Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types/Archive/2007

Urgent! Page Load Efficiency
Hey guys this list is not getting any shorter. Its poorly loading on IE and even FF!. The list is ridiculously long and the scrolling just to get to the topic even with the TOC is terrible. Can the guys from Wikipedia consider breaking this up into several sub pages?

This is really bad site design! It hinders the objective of making Wikipedia editors aware of the stubs. Believe me a lot of users would not want to read a list THIS LONG.

I have read the discussion below and frankly the argument having too many pages to maintain is weak and it clearly hampers this page's improvement. The purpose of this page is to help users not drive them off my presenting them IMO with an arduous poorly structured stub list.

From the arguments below:

Strong oppose. This has been suggested and rejected many times before. Just keeping one list up to date is bad enough, maintaining 10 will be impossible. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 23:03, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose If you work with stubs, having it all in one page is a lot easier. The stubs have many "intercategory" connections and ctrl-f'ing them this way is a whole let easier then having it all nice and clean and divided over several pages. The list is not intended to be read, it's just a maintenance page. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 18:05, 27 December 2006 (UTC)


 * RESPONSE: I respect your reasons but let me just say that these are reasons of lazy editors. There are many wikipedia editors around here who are more than willing to maintain the splitted article ergo editing 1 page from 10 should be no different.  If there were 10,000+ editors willing to help the amount of effort should negligible.  Furthermore, I certainly advice you rethink your positions this IS clearly poorly designed page.  It is for the Wikipedia users best interest why we want to break up the article in the first place! Not for a few editor's convenience.  Even as you create subpages, if it is well organized then you dont loose your way.  It doesnt makes sense dumping all the stubs in one page and makes it quite unbearable to use.  The 2nd argument of using CTRL+F? Do you think people will waste time doing that?  Lets make life easier for people to edit wikipedia so many will get themselves involved and ultimately improve the quality of the articles herein.

This argument is further supported by the Wikipedia Article Length Guidelines WP:SIZE.

-- –  Daimengrui  talk  19:31, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * This page is ridiculously long. Guidelines or not... I have a VERY powerful computer, yet, scrolling through this page is agony. It's a farce. Jscarle 15:13, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Strange. I have an old computer and a dialup modem, and don't have much trouble with it. I suggest you may want to get your computer looked at. BTW, if you look at the bottom of the page, you will see current discussions going on about the best way to shorten this list and, in fact, shortening is currently underway. Grutness...wha?  04:24, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Is there a stub for Seaweed (alga)?
GrahamBould 13:44, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The closest I could think of would be a general plant-stub. I don't think we have anything split out for seaweed and the like yet.  ~ Amalas  rawr  =^_^=  14:35, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Format of "expanding it" link in stub templates
Different stub templates use either which looks like  or [ this] which looks like [ this]. Shouldn't the templates all use the same format? I prefer the former, as this isn't really an external link. 132.68.249.135 13:27, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I use the format listed at WP:STUB, which I believe is the plainlink. I've been trying to cleanup any templates I see to using that format, but there are still many, many more that use "fullurl". ~ Amalas  rawr  =^_^=  14:58, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Also, perhaps we should update metastub to follow WP:STUB or vice versa. ~ Amalas  rawr  =^_^=  15:00, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I rather dislike the "plainlink" style, and I'd completely missed the update of WP:STUB to use it. To me it seems basically like an "easter egg" link:  since when are "bluelinks" supposed to open edit windows?  The unalert reader may have been expecting a "howto" page or something like that.  So put me down for "vice versa", fairly strongly.  Alai 15:35, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I've mentioned the same issue at WT:STUB, along with top-sorting of stub templates. Alai 15:16, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Alai is right: A "howto" page would be really great. Especially on en .wikipedia.org, as it most probably has the largest portion of readers and contributors who are no native speakers of the used language. Like me: it's terribly frustrating to spend hours or even a full day of sparetime for an article, though researching and writing are done within far less than an hour –- only to find some (self-exploiting, cooperative) admin proposing its deletion, because of still having failed to comply with all formalities. With easier understandable explanations closer at mouse on editing pages, I'd sure contribute more.

Stub-related question: I want to add facts I'm sure of to an existing article. Problem: my new p ara g ra p h would be a stub. Directly writing to all who so far contributed would take much time and reach only few (who perhaps lack knowledge for this specific completion, otherwise they might already have posted it). Best solution: stub with the usual hint inviting all readers –- plus all authors who chose to be contacted automatically. But a just generally article-related template wouldn't point clearly enough to the very section where help is needed.
 * Is there a simple way to guide from a stub mentioned in stub-lists to the "article #section " address?
 * Paragraph/section, or entire article: where should I type the template code? Above? Under the headline? Below?
 * If the rule says "above/below only", is it then possible that a section-related stub hint produces a code so that it, when clicked, also on the article page itself works as "... #section "-link, like the automatic entries in page contents boxes do?
 * joeditt 08:38, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Howto on stub articles is a little broader than I had in mind... I'm guessing you mainly want the assorted guidelines on notability, and perhaps also verifiability, though I won't claim that especially the former is exactly cut and dried.

I'm guessing you're looking for sectstub (which would IMO be better having the canonical name sectexpand), to reduce confusion between the two). Alai 18:10, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Massivly, Overwhelmingly Large!
I can't load this page (exept for the talk page), it's too big! My internet, which is normally good and fast, crashes, and all my windows close. Can it be divided? I think a useful page like this shouldn't be so hard to read. | A ndonic O Talk · Sign Here 10:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * This has been mooted before, with uncertain resolution. Ultimately we'll probably have to do it, since the actual contents ain't gonna be getting any smaller, anytime soon.  Or anytime foreseeable, indeed.  On the model of the now-essentially-redundant /Criteria page, we should probably split this up into a header sub-page, and 17 per-topic sub-pages, all transcluded here; with a separate page that links to each, rather than transcluding.  Anyone else have any thoughts on this?  In the meantime, I can only suggest tweaking your browser version...  Alai 15:25, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I suppose I could try that, but I have no other complaints. My browser works perfectly fine in everthing but this page. Well, I'll have to wait until this is "fixed". | A ndonic <b style="font-family:Papyrus; color:black; font-size:x-small;">O</b> Talk · Sign Here 17:00, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It all comes back to me now: this was discussed extensively before, see for example here.  Splitting it in the way I've just suggested would be a royal pain for reasons of updating the counts, though that could be streamlined in the fullness of time.  Also try and see if User:Hankwang/sandbox/stubindex loads or not (a complete list, but somewhat slimmed down in size of HTML).  Alai 17:46, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That one is much better; thanks! | <b style="font-family:Papyrus; color:black; font-size:x-small;">A</b> ndonic <b style="font-family:Papyrus; color:black; font-size:x-small;">O</b> Talk · Sign Here 17:50, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, that's not a complete list. It looks like the last update to that page was back at the end of Oct 06.  <b style="color:maroon;">~ Amalas</b>  rawr  <sup style="color:navy;">=^_^=  18:23, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh well; it's better than nothing. :-) | <b style="font-family:Papyrus; color:black; font-size:x-small;">A</b> ndonic <b style="font-family:Papyrus; color:black; font-size:x-small;">O</b> Talk · Sign Here 19:17, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, a not-split-by-sections list, is what I was really trying to say. I'm surprised it's so out of date, though:  I thought the plan was that StubListBot would be updating these, and there's been a database dump update since then.  I see the bot-driver hasn't been too active recently.  Something along those lines would be a good long-term solution:  bot-updating would reduce the maintenance nuisance that splitting the page would otherwise impose.  Actually, a cleaner solution would be be to allow hierarchical loading of pages (most obviously, by section):  this would also be a help on other large pages, and also be useful for people who have problems with some largeish articles on devices like PDAs.  Alai 20:06, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Here's what I think is the best solution so far: .  It looks a little ugly due to the stripping out of CSS and the WAP/PDA-formatted width, etc, but it's fully functional, it's a live mirror (benign remote-loading, I assume), and it keeps page sizes very manageable (at least where they have any sane sort of sectioning).  Ideally something like this would be served by wikipedia itself too, better integrated into the main service.  Alai 04:02, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Visual arts stubs
Can I ask that in future, when, or ideally before, you make any proposals on categories falling under the Visual arts project you advertise the proposal at the talk page there, and other relevant pages also? Really you should put it up for discussion there first. The stub-sorting project is hardly a place where you are going to get a wide or informed debate on the issues.

I must say I can't see the point of the new Category:Manuscript stubs at all. Of course most articles on individual manuscripts are fairly short, and are likely to stay so for a very long time. Many important manuscripts are only of importance for a few illustrated pages - sometimes just one. The assertion in the debate (if it can be called that) that many of these have literary importance seems extremely dubious to me - the great majority of illuminated manuscripts contain standard religious texts (or sometimes standard secular ones), and most of the rest of the category seems to me to consist of Biblical texts or legal documents.

You obviously put a lot of time into stub-shuffling and marking, but I'm afraid I can't see the usefulness of much of it. At the moment the stub project seems to be in a little bubble of its own. Johnbod 20:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Wherever possible we do consult with the relevant WikiProjects. Unfortunately there are new WikiProjects springing up all the time and it is not always possible to keep track of what ones are likely to be the most relevant to particular debates. Remember too that this project is for sorting what stubs there are - not for deciding the worth of individual articles. If there are 100 stubs on a subject, then categorising them together makes sense, since then editors who know about those subjects can decide more readily whether those articles are stubs, full articles, or candidates for merger and deletion.


 * As to the stub-sorting project being hardly a place where we get a wide or informed debate, that is exactly the purpose why it exists - as a central stub-creation and sorting place where such debate can and does take place between people who deal with stub sorting and people from specific topic-related wikiprojects. In many cases, a stub split deals with items which are within the scope of several different WikiProjects. It would be impossible to hold such discussions at all of them, and so havving this "neutral ground" for these discussions is far more sensible than trying to hold the discussion at the talk pages of several WikiProjects simultaneously. Also, since there are, at any one time, 20 or more stub splits proposed, it makes far more sense to centralise them in one place, rather than have stub sorters have to continually refer to twenty different pages to keep track on the latest stub-related discussions. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  22:50, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * These are not very convincing arguments, I'm afraid. The Visual arts project is hardly new, nor can it be hard to work out that Illuminated Manuscripts come under it. Goldenrowley was well aware that the are currently categorized under Art history, which for some reason he was not happy about; he wants to categorize them under literature instead - very wrongly in my view.  The "debate" was a 3 line proposal & a 3 word agreement from 1 other editor.  obviously most editors cannot be expected to have stub-sorting proposals on their watchlist.  Looking at the page in general, the level of debate can only be described as pathetic - it seems very largely confined to a small group of stub-sorters. I rather get the impression you prefer not to have outsiders intrude.


 * Unless I get a convincing explanation of the new Category:manuscripts, I am considering proposing it for deletion. It seems fundamentally misconceived to me, and i don't like the way it quite wrongly moves a category of art objects into literature. Johnbod 23:13, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I can see where illuminated manuscripts belong as part of the visual arts, and Category:Illuminated manuscripts, the subcategory Category:Manuscripts, does have Category:Art history as one of its parents. (By the way, both of those manuscript categories have been around for over two years, so I presume you meant to refer to Category:Manuscript stubs as being new.)  As for the stub type, if Category:Manuscript stubs didn't have Category:Art history stubs as one of its parents, there's nothing in the stub guidelines to prevent stub articles about illuminated manuscripts being double stubbed with both art-history-stub and manuscript-stub.  Indeed, given the hierarchy of the non-stub categories, it might be better to remove the link between Category:Manuscript stubs and Category:Art history stubs and use double stubbing for the illuminated manuscripts until there are enough stubs to warrant splitting the illuminated and non-illuminated manuscript stubs into separate stub types with a then newly created Category:Illuminated manuscript stubs becoming a child of both Category:Manuscript stubs and Category:Art history stubs, which would mirror the long standing organization of the permanent categories. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  23:52, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * If I have understood Goldenrowley correctly, the parenting of illuminated manuscripts under literature is new - that seemed to be one of his objectives. I object to this, as few of them have any literary importance (as already explained, the great majority are standard religious texts). I can't think offhand think of an article that should be in both illuminated manuscripts and a literary category, except for the Ellesmere manuscript - I've asked him for examples, wih none received so far.  They may well be some, but these should be categorized on an individual basis. I can't especially see the utility of stubbing most of the articles in the category - anyone who looks at the category knows most articles on individual manuscripts are short, and it is not easy for most editors to access the information to make them longer.  Johnbod 00:05, 7 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The parentage is not new, tho it is somewhat remote. Illuminated manuscripts → Manuscripts → Historical documents → Non-fiction literature → Literature is the most direct route.  I do question placing Manuscripts under Historical documents instead of just plain Documents, since not all of them are writings that are about history, and the detour through non-fiction since there have been manuscripts that contain fiction, but that doesn't affect the fact that manuscripts, because of the writing they contain do fall within the category of literature. As for whether the articles themselves should be marked as stubs at all is a separate question that by and large this Wikiproject does not concern itself with, leaving that to those who have knowledge about the subject matter to judge.  We serve more as service that tries to sort articles someone has thought to be a stub and try with our stub types to bring them to the attention of knowledgeable editors.  If you and Goldenrowley are disputing whether certain articles should be considered stubs, that's not really in our scope to judge, ponder, or arbitrate. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  00:50, 7 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Just to be clear, the vast majority of present and likely future members of category illuminated manuscripts are completely standard Gospels, Bibles, Books of Hours etc of no textual interest to literary or indeed biblical scholars. Exceptions are relatively few, and most of them are not literature, fictional or non-fictional. Illuminated means with pictures (or sometimes just decoration) in, and that is where the interest lies.  Hardly any of them are writings about history either, or contain texts of historical interest as such; far more are books of music.  They are virtually by definition, luxury painted copies of works that generally survive in many much older un-illuminated copies (the music ones are the main exceptions to this - their contents are usually the only source of scores) which are the ones Biblical or historical scholars are interested in.  With some individual exception they should be categorized only as the art objects they are, plus as books by date etc. I suppose this is not your department either.  I don't have issues (so far) with the classification of individual items as stubs - the trouble is the majority of the whole category are stubs, which anyone in a position to improve the articles is likely to know already, or will soon discover when they look.  So I just query the utility of having a stub marker.  I can't see stub-marking them in these circumstances increases the likelihood of the articles being improved significantly - in other cases I'm sure this is so.  But I take your point that the categorization structure is not new, or connected with Goldenrowley, which I misunderstood.  Where do I go to get the categorization changed?  Johnbod 03:39, 7 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Changing the parents of a category just requires editing the category, but other than making the changes I suggested in my previous entry, and which I have gone ahead and done, I don't see any obvious miscategorization here. There is the matter of whether Documents should have Literature as its parent or vice versa (it currently is both) but as I'm undecided about that I've asked WPP:Books for their input on their talk page. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  04:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Ok thanks - they seem to have dual-nationality, which I can live with. I wish, whilst the stub-sorting was being done, the categories were also checked; many are incomplete - that would be useful.  Johnbod 04:26, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

A way to cut the size
There's an easy way to cut the size, but since the maintenance bot probably needs to be aware of it, I'm proposing it here instead of just being bold.

Replace:

which produces:
 * Foo stubs foo-stub - <500 on February 30

with:

which produces:
 * Foo stubs foo-stub - <500 on February 30

We don't need to double list the category name anymore. Not only will this save text, but it will eliminate the opportunity for the two to iterations of the category name to not match as has happened fairly often in the past. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines 23:05, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Category:Foo stubs gets automatically turned into Foo stubs . Look at the source for this section (specifically your fourth piece of code) to confirm this. --TheParanoidOne 23:20, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * So it does, but why? ARGH! I should have known it was too good to be true! Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  00:02, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * One could use cls, but while that would make the wikisource shorter (possibly helping with people trying to edit the whole page at once... but why would people be editing the whole page at once?), it wouldn't really help with the size of the rendered page, which is what we most often get complaints about.  (Page won't load/takes too long to load.)  Alai 01:06, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Sectioning
Why are all stub categories classified as either "General" (only two entries in this category) or "Culture" (everything else under the sun)? --Smack (talk) 02:12, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Huh? The page is divided into 17 major classifications, of which "General' and "Culture" are just the first two. The others are "Education", "Commerce", "Government, law and politics", "Leisure", "Sports", "Religion, mythology, faiths, and beliefs", "Geographical", "History", "People", "Science", "Technology", "Transport", "Military and weaponry", "Organisations", and "Miscellaneous". Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  04:03, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Never mind, I got lost in the hierarchy. I thought all of the others were subsections of "Culture".  But it may be a good idea to make the 17 classifications into top-level sections. --Smack (talk) 05:08, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Why are there extra steps to edit this page?
RE:


 * This list is maintained by the Stub sorting WikiProject, with the purpose of keeping a list of templates and categories approved by WP:WSS. Please do not add any other material here, it will be removed.

Why can't just anyone edit this page?

This is wikipedia folks, every page should by dynamic. Why doesnt WP:BB apply here. By discouraging others from editing this page, you are stifling inovations and contributions. This is the very antithesis of wikipedias spirit and goals. You are adding an unnecessary step to the ease of wikipedia: you have to be a member of a little club to be allowed to add anything on this page.

Those who support this set up may state: it will cause chaos if everyone is allowed to edit this page. There are too many vandals, etc. What makes wikipedia dynamic and different from other webpages, is that ANYONE can edit the page.

Those who support this set up may state: The main page is protected. And other key pages are proteted occasionally from editing. I hate to burst anyones bubble and self importance, but WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types is not the main page, and it is not so vital that others should not be able to edit it.

History of vandalism, temporarily protect it. History of anons editing it, temporarily protect it.

Instead of having a small oligharchy control this page, lets remove this sentence:


 * Please do not add any other material here, it will be removed.

I am WP:BB and doing just that now.

Thanks for listening and happy editing :) RWV 04:55, 4 March 2007 (UTC)


 * First of all, Be Bold applies only to articles. The reasons for being conservative with this page include:
 * Portions of the content are currently maintained by a bot.
 * Stubs types, in order to be effective, need to be neither too small so as make stub maintenance overly difficult nor so large as to discourage interested editors from finding articles they are interested in.
 * And most importantly, stub types only work as intended if other editors agree that they are useful, or at a minimum are disruptive to the efforts of other editors.
 * For all of these reasons, a degree of consensus rather than boldness is needed here. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines 05:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Excellent points Caerwine, is it possible to accomplish all three without discouraging new editors from editing this page? I notice the process to create stubs has become complex too. Did you have a part in creating this policy? If so great job, I am only suggesting minor tweeks. I look forward to consensus on this.
 * I am going to give up before I even started. My change was quickly deleted by an editor who has built this page.  I am sincerly not trying to invade anyones turf.
 * That said, in regards to WP:OWN, who owns this page, a couple of well established editors, or the wikipedia communitee? RWV 05:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
 * For what, it's worth, I don't interpret that sentence you deleted (and I restored) as an absolute injunction against all change (i.e., no new stub types), but rather an injunction against changing the formatting standards, or introducing additional material (such stub template icons) that while it might be stub related, is not essential to maintaining what is already a rather large list. Indeed, most discussion about the stub list at the moment centers on what do we already have there that could be moved elsewhere or other wise dealt with.  The page is currently well over 400K of Wiki code after all. The statement might be worded a bit strongly, but the page, as you noted, is not protected, and does not appear to be in need of it. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  05:50, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
 * For what, it's worth Your opinon is worth a lot. Maybe the sentence can be reworded?Best wishes and good luck editing. :) RWV 05:56, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

zombie-novel-stub
Can someone add this somewhere: template:zombie-novel-stub the instructions are so tedious I give up. User:Caerwine, mind helping me? I feel like such a newb :( RWV 05:49, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
 * As a stub created outside the recommended process, it goes to WikiProject Stub sorting/Discoveries for discussion as to whether to keep it on not. I've listed it there for discussion, with a recommendation that it be kept and placed as an entry on the list of redirects. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  06:29, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

merge proposal
I've no objection personally to just redirecting WikiProject Stub sorting/List of stubs to this page (it's another list to maintain, after all). However, I suspect it might see some use for "speedy loading"/page size problems reasons, as discussed above. But if we're going to drop the category sizes, and transclude the page from sections, then we'd be able to get rid it (or use it as the section-linkified version). Alai 17:14, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I've basically made a similar comment elsewhere. I'd say hold off on any merge until we've found some way to make this main list easier to load... then there's no reason not to merge them. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  21:42, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * BTW, where was 'elsewhere'? This being the "merge target", I'd think this page would the usual place to centralise discussion on same...  Alai 06:23, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Plan of action
I don't see any vocal dissent, so to summarise some of the above discussion, I suggest we go ahead and: Anyone that thinks that this is a horrible idea, speak up now(ish).
 * Drop the counts from this page. (I could also "projectise" this list if people feel the need for a replacement form of fine-grained size info than that in /T.)
 * Split this page up into 17 transcluded pages, corresponding to the top-level section sections.
 * Turn /List of stub types into a page of 17 links to each of the above sub-pages. (For the sakes of people who'd rather not load the whole page, due to its deleterious on their network connection, browser, computer, nerves, or delicate sensibilities.)

If people want any of the information in a completely different form (like the templates-only form currently on the "list" page), I suggest they set up or request a 'bot to massage the above into an "echoed" page that's maintained automatically, and that bears an explicit disclaimer that it's not the "master copy", and changes there will be updated by the next 'bot edit. Alai 06:49, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Rather than do it all in one go, can I suggest doing this in two stages? I don't think dropping the counts will cause any problems, but it's conceivable that the splitting/transcribing would. To have an intermediate stage - even if only for a week or so - will see whether that makes for any improvement by itself. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  07:33, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with Grutness. Start with dropping the counts and wait a bit on transcluding.  I personally don't see much of the point of the counts anyway, but that's just my personal opinion.  I would love to see transcluded pages in the long run, so I fully support that process.  <b style="color:maroon;">~ Amalas</b>  rawr  <sup style="color:navy;">=^_^=  13:53, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I rather think the opposite about 'likely troublesomeness', but either way, I'm fully in favour of debundling and staging the two (or rather, three). Over a week sounds like considerable overkill, but 'enough time for people to yelp about the first change before continuing with the second' would be a good (if tremendously vague) guiding principle.  We'll know soon enough if the actual yelping (or conceivably, approving noises) from the masses start.  For one thing, I'd like to get rid of the merge notices before I'm significantly older, and that's somewhat necessarily the last step.  Alai 17:51, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd say the merge notices can go now. We've agreed that there won't be a merge, but we will be repurposing the other page. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  18:03, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Good move to make the changes in two stages -- I didn't know about this discussion until the counts were dropped, which caused me to take a look-see. I'm not a fan of dropping the counts, as the large counts in a couple of categories were what got me into stub sorting in the first place. (But it's also not a huge thing, either, and it seems to suck up a lot of editing time that could be used elsewhere.) However, I'm strongly against splitting the page. I frequently work on the Dead End Pages project, which has me editing a wide variety of pages. That means I'm looking for stub types I'm not familiar with. If I can't find the stub type quickly in the TOC, I just do a search in the page for key words. If I have to do 17 different searches through 17 different pages, it won't be long before I get frustrated and throw in a tag instead of the correct stub type, human nature being what it is and all.--Kathy A. 14:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The large counts are still being tracked elsewhere, as noted above. In fact, at least two elsewheres:  /To do, and the newly-projectised /Stub type sizes.  (Maybe I should reverse the order on the last so that the "bad news" is up front?)  But to clarify on splitting:  /ST would transclude the 17 sub-pages, so it'd make no (further) difference to the appearance of this page.  For comparison, look at the way /Proposals is made up for by-month sub-pages.  (But /List of... would point to the sub-pages individually, for those that don't want to load the whole page, and feel able to hazard a guess at which section it is they want.)  Hopefully that addresses most of your concerns?  Alai 19:12, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Definitely. Thanks so much for clarifying!--Kathy A. 19:22, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * /Stub type sizes definitely needs to be made more user friendly. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  18:36, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. I don't even know what the bolded and parenthesized numbers mean.  And yes, "bad news" first might be a better way of sorting. <b style="color:maroon;">~ Amalas</b>  rawr  <sup style="color:navy;">=^_^=  18:38, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Stubs (subcategories). Alai 23:14, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Re:"Bad news first" - the small ones are often bad news, too - lots of unproposed stub types... Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  23:18, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * True, and that was much of the original reasoning behind the list. They're (in theory) much simpler to deal with, though.  Alai 00:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Baby step
Rather than just a list of 17 links, I've been thinking of turning /List of stubs into a "fake TOC", something like this. This a a bit pointless by itself at present, as clicking on any of the links will load the whole /ST page anyway, and the links will have to change when the transcluded version is used instead, but just to give a flavour in advance. Comment away. Alai 04:42, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

On reflection, it's probably less painful to just use enumerated lists. I've put the /List page into that format, though currently the links just point to redirects to sections of this page. Alai 17:32, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Done
It's a done deal. Alai 23:40, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Ooooooh.... Me like... =) <b style="color:maroon;">~ Amalas</b>  rawr  <sup style="color:navy;">=^_^=  02:32, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Why is WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types/Leisure empty? That's weird, I preview my comment and it's there and according to its history, for quite some time, but when I first tried to load it as a separate page so I could add it to my watchlist, it didn't find it. Probably a server lag issue, nevermind. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  02:43, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Looks good, despite my initial misgivings. A suggestion - is it worthwhile redirecting all the talk pages for those subpages (and the index page) to here? That way any relevant discussion can all be done in one place. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  04:16, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Seems sensible to me. I'd certainly suggest moving-and-redirecting if they actually get any comments, so for my money it's just a matter of whether to do it proactively.  Alai 04:53, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I've redirected all the subpages' talk pages, but haven't redirected Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/List of stubs, since it already had comments on it, and I wasn't sure what the protocol is with redirecting an active talk page. Could someone please check that I got the lot? My ISP is having problems today and I'm having the devil's own job staying online. Cheers.


 * BTW, is there any reason why all the subheadings are nounds except "Geographical"? Shouldn't that be "Geography"? Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  05:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Uncategorization bot and stub categories
I have now recieved conflicting answers to the question of whether stub categories and equivalent non-stub catetories should be used for the same page. Currently, the bot that tags pages as uncategorized ignores stub categories (an entry under Category:Basketball stubs will get tagged unless it also has Category:Basketball or something else). So I'm going to ask one last time if there's a policy on this question (I'm fine with it going either way), and if there isn't, I'm going to raise the matter with someone policy-related. $$\sim$$ Lenoxus " * " 14:47, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
 * All articles require at least one permanent category. Stub categories are temporary categories relating to a cleanup process, and as such do not count as far as permanent categorisation is concerned. Thus, anything marked with only a stub category is still regarded as "uncategorised" in the greater scheme of Wikipedia. The same is true with articles listed only in other cleanup categories such as . Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  23:48, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the response. So, to clarify: Is there or isn't there any "official" rule on this? I now definitely understand and agree with the rationale for a "duplicate" category scheme, but I need to know what the ultimate say on this is, or whether it should be taken up on the proposals page (which I can't seem to find easily). — $$\sim$$ Lenoxus " * " 23:52, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Mmm. Good question. I don't know whether there's any official policy - what I detailed is simply how things are usually regarded at WP:WSS (and, presumably, by whoever has been bot-adding the uncat template). The existence of a specific uncat template for stub articles (Uncategorizedstub) is suggestive, though. I don't think it's really the sort of thing for the proposals page (which is more for proposing new stub types and, for future reference, is at WP:WSS/P), but you might want to post a comment about it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting - it may get a more authoritative answer there. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  00:06, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

My bot tags uncategorised pages, and for those purposes it does take account of stub categories (i.e., doesn't tag articles as uncategorised if they have a stub tag). But that's a matter of "triage", i.e. completely uncategorised are "more urgent cases" than articles that are in at least a stub category. (Lots of articles that have a permcat are also clearly 'missing categories', too, it should be noted.) That doesn't mean to say they might not have a stub tag added after being tagged as uncategorised, that another bot might tag them (Bluebot used to do this, but I don't know of any others currently running off the top of my head), or that someone might have added it by hand (or semi-by-hand, say by AWB). The "uncategorized stubs" categories do indeed exist specifically due to an earlier disagreement about whether to apply "uncat" to stubs, for which this was the "enlightened compromise".

On your actual question above, Grutness is completely correct. It's not a matter of policy, but it's implied by the categorization and stub guidelines, and consensus on this has been (in my experience) fairly clear. Note that often the categories won't be "duplicates", since it may well go into "X stubs" and some category "Ys", where "Ys" is a more specific subcategory of "Xs" (stub types are frequency and by design not as fine-grained as the permcats). Alai 01:06, 23 March 2007 (UTC)


 * To clarify what I meant by "proposals," I was talking about the Wikipedia propoals page. Presumptuous or not, I have now made the declaration here. $$\sim$$ Lenoxus " * " 14:46, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

List Order?
Can someone rework the List Order section on this page? I have no idea what it's talking about (and it has poor capitalisation :) ), so in my adding of the new Calvinism stub type, I'm just going to have to guess; this also means that I can't fix any problems that I happen to see (ie. if stuff is out of order). Btw, an apology if I get the Calvinism order wrong.

-- TimNelson 04:56, 3 April 2007 (UTC)


 * That's a good question: it is a little...  opaque.  I think what we're struggling to say it, they're organised firstly, in an order corresponding to the stubcat hierarchy, and secondly, ordered among siblings alphabetically.  So, where it is currently seems quite correct.  Alai 04:42, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

/Stub type sizes
I've updated WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub type sizes, and changed the format somewhat. Specifically, I've transcluded the actual listing from a sub-page, with some some sections added at several of the natural "breakpoints" (size thresholds and batches of 200); and in the parent page, added some explanatory text. If anyone feels moved to tweak the latter, they can now do so without having to wrangle with the updates to the former (and vice versa). Alai 05:03, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Author Stub - Not sure where to request it....
Pressing Ctrl + F in the article finds nothing about authors. Don't they deserve a stub too? ~ Giggy!  TalkContribs 06:17, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Authors use writer-stub with a large number of subtypes based on nationality and genre since the related permcat is . Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  06:42, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Cool, thanks.~ Giggy!  TalkContribs 05:17, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
 * And for future reference, if you do think of any potentially useful stubs we don't have, the place to suggest them is at WP:WSS/P :) Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  06:20, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Mathematician sub-stubs in use, but not reflected here
I found two sub-stubs that seem to be heavily used but are not reflected here: Asian mathematician stubs and American mathematician stubs. Should they be? The stub European mathematician stubs is listed here. --Ishi Gustaedr 03:35, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes. Alai 17:20, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Position
Is there a convention as to where the stub template should be placed within the article? I've generally seen it at the end, but should it be ahead or behind the external links, see also, references, etc? --SB 19:05, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the most common order is:


 * article text
 * references
 * see also
 * succession box (if any)
 * categories
 * stub templates
 * interwiki links

Valentinian T / C 20:43, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * This is all dealt with at WP:STUB. Basically, the categories, stubs and interwikis all come after the body of the article - which is taken to include any references, external links, and succession boxes. The stub template is usually plavced after the categories so that the stub category appears last in the list. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  00:59, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

River
What would the stub be for a river? --LtWinters 20:31, 21 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Please use the relevant -geo-stub, they have the form Germany-geo-stub. We've debated this issue and deliberately avoided having any special templates for rivers, mountains etc. It was simply impossible to draw the line, and it would clutter up the system. Valentinian T / C 20:46, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Slight reworking of geography subpage
I've made a few subtle changes to the geography stub subpage - firstly, I've moved the page from .../Goegraphical to .../Geography, to match the noun form of all the other subpages, then I made a few minor adjustments to the subheadings on that page, mostly to match the changed page name. Have a look - if there are problems, feel free to revert. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  07:48, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Any Ideas
What's the appropriate stub for Tattoo convention? --NeilN 02:13, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * fashion-stub is the closest, I think.--Pharos 02:24, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Done, thanks. --NeilN 02:25, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm... I've just noticed we have bodymodification-stub, but that's not on the official list.   I also noticed there was a bodypiercing-stub‎ which was supposed to have been deleted in July 2006, but which I've only redirected just now.  Should the bodymodification-stub be added to WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types?--Pharos 02:40, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm using the official list. Should I be checking something else if an article doesn't remotely fit into an existing stub type? --NeilN 02:49, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Just to quibble as "closer" of that SFD, the consensus was upmerge or redirect, with neither party to the discussion expressing a preference either way, so I opted for the former. However, ideally someone would have followed up to determine whether the new wider scope was itself sensibly wide and populable.  But even though it remains small at present, I'd imagine in practice it's heading more towards "list" rather than "delete", so I'd certainly suggest using it on that basis.  Alai 05:08, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

You could always post your findings at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Discoveries and see whether folks think it's a keeper. --EncycloPetey 04:15, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and to answer NeilN's question about the list, no - the official list is the one to use. If something isn't on it, either it's still being debated or we (WP:WSS) don't know about it. We don't have a list of all the things that aren't on the list :) Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  05:29, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Or, we approved and created, didn't trouble to list it (mea maxima culpa), or it otherwise got lost in the gears and bearings. Actually, we did have a list of things that aren't on the list:  Conscious used to generate one using a script which works on The List, and the raw size data list, which includes the kitchen sink, proposed, forgiven, under the radar or otherwise.  I must check to see if recent format changes have broken it...  Alai 05:49, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

OK, done! Here's a list of stub cats which don't appear on the list, current as of the last db dump (19th Oct). Be warned, it's rather long... Alai 15:43, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Adding parentage
Is there a procedure for adding parentage? For example, Category:Horse stubs is part of Category:Mammal stubs but should also be part of Category:Livestock stubs, can I just add the parent cat to the child cat page and indicate in small text the relationship on this page or do I need to ask permission on the proposals page?--Doug.(talk • contribs) 03:33, 26 October 2007 (UTC) **I'm not sure I understand, changing both what? You've lost me.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 04:28, 27 October 2007 (UTC) Duh, not reading carefully.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 05:11, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
 * There's no formal "process" for this. As a rule of thumb, the expectation is that the stub categories follow the structure of the permcats (smooshed out as appropriate, where there's additional layers of the latter, as is typically the case).  Here,  is not a parent (or ancestor) of, so I'd strongly suggest changing both, if you're going to change either.  Alai 10:10, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Ordering the School stubs for United States
Currently there are four major sub sections to Category:United States school stubs Then the states that have separate category are listed below, but those categories actually are subcategories of the 4 parent categories listed above. Would it not make more sence to list the sub categories under their parent category rathern than all together following the last parent category as has been done with other parts of the list? I would be willing to undertake that change but not until there is some agreement on doing so. Dbiel (Talk) 02:57, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Category: Midwestern United States school stubs
 * Category:Northeastern United States school stubs
 * Category:Southern United States school stubs
 * Category:Western United States school stubs
 * I would concur -- if it's even necessary at either. In general I'm none too thrilled about lengthy category preambles, since they're largely redundant with top-sorting of sub-categories, and they made the categories less convenient to use.  Cases like this, where it becomes necessary to repeatedly scroll to see any of the articles, past a single-column list of subtypes of subtypes are pretty absurd.  Alai 13:51, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Blank page
It's giving me a totally blank project page at the moment. -- Daytona2 20:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * It does this to me on a semi-regular basis. I hit reload a few times on my browser and it comes up eventually.--Fabrictramp 20:33, 12 November 2007 (UTC)