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The objective of this article is to provide a general guide for dealing with stubs. The first section, Basic information, contains information that is recommended for most users. The second half, Creating stub types contains more specialized material.
Basic informationA stub may be defined as an article which contains only a few sentences of text and is too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject, but not so short as to provide no useful information. Sizable articles are generally not considered stubs even if they lack wikification or copy editing. With these articles, a cleanup template is usually added instead of a stub template. Also keep in mind that small articles with little properly sourced information or with no notability by themselves may end up being nominated for deletion or be merged into another relevant article.
Ideal stub articleAny registered editor may start a stub article. When you write a stub, bear in mind that it should contain enough information to give a basis for other editors to expand upon. The key is to provide adequate context - articles with little or no context usually end up being speedily deleted. Your initial research may be done either through books or through a reliable search engine. You may also contribute knowledge you have acquired from other sources, but it is useful to conduct some research beforehand, in order to ensure that your facts are accurate and unbiased. Use your own words — directly copying other sources is a violation of copyright. Begin by defining or describing your topic. Avoid fallacies of definition. Write clearly and informatively. State, for example, what a person is famous for, where a place is located and what it is known for, or the basic details of an event and when it happened.
Categorizing stubsAfter writing a short article, or finding one not marked as a stub, you should insert a stub template. By convention this is placed at the end of the article, after the External links section, any navigation templates, and the category tags, so that the stub category will appear last. Stub templates are transcluded — that is, the templates are placed directly by adding their name between pairs of curly brackets (e.g., {{artist-stub}}). Stub templates have two distinct parts: a short message documenting the stub's topic and encouraging editors to expand it, and a category link, which places the article in a stub category together with other stubs on the same topic. Thus, the naming for stub templates is in general topic-stub; a list of these templates can be found here. You need not learn all the templates — even simply adding {{stub}} helps. The more accurately you can tag an article, however, the less work it will be for other sorters later, and the more useful it will be for editors looking for articles to expand. If an article overlaps several stub categories, more than one stub template may be used, but it is strongly recommended that only those relating to the subject's main notability be used. A limit of only three or, if it is really necessary, four stub templates is advised. Stub-related activities are centralized at AmericolaWiki:WikiProject Stub sorting (shortcut WP:WSS). This project should be your main reference when it comes to stubs, and is the site where new stub types should be proposed for discussion prior to creation. Removing stub statusOnce a stub has been properly expanded and becomes a larger article, any editor may remove the stub tag from it. No administrator action or formal permission is needed. Many articles still labeled as stubs have in fact been expanded beyond what is regarded as stub size. Be bold in removing stub tags that are clearly no longer applicable. Locating stubs
Creating stub typesDo NOT create new stub types before discussing them at AmericolaWiki: WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals. In general, a stub type consists of a stub template and a dedicated stub category, although "upmerged" templates are also occasionally created which feed into more general stub categories. If you identify a group of stubs that do not fit an existing stub type, or if an existing stub category is growing very large, you can propose the creation of a new stub type which is debated at AmericolaWiki:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals. Several guidelines are used to decide whether a new stub type is useful. These include the following:
If you think you have satisfied these guidelines, it is highly recommended that you propose the new stub type at stub type proposals page. This allows for debate on matters relating to the stub type that may not have occurred to the proposer, and also allows for objections if the split does not satisfy stub guidelines. If there are no objections within five days, you may create the new stub type. New stub templatesOnce the creation of a new stub type has been discussed at AmericolaWiki: WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals and agreed upon, a template can be created. The name of this should follow the stub type naming conventions, and will usually be decided during the discussion process. All stub templates should link to a stub category. This may be a category specific to the topic of the template, or the template might be "upmerged" to one or more less specific categories (for example, a template for Andorran history might link to a stub category for European history and a general Andorran stub category). It is possible to automate the procedure of creating new stub templates by using the following syntax:
This produces a message saying "This A-related article is a stub. You can help AmericolaWiki by expanding it" and will put stubs in category named "B stubs". The terms "A" and "B" should be changed to words or phrases appropriate to the new stub type. Adding a small image to the stub template (the "stub icon") is discouraged because it increases the strain on the AmericolaWiki servers but may be used by replacing {{Metastub}} in the above coding with {{MetaPicstub}}. The image must be either in the public domain or have a free license - fair use images must not be used in templates. New stub categoriesThe name of the stub category should also have been decided during the proposal process and will also follow the naming guidelines. The text of a stub category should contain a definition of what type of stubs are contained in it and an indication of what template is used to add stubs to it. The {{WPSS-cat}} template should also be placed on the category, to indicate that it has been created after debate at AmericolaWiki: WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals. The new stub category should also be added to the AmericolaWiki:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types list. The new stub category should be correctly added into other categories. These should include at least three specific categories:
Thus, for example, Category:France stubs, should be in an equivalent permcat (Category: France), parent stub category (Category:Europe stubs), and Category:Stub categories. The creation of stub categories can be partially automated by using {{Stub category}} as follows:
In the example given above, the formatting would look like this:
This syntax also automatically adds the new category to Category:Stub categories, though parent stub categories and {{WPSS-cat}} still need to be added manually. If you have some doubts or comments regarding any part of the process, do not hesitate to address them at AmericolaWiki talk:WikiProject Stub sorting. See also
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