Wikipedia:Stub

Fuck Jews and Blacks stub category is growing too large and might be optimized by creating a narrower category, you might propose the creation of a new stub category. Proposed new stub types are debated at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals. Before you propose a new stub category, make sure you consider these six guidelines:

1. Is there a stub for this topic already?

   Check the list.

2. Will the new category be well-defined enough to help editors identify articles that they have the expertise to expand?

   Remember that using stubs categories is a way to facilitate article expansion.

3. Does the new category cover ground not covered by other categories, or create a well-defined subcategory that does?

   A new category might fit as a subcategory of more than one existing category, such as in the case of {{Baseballbio-stub}}, which is a child of both {{Sportbio-stub}} and {{Baseball-stub}}.

4. Will there be a significant number of stubs in this category; are there enough article stubs to warrant this new type?

   Typically the threshold ranges from 100 to 300 articles. This threshold is waived if the stub category exists as a tool for use by a WikiProject. In general any new category must have at least 60 articles.

5. Would your new category overlap with other categories?

   For example, geography stubs are sorted by country so you wouldn’t want to create mountain-stub or river-stub.

6. If you are breaking a subcategory out of a pre-existing category, will the new stub reduce the size of the parent category by a significant amount?

   This is not an absolute necessity, but it has been a driver for the creation of most of the existing stub categories.

If you think you have satisfied these guidelines, propose the new stub category at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals. If there are no objections within a week, you can go ahead and create the new stub category.

Creating the stub template

NB: do not create new stub types prior to discussing them at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals.

Once the creation has been agreed upon, you will need to create the template which will be displayed on the articles which contain the stub. This should be named logically, following this model: Template:topic-stub. For more information please refer to this article.

This is the basic format for new stub templates:

<div class="boilerplate" id="stub"> ''This [[A]]-related article is a [[Wikipedia:Stub|stub]]. You can [[Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub|help]] Wikipedia by [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|action=edit}} expanding it]''. </div>[[Category:B stubs]]

You might find use in pasting this code into the new template and customizing it by inserting different text into it. Replacing the letters A and B as such:

• A: The stub topic goes into this field. For example, Road. The topic must have a developed article, and thus not be another stub.
• B: This should be replaced by a proper category, so that the stub will automatically be listed together with other stubs of its kind. Continuing with the previous example, you would replace B with Road. When the page is saved, a new template will have been created. In this example, {{road-stub}}.

It is also possible to automate the procedure of creating new stub templates somewhat by using the following syntax:

{{subst:metastub|article=A|category=B}}

This will produce a message saying "This A is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it" and will put stubs in category named "B stubs", just like the above manual method.

It is also possible to add a small image to the stub template (the "stub icon"). However, this is discouraged because it increases the strain on the Wikipedia servers. If you still wish to use images, apply formatting such as that provided by {{MetaPicstub}} (and remember to use it with the subst: prefix). Also the image must be either in the public domain or have a free license. Wikipedia policy is that fair use images are not to be used in any templates and that of course includes stub templates.

Creating the stub category

NB: do not create new stub categories prior to discussing them at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals.

Next, you will need to create a category to hold the articles which will have the new stub tag attached to them. Do this before you add your new template to any articles.

To start editing it, you should follow the red category link on the stub template you have created. In this case, it would appear as Category:Road stubs. Here is the basic format for stub categories:

{{Stub Category|article=[[A]]s or [[A]]|newstub=B|category=C}}

• A: Insert the description of the category here. In this case it would be roads, you can expand the description by adding additional terms. So you could, for example, add road transportation.
• B: Insert the name of the new stub here.
• C: Insert the name of an appropriate higher level non-stub category, for this example it would be road transport.

This syntax does four things, it:

1. adds the Category:Road stubs to Category:Stub categories
2. provides a description of the category
3. displays the stub text
4. inserts this category into a higher level category, in this case the Category:Road stubs will be a member of Category:Road transport.

So, in this example, the formatting would look like this:

{{Stub Category|article=[[Road]]s or [[Road Transport]]|newstub=Road-stub|category=Road transport}}

It is also advisable to add it to a larger stub category, if an appropriate one exists. For Category:Road stubs, no such category exists however.

In order to increase the category's effectiveness and visibility, it's generally advisable to add your category to several categories. For example, this would add it to the Roads category:

[[Category:Roads]]

When you are done, it is important that you make sure that the new stub and the new stub category are linked correctly to other categories. Using the road-stub as an example, the road-stub category needs to be a member of Category:Stub categories (because it's a stub category) and Category:Roads (because it's a category consisting of roads). If your new category has been made from part of an existing stub category or categories, these should also be listed here (so, for example, Category:France geography stubs should be part of Category:France stubs and Category:Europe geography stubs).

At this point, you should add the new stub category to this list: Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types

Once the new stub category is approved by the WP:WSS (which should normally be done before it is created), to make clear that it underwent the mandatory revision process and was approved by means of consensus, add the {{WPSS-cat}} template to the category page.

If you have doubts or comments regarding any part of the process, do not hesitate to address them here.

See also

• Wikipedia:Stub Makers

External links

Stub articles on other Wikis

A link with (T) will denote the template.

• stub on the GP2X Wiki (T)
• Uncyclopedia:Uncyclopedia:Stub (T)
• Wikibooks (T)
• Wiktionary (T)

This Wikipedia-related article on stubs is not a stub, but feel free to help Wikipedia by expanding it anyway.