Category talk:Stubs

removal of category from UTC pages

Suggest removal of stubs category from all the UTC pages - they are really linked redirection pages. Scottkeir 04:41, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

You're more likely to get a response by taking this request to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting, or maybe Wikipedia talk:Stub. The category talk page isn't really the place for it. Grutness...wha? 04:46, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Many thanks, suggestion now at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting. So many talk and discussion pages, hard to know which to pick! Scottkeir 19:14, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Why don't you just

Change the stub template to make it say something about how you categorize stubs now, and link to the stub categorization page?

A lot of editors dislike referring to the inner workings of Wikipedia in articles, so it would quickly be reverted. In fact, there's a specific guideline not to link more than is necessary to Wiki-space - Wikipedia:Avoid self-reference). Grutness...wha? 01:04, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Heh, the subtlety is what got me intrigued in wikipedia in the first place :) Xhin 22:30, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, the whole idea of stubs is a self-reference, no? A slightly more explanatory version, though, might encourage better self-stub-sorting.--Pharos 12:04, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I fully agree. If you added something to the stub template saying something like "this template is deprecated, please choose one of the recognized stub types instead, then the stub sorting work would be way reduced. Stifle 16:05, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I at first had similar thoughts, but on the discussion page for the template, it was basically suggested that it remain this way so as to prevent inexperienced users from trying to be too helpful and in essence make things harder. Besides, don't you want to do some fun sorting anyway? Jfingers88 03:48, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

There is some truth to that (the first part :) - Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion is frequently flooded with invientive new stub templates which some newbie has decided to create in order to help out. And there are definitely quite a number of stubs which have been assigned to...erm, shall we say surprising stub categories. Though it's good to have as many people helping out with stub sorting as possible, the whole stub system has got so convoluted that it's good if people have some idea of what categories there are before they start. Some might point out that this is a flaw in the whole stub-sorting system, and it's a justifiable comment, but given that there are an estimated 1/3 of a million stubs on wikipedia, the classification system is necessarily big (which is why WP:WSS/ST takes so long to load!). The fact that we managed to keep all but a couple of hundred stubs categorised at any one time is quite a feat in itself. Grutness...wha? 04:50, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

"Very Large Stub Category" notice addition

Is this really necessary? By all accounts, this category is not large, let alone "very large". Using the template only serves to dilute the impact it might otherwise have. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:17, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Especially since the stub category is empty right now. Jfingers88 00:03, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Good points. The reason that notice is often there is that this category fluctuates enormously - sometimes it'll suddenly get flooded with a few hundred articles, although a lot of the time it is nearly empty. That notice comes and goes from it, but because of the rapid fluctuation sometimes it's there when the category is very small rather than very large. Grutness...wha? 01:24, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Zero

I'm new here to the project, and I've been working like crazy getting rid of all these stubs. I just thought I'd never see it blank :p Amazing. SynergeticMaggot 03:07, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

It happens every now and again (but not often enough :) Good to see yet another new stub-sorter, BTW! Grutness...wha? 05:32, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Well as long as I have nothing in particular to do, I'll be a-stub sorten :p SynergeticMaggot 06:16, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Awesome. Keep up the good work. It's nice to see the "Empty Category" notice here once in a while, though it usually takes a ton of work. Jfingers88 19:39, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Yawn. Finally I emptied it. Too tired to shout hooray. :D Picaroon9288|ta co 04:04, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

It's empty again. --andrew 06:30, 27 August 2006 (UTC) ...and again --andrewI20^Talk 04:31, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

It's gotten big again... NauticaShades^(talk) 16:00, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Empty again --Skapur 16:25, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

And empty again --- Skapur 03:45, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Empty once more --- NielsenGW 18:04, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

No offence folks, but... it fills, it empties. Unless it suddenly gets really big, we don't really need to keep reporting its size here! Grutness...wha? 21:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Suddenly REALLY BIG, film at 11...Her Pegship (tis herself) 00:58, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

For those keeping track, it's been macheted back to 800 stubs. We're getting there... Grutness...wha? 00:52, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Stub on user pages

If, like me, you get fed up with having to subst stub templates on user pages, you might like to know that I've just made {{Stubbed user}} - a template that can be subst'ed onto user talk pages to quickly explain what you've just done. Grutness...wha? 01:02, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Cleared

Cleared on Saturday, March 31 2007. Just thought I'd show off a little. ;) Thanks to everyone else went through these articles. Black-Velvet 06:44, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

It's 1,000+ again. :( Mahanga^Talk 01:00, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Cleared a load...

Well, I've cleared out quite a few of these over the last couple of days (not that the list seems to be shrinking much - lol), but I thought I'd just apologise in advance, if I've put any in the wrong stub. I don't think I have, but it's not always easy to tell exactly which one it should be, is it? Cheers, --Midx1004 19:26, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Even very experienced stub sorters like myself get them wrong every now and again. But even if only 90% are right, then it's a good load of work done :) Grutness...wha? 00:58, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Coming down...

We seem to be back to just over 600 again. Grutness...wha? 00:58, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

...and again, for the first time in nearly three months. Grutness...wha? 00:08, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

One can now see as far as "R" on the first page - it's been a while... GregorB (talk) 21:50, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Now were only at about 160! :) Icestorm815 (talk) 21:39, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Ladies and Gentlemen - I an happy to announce that, for the first time since April, the {{Backlog}} template has ben removed from the top of Category:Stubs! :) Grutness...wha? 23:20, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I feel bad about single handedly putting it back in about 2 hours with AWB :S. --Nn123645 (talk) 05:36, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

(Sh)it happens - we just keep bailing. :) Grutness...wha? 22:40, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

cleared the page

last one just done! PamD (talk) 15:31, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

All hands to the pump...

Hey-la, the backlog's back... Grutness...wha? 00:01, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

What is the thresold you are using for a backlog? I would think 1,000 articles or three months would be a good threshold considering what is found in Category:Wikipedia backlog.--BirgitteSB 15:38, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

This category is theoretically meant to be completely empty, and frequently is - anything that's in here more than a week is in here far too long, and anything over 100 stubs is too much of a backlog, which is why the template goes in and comes out at approximately the 100 stub mark. Grutness...wha? 23:20, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

If more than 100 stubs is a backlog then we need to invent a new term for the rest of what is found at Category:Wikipedia backlog ;) I am not going to cause a fuss over the tag but for the record I find it clearly unnecessary to be tagging categories with only 100 items with backlog.--BirgitteSB 18:34, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, the threshold used by stub sorters is 100 stubs in Category:Stubs for good reasons. The category is meant to be entirely empty, and as such a case could be made for saying that just one stub in there is a backlog. But 100 is used as a conventient point for adding the backlog notice, since the editing of the page to do that draws attention to the category for anyonee with it on their watchlist - which isnludes a large number of stub sorters. 100's been used for about two years now very effectively for the purposes of stub-sorting (FWIW, I was against it at first, as can be seen here, but since realising how useful it is, I'm all in favour of it :). It should also be remembered that stub-sorting's a little different to most types of WP cleanup, since most other forms of cleanup backlog primarily require the articles to literally be cleaned for the backlog to go. Here, Category:Stubs is simply a sorting-house into a couple of thousand more specific cleanup categories (the stub categories by subject). Grutness...wha? 23:48, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I think you all are doing a great job preventing a backlog here. I just try to keep the Backlog category updated.

Fair enough - and thanks for the compliments :) Sounds like you're doing good cleanup work too! Grutness...wha? 05:56, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Cleared again

Backlog is cleared again! —BradV 01:30, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Nice work! I'd been working to keep the first half of the alphabet clear this week but it's been hard to push all the way through -- nice job finishing it off! -- KathrynLybarger (talk) 04:22, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Many hands make light work. I would have given up earlier if I didn't know you were there working from the other end. Kudos. —BradV 05:53, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm one of the many hands Kathleen.wright5 23:28, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

And cleared again, but for one article with a "work in progress" tag and work being done on it today! PamD (talk) 08:57, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

And again - someone else had stubsorted the Work In Progress - interesting dilemma there, as the template says "As a courtesy, please do not edit this page while this message is displayed". Should keen stubsorters ignore that and sort the stub, or leave the {{stub}} there in the expectation that the active editor will either stubsort it or move it beyond a stub?! PamD (talk) 11:21, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

...or leave a message on the editor's talk page saying "next time you edit this, could you...?" :) Grutness...wha? 21:34, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Re:Article in Category:Nursing stubs

Why is there an article in the above Stub Category? Kathleen.wright5 11:02, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I think because someone got very muddled! I've unpicked the damage and left a message on both the userpages used. PamD (talk) 11:44, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Re: Reer Mohamed Arab

What do I do with the above article which is not in English? I removed the Stub which has been put back by User:Kubek15 . Kathleen.wright5 04:51, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Check the "whatlinkshere"s. One of them says it's a Somali clan. I've put a somalia-stub on it. Grutness...wha? 05:27, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

What Stub is suitable for Writing bump ?

Could someone tell me what is a suitable stub for the above article?, and there is a backlog of a 105 articles at the moment. Kathleen.wright5 05:39, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Mmmmmm. Probably something like {{musculoskeletal-stub}}. We don't have a stub type for the actual writing process, unfort5unately. Grutness...wha? 22:21, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Help! The backlog is now 264. Kathleen.wright5 11:10, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

...and many of them seem to be dab pages, which shouldn't have been marked as stubs in the first place... :/ Back to about 210 now. Grutness...wha? 23:17, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

My bad there, I think: someone'd tweaked MW page-rendering in such a way as to subtly break my bot's check for template-populated categories. Fixed, and added a double-check for the most common such templates, to mitigate the damage if the same thing happens again. Hopefully not too many articles were affected: fortunately I only ran a small portion of the batch before the issue was pointed out to me. Everything from the mid-March db dump's been tagged now, btw. Alai (talk) 06:08, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

No, the main problem was a number of dab pages which weren't marked with {{disambig}}, so it wouldn't have spotted them anyway. Grutness...wha? 21:51, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, that's a more long-running issue. It may be that I can tag some of these that seem to "partly match" what a dab page ought to look like with disambig-cleanup, but it seems to me that such cases are generally going to need human eyeballs one way or another. Alai (talk) 06:13, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

All hands to the pump !

The backlog is now 1,093 and climbing. Kathleen.wright5 08:16, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Backlog now 1,200 Kathleen.wright5 07:43, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Done climbing, though. :) (Give or take whether anyone tops up from the special page, which tends to be much less all-at-once.) Alai (talk) 08:18, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Backlog now 1,568 Kathleen.wright5 07:53, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Technical problem Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types

There is a technical problem at the above page, please see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#WikiProject_Stub_sorting.2FStub_types Kathleen.wright5 24:46, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

It seems to be OK now Kathleen.wright5 14:00, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I was wrong, its still continuing. It happens after I list new or recently discovered Stub Types. Kathleen.wright5 12:42, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Re:Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/List of Stubs

How do I turn the above page into a Link so that it can be put onto members User Pages instead of the usual link (parts of which don't work). Kathleen.wright5 23:42, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Problem solved. Kathleen.wright5 08:18, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Holy crap

No wonder there's such a backlog. I stop clearing out A-J for 36 hours and the number of uncategorized stubs goes from six hundred some to over 1300. Gah! Powers ^T 17:10, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

There's a huge dump of new stubs into the category about once per month. Last time it took the total to over 1500, and it usually takes it past 2000. if it only climbed to 1300 we got off lightly this time! Grutness...wha? 00:43, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Cleared again

Category is now empty! PamD (talk) 07:33, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

To be accurate... it was empty 10 minutes later. I found, and sorted, 3 stubs in the first part of the alphabet, forgetting that my bookmark points to "P"! But it's still empty now... I wonder for how long? PamD (talk) 09:01, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Nice work everyone! -- KathrynLybarger (talk) 12:29, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

AGAIN!! -- KathrynLybarger (talk) 04:56, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Regular influx of new articles

There's a discussion started at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting#Auto_Stub_Tagging_Bot which could affect the influx of new articles into this category. Might want to check it out... Grutness...wha? 02:34, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

User:Atomican/Wikicite+

I have been testing this out and I recommend other stub sorters test and try it out as well. I've found it to be of great use thus far. Its simple and easy to use, and is being updated constantly. — _Maggot^Syn 09:21, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I've copied this across to WP talk:WSS. Grutness...wha? 01:34, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

• Notice: Atomican is in the process of creating a script to aid in sorting stubs. During this process we are allowing him to test a number tags in his sandbox.

I've added this note on the main page to allow Atomican to continue his updates and tests. Revert me if you don't think its needed. — _Maggot^Syn 21:47, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Using hidden categories for stubs

I think we should be using __HIDDENCAT__ (or {{hiddencat}}) on this category and its subcategories. My argument for this is on the main stub sorting talk page. GreenReaper (talk) 08:27, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

200 and climbing...

The number of unsorted stubs is starting to climb again... about time for some clearing? Grutness...wha? 23:40, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Getting to work... LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 03:49, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Strange numbers...

Something odd is going on with the number of articles in Category:Stubs. At the top of the list it says "The following 200 pages are in this category, out of 517 total." Yet page 2 of the list only contains three articles. The template's whatlinkshere lists only about 205 articles, as well. I know that there can b server delays with adding items to this category, but it's the first time I've seen it differentially affect the number of articles and the list of articles. I've commented about this at VP (Technical), but got no satisfactory reply as to what's going on. Anyone have any idea? Grutness...wha? 00:38, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Its a caching error on Wikimedia's side. Null edits to every page would empty it, or you could just wait... LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 00:35, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Automated backlog tagging

Excellent idea. Synergy 23:08, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Not necessarily. It may attract the attention of more general article-sorters, but it's less likely to attract the attention of stub-sorters (who are likely to have the category on their watchlists, and are more experienced in knowing where to sort stubs to). I think it's likely to result in backlogs staying around longer than was the case with the manual backlog tag, and also in more stubs being inappropriately sorted. Grutness...wha? 23:54, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay; in that case feel free to revert the edit. But shouldn't most stub sorters just be checking the cat occasionally, without needing it to be on their watchlist? –Drilnoth (T • C) 23:59, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

A lot do - but for many it's onlky an occasional thing, as they do other work here as well. If it's on their watchlist as well, the placing of a backlog template is an instant "call to arms". Grutness...wha? 22:07, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I think that 100 is a good number for a backlog. Recently is was tagged at about 30-40 or so, and this is just not accurate for us. 100 is sensible in that we would normally get an influx of about 1k. I'd rather a bot handled it, honestly. Some newcomers might get tag happy, just trying to help out and all (understandable). Its true that the tag is a "call to arms", at least for me. But you mentioned this (manual tagging) as a way to sort them properly and the tag will be there longer, and I have to disagree here. We really aren't meant to be sorting them to their exact or specific stub type. Most often, they are further sorted later, so a simple bio-stub on a person will later be further sorted, etc. This moves them out of the main one much faster, resulting in no backlog. Synergy 18:12, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Maybe - but it depends on who is called in by the backlog. In my case, for instance, I go through a backlog looking for stubs that i know I can sort to a fine level (e.g., Geography stubs and New Zealand-related stubs). By sorting them they go straight to a low-level category without the intermediate steps. I suspect that quite a number of stub-sorters deliberately look for stubs they can deal with thoroughly in a similar way. If its non-regular stub sorters who get called in by the category appearing in a generic backlog list, chances are any stubs on these subjects will get more coarsely sorted, and other sorters will still have to sort them into the finer categories. It may reduce a backlog in the main Category:Stubs, but only at the expense if increasing the smaller backlogs in numerous other categories. Have you checked the size of some of the top-level stub categories being sorted into - Category:Politics stubs, for instance? Grutness...wha? 00:41, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

When I was more actively sorting, I used a program to locate the best possible stub type to use. But yes, not everyone will do this. Which is why some editors go to the main stub types (geo, poli, bio, etc) and sort from there, since others do not. There is no easy way to fix this, as we cannot force them to use the best possible "type", but I don't think it would be solved by either having a manual tagging, or a bot issued tagging for backlogs. To me its an entirely different situation, and would be solved by actually trainging sorters to use a more specific type. Our main issue for this cat, is to just move them out, since its temporary. Synergy 01:50, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it's more of a side issue to the matter and hand, but the point remains that if regular stub-sorters get called here when there's a backlog, they're probably more well equipped to know finer stub types to replace {{stub}} with than what you might call, "generic wikignomes" who work on reducing backlogs in general. I just don't like the idea of replacing one backlog with several smaller ones further down the line. Grutness...wha? 08:30, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

The last thing I want to do is carry this on but I have to disagree again. :) The regulars will check regularly. They "might" check faster, seeing the tag. Unless we question all the regs, I still don't think it will matter. Agree to disagree then. ;) Synergy 01:08, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Since it was me who added the autoreport feature to the backlog template I guess I should comment: As Drilnoth kind of said above, its just an option. If you don't like it simply remove the autoreport value from the template and you get the old manual template. That is, change {{backlog|100}} to {{backlog}}.

I myself have sometimes acted when I have seen in my watchlist that someone has added a backlog template on some category, so I can see that the manual method also can be a good solution.

And this gave me an idea: I could make it so this template can take one or more categories as parameters. And when it "reports" it could report to those categories too. So you could have an internal backlog category for your WikiProject or similar. (But I think it should still report to the global backlog category.) Then you guys would only need to take a look in that backlog category every now and then. Would you find that useful?

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:25, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure I follow that... if I'm right, what you're saying is that the main page of WP:WSS would be pinged when there's a backlog - and therefore that would register as a change in any watchlist listing that page? If so, it would be an elegant solution - it would list the category in Category:Backlogs (or whatever it's called) and still appear as an alert on watchlists. If so, I'd be quite happy with that. Grutness...wha? 08:24, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry no, it wouldn't appear on the watchlists. The only way to do that automatically would be to have a bot add and remove the backlog template when needed. Or rather, have a bot understand the template and do a dummy edit with a proper edit comment like "This category now has a backlog". That is actually doable, we should perhaps consider that for these backlog templates.

Anyway, what I meant above is that you could tag all the cleanup categories related to your project with {{backlog}}, even all the subcategories. And then the template could report to a single Category:Wikipedia stubsorting backlogs. And then instead of you guys having to manually check all those subcategories, you would only have to manually check Category:Wikipedia stubsorting backlogs every now and then. So it won't help much for the top category, but it would help a lot in keeping an eye on the subcategories. Of course, you wouldn't even have to check the top category anymore, since it too would be reported into Category:Wikipedia stubsorting backlogs.

Come to think of it, since this would mean you guys would tag all your subcategories, then we probably should give this template an option to not log into the Wikipedia global Category:Wikipedia backlog. Since as you pointed out above, the "generic wikignomes" probably won't be of much help in those subcategories anyway.

--David Göthberg (talk) 14:00, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Mmmmm. The problem I see with that is that most stub categories get backlogs when things are sorted into them, so they're slow to build up to that point. Those categories are already listed as backlogs when they're too full - at WP:WSS/TD. With Category:Stubs it isn't a slow incremental thing - we get sudden datadumps of two thousand-odd stubs at once. In many ways it's an apples and oranges situation. The bot solution sounds a better one, if it doesn't take too much effort on the part of the bot-maker/owner. Grutness...wha? 22:09, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, coding a bot that does that is probably quite some work. But I don't know much about bots, that is not my area.

I am of course just brainstorming here, since I don't know what is the best solution for you guys. Anyway, I just remembered the MediaWiki API call we made for the category redirects. With an API call normal users can check 500 categories at a time, and admins and bots can check 5000 categories at a time. That is, we can get a list with the number of items in each stub category. And that is fresh up-to-date data. I see you have 7,019 stub categories in Category:Stub categories. So that would mean 15 API calls for a normal user to get the whole list. Or 2 calls for an admin or bot. Unfortunately those calls are a bit tricky, so they should preferably be made by a bot. If you guys know some willing bot owner, ask him to contact me and I can explain how to use the API calls. Then he could produce the list on a daily basis and publish it some place.

But just as a teaser, here is the call that shows the data for the first 500 categories in Category:Stub categories. Try clicking it and see what it produces. As you can see it probably needs to be filtered by a bot and published in a more human readable format. Anyway, would you find that useful?

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:02, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Diffuse Tag?

Shouldn't this category have a {{CatDiffuse}} (Template:CatDiffuse) tag? I mean, the whole purpose of this category (original intention or not) is pretty much a place to hold stub articles until they can be relabeled with a more descriptive stub, isn't it?--98.114.243.75 (talk) 23:03, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Support: I was sorting the non-categorised a few hours ago, and have finished, for now. CorporalStone (talk) 21:49, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Redirect

Can we stick a redirect to here on [[Category:Stub]]? CorporalStone (talk) 21:46, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

almost cleared

almost cleared the list

increased my edits from 267 to 305

first time stub cleaning--Umar1996 (talk) 15:12, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Keep up the good work :) Grutness...wha? 22:11, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

thx (first time thanks received) --Umar1996 (talk) 15:33, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Any way for an anon to request stub status for a protected article?

Here is a stub suggestion: Gabriella Hoffman. I think by making it a stub more people will see it but I'm not sure how I can do this. Can someone do it on my behalf and also is there a place to request such things. The article's talk page is relatively empty.--128.54.231.9 (talk) 08:01, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Done. There are two ways - one is to add a note on the article's talk page, the other is to register as a user, which is free, easy to do, and recommended :) Grutness...wha? 21:53, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Cleared - 8 Jan 2012

After a long period when there have been a lot of entries in the category, it's now cleared. Not for long, obviously! PamD 10:05, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

And again, after another backlog. PamD 20:46, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Cleared 21 Jan 2013

After a massive influx from a bot chasing up old untagged stubs, we've got it down to zero. Well done to all stub-sorters! PamD 21:55, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Template:Stub

Today the template Template:Stub is suddenly appearing in the category Category:Stubs. The template doesn't appear to have been edited since Sept 2011, so something else has changed. Any ideas what's changed and how we can change it back? I'm asking this both at Template talk:Stub and at Category talk:Stubs. PamD 22:59, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I can't see it in there at the moment? -- Patchy1 REF THIS BLP 00:00, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

No, because PamD (talk · contribs) raised about three threads all for this one problem, and Le Deluge (talk · contribs) (who fixed it) replied at only one of them: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting#Template:Stub in Category:Stubs. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:56, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Keeping an eye on Category: Stubs

I don't know how many active participants WP:WSS has, but if anybody watches this talk page, just wanted to note that Category: Stubs had grown to over 700 entries in recent weeks. Anyone who stub-sorts regularly might want to check in from time to time to keep it manageable. Thanks. Woodshed (talk) 10:10, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Congratulations to Woodshed for both quantity and quality of stub-sorting in recent days - thanks! PamD 08:00, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Don't worry, I'll soon help to get it back to the 700 mark. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 13:46, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Empty category, for the moment! PamD 07:50, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

And again, thanks to valiant work by TCMemoire. PamD 10:54, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

MoohanBOT

Just to let you all know my Bot runs through this category, periodically, performing two tasks;

1. It removes the {{stub}} tag if there is a 'better' one on the page i.e. {{something-stub}}
2. It tries to identify biography articles, through categories the page is in and the presence of {{persondata}} amongst others. If it identifies one it changes the stub tag to {{bio-stub}}

The reason I let you know is that if you notice the category is very long or seems to have a lot of possible biography articles, feel free to leave a message on my talk page and I'll run the bot as soon as I can! Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 13:53, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Following this up I was surprised to find >1000 articles in Category:People stubs, ie those with the less-than-helpful {{bio-stub}}. I cleared it out finally this morning, after spending way too much time on it in the last month. A very small trickle of articles seem to get there manually, mostly as part of AfC. I'll keep an eye on it now. PamD 12:43, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Proposal: Stub categories should be hidden

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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All categories within the Category:Stubs structure should be hidden categories. The current arrangement of stub categories as non-hidden is in contravention of the guideline at Wikipedia:Categorization, where they are explicitly described as Wikipedia administrative categories. The guideline gives no rationale as to why these should not be hidden.

Stub categories are not categories which describe the topic itself and should be hidden in line with other such administrative categories as Category:Good articles and Category:Year of birth missing.

Stub templates, which generate stub categories, serve as a visual suggestion to the reader to expand the article. As a result, there is no basis for not hiding the category on these grounds (see Template:Unreferenced and Category:Articles lacking sources as a similar effective arrangement).

Stubs have not been hidden purely for historical reasons. FYI – This idea was raised by several editors in 2008[1][2][3] when hidden categories were introduced, but the conversations did not receive much attention. SFB 21:29, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Survey

• Support as proposal initiator. SFB 21:29, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose per Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2012 April 6#Category:Stub categories. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:29, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose per RedRose64. Fortdj33 (talk) 12:32, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose There's a difference between hidden categories (which are designed to recruit power-users to fix a problem) and stubs (which are designed to recruit common readers/editors to expand the article) just as there are the maintenance templates (which are designed to inform of a problem and recruit a reader/editor to fix a problem). Hasteur (talk) 15:36, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
• Support --NaBUru38 (talk) 13:06, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose Having the stub visible highlights the fact the article needs expanding. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 12:50, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
• Support Floatsam (talk) 01:27, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose, they assist navigation to other similar content by topic. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 01:22, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose per RedRose64, Lugnuts, and Hastuer. --I dream of horses (T) @ 01:57, 16 April 2014 (UTC) (fixed formatting at 01:58, 16 April 2014 (UTC)) (added to comment at 04:25, 17 April 2014 (UTC))

Discussion

@Qetuth: mentioned that stub category links could be provided in the stub template text. Is this a desirable option? SFB 07:29, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

@Sillyfolkboy: I would hope that every stub (as part of the template code) includes a category link so that it will get assigned to the right project's stub sorting category. Obviously not all stubs will have it and we may have to run some null-editors over the template transclusions so that it gets picked up appropriately. Hasteur (talk) 15:38, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

@Hasteur: I meant in the article presentational element, not the wikicode. I was thinking of something along the lines of:

This biographical article relating to Austrian luge is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it

or:

This biographical article relating to Austrian luge is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it (or expanding similar stub articles)

This would encourage expansion of similar articles without resorting to classifying a topic with a Wikipedia admin category. SFB 20:57, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

The problem with that is that not all stub templates and stub categories are in a 1:1 relationship. Consider Category:American painter, 20th-century birth stubs - that is populated by ten different stub templates; and {{SanFrancisco-railstation-stub}} which populates both Category:San Francisco Bay Area railway station stubs and Category:San Francisco, California building and structure stubs. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:18, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

There is no problem there either, we link to the category the template is situated in. I think it's more intuitive then showing the category at the bottom - something more regular reasons skip over. Of course advance users can always choose to see hidden categories and have it both ways. --CyberXRef^☎ 06:05, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

If we are to "link to the category the template is situated in", which category is that for {{SanFrancisco-railstation-stub}}? Or for {{SouthKorea-airport-stub}}? --Redrose64 (talk) 08:03, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

That's a fair question. We could always link to more than one. However in both of your examples, you can filter some out (for example, a lot of articles falls into "XXX building and structure stubs", not necessarily a good category to point new readers to if they are looking to help out with airports or railstations.) --CyberXRef^☎ 08:23, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I support the proposal because casual readers don't need to see that category, it's only useful for editors. --NaBUru38 (talk) 13:09, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

cleared

The category was empty earlier this morning - well done all stub-sorters! PamD 08:45, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

And again today (and a few times in between!). Well done all of us. PamD 07:52, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Empty category!

Season's greetings to all stub-sorters: we're at zero stubs for the moment! (If you get withdrawal symptoms, have a go at Category:People stubs or its subcats) PamD 08:27, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Empty again. PamD 10:07, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

The_Omen_5

The_Omen_5

I've done a bit of work on this one... anyone wanna have a look and neaten up my roughness, suggest any edits. let me know if it's worth continuing or will just be deleted.. cheersPanglossx (talk) 08:00, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Now deleted. Sorry.--DThomsen8 (talk) 12:49, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

"Get rid of stub tags"?

Maybe I missed something, but until I saw it in the Spotlight I didn't know about the discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Get_rid_of_stub_tags which began on 21 June. Other people interested in this category may find it of interest. PamD 14:45, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Recent raft of articles being assigned "stub" as category manually

I regularly visit Category:Stubs in order to apply more specific stub tags to the articles therein. In the last few days I have found at least 2 dozen articles where Category:Stubs has been applied as a category without the use of a stub template. I can't seem to track this trend to a particular editor - can anyone think of a place where we could make it clear that template use is preferred? Hope this makes sense - Her Pegship (?) 23:29, 17 January 2024 (UTC)