being interchangeable.)  Alai (talk) 11:17, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I hope I've done correct in both creating the template (Israel-band-stub) and the category . All that is left is for me to start adding the stubs to it. I can't say everything went to plan; due to carelessness on my part I created by accident.  Red157 (talk • contribs) 16:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Neither of those categories would have been in my plan, but I've speedied the latter, at least. As things are far from clear on the "numerosity" issue, I would recommend revisiting upmerger fairly soon, if this doesn't show at least some growth, beyond the one article we've heard of, and that now populates the type.  (One might also mention the small matter of the discussion period, though admittedly I did suggest a partial speedying.)  Alai (talk) 20:16, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * In fact, it was clear from the comments above that the template should have been upmerged (i.e., not have its own category). Still, we'll see if it grows to threshold - if not, it may need to be upmerged later. Grutness...wha?  00:44, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think it was entirely clear, as there seemed to be some sort of stream of consciousness argument that there must be 60 of them, someplace. But it was a little too speculative-sounding for my money.  Still waiting hopefully for that somewhat more concrete estimate...  Alai (talk) 01:02, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I apologise for any rashness on my part. I'm still a relative youth in this game and have always learned by doing on wikipedia, but I completely understanding at least removing the category if I don't find enough stubs to be placed in there. Though I was right enough in thinking most Israeli band articles are what I'd judge as stubs, just don't know if there's enough of them.  Red157 (talk • contribs) 21:33, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * No worries, no-one died. There's 52 in there now (nice sorting job), which to use the technical term is "pretty darn close to 60", so I'd suggest we put any immediate notions of upmerger on hold, in the hopes that another eight turn up on some reasonable timeframe.  Alai (talk) 22:49, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds fair enough to me. Grutness...wha?  00:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
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Upmerge following, S2 speedy SeveroTC 19:32, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
 * CzechRepublic-tennis-bio-stub (30)
 * Germany-tennis-bio-stub (50)
 * Spain-tennis-bio-stub (44)
 * Speedy these, and the two below. Support any country-level levels anyone is minded to create for both.  Alai (talk) 10:38, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
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SeveroTC 19:30, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Italy-boxing-bio-stub/ (61) &mdash; un-upmerge S1 Speedy
 * France-boxing-bio-stub (35) &mdash; upmerge S2 Speedy
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Looking through the fiddler articles I see quite a few stubs (see for example category:Fiddlers by nationality; the List of fiddlers talk page and historical changes suggest that there are many more on the way) . The most appropriate stub category currently available is Violinist stubs, but there are already nearly 300 "violinist" stubs, of which only a handful are fiddlers'. The editor population attracted to the "violinist" label, and the category's size, make me think that fiddler stub expansion won't go anywhere without its own category. — eitch 06:08, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Slightly cart before the horse, if the stub articles don't even exist yet, much less be getting much attention for expansion: see the "numerosity" clause in the stub type creation criteria.  However, if the music editors are satisfied this is a "clean" distinction in scope, I would suggest that an upmerged template be appropriate, until there's enough for a separate category.  (i.e., 60 of 'em.)  Alai (talk) 08:03, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It's true, but it's so much less work to say, in six months or something "Hey, this never did get populated... let's ditch it" than to call them all violinists, keep a count in userspace or something, and then go back through the stubs and re-sort them. ... An upmerged template sounds good, but I can't find anything that tells me what it is or how to do it. Tips? — eitch 02:27, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Created as fiddler-stub. Alai (talk) 03:48, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
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subtypes
This oversized and essentially useless category continues to plague us (and continues to be useless). Here's some possibilities, and their estimated sizes from the category tree: I'd take the numbers with a pinch of salt in this case, as many of them aren't in the "English" portion of the permcat tree, just stub-tagged that way, but they seem to at least indicate fairly strong prospects of viability. Alai (talk) 16:01, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 95
 * 195
 * 114
 * Looking at them as a split of the english bios all look reasonble, looking from the other end I would rather scientists and military were split along different lines, but these are needed to split English people and not the other end so suppoprt. Waacstats (talk) 08:00, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Believe me, that's the only reason I'm proposing them. I rather wish the parent would just go away, but it resolutely sits there, being oversized and such.  The worst of it is that there's such a large number of editors that insist on eradicating any trace of "British" identify from biographical articles that it'll continues to grow.  Alai (talk) 11:03, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
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Don't even ask me exactly what these are... I just know we have a lot of 'em! The are very oversized;  this would seem to split 'em roughly in two. I'll try to find a WPJ that would be able to tell if this makes any sense. Alai (talk) 12:59, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
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The mystery of why got so big is solved:  there's 150 of these. Alai (talk) 16:20, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Approved back in February. Her Pegship  (tis herself) 18:46, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
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Another long-standing oversized parent, I think this would possibly solve that at a stroke. There's anywhere up to 211 of these, if you believe the category hierarchy implicitly, but at any rate there's at least 65 that are directly in the permcat. Alai (talk) 20:56, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support, and a quick glance at the heirachy seems to suggest that the heirachy is not completly messed up. Waacstats (talk) 14:54, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support. Template would be Architecture-element-stub, I take it? We use Architecture-stub for the main form, and "Element-architecture-stub" sounds like it would have something to do with atomic physics. Grutness...wha?  01:31, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Not very consistent with the idea of arch/architecture being a "hierarchical element", though, is it? Anyway, stable door, etc.  I won't object if anyone moves it around to taste (within reason).  Might be worth keeping redirects.  Alai (talk) 01:38, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Entirely consistent with the various foo-term-stub types, I would have thought. In any case, we deliberately don't use "arch" any more, since it's ambiguous (these could be elements of arches!). Off to SFD it is... Grutness...wha?  02:27, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Nothing like a mid-discussion change of venue to "clarify" matters. But to respond to your additional tangent:  term-stub would be a logical parent, though it doesn't actually exist.  (It could just be a redirect to vocab-stub, actually.)  This would most definitely not be:  the "parent" is arch(itecture).  Alai (talk) 12:37, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I thought the discussion was pretty much finished - you pretty much indicated that you didn't mind if someone carted it off for a renaming, and the "stable door" comment fairly clearly suggested that it was all done and dusted. As to term-stub, that's pretty much my point. Geo-term-stub's logical parent is geo-stub - they relate more to the sort of editors who deal with geography than the sort of editors who deal with terminology in general, and in any case, there's no such template as term-stub. In exactly the same way, architecture-element-stub's logical parent is architecture-stub. We don't always use the part of the templatee name closest to the word stub as the principal parent. We usually do, but there are definite exceptions, usually for very good reasons (the various tv-station-stub types and tv-prog-stub types are also examples of this). In this case, there is a very good reasons. These aren't "element architecture stubs" - they don't have anything to do with the architecture of elements at all - we use various atomic physics stubs for that. No, this is for acrhitectural elements, as the category says. As such, calling it architecture-element-stub makes perfect sense. It also retains a logical grammatical order from the category - something you are usually very much in favour of. Grutness...wha?  13:02, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
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Did we approve this already? Rings a bell from someplace, seems to be 62 of them. As noted, parent oversized. Alai (talk) 20:41, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * You're probably thinking of, which got made about a month back. Support, anyway. Grutness...wha?  00:24, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Possibly, though I thought I'd thought of thinking of that. As it were.  It also occurred to me that it was the same sixty-odd articles getting triple-stubbed, but they do seem to actually be distinct.  Alai (talk) 00:27, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Gah - have you been listening to the Chills' song "I think I thought I'd something else to think about" again? :) Grutness...wha?  00:43, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
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Not one that would have occurred to me, but there seem to be exactly 60 of these in the oversized. Alai (talk) 20:39, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * We have articles about passports? Looks like it's needed so support Waacstats (talk) 21:23, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
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are oversized -- see WT:WSS/T for the gory details -- the Indians seem to be the only new nationality that're viable, at 64. Alai (talk) 15:35, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * support and template for any other nationality that is viable. Is it worth splitting out by continent? Waacstats (talk) 15:14, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
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73 of these, parent is oversized. Alai (talk) 16:07, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * supportAS with Poets below is it worth templates for other large countries and by continent categories.Waacstats (talk) 15:21, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
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is oversized, this is the most sensible subcat I can find; would be at least 275 of them. Nothing else by-genre seems to work (although, dismayingly, is responsible for 50 of these). Alai (talk) 17:47, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * What about story-collection-stub? We have poetry-collection-stub which seems to help with that category. Her Pegship  (tis herself) 18:43, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd be cool with that, if the population in that category tree really are collections, and not the sort of traditionally-broken permcat stuff like "stories by collection". Or it turns out to be otherwise populable.  Alai (talk) 00:44, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Holy Toledo. There are at least 74 items of 512K or fewer than 4 links, and 173 of 1000K, which would qualify for story-collection-stub. I will run some numbers on possible sf- and fantasy- types and get back to you. Her Pegship  (tis herself) 19:38, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * We already have those. Or did you mean sub-sub types for sf collections?  Alai (talk) 19:45, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * collections...Her Pegship  (tis herself) 20:36, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Isn't that a bit ambitious if there's "only" 200ish in total? But perhaps just create the upmerged templates now, and it'll all come out in the wash...  Alai (talk) 20:49, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * All that means is that I did a cursory count of articles under 3 levels of . If I remove 173 items from, isn't that at least a start? I can probably find more once CatScan comes back up; some of them are tucked into . Her Pegship  (tis herself) 22:59, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I meant upmerged templates for those latter two. I'm positively eager to see the collections as a whole split out.  Alai (talk) 23:08, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Okey dokey, then for clarity: story-collection-stub &, with upmerged fantasy-story-collection-stub and sf-collection-stub, right? Her Pegship  (tis herself) 22:35, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, precisely. Alai (talk) 00:10, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
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kabbalah-stub
At the moment these stubs are upmerged to Category:Judaism stubs, but there are now 71 so I propose Speedy creation (S1).Kathleen.wright5 06:19, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support speedying. Alai (talk) 12:54, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
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Category:Law enforcement stubs currently has 733 members and could usefully be split. I have made a new stub-template Template:Riot-control-stub. Is it any use to you? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 10:18, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It certainly not without its issues... I've tried to standardise the naming and coding somewhat.  Beyond that, we have no  permcat, so the scope doesn't seem as cut and dried as one might wish;  for that reason, it's also tricky to see whether it's going to be populable.  Any idea about that yourself?
 * On the broader question of what to do about the law enforcement stubs: first, enjoy our 67 articles worth of theoretical headroom.  It might not be a lot, but it leaves it in better shape than over 150 others that I'd be more concerned about tackling first.  However, if they are to be split, I'd suggest instead looking at a split by country (US- and UK-, unsurprisingly), or else by splitting about the bios and orgs.  Each of those looks to be numerically feasible.  Alai (talk) 13:11, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Pages ARWEN 37 and ARWEN ACE could be in class, for a start. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 17:53, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * should be in its own category Category:Riot-control stubs (which could be set up easily), not bundled into Category:Law enforcement stubs, else what is the purpose in having another stub class? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 17:58, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * , if anything: we keep the qualifier in noun form, rather than adjectivising it.  (After a long period of having an incoherent combination of the two.)  There is no point in creating a new stub type, if there's not a critical mass of stub to which it would apply.  You're looking for around sixty, not two, if you're not familiar with the guidelines.  Alai (talk) 18:25, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Agh - I've only just seen this. I've just listed Riot-control-stub at SFD, since there's no such permcat as and no indication that it would be a useful way to split the stubs! Grutness...wha?  02:23, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm certainly not convinced about a riot-control-stub, but looking at it is splittable - and a far more sensible split would be by country, which is a standard way to split stubs. Well over 100 of these stubs seem to relate to law enforcement in the US, and a US-law-enforcement-stub template would probably make far more sense than a riot-control-stub. Replacing the incorrect Law-enforcement-stub with the correct prison-stub and crime-bio-stub on the 100-odd prison and biography articles in this category would help a lot, too! Grutness...wha?  07:03, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
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-- by DoB
Permcat has next to no subcategorisation, so DoB seems to be the only viable option. Alai (talk) 16:45, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 190
 * 84
 * we've split so many other sports by DoB so I see no problem, especially as the only other option would be by position which does not seem to be categorised in many cases. Waacstats (talk) 15:54, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Do those categories even exist? If so, they've flown well below my radar.  Not necessarily a bad idea, if the info's in the article in some systematic way (like an infobox or a category).  Alai (talk) 00:11, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Appears that the caegorisation by position is poor because they don't eexist and from what I've seen position does not appear in many infobox. Waacstats (talk) 22:32, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah. That would certainly explain that.  Seems odd, since rugby (or perhaps more especially Union) seems to be one of the more position-stereotyped of ball sports.  I can cope with DoB if everyone else can.  Alai (talk) 23:40, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
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is oversized, this is the best I can come up with. Perhaps with upmerged templates for TV, radio, newspapers, etc. Alai (talk) 16:41, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support upmerged templates. Waacstats (talk) 21:34, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
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, by industry
Oversized. Following the pattern of the US split: The "service" one might be excessively broad. Alai (talk) 16:30, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 223
 * 164
 * 73
 * 63
 * And there's also from June 2007. Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself)  18:53, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Odd. I must investigate further...  Alai (talk) 00:45, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
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, and rest of said state
Parent is oversized, there seems to be 68 of these. More generally, we'll probably need upmerged templates, and regions -- whatever those are exactly. (There are and  permcats, for starters.)  Alai (talk) 16:14, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * support Category and upmerging templates. I think if this clears the virginia-geos off the list all well and good otherwise we will need some regionalisation.  Any WP we can contact regarding these if/when needed. Waacstats (talk) 15:28, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
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, by subdiv
Apparently undergoing rapid growth by a certain someone who evidently doesn't "do" stub proposals, but is at least willing to engage in stub-proposal proposals. Or proximity proposals, maybe that is. At any rate, if you read User_talk:Alai, you'll know all I currently know. Alai (talk) 00:42, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually there are 3 editors working on Burkina geo articles and I've more than done my part in helping wikipedia ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦       $1,000,000? 15:34, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I was just about to propose this. Also, when the editor started creating Burkina Faso geos en masse, he wasn't adding stubs to the short articles, so there are even more than the current 850...--Thomas.macmillan (talk) 12:44, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, I can confirm that Plateau-Central Region and Boucle du Mouhoun Region types are (very comfortably) viable, and which would be enough to do-oversize for now. Probably others are too, but this is obscured by systematic confusion between regions and provinces in the infoboxes' "first order subdivision" field.  Nor have they bothered creating regional-level cats.  If someone does so, I can easily pick up more accurate counts when the next db dump happens.  Alai (talk) 15:22, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * There are now near a 1000. I'd suggest spitting by the 45 provinces. Some of them will have to be upmerged until they have 60 but some of them already have like over 100 in some of the provinces. There are 3 editors working through them  ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦       $1,000,000? 15:27, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Very unlikely to be viable for quite some to come, since 900/45 is only about a third away to the threshold on average. Most of the regions will be plenty marginal enough.  However, I have no objection to provincial templates upmerged to regions (or upmerged to the parent, as could have been done quite some time ago, as I keep pointing out in such instances).  Alai (talk) 15:41, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

E.g Category:Ganzourgou Province now has over 200 stubs alone. The best thing indeed would probably to split by 13 first and then if these become too big in the future then they can be split by Province. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦      $1,000,000? 15:42, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed, I've just done a count by "secondary subivision" by infobox (which isn't going to be completely consistent, for the reasons noted above), and Ganzourgou, Banwa Province, Balé Province are all definitely viable. Bam Province is also at least quite close.  Everything else is shrapnel at present, though that might just be pending creation of another shedload.  Do we have any idea how many to expect in total?  Alai (talk) 15:55, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * And lastly for now, Centre-Nord Region is going to be viable once its components (including the aforementioned Bam) are added in. Provincial templates for all 45 provinces are probably the best plan, though it's a tad more work in the short term.  Alai (talk) 16:07, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd imagine eventually there will be around 10,000, that just towns and villages not including all the other geography stubs and the ones on departments, rivers etc. I would expect around 10,500 eventually. We are building the temmplates up at WikiProject Burkina Faso/Provincial templates by province. The first few templates give a typical insight to how many are in each province. They look hideous listed together with 45 templates on one page but we needed to keep track of progress and eventually aim at expanding them when info becomes avilabale. Note that Bam province is actually only half complete....  ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦       $1,000,000? 16:15, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Blofeld, Bam is 3/4 complete with more coming! Of course, we really should have the stub tag before Blofeld, EJF, and myself get to the region or province, whichever works best. However I think all region stub tags should be created on the spot and we can further divide into provinces after that. Yes it is true I don't exactly "do" stub proposals since I would much rather create the stub tag without all this stub-tag discussion. I'm an Editorofthewiki[citation needed] 18:35, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * If SBoS is even 1/4 right about the eventual numbers, we would be much better creating (upmerged) stub templates for all the provinces up front, rather than tagging by region, and then double-handling later. You may think that 'all this discussion' is somehow irksome, but in my experience, when a proposal is clearly guidelines-compliant, the amount of discussion required tends to be pretty minimal (and very often the "wait" likewise).  If a proposal (or unproposed course of action) isn't in line with the guidelines, then it's just as well to have the discussion up front, rather about to fix it after the fact.  Alai (talk) 00:01, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
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by... some sort of subdivision
Australian subdivisions seem to follow the UK model, which is to say, "total incomprehensibility to outsiders". Counting permcat numbers, would seem to be viable at v63, which may or may nor correspond to an LGA. I'm currently rummaging through infoboxes to see if those add up better. Alai (talk) 17:11, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The "LGA" search confirms an identical count for Ipswich, but throws up nothing else immediately viable. So beyond that, I'd need to make sense of the wider, probably informal, regions.  Alai (talk) 18:54, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * We already have some sub cats does this follow the same pattern. Also what do we use to tell Ipswich-geo-stub relating to a future stub type for Ipswich, England and Ipswich-geo-stub for Ipswich, Queensland apart. Waacstats (talk) 21:37, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Probably relatively far-future, since Ipswich isn't a UA, but good point. Probably IpswichAU-geo-stub, say.  Alai (talk) 22:34, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
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UK-tv-bios are oversized; there seems to be something like 116 that would go in this. Alai (talk) 17:01, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * support. Copies what we've done with the US. Waacstats (talk) 15:55, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
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The comp-sci stubs are rather large now; I believe there are around 81 on data structures that could be carved out. I shall keep plugging away to find other possible subtypes. Alai (talk) 22:23, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I haven't already proposed ? I shall do so now...  Alai (talk) 16:20, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
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subtypes
You know the drill. Alai (talk) 01:32, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 77
 * 88
 * support all of these, I think pop-rock has already been based and I think suggested hard rock in anouther discussion. Waacstats (talk) 08:15, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Would that be and ? if so, support. Nitpickily, Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself)  18:55, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Good point. This is why we have this page. Waacstats (talk) 21:32, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Y'know, I was a little surprised that one didn't go blue... Alai (talk) 00:48, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
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, by continent
For some countries there will be enough museums for seperate country museums like Greece and Korea etc (as has already been created) but for many museums in Africa etc I;d suggest splitting by continent first e.g Category:Africa museum stubs etc. There are currently 774 stubs in that category as is likely to increase considerably due to the activities of the new museum project  ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦       $1,000,000? 16:27, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support and seems speediable--Thomas.macmillan (talk) 19:59, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, so that's where they're coming from. Support templates for any-country-one-cares-to-name, which would certainly be speediable, and thereafter any categories that are numerically viable, either per-continent, UN geoscheme subregion, or country.  Normal attributive usage though, please (e.g. ).  Alai (talk) 00:05, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
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Of the upmerged Oceania bio stubs, PapuaNewGuinea-bio-stub has reached 85 articles, and Samoa-bio-stub 62. Speediable? – Liveste (talk • edits) 16:35, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Quite speediable, I'd say--Thomas.macmillan (talk) 18:48, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
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/ Ireland-reli-bio-stub
Irish people is oversized and this seems viable at 73 according to catscan. Could also act as a parent for. Waacstats (talk) 12:52, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
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Rabbi-stub
This stub should have had a Category a long time ago because I stopped counting when I got to F and 96 stubs. Currently under Category:Jewish biography stubs. Therefore I propose Speedy S1. Kathleen.wright5 03:20, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
 * According to what links here 452! I think this might just qualify it as speediable. Waacstats (talk) 07:50, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
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70 items that could use sport-equipment-stub; more sub-cats of to come. Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 18:43, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks like a good start on sorting out the dumping ground that is Waacstats (talk) 10:19, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
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We appear to have 60 articles for which US-legal-academic-bio-stub / would not go a miss. Waacstats (talk) 16:05, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
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Both the following would just about be viable splits from this oversized category Not to sure about the last name as it would map to which we already have a stub cat for. So do these just need resorting or do we need the new cat? Waacstats (talk) 15:49, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * / US-political-writer-stub (60)
 * / US-historian-writer-stub (96)
 * Resorting. While I could see splitting between historians who write mainly for a popular audience and those writing for an academic audience, the existing permanent categories don't support it and there would be POV issues about where some of them go.  I just added  as a parent of  to match what the permcats do. Even if there are no dupes, it won't make Cat:United States historian stubs oversized to resort those into the historian stubs. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  20:32, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't believe it's necessary for us to wait on a direct permcat parent, as in similar cases we have not baulked at semi-arbitrary intersections, if they're populable and seem useful. But here, I don't know it really is.  If anything, I don't think the historians-writing-for-an-academic-audience should be tagged with a -writer- type at all, but with an -academic-bio- one.  After all, a notable physicist must have written the odd paper or two, but we wouldn't tag them as "writers" on that basis alone.  Since those types continue to grow without limit, we probably need to make subtypes make explicit that someone is an academic of a particular discipline, as against having subtypes-that-aren't-really-subtypes, by discipline but without the academic qualifier.  Alai (talk) 20:56, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds like we are all saying that the historians should have US-historian-stub and not a writer one, correct. Waacstats (talk) 22:57, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
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Well, we knew this rather iffy one would arrive sooner or later. Given that we do have a, and also given that the country has been recognised by a pretty large cross-section of the world's nations, the geo-stubs from Kosovo (which have just reached 60 in number) can probably be afforded their own speediable category. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  12:29, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * About-bleedin'-time support. As Kosovo used to be an official subdiv anyway, the recognition issue ought not to have prevented us creating this category (it just should have given us reason to be careful about supercats).  Alai (talk) 17:26, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Created (and pre-emptively protected, given the trouble we had with the similar generic category) Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  08:34, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Probably wise. We're not going "double parent" on this one, then?  Alai (talk) 14:42, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
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Heading to oversized, according to catscan / Italy-reli-bio-stub would have 70 articles and a saint subcat. Waacstats (talk) 09:32, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
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10 National team rugbyleague-bio-stubs
Planning to create stub types for those major rugby league nations who do not current have one. Those being; PapuaNewGuinea-rugbyleague-bio-stub Samoa-rugbyleague-bio-stub Tonga-rugbyleague-bio-stub Fiji-rugbyleague-bio-stub Lebanon-rugbyleague-bio-stub SouthAfrica-rugbyleague-bio-stub Cooks-rugbyleague-bio-stub Ireland-rugbyleague-bio-stub Scotland-rugbyleague-bio-stub Wales-rugbyleague-bio-stub England-rugbyleague-bio-stub Will create in short order. Londo 06  12:11, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Can we assume these will be upmerged? The parent cat has only 240 articles therein. Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 15:13, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I know my knowledge of Rugby league is limited but are countries like Cook Islands and Lebanon really bigger than england (which we don't have a template for). Support upmerged templates by the way. Waacstats (talk) 21:32, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It is the national sport of Papua New Guinea and real big in Lebanon. The Cook Islands have a number of players, but I couldn't speak for the game out there. I have created the England stub also. Londo  06  11:27, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * England-rugbyleague-bio-stub would be viable also (and is missing). Is an Oceanian category viable? SeveroTC 21:55, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Renamed to CookIslands. We are talking of around 50+ articles for all the stubs to be created. Londo 06  19:50, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment - I have amended three of the proposals slightly to the standard "PapuaNewGuinea-", "Cooks-" and "SouthAfrica-" forms (check the naming guidelines - no gaps!). I'd support upmerged templates too, BTW, although they seem a little premature (to answer Waacstat's question, an appproximate world ranking would be Australia first, the England and New Zealand, then a significant gap to France, Scotland, Ireland, and Papua New Guinea, from there a bigger gap to the other countries listed. They all play the sport to some international level, but England would far outstrip most of them). Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  23:25, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Renamed back to Cooks- as per what is used in stub sorting! Please check other stub types relating to the Cook Islands, all of which use Cooks-. No objection to a redirect fromCookIslands-, though. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  22:31, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Created the remaining stubs and CookIslands as a redirect of Cooks. Londo  06  11:29, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
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UK-diplomat-stub is at 90 propose speedy creation of above category. Waacstats (talk) 20:30, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
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/ Canada-activist-stub
The Canadians are nearly over 800 this has about 70 according to catscan. Waacstats (talk) 13:56, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
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7 sports bios
All of the following are viable given rough figures. Waacstats (talk) 13:09, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
 * / Malaysia-footy-bio-stub (50) Malaysia-sport-bio-stub (50)
 * / Singapore-footy-bio-stub (40) Singapore-sport-bio-stub (35)
 * / Thailand-boxing-bio-stub (30) Thailand-sport-bio-stub (50)
 * / Taiwan-footy-bio-stub (35) Taiwan-sport-bio-stub (65)
 * / UAE-footy-bio-stub (30) UAE-cricket-bio-stub (30) UAE-sport-bio-stub (5)
 * / Zambia-footy-bio-stub (50) Zambia-sport-bio-stub (15)
 * / Fiji-rugbyunion-bio-stub (35) Fiji-sport-bio-stub (30)
 * Support all. SeveroTC 21:41, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support all, but... the UAE ones should be UnitedArabEmirates-footy-bio-stub, UnitedArabEmirates-cricket-bio-stub, and UnitedArabEmirates-sport-bio-stub per standard naming (the other names are fine as redirects) Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  23:31, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I've always used UAE, will have to remember that in future. Waacstats (talk) 07:54, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * as with New Zealand and a couple of other countries, we have UAE- types as redirects, but the main ones are at UnitedEtcEtc-. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  11:16, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, and for some inexplicable reason, we both spelt cricket with a capital C - I've fixed that :) Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  11:24, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * We should certainly have UAE- redirects (at least), since it's a standard abbreviation, which passes the redirect/disambig test in the article space. (NZ almost does so, but not quite, and is a much less familiar/standard one, for me at least.)  Alai (talk) 20:21, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
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/ Japan-business-bio-stub
Again Japan-bios are oversized Catscan gives over 100 articles (with one or two oddities). Waacstats (talk) 12:57, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
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Another one hovering below the 800 mark. / UK-music-bio-stub and UK-conductor-stub is viable and could act as a parent for existing musician, singer and record producer stub cats. Waacstats (talk) 16:04, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
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Just sorted to under 800 a / US-illustrator-stub would be viable. Catscan gives 55 that could take US-sculptor-stub and I am sure we could find the extra for a category but template first if it reaches 60. Waacstats (talk) 16:04, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
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{[sfp create}} Nearly oversized, undersorted to screen actor cat but I think it may be easier to sort if we finish off the template and create Waacstats (talk) 16:04, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Canada-film-actor-stub
 * Canada-stage-actor-stub
 * Canada-voice-actor-stub
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I was working on harness and noticed it had an inappropriate stub category. I looked at the list of stub types and found nothing that would group hardware, general misc equipment or gear together under one category of stub. This category could be further subdivided when appropriate, but other technology based stub types seem inappropriate for this type of article. I'm not hardover on the title but I think this one is a good top level name. -- T HE F OUNDERS I NTENT  TALK 15:40, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That the article is now a disambig, and the category has been deleted twice does not fill me with high hope, I must admit. Can you scope this in such a way that it a) corresponds to a permcat, b) would be populable, given the "numerosity" objective, and c) isn't too vague or broad for any practical utility?  Alai (talk) 18:51, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Normally, we'd use the fairly vague Tool-stub for this sort of thing, BTW. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  00:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Doesn't look like those articles would actually be in the permcat hierarchy, but rather .  An equipment-stub would be even more tremendously vague, however.  Alai (talk) 08:59, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Like I said, I'm not wrapped around the axle about the name, as long as it's reasonable of course. Equipment, hardware, or something of that nature which is missing from the the Stubs list.  I just can't find anything that I can use that isn't a big stretch.  I don't care if it's been deleted, maybe those folks didn't look hard enough to find articles, I don't know. Why is there a technology list and then an Other technology list? -- T HE F OUNDERS I NTENT  TALK 13:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The permanent category was deleted. There's no "numerosity" requirement for permcats, so if was deleted for lack of use, it must have been entirely unused.  But more to the point, I'm still not seeing either the need, or the utility.  Other technology?  I don't get the context.  Alai (talk) 16:28, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Never mind, I retract my request. Too many naysayers. -- T HE F OUNDERS I NTENT  TALK 18:28, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Eh, I didn't say "nay", I said, "please explain further how we could sensibly do this". You didn't.  Alai (talk) 14:57, 6 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The only stub category under seems to be, or if you go far enough you get to military items such as firearms & armor. What about something like "farm equipment" or "sports equipment" stubs? Viable? I'll have to look later. Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself)  14:34, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Those woul certainly make perfect scoping sense to this editor. Alai (talk) 00:17, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, I have done some hand-counting and find at least 70 items that could use sport-equipment-stub, and an additional 580+ that could use equipment-stub. I will do some sorting in this area and see if I can find any more viable sub-cats. Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 18:42, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
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I estimate that about 77 gov-stubs are for "gov-jobs" (rather than bios). Parent is (still) oversized. Alai (talk) 01:05, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * ...a natural subtype of the largish Job-stub, too. Support. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  02:33, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
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On its way to oversized propose the usual suspects Waacstats (talk) 16:04, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
 * / US-chemist-stub and US-biochemist-stub
 * / UK-chemist-stub and UK-biochemist-stub
 * Why not and, for the usual reasons of "horizontal consistency", and "basic sanity"?  Alai (talk) 17:23, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I normally use US/UK don't know why I didnt. Happy either way, I'm not that bothered by the distinction and get bored of arguments of both sides so which ever the closer decides. Waacstats (talk) 18:23, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
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Cook Islands stubs
We don't have a general Cook Islands stub type, I haven't done the numbers, but propose Cooks-stub/ pretty much regardless of size, although I think there's a fair few anyhow, including those articles tagged with Cooks-geo-stub. SeveroTC 22:52, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support. May as well throw in an upmerged Cooks-bio-stub and possibly a Cooks-politician-sutb while we are at it. Waacstats (talk) 23:00, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support as well. I tried to fix and gave up when I realized that no country-level stub even existed!--Thomas.macmillan (talk) 01:13, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support from me as well. It would probably be useful to have a generic stub template for every country by now, same as there is for geo-stubs (as listed at User:Grutness/Geo-stub list). Most (though not all) would probably reach threshold for separate categories, too (almost all the geo ones have now). Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  02:36, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * While I understand the logic behind Cooks-geo-stub, I have to say that Cooks-stub reads... oddly.  I'm not sure I wouldn't rather have the canonical template at CookIslands-stub, with a redirect.  Alai (talk) 23:09, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I must say that overall I tend to agree. Though we do try to make these thing uniform at Xs-stub for the X Islands, we do make one or two exceptions (The Channel Islands, for instance). perhaps The Cook Islands should be another of these. ISTR a similar point was implied at least with the recent rugby league stubs. It will mean reversing some redirects, but that shouldn't be too problematic. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  06:19, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

CookIslands-stub//CookIslands-bio-stub//CookIslands-politician-stub then. I'll take the geo- template to SfD. SeveroTC 22:04, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
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Is up over 700 making it one of the argest sport cats, I propose to split by playing position as we have done with its southern neighbour American football. Catscan shows the following would be viable and categories for any of the later that prove to be over 60. Waacstats (talk) 21:59, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Canadianfootball-widereceiver-stub /
 * Canadianfootball-runningback-stub /
 * Canadianfootball-offensive-lineman-stub /
 * Canadianfootball-linebacker-stub /
 * Canadianfootball-defensive-lineman-stub /
 * Canadianfootball-defensiveback-stub /
 * Canadianfootball-fullback-stub
 * Canadianfootball-placekicker-stub
 * Canadianfootball-punter-stub
 * Canadianfootball-quarterback-stub
 * Canadianfootball-returnspecialist-stub
 * Canadianfootball-slotback-stub
 * The problem I have with Canadian football stubs in general is that the vast majority of players are in fact from the United States and simply play in the Canadian Football League. should be sorted by nationality, not league, as should these.--Thomas.macmillan (talk) 15:50, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Not true. Firstly, half of all players in the CFL are Canadian and all, or nearly all, in CIS football and Canadian Junior Football League are Canadian. Secondly, Canadian football is not American football so the point is moot anyway; would we not have American fullback stubs because there are Association football fullback stubs? Double Blue  (Talk) 05:05, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The point is nonetheless true that we should be as clear as possible about what the intended scope is. Are we having a gridiron type, split by nationality?  Or are we having two distinct by-sport types?  Seemingly, on the basis of the template names, it's the latter, but we should be wary over possible confusion, and possible excess double-stubbing.  Alai (talk) 11:27, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I also wonder if some of these are a little over-specialised. Are slotbacks (template should be singular, btw) really career specialists, or do they cross over significantly with tight ends, wide receivers, or other flavours of back?  But if these guys are correctly sorted here in the first place, I agree in principle with the split.  Alai (talk) 18:56, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I have no idea about these, I saw that they are large and thought how do we split these? and this seemed the best way. Waacstats (talk) 20:21, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we could also create a -back- template, or something like that, and see if saves on excess double-stubbing. Alai (talk) 21:13, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm surprised you support the templates this way round, Alai, given that the major component is at the start rather than the middle :) I do too, though, and trust you, waacstats and whoever else to find the correct positional terminology for a sport I know less about than korfball or polo - i.e., nothing at all (Support) Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  23:50, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I think some of these verge on over specification. We don't even have either fullback-stub or slotback-stub  though I grant that with the 12th man and other rules differences, Canadian football uses the slotback position more.  Still it may be overkill to separate them from the running backs and the wide receivers at the stub level. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  00:27, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I thought 'slotback' was strictly particular to the Canuck variety -- no? Alai (talk) 01:10, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
 * In American gridiron, it refers to a position a running back or would start from in some offensive formations, but since American has only 11 players instead of the Canadian 12, its not used as often in American gridiron as it is in Canadian, so not all American football teams have a player specifically designated as such. However see this, this, and especially this for evidence that the slot back is not uniquely Canadian. It's just that the rule differences make it more common in Canadian football. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines 00:48, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Learn a new thing every day. Sounds as if it's not going to be a "career speciality" of any sort in the Amfoot- variety, don't know if it is in Canfoot-.  If we end up double-stubbing most of the people who'd use it with some other position, doesn't sound like it's worth it, even as an upmerged template.  Alai (talk) 01:13, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
 * If we create the templates which will have categories and then see what is left in the main category before creating any other templates. Create the other templates only if there are 30 or so that would not be double stubbed with another canfoot template.  How does that sound.Waacstats (talk) 15:04, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Support in principle. There may be some positions that could be combined as per Alai and Caerwine (and there are spelling corrections, obviously). Double Blue  (Talk) 05:10, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
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Another over 700 I propose splitting this in the same way as we have with Pennsylvania. Cat scan shows this would have 300 articles. Other states that I checked that would also be viable are California 89, North Carolina 122, Virginia 177, Illinois 62, Marland 143, Ohio 87, Georgia 148, massachusetts 83. Waacstats (talk) 21:59, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * / NewYork-Representative-stub
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tv-stubs are oversized, I think this would squeak to 63 or so. Alai (talk) 18:19, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Good idea. Is the template -tech- or -technology-?. Waacstats (talk) 15:04, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I was assuming the former, in line with tech-stub. Alai (talk) 17:51, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I think i've seen both and was wandering which way round it was. Waacstats (talk) 18:18, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
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Heading for oversized, we already have two subcats one for the English and one for those born in the 1940s Therefore we could goeither with templates for scotland, wales and NorthernIreland or for continuing the Decade of birth split. I propose we continue along the lines of decade of birth split. templates for each decade, category where it reaches 60. Waacstats (talk) 14:03, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support by-decade. "England" subcats are rather useless, given that it's the numerically dominant component, so becomes oversized almost as quick as the UK- version.  Creating the other "home nations" only encourages 'em.  Alai (talk) 14:23, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
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Recently proposed tempaltes for film, stage and voice have all reached 60+ propose be speedy created Waacstats (talk) 12:49, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Speedy indeed. Alai (talk) 13:10, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
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is oversized, this would certainly be viable. I thought we'd laready had this proposed, in fact... (under a slightly different name, or something?). Alai (talk) 18:05, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support, and it might also help with the oversized . Waacstats (talk) 13:02, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Back in October 2006 we approved, , , and , of which (as you see) two have been created. I support creation of . Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 15:20, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for clearing that up. Permcat uses "railway", so that would seem preferable.  Alai (talk) 17:28, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
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is oversized, this is viable at 61. Alai (talk) 17:33, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * While trying to sort Russia-stub, found that this was already created in March as .--Thomas.macmillan (talk) 18:01, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, close enough, I guess. Alai (talk) 18:07, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah-hah -- Russia-university-stub was double-catted, and otherwise broken. Fixed now.  Alai (talk) 18:11, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
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, by county
Oversized -- warning, bot at work. And others to follow -- probably near-alphabetically -- as they become viable. Alai (talk) 17:13, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support these and any along the same line that become viable. Waacstats (talk) 13:01, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Update: parent was heading towards 1400, so I decided to start catching up.  Now also viable:  Grudziądz, Inowrocław and Lipno counties.  Alai (talk) 03:11, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
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by decade
Oversized. Could readily be split into the following: Open to other ideas. Alai (talk) 16:59, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 87
 * 156
 * 251
 * Doesn't seem to be any other reasonable splits from the perm cat so Support. Waacstats (talk) 13:00, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
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I can only 55 of these at present, but since they're the largest by-country component of, they're enough to de-oversize it (... for now...), and since many of them won't even be in Europe, I suggest we wink at the shortfall, and trust that it'll grow soon enough anyway. Alai (talk) 11:13, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support. Waacstats (talk) 12:50, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
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'90s singles are oversized: as this is how we split the '00s, and indeed just about every album type, I'd think this might well be speediable. "Pop" would almost certainly be viable too, if someone cared to hand-sort (or even inspect the infoboxes). Alai (talk) 17:55, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
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Remaining country stubs
Propose the last few country stubs are created with categories and bio stubs upmerged, all regardless of size : SeveroTC 23:56, 26 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Support templates (with the very minor amendment I made to the Palau template) - but not categories. I'm not convinced this is "the last few" though - I'm sure there are others with geo-stubs that don't have generic stubs. I don't recall a NetherlandsAntilles-stub, Azores-stub, USVirginIslands-stub, AmericanSamoa-stub or NorthernMarianas-stub, to start with. And though you may quibble about the definition of "country", several of these are at least as nuch countries as some of those that exist - or indeed, a couple that you've proposed! Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  01:16, 27 June 2008 (UTC) (amended 08:29, 27 June 2008 (UTC))
 * Why "regardless of size"? Alai (talk) 05:37, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, that's a point - I hadn't noticed that. Templates is what I was thinking of 9and what i support). Categories can wait in most cases. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  08:29, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Categories are supported by number of articles now. SeveroTC 09:18, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Grand. The Vatican was the one that looked iffy to me...  Alai (talk) 17:53, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Don't we have agreement for all foo-stub, foo-bio-stub, foo-geo-stub and foo-politician-stub for all countries (for a given value of country). Either way Support
 * I think we in essence do, whether it's even been put that explicitly or so. If we don't, suggest we do so now.  Alai (talk) 23:06, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I must say that overall I tend to agree. Though we do try to make these thing uniform at Xs-stub for the X Islands, we do make one or two exceptions (The Channel Islands, for instance). perhaps The Cook Islands should be another of these. ISTR a similar point was implied at least with the recent rugby league stubs. It will mean reversing some redirects, but that shouldn't be too problematic. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  06:19, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Aimed for the section below and missed? Alai (talk) 10:43, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed so, and now moved. Someone must've added a new section while I wasn't looking. Support the cats for those with 60+ stubs now, BTW. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  13:40, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
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Close to oversized I propose splitting out a and  fed with as many country specific tempaltes as people want and then continent-tv-bio-stub. Waacstats (talk) 16:04, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Weak oppose of continental templates (for the usual reasons); support everything else -- nay, speedy.  Alai (talk) 17:20, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * If someone wants to create all the templates I have no problem with that, if I start I'll get bored after 4 or 5. Waacstats (talk) 06:55, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That's why it's only a weak oppose. :) If you need complete coverage to start sorting, I do sympathise for the need as a matter of practicality.  Alternatively, you could start with the most numerous, and then create some more on-the-fly...  In fact. now that I think of it, let me crunch some numbers on the last db dump, which finished building here overnight:  Ireland 15, T&T 13, Philippines 11, New Zealand 10, Mexico 9, Pakistan 8, HK 7, Argentina 5, Germany 4.  (Results probably somewhat wonky due to lack of a consistent structure under, but ought to be more or less safe underestimates.)  Alai (talk) 08:40, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
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Split oh historian-stub
Category is around 800, definitely could use some attention, though I don't have any specific numbers or suggestions.--Thomas.macmillan (talk) 13:57, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorted closer to well below 700, catscan says there are 62 articles in and a subcat of  so I propose Germany-historian-stub and  Waacstats (talk) 14:48, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Bit late on this, but was just about to action. CatScan gives only 48 articles in the parent and a subcat of  - there are about 15 more in . I'll go ahead with the template for those currently marked historian-stub but I'll leave off the art historian ones now and also the category as without them it doesn't meet threshold. SeveroTC 21:54, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
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do-over?
The East/West split that was apparently agreed earlier doesn't seem to be happening. I certainly won't be making it happen, since it doesn't align to any permcats, at least with detectable populations. Should we be looking at this again? Alai (talk) 11:00, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support from me for that (though you already knew that - see the psych stubs split below for details). Problem is, of course, that we're veering into "Unrecognised states" territory with these - though the boundaries of Ross Dependency are well-enough agreed for a separate permcat, and the Antarctic Peninsula also has one, most regional claims are overlapping and trying to split this any other way looks fairly unappealing (arbitrarily carving off sectors according to longitude, perhaps?). Perhaps Antarctica is the one area where dividing things by type of feature does make some sense, though I'd like to think that another way is possible. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  02:48, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Since I was a proponent of the East/West split in the first place, I guess I should attempt a restubbing to see if its salvageable. Early efforts look promising, just tedious, and likely to affect any effort to sort these. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  04:55, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * (Header fix: oops.  Meant the geos, of course.)  The only sub-region that seems to have a viable permcatwise population is the, but that gets into the realm of political claims, and isn't even contained within either of the above.  Landformwise looks pretty straightforward, and might even make sense in some cases -- I bet there's a lot of double-stubbing of the glaciers, for example.  However, if the efforts of our brave volunteer pay off, I'm happy just so long as it makes it off (or at least down) the list.  Alai (talk) 09:07, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Problem with Ross Dependency is that it is split between East and West Antarctica. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines 16:45, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That's just one of the problems, as I mentioned. Alai (talk) 19:16, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I haven't been whacking at this as fast I ought to, but the East Antarctic stub is now large enough for a category of its own. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines 04:45, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
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Canadian ice hockey players
A couple of the by position categories (winger and defenceman) are over 700 and there is undersorting to these from the player category. I propose we split these by decade of birth. templates upmerged except where they reach 60.Waacstats (talk) 21:59, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
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UK-bishops are oversized. I think a large chunk are pre-reformation, though it's hard to be sure, since the contents of the permcat are, basically, completely nonsense. Should be possible to busk it from the dates. (The nonsensical permcat is also scoped as England and Wales, but I don't see any point in not going with the broader scope.) Alai (talk) 16:00, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support. I seem to recall having a similar problem when I tried to sort them before.Waacstats (talk) 15:15, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Just one question, template name? UK-prefeformation-bishop-stub or similar. Waacstats (talk) 15:51, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I can't think of anything better, to be honest. Other than spelling it correctly, that is...  Alai (talk) 18:06, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * My excuse is I did a Maths degree and never needed to spell. Anyway UK-prereformation-bishop-stub I get most things right second time around. Waacstats (talk) 21:21, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Oppose Shouldn't any such pre-reformation stubs already be using UK-RC-bishop-stub/?  At only 97 stubs, that existing stub type is hardly going to be overwhelmed by sorting through the parent.  Plus the existing ChurchofEngland-bishop-stub should also serve to diffuse most of the rest. The British bishops need sorting into the existing subtypes at the moment, not creating a new subtype. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  01:50, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Uh, which are which? Tagging a pre-ref Eng bish as either of the above is going to be see as at best POV, and at worst causus belli for a full-scale revert-and-flame war.  (Admittedly the Scottish case is rather different, on which basis it might be argued that restricting it to England might be the better plan.)  IMO much better to treat it as a de facto distinct denomination from either, serving double duty wrt to historical period.  Alai (talk) 02:21, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Looking at the existing stubs marked with UK-RC-bishop-stub or ChurchofEngland-bishop-stub doesn't seem to indicate a problem with revert wars if we use the former to indicate those who acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope and the latter to indicate those that acknowledged the supremacy of the King. Nor does structure of the existing permcats indicate that it would be a problem either.  The desire for the difference between pre- and post-Reformation appears to be a desire to organize the categories for the individual bishoprics existing at the time of the Reformation so to emphasize the continuity of each despite the change in the acknowledge supreme earthly authority, not any disputes over whether the pre-Reformation bishops were Catholic. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  06:12, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That's just the point: both sides claim(ed) ownership not just of the church itself, in England, but of the tag "catholic".  Hence among other things, the insistence on (and dislike of the insistence on) "Roman" as a qualifier and modifier, in some parts.  Just as we have, rather than tagging these types with RC- or Orthodox- on some mysterious basis.  If these get sorted on the basis you suggest I'm not going to object, but it certainly won't be anything I'm tackling myself.  Alai (talk) 10:47, 13 June 2008 (UTC)


 * After a cursory read of the articles on the English Reformation and Anglicanism, may I suggest something like PreReformation-Anglican-bishop-stub? I do think that the term "United Kingdom" should be left out of it, as the UK didn't exist at the time. Just a thought. Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 04:07, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
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, by region
650 stubs in this category. Most are from the Kara Region but gradually the other towns and villages in other regions will be added to. I'd upmerge them for now. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦      $1,000,000? 16:02, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Greetings, Sir Blofeld! These were approved in May; templates are listed for creation on the To Create page. HTH, Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 16:20, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Ahhh I was slow. Thanks. Hope you are well  ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦       $1,000,000? 16:24, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I've just ran the numbers on this, and things don't seem to have changed significantly: only one region is currently viable, or which three of the five sub-divs also are.  For the sake of symmetry, however, it wouldn't be too soon to create templates (upmerged as required) for all the prefectures.  Alai (talk) 00:09, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
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More butterflies
User:Wloveral's been working through the butterfly stubs, and tells me that all families of butterfly bar Riodinidae have their own stub templates. I'd like to propose a Riodinidae-stub template, with a separate category if and when we can find 60 stubs for it. The template's probably speediable, given that all the other families have similar templates. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  00:24, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I hate to tempt fate, and get the usual barrage of "oppose all stub-sorting!" and "move for change of venue!" non sequiturs such a move seems to cause (when it doesn't simply get tumbleweeds and stony silence), but just in case this turns out to be an "old, bad taxon", we should probably heads-up the lepidopterans via their WPJ. Otherwise, support, and all-due-speedy.  Alai (talk) 17:04, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I've dropped them a line. Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 02:59, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * No reason not to have a category for this family, about 1000 species when all species are covered (but presently seems like there are only 15 species pages - so may need to wait for more stubs) and should be in line with nymphalidae-stub, papilionidae-stub etc. Shyamal (talk) 11:41, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
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Split of
Cat is oversized, suggest splitting into regional categories, , ,. Sorting will be very easy as all countries have been sorted into national templates.--Thomas.macmillan (talk) 02:20, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment - we've used Southeast Asia as a regional split before now, perhaps it would be useful here too. I suspect this could be the next equivalent of the geo-stubs "list and regularly count" method - there are a lot of countries quite close to threshold, with several of those asian ones around the 50-stub mark. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  02:39, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * IMO, we should be using the UN geoscheme for all sub-continental splits. Alai (talk) 10:57, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Category currently has just over 700 articles so no rush to split yet, some of those around 50 countries could make it to 60 before the category reches 60. That said I'm not necessarily opposed to a regional split.Waacstats (talk) 13:06, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Just for the record, Bangladesh passed 60 and I de-upmerged the category.--Thomas.macmillan (talk) 07:03, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
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, by region?
I can't find any officially-defined regions for Mexico, but unfortunately it's oversized, and the states are too small. For the sake of argument, what about using the five broad regions defined here? Alai (talk) 18:59, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd prefer to think about state-specific templates first and seeing whether any reach cat threshold. That might at least lower the overall population a bit. The idea of splitting by broad regions is OK, but as a later resort if the states don't work out by themselves. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  01:05, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * They don't, as I've said. Unless there's vast undercatting and someone can fix that by doing the split but hand, by the numbers (800/30) on that score don't exactly look encouraging.  Naturally there would be per-state upmerged template (and no regional templates, topically enough).  Alai (talk) 10:54, 30 June 2008 (UTC)


 * So would this be "create regional categories for upmerged state templates"? Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 03:15, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
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and -- counsel of despair?
There was some discussion of these stubs at the astro-objects WPJ, the trend of which seems to be that no-one really wants these articles, aside from the couple of people that have been creating them. No sign of a mass trend of deletion or merger yet, however. In the meantime, the mass-created articles are totally swamping the relatively few articles that have meaningful data, that have actually received some attention from editors. From a stub-sorting POV these are in effect, unsortable on any data-driven criteria, due to an absence of said data. Accordingly, I suggest we set up one or more "dumping ground" categories for those lacking some agreed threshold. For example, with no infobox, or no text beyond the form-letter minimum used by the auto-creations, or lacking meaningful infobox/category data, like family and spectral class. I realize this is perilously close to the revenge of the return of "sub-stubs", but it's the only way I can see forward. Alai (talk) 21:21, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * For want of a better idea, I suspect that most of the notavble asteroids have low numbers. Could we create subcategories by number (, etc)? using 10k-asteroid-stub, 15k-asteroid-stub etc as templates? Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  02:55, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd be up for that (but it might just be the despair talking). Alai (talk) 03:54, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * We need some place to put them while we figure out what to do with them. Once we get a consensus, it'll be much easier to find them if we have them in one place.--Aervanath lives in <b style="color:green;">the Orphanage</b> 02:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
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Split of
While far from oversized (360 at the moment), this category is missing a few templates and categories which would be quite useful. Propose Europe-protected-area-stub, Asia-protected-area-stub (has category but not template), Canada-protected-area-stub (already has two potential sub-cats) and SouthAm-protected-area-stub and categories when past 60.--Thomas.macmillan (talk) 15:37, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Continental categories but not templates = a good thing. Support upmerged per-country templates, oppose continental templates.  Alai (talk) 16:25, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support I disagree with Alai, having 50 odd templates linking to one category = almost the entire first column = not good. Waacstats (talk) 18:09, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * And systematic double-handling, and confusion caused by subsequent deletion, would be what? Alai (talk) 18:12, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Probably just as much mess, but I think unless someone is willing to create all the templates (and yes I did create the last 20 or so asia-politicians to try and clear it) then it is better to have a number of country templates and a continent template than have articles that should be in the category but are not because there is no template for ,say,, oman-protected-area-stub. Waacstats (talk) 12:57, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I do agree that creating all the templates is a bit of a chore. (I'm rarely in the right OS to use AWB, so that isn't much of a help.)  The only comfort on that score is that one doesn't need to do it all at once, but either entirely as-needed, or in chunks.  Alai (talk) 13:20, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
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China's still something of a mess, due to being an ad hoc mixture of Chinese language and history, and the 2 1/2 modern states. As there are new four PRC-specific stub types, an actual national parent seems only sensible. (I'm not promising to rush to re-sort the myself, mind you, though it might be worthwhile putting it on the list.)  Alai (talk) 15:40, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support this is a sensible idea, however we are talking about China which very often leads the other way. Waacstats (talk) 12:51, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
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Split of
While not oversized by any stretch (currently around 360 articles), I propose a NBA-stub (or perhaps NationalBasketballAssociation-stub?) as well as a National-basketball-federation-stub upmerged template for the time being. The NBA stub is a definite for a category based on first glance.--Thomas.macmillan (talk) 06:14, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps a US-basketball-stub would be better? Trouble with the NBA is that it'll take almost all the US stubs, but will leave any annoying handful around in the parent...  Alai (talk) 10:55, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd support Alai's suggestion. I'm amazed we don't have that. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  13:40, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The problem with that is that the NBA is a multinational league, with one team currently in Canada and few others throughout history. A way to get rid of the non-NBA stubs might be a basketball-league-stub, perhaps as a part to a NBA-stub?--Thomas.macmillan (talk) 15:52, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, I missed that. I have a sneaking suspicion that if we create a NBA-stub, it'll end up on numerous bios and the like, spuriously.  If we can scope the text in such a way as to make that less likely, all to the good.  Alai (talk) 17:23, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
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The metal albums are relentless! Only plus side is, the 18 months the crapflood of all these album stubs will be divided into, which it's remotely conceivable might take the load off for a while! Or not! At any rate, 73 of these. "Doom metal" is following along, currently at 53... Alai (talk) 16:53, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * support also template and (and cat if it creeps over 60) for doom metal. (I recently sorted these and wouldn't be surprised if Doom goes over)Waacstats (talk) 15:49, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
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Italian art - need a more generic stub
I've been coming across various articles about paintings and art collections in Italy that have been tagged with Italy-artist-stub to indicate a connection with art in Italy because there isn't a Italy-artist-stub. I've now switched them to Italy-stub but given that we have various "specific" Italian art stub types, it would be nice to have a more "generic", "catchall" stub. I'd guess there's probably 15-20 articles in the general art-stub and Italy-artist-stub categories, and I'd guess 40 or more generic Italy stubs that would fit. There could be scope for art stubs in other countries as well? FlagSteward (talk) 15:03, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd support a double-upmerged template until such time as the numerosity situation becomes clearer. Alai (talk) 16:15, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
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: regional lumping?
Another oversized Indian state, with "too many" districts: I can't find anything with more than 40 articles. If I can find some regions to upmerge to that I can get away with... The TN article mentions the regions of Chettinad and Tirunelveli, as well as four Tamil_Nadu_Police. These could stand to be better-defined, though. Alai (talk) 12:37, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * those regions seem to be subdivisions of the districts and I don't think the Police districts are much use as I can't find any where saying which districts fall where. It may be a case of templates for each district and hoping something reaches 60 sooner rather than later unless someone can come up with something better. Waacstats (talk) 21:31, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
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subtypes
In the latter case, I'm taking the liberty of inferring "folk rock" from simultaneous presence in a "rock" stub type, and a "folk" permcat... Alai (talk) 01:26, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 92
 * 67
 * Support seems a reasonble inferance.


 * Support with same nit as picked above: and . Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself)  18:59, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, fixed. Alai (talk) 18:09, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
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70 of these by category. Parent is traditionally (and currently) oversized. Alai (talk) 23:47, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
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: subtypes by branch, or thereabouts?
There's also the previously-mooted prospect of a, which would be populable on the face of it, at 176 according to the cat-hierarchy: unsurprisingly, though, about 114 of those are also candidates for clin-psych.
 * 437
 * 196
 * 72
 * 67

I'd propose to start with, since that has has the largest number of direction categorisations, so seems the safest bet, and work from there. Alai (talk) 21:44, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * There's bound to be some overlap, butt I'd say go for it. I'd be tempted to make the perception category a, since the two are so closely allied, but then I'll admit to bias on that point. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  00:31, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * There's not an obvious parent in the permcat hierarchy for those two, so perhaps you should be rebiasing those, in the first instance... I skipped  as ludicrously broad in categorical terms, and  turns up not in "branches", but in "theories".  Is that a better axis?  Search me.  If they happened to get a moment in between sorting  (hint, hint), perhaps someone familiar with this area could examine the permcats for sanity of mapping to various stub options...  (hint, hint, hint!)  Alai (talk) 00:44, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Hey, don't look at me - I've been too busy shovelling out some of the backlog at SFD :) And until someone explains this East/West Antarctica business definitively to a part of the world than never uses those terms (i.e., everywhere outside the US), I'm not likely to sort much there... Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  02:04, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh. Maybe we should be looking at a split of the Antarctics that does actually conform to the permcats, then...  Alai (talk) 02:08, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd definitely agree to that - SouthOrkney-geo-stub, SouthShetland-geo-stub, RossDependency-geo-stub and AntarcticPeninsula-geo-stub would all match the permcats and make far more sense as far as I'm concerned. But this is all getting to be a bit too much of a digression, no? Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  06:23, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * OK you two, so what about the psych stubs?? Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 22:42, 12 June 2008 (UTC) uppity new admin
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subtypes
Another long-term oversized type, that I submit we have to bite the bullet on sooner or later. Alai (talk) 20:28, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 392
 * 65
 * 109
 * I assume the 1990 & 2000 cats should be etc or am I miss reading this somewhere. Assuming no miss reading Support Waacstats (talk) 14:41, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * For some reason, "series" doesn't appear in the by-decade permcats. I don't know if there's any particular logic to that.  Alai (talk) 00:15, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
 * In that case I'll support anyway. Waacstats (talk) 14:53, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
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To help deal with the -- again, all other/betters ideas also sought. No apparent problem with size here: I see over 100, plus would supercat  and, I assume. Alai (talk) 18:26, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Skull stubs were approved back in October 2006; does this help? your archivist, Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 18:49, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
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I count 53 of these, and the med-stubs are, is as traditional, huge. Anyone find another 7 for me, advocate winking at the shortfall, or think of a better idea? Alai (talk) 18:17, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support idea but I know we have a so are we using term or terminology in any other categories. Waacstats (talk) 21:26, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The permcats in both instances appear to use "term", so I'd go with that. Alai (talk) 16:22, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
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subtypes
This is a long-term-oversized stub type with huge and twisty category tree that I'm going to propose tackling in a fairly gradualist manner, so as to try to minimise overlap, and incoherent transitivity of the category tree. I may have more to follow during the run of this proposal, but if anyone else has any ideas, I'd love to hear 'em. Alai (talk) 17:49, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 60
 * 68
 * Strongly suggest getting WP:PHARM project support for this 1st :-) David Ruben Talk 19:50, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * They've been notified. Last time I checked, their only comment was to quibble about the link being broken (in a fairly obviously fixable manner).  Beyond that, qui tacet consentire videtur.  Alai (talk) 00:55, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
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subtypes
Yes, oversized! What, you guessed? Some possibility to re-sort s'more to and to, but those won't hold us for long, if at all. In due course I suspect we'll be needing: If they can't be made viable in the short-term, I may have to settle for upmerged templates. Alai (talk) 16:09, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 42
 * 34
 * support as upmerged templates till they reach 60. Waacstats (talk) 08:05, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
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The Kerala-geos are oversized, no single district appears to be over threshold. Suggest upmerged templates, feeding into historic regions, starting with this one. Alai (talk) 00:43, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Districts of Kerala seem to suggest there are 14 districts, atleast one of which must be oversized (800/14=57ish). So maybe upmerged templates for each district and some hand sorting will find atleast one district over 60.  otherwsie we will have to go with Malabar. Waacstats (talk) 07:53, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Good point! I was simply going by infobox data, which must be somewhat sparse.  Sounds like if someone hand-sorts we'll be, well, sorted...  Alai (talk) 11:07, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
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Sub-stubs could subsequently be created for tobacco, pipe smoking, etc. My use case here is Dokha, which I've just created. — Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   02:01, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Are there enough of them to warrant even one stub type? There used to be a stub type for this a couple of years ago, but IIRC it was deleted as being virtually totally unused. I realise WP has grown a lot since then, but I still wonder just how useful this would be. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  02:27, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It was tobacco-stub which was itself a expansion of cigar-stub. It was deleted back in April 2006, before we started having upmerged stubs as a possibility.  If smoking-stub were to also include cannabis, I think it would have enough to support an upmerged stub template to . Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  03:51, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah... that might work. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  06:33, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That's in line with the permcats, certainly, though of course MJ isn't always smoked, so it's not a completely clean split by substance. But certainly an upmerged template seems like a good plan.  Alai (talk) 11:23, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps something like recreational-drug-stub might be a cleaner and wider-scoped solution? That would certainly have close to the numbers for its own category, and could even conceivably take as a subtype. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  12:46, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * ...then again, it looks like there is no, so perhaps that's a non-starter, sadly. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  12:47, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * If I recall correctly the gist of the discussion when we were splitting up the pharm-stubs, there was strong opposition from the nearest-neighbour WPJ about anything that even had a whiff of a "recreational drugs" vs. "pharmaceutical medicines" demarcation. Alai (talk) 12:54, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Taking a look at the perm cats, it looks like one possibility might be (permcat ) as a child of both  and, though the permcat needs work too. By the way, it also looks like is in need of a rename to  to match the change in name several years ago of its parent from  to. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines 17:07, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Odd one: looks as if the one was moved shortly after the other was created, making them a mismatch for almost their entire joint existence.  I support hauling this off to SFR, unless someone can think of some technical excuse, or wishes to boldly IAR, for renaming.  Alai (talk) 09:04, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * "Joint existence"? Hm. In any case, yes, a rename looks like it might be necessary. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  01:03, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * As in "the period of time when both were extant". Alai (talk) 08:07, 6 June 2008 (UTC)


 * It looks like there are over 100 articles under that could qualify, in such categories as cigars, cigarette brands, pipe smoking, cigarette rolling papers, tobacco cessation, and cannabis. Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself)  20:33, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
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Create
 * Opera-bio-stub
 * Opera-struct-stub
 * Italian-opera-stub
 * French-opera-stub
 * English-opera-stub
 * German-opera-stub

---

split -- deja vu all over again
Recall these? How we split them by language? They were mass-undone for our trouble. Two axes appear to be viable: or I don't mind which, just so long as it sticks this time, and whatever WPJ input we might get is at least vaguely stub-guideline compliant. Alai (talk) 16:47, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 95
 * 140
 * 120
 * 140
 * 103
 * 78
 * 56
 * Might be an idea to speak to the Opera project to see what they want, It was one of them that undid the split I believe. Waacstats (talk) 17:58, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Which is one reason I'm highly hesitant about their "input". Alai (talk) 18:06, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Here is the discussion wherein the opera folks decided on a course and acted upon it (without, I believe, discussing it here). I have suggested that they come by and give us their 2 pfennige. El Grutness beat me to it. <g> Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 03:16, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Waacstats (of WP:WSS) was invited to take part in the discussion - just as I invited you to take part in the current one. When a large number of articles are involved it's essential to talk to all involved. -- Klein  zach  06:40, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, it was me who invited you to takee part in the current discussion. Since it's a stub-related issue, the discussions take place here, which is the central site for all stub-related discussions. As I said at the time of my invitation, anyone from the Opera project is more than welcome to join in here to help find the best way to split this category. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  09:35, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The discussion can't take place if no-one informs us. Why did it take 6 days to tell the Opera Project? -- Klein zach  11:34, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Given the nature of the "input" (rampant WP:OWNership, bold-faced melodrama, and demands that we ignore all normal stub-sorting criteria), and just how predictable that all was, I think a more pressing question is, why did we bother informing you at all? Alai (talk) 12:28, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * You didn't. I discovered the changes being made and a message was hastily put on the Opera Project. And you quote WP:OWNership! Well, this is certainly owned by you. Nobody else knew about it! -- Klein  zach  14:45, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That's a remarkable construction on events. I think you might need to also review WP:AGF.  Alai (talk) 16:30, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I've just informed the Opera Wproject. Hopefully we'll get some clearer idea from them which is the more appropriate. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  03:12, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The previous discussion indicated that WP:Opera was most interested in classification by composer, which because few composers will have 60 operas let alone 60 stub articles about their operas, doesn't work well for stub sorting. However there's another axis that might work, though it doesn't match the existing categories.
 * Austria-opera-stub /
 * France-opera-stub /
 * Germany-opera-stub /
 * Italy-opera-stub /
 * etc.
 * Just throwing out another idea. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines 03:57, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That sounds fine to me, if the operistas would find it useful/acceptable/something they wouldn't unilaterally revert without at least telling us. A bit harder to bot-crunch, for the reasons you mention.  Alai (talk) 10:49, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Please have the courtesy to stop changing these cats until the editors at the Opera Project had had a chance to comment. I see some 60 or 70 changes have already been made to opera stubs by Pegship - changing librettists' opera stubs into playwrights stubs etc. Can this please stop? For your information we had a similar situation in December (see here). At that time the Opera Project decided against subdividing the stub tag/cat by language. -- Klein zach  04:17, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I have been sorting out the people in into other more appropriate stub cats - such as playwright-stub for librettists, theat-bio-stub for managers, composer-stub, opera-singer-stub &c. A librettist is not an opera, thus does not belong in a stub category for operas. Splitting the stubs by language or period creates necessary distinctions for editors who may specialize in those areas, not to mention breaking the stubs cats into workable sizes, which is less likely to deter editors than a 700+ category. The stub system is not "owned" by either the Opera project or the stub project; the Opera project knows opera, the WPSS knows stubs. Trust us. Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself)  05:08, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Stubs are part of a larger system. If you remove the opera stub it means that the article may not be picked up by bot (or manual) sorting and put in Category:WikiProject Opera articles. It then falls off the radar and is not picked up in bot-created cleanup listing etc. (The project has about 5,000 articles so maintenance is demanding.) It also means that the article is picked up by an unrelated project.
 * There is little logic behind the changes you are making. Somebody who has spent his whole life in opera administration should not be given a theat-bio-stub (with subsequent bannering by the unrelated Theatre project). Someone who is only notable as an opera librettist should not be given a playwright-stub (with a similar result).
 * The Opera Project is using the stubs everyday. Why not trust them to decide what is practical? -- Klein  zach  06:07, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The stub-sorting project is using them every day, too - and finding the size of the category to be nearing the point at which it needs splitting. You seem to be a little confused about what stub templates are, though you're right about one thing: stubs are indeed party of a much larger system - larger than just your one WikiProject. There are thousands of stub types covering over half a million articles. They are not for the benefit of any one specific WikiProject; they are intended to be used by all editors across the entirety of Wikipedia. If you want articles to be marked for sorting by a specific WikiProject, you should use a WP talk-page banner assessment template. I find your comment that the article might be in danger of being picked up by another project both faintly concerning - if another WikiProject improves the article, has harm been done? Or are you for some reason jealous that one of your project's articles might be edited by other editors? Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  09:29, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep It's fine as it is. Splitting the stub by language, period, composers or whatever is impractical. It only creates unnecessary maintenance work - and acts as a deterrent to new editors who will be put off by complicated choices. If it ain't broke. . .  -- Klein  zach  04:28, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment A stub category with over 800 articles is considered broken because it is too large, and this tye is nearing being broken.  That said, a librettist who is not notable for non-operatic work should probably be double stubbed with both playwright-stub and opera-stub (which is about the genre, not just for individual operas, as its parent cat is  not .  Perhaps opera-bio-stub/ as a catchall for the various opera related professions? Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  05:28, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment No one involved in opera editing has said the stub category is broken. The project has just had bot runs without any related problems. -- Klein zach  06:15, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * (ec)Further background: There was a discussion in both Deletion and Proposals about operas by language, in April 2007. Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 05:37, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps no-one involved in opera editing said that the stub category was close to being broken because none of them are regularly involved in stub sorting. If they had been, they would probably have proposed some form of split here themselves. But that is beside the point. The point is that from the point of view of stub sorting, this category needs splitting. As such, a split is likely to happen sometime soon. It would be nice if we could find a way to split this that is not going to cause problems for the opera project - and as such it would be useful for us if you could suggest the best possible split, given that a split by individual composers is unlikely to work. From the point of view of usual stub-sorting practice, some splitr that in some way mirrors that of the permanent categories would make most sense, but if a different method is preferable, please suggest it. We have suggested two possibilities - if one of them is to your liking, fine; if a different split is more preferable, tell us what.Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  09:21, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Strong see what I mean? Alai (talk) 10:45, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Question & suggestions One of those painful 'operistas' here.;-) I can see why there would be a need to do split some of these large cats, and understand your reasons. I think the question becomes, how best can it be done without sacrificing accuracy and causing unecessary work and/or confusion for either the Stub-sorting Project or the Opera Project. At the moment there are 714 articles in Category:Opera stubs. If all the articles there that were not about a specific opera were removed, that would take it pretty well below the "broken" criteria, even without splitting the operas themselves into subcategories. There are a couple of issues with subcategorizing the operas themselves, especially by composer nationality. First of all, it can lead to inaccuracies re what their nationality actually is given the changes in the map of Europe over the last 300 years. If anything, sub cats by century would be better and clearcut and possibly produce fewer separate stubs for the OP editors to deal with. But even then, you'd have 6 different stubs and starting with the 16th century and the first one would have potenially only 1 member. It's sort of pain for people writing articles on operas. Could we avoid this by having a sub cat for "Opera related bios", e.g. a catchall for the non-singers - librettists, opera critics, opera adminstrators etc. as Caerwine suggested above? Plus perhaps another sub cat for "Opera related topic" to mop up articles about opera companies, organizations, houses, publications, etc.? That would leave the OP with only 4 stub cats to deal with - 1 for individual operas, 1 for opera singers, 1 for opera-related bios, and 1 for all other opera-related topics. I wouldn't find that hard to cope with and actually think it might be an improvement on our current system. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 13:45, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * To clarify: at the moment the project lists 4 stubs:
 * General opera topics: (715 articles)
 * Opera singers: (552 articles)
 * Composers: (shared with other projects) (480 articles total)
 * European opera houses: (very little used by Opera) (276 articles total)
 * It's worth noting that many other classical music stubs cats are large, e.g. Conductors (546 articles), Classical composition stubs (513 articles) etc. -- Klein zach  14:36, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * We could get rid of as one used by the OP. Not only is it very generic, it's no help for stubs about opera houses outside Europe.Voceditenore (talk) 15:08, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, use by the project is negligible. It's a survival from ancient times. I couldn't even get a figure for it. We can de-list it - but it's not an issue. -- Klein zach  15:54, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * You may or may not want to list it on your project page, but opera house stubs certainly should have some sort of -struct-stub tag on them (in addition to opera-stub): bear in mind they're not just of operatic interest, they're very often of local and/or architectural significance as well.  Accordingly it's appropriate to have them (also) in a stub category that facilitates those editors as well.  Of course, an operahouse-stub (or opera-struct-stub, to be strictly hierarchicalist about it) is also something to be kept under consideration...  (There's seem to be about 31 of them tagged as opera-stubs, there might of course be more lurking around elsewhere.)  Alai (talk) 16:48, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * There are a handful more in, at least half a dozen in , and probably more in other places. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  01:02, 5 July 2008 (UTC)


 * It's not necessary, nor necessarily the case, that you all be painful. :) Firstly. at the current size level, it's not quite on the "officially oversized list", so if it would be helpful to 'adjourn with a view to medium-term contemplation', I'm not opposed to doing so.   OTOH if we're just going to have the same issues arise next time it makes it onto the to-do list, perhaps better that we seize the nettle sooner rather than later.  A split between actual-operas and opera-related topics seems like a good first step, though if neither is further subdivided, it does somewhat create the need for a somewhat artificial naming distinction, since by naming convention both  and  would map onto the existing opera-stub/ names, due to our 'avoiding double plurals' consideration.  (We would ideally come up with some generic scheme for such cases, since this isn't the first time such clashes have arisen.)  I'd wince a little at  or, , or something along those lines, but it would be a level of pain I could deal with under suitable medication.
 * On by-century: what we'd do is to create templates for all possible/sensible centuries, for the sake of consistency, but for the 'undersized' ones (16th and 17th) we'd "upmerge" them, either to the existing parent, or to some "consolidated" pre-18th (or perhaps pre-19th) category.  But I can't comment on whether it's a good or useful split in and of itself.  (I know that certainly some scholars of opera are especially concerned with particular periods or particular languages, but that doesn't much help us if that doesn't align with the army-that-we-have-that-we-go-to-war-with.)
 * An opera-bio-stub seems like an unqualifiedly good idea. As it'd have the existing  as a subtype, we can cut it some slack on size considerations, and if the worst comes to the worst, upmerge it too, for now.  Alai (talk) 14:21, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * (Edit conflict) There would be no point in seesawing articles between two equally large stub categories - the one getting larger while the other gets smaller - that's what would happen if we moved people into a new super-biography stub with . -- Klein  zach  15:18, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * And that isn't what was proposed. Alai (talk) 16:27, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * How about all-opera-stuff-that-doesn't-fit-anywhere-else-stub or random-opera-blither-stub? Just joking. Anyhow, we could start with opera-bio-stub and see how far that gets the Opera Stubs cat down before going any further? But it doesn't solve the problem of separating "the other stuff" from stubs about actual operas. I can't speak for the rest of the OP, but I'd personally find it useful for those stubs to be eventually separated out, provided it didn't cause too many problems for either project and/or its name wasn't too wince-inducing. Voceditenore (talk) 14:56, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * VDT: At present we have two large stubs - 'Opera" and 'Opera Singer' . The problem with turning this into three - Opera, Opera-singer and Opera-not-singer-bio - is that there are relatively few non-singer, non-composer biographical articles. -- Klein zach  15:31, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * You may well be correct about that: that's why I included the caveat about an upmerged template.  It's hard to get a reliable count from the category information I have to hand, since it's outdated wrt the recent re-sorting, the bios aren't in any single opera-related permcat subtree, and not all the candidates will have been tagged with opera-stub, anyway.  Alai (talk) 16:39, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I completely agree that the Opera stub category is verging on too large; so changes should be made so it doesn't get to that point. Here's my basic idea of what would be useful. How's that look? §hep  •   ¡Talk to me!  16:55, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * opera-stub for all articles related to Opera that do not fit into one of the sub-templates
 * opera-singer-stub for Opera singers (Maybe break into sub-templates by nationalities with over 70 people)
 * opera-composer-stub For composers related to the Opera field
 * opera-struct-stub For all Opera houses and similar places.
 * euro-opera-struct-stub For consistency we change euro-struct-stub to fit with the new scheme.
 * There's not enough articles to have to worry about the same thing WP:FOOTBALL does atleast. :D §hep   •   ¡Talk to me!  16:58, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * As far as those structure ones go, there should be enough for a category (I reckon just over 60) with the euro- template upmerged to it with just over 30. SeveroTC 17:11, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * (ec)That's a pretty good scheme at the template level (categories we can judge on a size basis as things go along). The only quibble I'd have is that the euro- one isn't a very useful template:  better to replace it with country-specific templates, ideally.  (Those can then feed into both a country-related and an opera-related category.)  Alai (talk) 17:15, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd have to agree with you there, I just wasn't sure what the norm was here at SS. §hep   •   ¡Talk to me!  17:17, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Numbers
This is a bit of an arbitrary section break as it's getting awfully long to edit easily. (Feel free to remove it). Even so, it might be worth looking at numbers. I've just had a look over the Opera Stub Cat. Kleinzach is right. There are relatively few non-singer bios in there, at most 10. So I don't know how much mileage we'd get out of a an "opera bio" cat. Overall there are about 135 "non-operas" in there - the vast majority are for companies, festivals and houses. There are also a few miscatergorized ones in there which we can remove now. But presumably not all the ones which Her Pegship removed have been restored?. It's also the case, that quite a few of those articles may not be stubs at all - they have been expanded without removing the tag. That would take some time to check, but would further reduce the size. If this project really considers that our current "Opera and opera related stub" cat is too big at about 715 or will soon become too big, what else can be done?

Just have an extra opera related-topic-stub? Breaking down by century, language, or composer nationality (apart from the inherent problems with composer nationality) leaves the problem of what do you do with the opera-related articles? They won't fit in those sub cats because they're not operas. Would it be the case that they just appear in the current cat but not in the subcats, e.g. 19th century operas, etc.? I don't think §hep's proposal of an opera-composer-stub is viable or would reduce numbers much, since my understanding is that the current opera stub isn't used for them anyway. There are no stubs at the moment in "Opera" which are about composers. The only other way to reduce numbers significantly is to have some stub that includes both opera houses and opera companies.

Alternatively, if the threshold hasn't been passed and looks like it won't happen for a while, especially if we can naturally prune that category, perhaps we could put off making any changes until it's absolutely necessary. Or at least until the autumn? An awful lot of OP members are going to be away or already are away for the summer. Just a thought. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 17:28, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * That's a realistic summary of the situation. I've been keeping figures on the ratio of stubs to non-stubs and it has been falling. We are gradually moving articles beyond the stub stage and that should remain the focus of our activity. -- Klein zach  01:19, 5 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The idea for the opera-composer-stub was because it was stated that composer-stub has overlap with many projects. This would remove that issue and all articles in Category:Opera composers could be checked to see if the tag fits (of which there are stubs).  Not all of my proposal was just to reduce the numbers, but also to sort things a little better.  Also, as I proposed all articles that didn't fit into one of the sub-templates would go under the main opera-stub; as is what many other projects do.  I hope that explains the point I'm trying to put across.  §hep   •   ¡Talk to me!  17:46, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Category:Opera composers is not exclusive. Yes, we've discussed this Composers/Opera overlap before - but the variability of a composer's involvement with opera means opera-composer-stub would be impractical. It would just encourage multiple stubbing. A (rediscovered) Mozart would end up with 'opera composer', 'symphony composer', 'piano concerto composer' etc. etc. stubs. -- Klein  zach  01:43, 5 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm guessing that relatively few composers will be notable exclusively for operas, so it may not be very applicable (unless it's used in addition to another composer tag, which doesn't really represent a lot of progress). I do still think that an opera-bio template is a sensible step, but that's not enough for a separate category, and even if it were, it doesn't represent a lot of numerical mileage.  Voce, you're exactly correct about the "relateds":  if we split all the operatic works (by century or by other means), that would leave only the remainder in the parent, so it solves the question of splitting out those without having to contrive a name for that class.  That's not sufficient justification in itself for a split of the works, but it would be a pleasant side-effect, from my point of view at least, if that would itself be useful.  If most of your non-works are "organisations" of some sort, an opera-org-stub would achieve a somewhat similar effect, without creating an arbitrary-sounding "related" category.
 * 715 is "large but not oversized" in terms of our quasi-canonical list, and admittedly-arbitrary size threshold. However, if most of Peg's re-sorting efforts get reverted, we may be back there relatively quickly, and it seems odds-on that without some sort of splitting scheme we'll get there sooner or later, as it seems to be a near-universal law for the vast majority of stub types.  The most useful split is likely to be one that not just makes not just organisational sense, but that has the most likelihood of being "differentially expanded" by particular groups of editors.  I don't know which of the ideas floated here pass that test best, but it ought not to be beyond the wit of man to devise one.  Alai (talk) 18:27, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the easiest split would be this: change the scope of Opera-stub to only cover the operas themselves, and create a new Operatic-stub or similar to cover all other opera-related stub articles. The idea of a separate template (and possibly category) for opera houses is a good one, too. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  00:54, 5 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The problem with having Opera-stub and Operatic-stub is that no-one would be able to distinguish between them. I (and VocediTenore) check the new articles. Only about half the editors know how to use the existing stubs. Give them a choice between 'Opera' and 'Operatic': Editor A will probably use one type and Editor B will probably use the other. This leaves the main editors at Opera Project with hours and hours of donkey work switching around stubs. -- Klein zach  01:32, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It would still be a fairly clear and sensible split - and a useful one, too, I would have thought - and the difference would be explained on the templates and categories themselves. As to explaining to editors which one to use, given that most of the editors sorting are either in this project or yours, informing them of which to use shouldn't be too hard a job. If a better name for operatic-stub could be found, though, it would be good - one that make it clear it's not for the works themselves. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  02:11, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately most stub articles are started by new editors unaware of any instructions. They usually copy some article that they have found as a model. The Opera Project editors usually work to start class standard. We discourage starting articles that stay permanently as stubs. -- Klein zach  02:45, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I'd tend to agree with KZ on the naming issue: neither that or the various other possibilities discussed earlier are at all obvious or natural, either at template or category level.  Probably about the only reliable thing to do would be to create two name stub types, one for operatic works and one for opera-related topics, and turn the existing type into effectively a "container", cum holding pen for articles not yet re-split.  I won't claim that's in the least elegant, just that it would avoid mis-tagging by default.  Normally we end up finessing this by having a more thoroughgoing split in the first place, as I described earlier...  Alai (talk) 02:25, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Here are updated figures: Opera stub =727, Opera singer stubs = 555 (I've done a check, removed some misstubbing, and finished reverting Pegship's mistakes). The figures could be reduced by 10 to 20% if the opera editors checked through the articles and uprated those that have now developed beyond stub stage. This would be the most practical solution.-- Klein zach  02:53, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Grutness: "lengthy irrelevant digression"
I take issue with the word "mistakes". A more neutral term might be "changes", or perhaps "work". Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 03:22, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * There were many less neutral alternatives to 'mistakes' available but I decided against using them. On the contrary, and despite the circumstances, I preferred to make the assumption that that your basic intentions were not bad. -- Klein zach  11:22, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
 * There were also more positive terms which could have been used, and since Pegship was carrying out a split that had been agreed to here, it was hardly a mistake on her part. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  01:37, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * So it was a mistake on the part of the group as a whole? Is that what you suggesting? -- Klein zach  04:01, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * On the contrary. Quite clearly it wasn't a mistake of any kind. It was deliberate work, undertaken affter a decision was reached through a standard stub-splitting discussion. Calling it a "mistake" suggests that it was somehow wrong for Peg to have done that work. it wasn't wrong. Suggesting it was a mistake on the part of WP:WSS suggests that there was something wrong with the discussion, or that no discussion should have takeen place. This also isn't the case. As such, using the term "mistake", which implies that things were either done accidentally or not in accord with standard practice, is both wrong and seemingly deliberately emotive. Please try to use less biased language when discussing Peg's perfectly legitimate work. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  06:55, 7 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, I don't understand this either. When we complained that well over 100 articles been changed with no notice at all to the Opera Project until 6 days after it began, we were told by Alai that there was no plan being implemented and things like changing opera librettists to playwrights (and presumably also starting to remove Category:Operas from all actual operas) weren't part of the current proposal. Now Grutness says that they are part of a plan agreed here (prior to notifying the OP).


 * So which is it? If it is part of a plan you all agreed, then those edits were not "mistakes", from the WPSS point of view. But in terms of accuracy, I'd consider it a mistake to tag an article about a writer known only for their opera libretti as being a "about a playwright" instead of "about an opera or opera-related topic". Ditto removing the current "opera or opera-related" stub and replacing it with "theatre bio" for someone who spent their entire career directing operas or running opera houses, and whose principal notability derives from that. Ditto adding opera-singer-stub to Ioan Holender who had a very brief non-notable career as a singer, but then became a theatrical agent in 1966 and is chiefly notable the director of the Vienna State Opera for the last 17 years. In that sense "mistake" doesn't imply bad faith at all, quite the contrary.


 * Also, can you all clarify whether it had been the WPSS intention to completely remove Category:Operas from all actual operas? If so, why? We use that cat for all operas, regardless of their subclassifications by composer, genre, etc., to enable readers to access a single page with an alphabetical list of all operas with articles in Wikipedia, with the added benefit of links to the operas subclassified. I'd consider it a mistake on the part of WPSS to remove a really useful tool for readers. Voceditenore (talk) 07:40, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, as far as the last point is concerned, WP:WSS doesn't have anything to do with removing permcats from articles - we're only bothered with stub cats (although we'll add permcats if there aren't any on an article). So we've got no reason to even think about the permanent . As far as the earlier point is concerned, bio-stubs (i.e., stubs about specific people) are generally not included in stub categories for the general subject - they usually have specific categories relating to biographies. As such, it wouldn't be normal practice for to contain biographies of librettists, any more than, say, for  to contain articles about cartographers. As such, it is normal practice to remove bio-stubs from categories about specific subjects, and to replace them with some specific bio-stub type - it's not specifically connected to discussions about splitting this category, but it is quite often the case that a discussion about whether a category needs splitting will lead to it getting a bit more attention and a bit of a clean-up (which would include removing any incorrectly assigned stubs). Unfortunately, in the current case, there is not a specific librettist-stub or theatricalagent-stub (hence discussions above about a possible opera-bio-stub). Perhaps upmerged templaes of those types could be considered, but chances are they would still be upmerged to categories that are strictly-speaking only approximations of what they should be. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  09:02, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Here is an example of Pegship removing Category:Operas, see . -- Klein zach  09:13, 7 July 2008 (UTC)


 * And here are five more examples:, ; ; ,. Presumably this would have gone on had Kleinzach not asked that it be stopped. And Grutness, I understand your point about our current "opera and opera related" stub not being "normal practice", but it doesn't cover the error of adding a singer bio stub to someone not notable as a singer (Ioan Holender) or adding Category:Opera directors to someone who is a conductor has never directed an opera in his life (Giuseppe Patanè). All we're asking is that care be taken to avoid this kind of stuff, and that the wholesale and extremely unhelpful removal of Category:Operas from articles about actual operas be stopped. I take it from your comments above, that the category removal was not part of the WPSS proposal and isn't going happen again. Correct me if I'm wrong, and I don't mind at all if you call it a "mistake" on my part. ;-) Voceditenore (talk) 10:29, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Having a look at them, these seem like perfectly normal edits. They're not stub-sorting - though they may have been done at the same time - but they seem like perfectly reasonable tidying. There's no point in having articles in a parent permanent category if they're already in several of that permcat's child categories - as is the case in all these examples. These clearly aren't mistakes - they're standard edits. To quote Categories, In the "vertical" dimension, Wikipedia has traditionally been more frugal, placing articles only in the most specific categories they reasonably fit in. That is - articles in, say and  have no need of also being in, and indeed it is traditional Wikipedia practuice to remove them from these more general parents. There was clearly no mistake in any of those edits. They may not have been stub edits, but I'm noit at all surprised that they occurred, and I can see no reason why they shouldn't have.
 * As to the changes in the bio-stubs, you're right about Patanè - that appears to have been a slip. As to Holender, the article clearly states that he was a baritone, which is a term usually applied primarily to singers rather than theatrical agents. Was he, or was he not a singer? Clearly he was - although this was only part of his career. As such, opera-singer-stub is an appropriate stub, though an additional second stub template would also have been appropriate. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  12:41, 7 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Holender was not notable as a singer. On the other hand he now occupies (arguably) the most important administrative job in the whole opera world. That's why putting the man alongside singers is not appropriate. -- Klein zach  14:38, 7 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Grutness wrote: In the "vertical" dimension, Wikipedia has traditionally been more frugal, placing articles only in the most specific categories they reasonably fit in. Perhaps "traditionally", but it's certainly not universal here or hard and fast policy. Is this an encylopedia for the benefit of its readers or just the benefit of Wikipedia? As I explained above, we use that cat for all operas, regardless of their subclassifications by composer, genre, etc., to enable readers to access a single page with an alphabetical list of all operas with articles in Wikipedia, with the added benefit of links to the operas subclassified. If you want all take umbrage at the word "mistake" fine, and/or discuss the gradations of meaning between "mistake", "inaccuracy", "potentially unhelpful", "slip", fine. But could we please also come to some kind of conclusion as to whether there should be a new Opera-related-stub and/or Opera-bio-stub and indeed if this even needs to be done now that our total opera-stub category is down to 614 and falling. Voceditenore (talk) 13:28, 7 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm, not quite sure why either of us is continuing with this, really, since you aren't going to convince me that normal editing practice is a mistake, and I'm clearly not going to convince you that normal editing practice is correct. No, it's not policy, it is a guideline - i.e., (in the words of the WP definition of guidelines) generally accepted standard that editors should follow. No, it's not universal - it's just usual practice. if Pegship hadn't done this, someone else would have soon enough. Yes, the encyclopedia is clearly for the benefit primarily of readers, which is why having smaller, more specific categories - rather than large vague categories - is preferable, especially when those specific categories are within a tree that can easily be accessed as subtypes of the vaguer category. Having parent categories as well as subtypes makes articles category-heavy, cluttering up the bottom of the articles. If you want a single alphabetical list, then make a separate list. This is the reason why list pages and categories both exist on Wikipedia. In any case, as you point out, this is completely irrelevant to the subject of stubs. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  14:01, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Grutness: Please read the 'Secondary categorization rule' of WP:SUBCAT:  "there are some articles which should be in both a subcategory and a parent category." This is the rule that the Opera Project follow - as explained on the project page. BTW It's a mystery to me why you think categories "clutter up the bottom of the articles" but not multiple stubs. -- Klein zach  15:01, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Multiple stub categories do clutter up the page - when have I ever said they do not? That's why we try to split stub types so that multiple stubbing is reduced as much as possible. And that is what we should be discussing here - NOT whether you think that our standard work on this project is a mistake or not, when it seems we are simply following a different Wikipedia guideline to the one you are using (if it's a mistake at all, it's a mistake on the part of Wikipedia for having two guidelines which are directly contradictory!) It srtill seems to me that an alphabetical list (separate from a category) would be far more useful for operas, since they could be listed along with the names of the composer, librettist and year, as well as including redlinks to indicate articles yet to be made. But if that's the way you do it, that's the way you do it. Now can we PLEASE get back on topic? Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  23:42, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

You continue to second-guess the way another (rather technical) project goes about building its corpus of articles. Why you do this is a complete mystery to me. The music and opera editors don't tell the Gastropod Project what to do, they don't teach rocket science to the rocket scientists, they don't reclassify molecular biology diagrams or redraw maps of Angola, so why do you interfere in the editing of opera articles that you don't understand?

As for getting back on topic. While you have been attempting to justify the unjustifiable, squirming out of making an apology and writing tendentious headings, the Opera Project has been at work carrying out a major sweep of opera stubs to uprate the (many) articles that have significantly developed over the last year. As I write this, there are now only 578 articles with the opera banner (down from around 750).

I hope whoever closes this down notes that in future stub reorganization should not be carried out by stealth. When WPWSS believe that re-organization is desirable, they should first ask those directly concerned, in order to get essential background information. -- Klein zach  01:33, 8 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I give up. I offer a suggestion that seems sensible, on the basis of how other WikiProjects work, and you continue to act as though I'm telling you what to do. You continue to talk about "justifying the unjustifiable", when all I have done is pointed to the relevant guidelines which clearly justify what was done. But all of that is, as I have now pointed out three times, completely beside the point, and this massive digression would never have started if you hadn't insulted Pegship's perfectly legitimate work. I'm not sure why you don't simply start your own Wiki Operatica, since you make it crystal clear that you own the opera articles and that anyone else had better watch out if they try to edit them. Perhaps if you put a big sign at the top of each article saying "hands off - onnly Wikiproject opera people are allowed to edit this", it might have made things simpler all round. As to your comments qabout me "squirming out of making an apology and making tendentious heading", may I point out who it was who put the first tendentious header on this section and also who it was who first started insulting other editors' work on this page. I have nothing to apologise for, and since you seem incapable of making an apology to Pegship I'm having nothing more to do with this pathetic argument. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  02:29, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Let's be clear about this. Pegship made about 120 unannounced edits to opera artucles. As VocediTenore and I have demonstrated, many of these edits were wrong because she didn't understand about the work of opera librettists, managers, directors etc. and made no attempt to find out. This was disruptive. The Opera Project does not own anything here, however like other contributing editors we object strongly to time-wasting disruptions. -- Klein zach  06:50, 8 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I don't object strongly, and while it has been a bit disruptive, it has also resulted in a major stub review at the OP, which was very useful. But I do think this whole thing could have started out in a more helpful way for all concerned. Look at the very top of this discussion. It was begun on June 29th by Alai. The same day Waacstats suggested asking the OP for input, and Alai replied that after the previously proposed changes had been objected to and undone he was "highly hesitant about their "input"". Then on July 3rd, after no further discussion here or anywhere else, many opera stubs started being changed. We weren't told that this was being done as preparation for a renewed WPSS proposal to split opera stubs, or even what the proposal involved until July 4th.


 * Nor do I think that the re-stubbing of articles to theat-bio-stub resulted from the editor not understanding the subject. It was simply a different view of the issues involved. Besides, she caught several singer articles that had been incorrectly stubbed with opera-stub and corrected them. The problem is/was that suddenly changing the stub classifications (and in some cases categories) for a large body of articles within any project can cause problems for those who are monitoring the contents, looking for areas to improve the coverage or key articles that need expanding. Different projects do those tasks in different ways for different reasons. The Opera Project currently uses Category:Opera stubs for a lot for this work. None of the problems with splitting and/or re-defining the current opera stub (or stubs) are insurmountable, but some ways of doing it are less problematic than others, and will have less scope for generating classification errors which can be time-consuming to monitor and repair. (I'm not talking about potential errors by the WPSS. I'm talking about potential errors by the editors creating future stub articles.) I've started a new section below so these issues can be discussed.Voceditenore (talk)

The way forward
Some questions to consider: Voceditenore (talk) 11:14, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) What is a reasonable threshold for the necessity to split the stubs further? (The OP has nearly finished a stub review. The number in Category:Opera stubs currently stands at 561 with about 145 more articles to be reviewed.
 * 2) If it is still necessary to split, would it be enough to split opera-related topics from actual operas, keeping Category:Opera singer stubs?


 * The two stubs: opera-stub and opera-singer-stub are now almost the same size. I don't think we will see the numbers climb back up significantly within the next six or eight months as we now have much better systems for monitoring and uprating articles. -- Klein zach  12:47, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Opera stub review
Inspired by the discussion here, the Opera Project has started a stub review drive. We're going through the members of Category:Opera stubs and removing stub tagged articles that had since been expanded, and removing the occasional mis-tagging of articles that are not actually opera-related. So far we've done A-F and the opera stub numbers are now down to 675. G-I will be done by tomorrow. It's been quite a useful exercise. Voceditenore (talk) 13:15, 6 July 2008 (UTC)


 * We are about half way through now and the figures is down to 599. -- Klein zach  04:04, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

The review has now finished. The figure is down to 547 -smaller than the number of opera singer stubs. -- Klein zach  01:13, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

A final observation
May I remind everyone involved in this conversation that Wikipedia is a resource that anyone can edit. For every trained opera musician like myself, there will always be someone less-informed, though possibly as well-intentioned, as myself. If the opera project would prefer that others not contribute to opera articles, perhaps a separate opera wiki would be the answer. Signing off from Disneyland... Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 23:35, 9 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Anyone can edit Wikipedia - that includes vandals, copyright violators, self-publicists, poseurs, hoaxers and people like Her Pegship who made 120-odd edits without (1) checking the facts, (2) informing the relevant project that systemic changes were underway, or (3) a whisper of an apology for disruptively creating work for other editors. (See the section that Grutness, tendentiously renamed as lengthy irrelevant digression (sic) for full details: Ioan Holender, Giuseppe Patanè pages etc.)


 * Voceditenore has just attempted once more to move this back to the actual issue of opera stubs. Unfortunately instead of a discussion we get another display of hubris. -- Klein  zach  00:56, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Apart from one or two slips, Pegship's edits were perfectly accurate in that they made the best choice of alternate stub given that the WPSS had decided to take a large body of articles out of their existing stub category. We pointed out some of the problems with using the alternate stubs from our point of view. But that's not the real issue as far as I'm concerned. The real issue is that WPSS decided to make and start implementing organizational and systemic changes affecting a large body of articles without even mentioning it to the project that looks after those articles.

From the discussions on the WPSS talk page and here, that seems to be your (collective "your") normal way of operating, and I acknowledge that none of you consider that way of operating to be a "mistake". But, really, was it so unreasonable for us to ask to be informed about the planned/proposed changes and given a chance for input before they got underway? This has nothing to do with ownership any more than the request in this WPSS banner which you (collective "you") put on the stub-category pages looked after by your project.

Now, is anyone here willing to return to actually discussing the proposal? Voceditenore (talk) 05:32, 10 July 2008 (UTC)


 * WPWSS claims "at least 340 participants", so maybe someone will turn up? -- Klein zach  07:24, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Numbers/2
According to CatScan, there are 38 articles under which could be marked with some type of opera-bio-stub, including articles from, , , , , and. Other types which would be less viable would be (18 articles) &  (10). Although the Opera Project has done some superb housecleaning as noted above, if they are amenable to any further splits I would suggest a opera-bio-stub per the numbers I have given. Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 19:33, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Apart from the small numbers involved, I wonder about the logic of putting critic/composer/librettist/manager etc. biographies under opera-bio-stub and all singer biographies under opera-singer-stub. Wouldn't this cause confusion? -- Klein zach  01:13, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * just a note to say that many of the active members of the OP are on vacation at the moment, including me (I'm on a hotel computer). Could we hold off on this discussion for about 10 days or at least until others from the OP return. Voceditenore (talk) 11:15, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Opera-struct-stub should be viable - many articles in the recursive are not tagged with opera-stub. The numbers should be around 60 to 65 - I'm just looking through all the articles under 2kb. I'm very keen on this one. SeveroTC 19:13, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * This is incorrect. I've just been through the Opera house cats - it took me more than a couple of hours - and there are only 35 opera-bannered stubs. That's all. Not enough for a useful new stub IMO. -- Klein zach  14:36, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * My numbers from CatScan, I'll produce a list. SeveroTC 15:00, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Please bear in mind that just as most European opera houses are not called 'opera houses' per se ('Teatro' in Italy etc.), many of those so designated in north America (in the past) were really small general theatres that never produced opera. (Another example of why technical matters are really best left to the project concerned!) -- Klein zach  02:04, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

No closure?
All the other discussions on this page have been closed. Will this be closed as well now? Or should I go ahead and close it myself? -- Klein zach  00:09, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * According to policy, someone who has an interest in the outcome of the discussion may not close the discussion. I'd rather not be accused of any further wrongdoing. Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 00:50, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. I won't close it either. -- Klein zach  02:00, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Still no closure?
Every other item on this page has been closed. Why hasn't this one? -- Klein zach  00:39, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * What do you think the consensus is? Perhaps no one is willing to sort out the threads. Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 15:43, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Let's be as neutral as possible about what has been a contentious discussion. How about this as a final text:
 * "The number of Opera-related stubs has been reduced during the course of this discussion. The Opera Project are asked to periodically review and de-stub as necessary. (Doing this at least once a year would be a good idea.) Any future proposals for new stub types need to be quantified and discussed between the WPSS and the Opera Project."
 * Can you endorse that? -- Klein zach  22:31, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * As a policy guideline it's fine, but what is the outcome of this particular discussion? No consensus, opera-struct-stub, no action required? Her Pegship <small style="color:green;"> (tis herself) 15:50, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe "no action required now"? How about that? -- Klein zach  22:40, 25 August 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.