Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting

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[edit] Deprecation of {{Vocab-stub}}?

Hi all - I've just been in discussion with User:Uncle G about {{vocab-stub}}, which has apparently been deprecated because it is redundant to {{Move to Wiktionary}}. This came as a surprise to me for several reasons: (1) I don't recall this deprecation ever having been discussed here - as far as I was concerned it was still in regular use; (2) stub types are rarely deprecated - they are usually either in use or deleted through SFD; (3) the primary purpose of that stub type isn't to mark things for moving to wiktionary - it is to mark articles on vocabulary and usage which qualifty for wikipedia articles in their own right, as explained in the note at WP:STUB#Basic information. When was this deprecation decided, and why? Grutness...wha? 22:51, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, yeah I can't see why that would be deprecated. The "move to Wiktionary" people sometimes go too far in my experience. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:03, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
This probably stems from irritation at it sometimes being used as something of a "misc-stub". The note seems on the one hand worded rather too strongly worded, and on the other, pretty pointless: as it's noincluded, no-one'll notice it unless they're looking at the tenplate page itself. I'd rather see something on the category page (as usual), worded in less hyperbolic, clearer and more explicit terms. Alai 01:10, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
Note removed. Note on project page removed in a sec. Rich Farmbrough, 08:09 28 September 2007 (GMT).
Among certain other changes, I can't help but noting. Anyhoo, that seemed to last all of 20 minutes before being "re-deprecated". Some actual consensus on what the status of this would be handy, though. Alai 10:21, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Items like Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society and pretentious language are not really candidates for transwiki. Rich Farmbrough, 11:56 28 September 2007 (GMT).
I agree, I think we have a confusion of purposes here, perhaps understandable in the light of the "dumping ground" phenomenom, but that's to be avoided if at all possible. We now seem to additionally have the issue of whether the template should populate the (non-stub, obviously) category. Cat:copy to Wiktionary (otherwise populated by its namespace-doppelganger {{copy to Wiktionary}}). This seems to be tied into previous categorisation of the Cat:vocabulary and usage stubs, which was via the self-same template (subsequently substed and decatted). Alai 16:42, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
It seems inappropriate. Make a mountain out of a molehill, for example, has a wikt entry in it, which may of course also refer back to WP. Rich Farmbrough, 09:13 29 September 2007 (GMT).
Indeed, I can think of several reasons why that particular proverb would refer back to Wikipedia. :) Alai 16:01, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hi

In good faith, I've started a new Cat and Template called !stub. (Template:!stub, Category:!Stubs)

This template is designed to be applied to articles that are very short, but are unlikely to need much expansion. A good example of this would be a biography of a long-dead sportsman who played professionally without achieving much. Such a person passes WP:BIO but unless new research discovers a forgotten side of their achievements, the article may be sufficiently full, yet very short.

The utility in this template is to avoid the usual stub requirement that is a request for people to expand it.

Now, I'm experienced enough in Wikipedia to realise that a) this is probably not a new idea b) there's probably good reasons for not doing it and c) I've probably messed up in the template/naming/Cat etc.

So, I've only applied the template to one article (William Adshead, a good example of a !stub IMHO) and I will welcome your expert criticism or support equally. This is a learning experience for me. I hope I've come up with something that enhances Wikipedia. If not, I've done no real damage and I'll be happy to nom the template and Cat for speedy deletion. --Dweller 15:08, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

While I'm bound to be biased on this one, I think the template (whatever it eventually becomes called, I would advocate Template:Not a stub) is a very good idea. The Rambling Man 15:16, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
I also have to declare an interest, since I'm the original author of the above-mentioned William Adshead article. Three minutes after I posted it, deliberately leaving off a stub tag for the reasons Dweller mentions, another editor added one in. I found that amusing, and said so on WikiProject Cricket's Talk page (section heading: "I can't win!"). Although it has its attractions, I'm not entirely decided about the pros and cons of this proposal in case it too much duplicates the WikiProject assessment banners, though I would agree with The Rambling Man above that {{not a stub}} would be a clearer, and thus better, name than {{!stub}}. Loganberry (Talk) 21:49, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
  • A template is a good idea (although, as pointed out, {{notstub}} already exists). I'm not convinced there's any need for a category, though. What purpose would it serve? Stub categories are used by editors looking for articles to expand - I doubt anyone would need to consult Cat:!stub while looking for articles they needn't expand! Grutness...wha? 01:24, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree with G.; worse, it's a "maintenance" intrusion on articles... to document that they don't have to be maintained. And logically, it would never be removed. I'd suggest redirecting to the existing template, and deleting the category (or else using it only on talk pages). Alai 01:52, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. I'll nom the template and cat I created for speedy and replace the stub tag I used with the existing one. Thanks for your specialist input. --Dweller 09:20, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I've set up redirects from both {{!stub}} (now that the earlier speedy has gone through as above) and {{not a stub}} to the existing template. I hope that's okay. Loganberry (Talk) 14:47, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't know if this is exactly appropriate but I just want to vote I think it's a good idea. I actually came here to make this suggestion and found others already doing it. I have been thinking about this for some time. There seem to be many articles that don't need expansion even though they are short. You would think I could just ignore the stub notice but it bothers me everytime.

[edit] Standard template code

Didn't we have a standard stub template code somewhere? It looks to me like some templates regularly get reformatted to non-standard versions, e.g. with the image and text indented. Just a thought. Valentinian T / C 12:24, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I thought the indent was standard. Blast [improve me] 15.05.07 1519 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure {{metastub}} is supposed to be the standard. ~ Amalas rawr =^_^= 15:43, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Interesting. The indent wasn't originally used, but it was added in March 2006.[1] Not sure why, though. On the vast majority of templates I've seen (generic, bios, geos and similar) there is no indent. Valentinian T / C 10:54, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image size limit

Relatedly, is there a standard image-size-maximum? I'm noticing 45 and 50 px wide icons in many stub-tags lately, which is way too large. Wikipedia:Stub#New stub templates isn't clear at all, and mainly talks about {{Metastub}}. Thanks. --Quiddity 07:41, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

There have been a number of discussions about this, but I think 30-35 px is good, depending on the height. For example, if something is really short, it may need to be longer so that the image is clear. ~ Amalas rawr =^_^= 15:22, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
A flag would normally be 30px, but a few other images suffer terribly if shrunk all the way to 30px, and in that case, no problem with 35. Valentinian T / C 16:33, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Personally, I use 40 as an absolute upper limit. 45-50 is too big, but - as V says - some things look too muddy with 30. A bigger problem is what size to make vertical "portrait format" icons. Grutness...wha? 01:01, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
Personally I tend to "standardise" anything larger to 40x30px. Some images won't be very clear at that size (especially if the aspect ratio is more "portrait-ish"), but rather than enlarging them, I'd prefer to see them re-cropped, or else a more suitable image found. Too much variation in size will make multi-stubbed articles distinctly messy-looking, aside from the general intrusiveness of images of inherently oversized images. Alai 13:22, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Metatemplate on the football stubs?

Try taking a look at {{Euro-footy-bio-stub}}. It looks like an editor has created a metatemplate generating stub icons by laying two images on top of each other. Thoughts? Valentinian T / C 18:02, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, since my computer is in the shop, I'm having to use the public one at the local library. In it's antiquated browswer, I'm only seeing one icon, an overlarge soccer ball. Side by side icons have been occasionally seen on these sorts of dual axis stub templates, and some people have even been inventive enought to create custom icons for some of them, but given the nature of the browser compatabilities issues, I can't say that deliberately overlaying images is a good idea at all, especially if it leads to use of such a large icon. Caerwine Caer’s whines 18:36, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Backlog at Cat:stubs, and about to get worse

I hate to be the bearer of woe, but Cat:stubs doesn't seem to have been empty at any point since the last db dump (due to the drop-feed since then from the uncategorised special page), and it's about to get a whole lot worse, since there was a db dump a few days ago. I estimate there's going to be something on the order of 2,500 incoming from same. Alai 13:46, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Happy happy joy joy :/ It did get down briefly to about 400 stubs, but it's filling faster than it empties a lot of the time. Grutness...wha? 22:56, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

More like 4000 (including the existing backlog), as it turned out. Alai 19:17, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Groaaaan. Well, at least I'll come back into this project with something to do. Blast [improve me] 06.06.07 0441 (UTC)

[edit] Dispute about the wording/scope of a stub

Western Sahara and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic There is are two ongoing disputes over at Template talk:WesternSahara-stub concerning the content of that template: one over the inclusion or exclusion of a flag and the other over the wording (and consequently, the scope) of the stub. It is the latter dispute to which I was directed here by an admin. Originally, this template read: "This Western Sahara or SADR article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it." It had a reference to the SADR for about 14 months and had the flag dispute several times in this interim. It was changed by User:Juiced_lemon to read: "This Western Sahara article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it" with no comment on talk. Since then, there has been a long back-and-forth. I argue that the Template:Taiwan-stub is a perfect model for how to make this template (in point of fact, it was literally the model I used when I made it), and that template includes both the ROC flag, as well as the text reading: "This Republic of China or Taiwan-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it." To reiterate, I would like the change modified back to the way that it essentially was for several months; namely: "This Western Sahara or SADR article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it." Could you please comment on this matter? -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 18:14, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

This is a perfect example of why disputed territories shouldn't in general have their own stub types. Taiwan-stub was also the subject of a long and bitter edit-war and is an extremely poor example to use for any stable stub-type. In fact, until it was mentioned on the talk page of WesternSahara-stub, I thought it had no icon, which was how it was when I last saw it. A better example would be Korea-stub, where a specific new design was created for a stub that clearly represented the whole of the Korean peninsula without being open to interpretations of partisanship. Grutness...wha? 00:55, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Sure Where does that leave us, though? I don't know that there is a Korea-style solution to this issue. Do you have any suggestions on how to move forward? It still appears to me that there is an odd and arbitrary double-standard being applied. (posted on Template talk:WesternSahara-stub and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting#Dispute_about_the_wording.2Fscope_of_a_stub)-Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 03:11, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't see how it's an example of that at all: it objectively is a disputed region, but there exist places in it that need to be stub-tagged. Sort-annexing it to Morocco would seem not to be a sensible solution, to put it mildly, so it essentially has to exist. As to wording, it seems to me that the "Western Sahara" wording, with no flag, seems the best option, and to correspond with the UN position that the whole region is a "Non-Self-Governing Territory". Otherwise one will end up attempting to "balance" the opposing SADC and Moroccan views, which is going to be over-long. Add a brief synopsis of the dispute to the category page. Alai 13:23, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Double-standard It's an arbitrary double-standard because Taiwan is also a disputed region and the Taiwan-stub template has a flag (a secondary issue), and mentions the ROC. Why should the the Western Sahara-stub template not mention the SADR? Why would there be two completely different approaches to the two? -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 14:10, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
(Do you really need to bold your absence of assuming good faith?) I don't see how the Taiwan comparison is at all helpful. You appear to want to "balance" the UN/international POV with the SADR one. By which logic, we'd then have to "counter-balance" it with the Moroccan POV. We'd end up with a mini-essay, in place of what's supposed to be a concise and neutral summary. Please tell me what's actually objectively wrong with the approach I suggested. Alai 14:39, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Bad faith? It's not bad faith; it's a title to help me remember which comment is which. If you honestly want me to not put headers in my comments in this talk, I can oblige. The Taiwan comparison is helpful because here is another situation that is similar and, for some reason, we're doing something different. I would like to know what is different enough about the two examples that two different policies should be applied. I don't want to choose the SADR perspective per se, I want to be consistent. As for the flag issue, note that there are a host of unrecognized countries that have flags in their stub templates as well: e.g. Template:Transnistria-stub. Why is this standard being applied to all the other examples, but not Western Sahara/SADR? What makes it wrong is that it is totally arbitrary and you (plural, you as a community) are choosing to single out one unrecognized country (which actually has more recognition than the ROC, Transistria, etc.) for some peculiar censure. Can you explain that? -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 14:51, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
I didn't say "bad faith", I said "absence of assuming good faith", and I don't see how one would equate the two. Be content with being "consistent" with the majority of stub templates, which find it sufficient to use the generally acceptable name for their topics, rather than seeking some sort of parity with (other) problematic cases. I note you didn't address my point about the "Southern Provinces" POV. (And I'd personally suggest not putting "headers" of this sort in any talk discussion, they're simply distracting (and if you're going to make rash accusations, and bold the rashest part, tending to up the contentiousness).) Alai 15:08, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Alai, there is no reason to escalate things here; I wasn't attempting to accuse you of anything, simply re-wording what you wrote. It seemed like a "lack of good faith" is the same as "bad faith" to me, but let's not debate the semantics of that. Just let it be known that I'm not trying to make accusations. That having been said, if you want to be consistent with the majority of examples, you would include the flag, right? As far as wording goes, there is no other example like this except ROC/Taiwan, so, again, the majority is to include both titles. I'm not sure that I understand your "Southern Provinces" example - what are you asking exactly? Do you have an example in mind? If you're suggesting something like "This Western Sahara or Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which is viewed as the Southern Provinces by the Kingdom of Morocco, stub..." I would be opposed to that because it is ludicrous. I would also be opposed to something like "This Chechnya, which the Russian Federation considers an integral part of its state, stub..." because that is equally ludicrous. Anyone viewing Wikipedia can read the articles themselves and understand the conflict(s). We also don't need to put "This Taiwan or Republic of China, which the People's Republic of China considers its twenty-third province and and illegitimate government, stub..." In short, I am opposed to short essays, so we should just leave them as they were for the past year and a half, flags inclusive. I have no problem with that. -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 15:21, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't feel I'm escalating anything: I think that statements about application of double standards do that quite efficiently. I said lack of an assumption of good faith: I'm not sure how much clearer I can make that. (Suggesting that someone is applying double standards is accusing them of not acting in good faith (and to point this out is not itself such an accusation).) I'm going to ignore the "flag" issue entirely, since elsewhere you yourself say it's not the key point; let's not successively drag it up and drop it, at least until there's stability on (what you say) is the main issue. Of course the "essay" would be ludicrous, and that's the whole point: there aren't two points of view here, there are (at least) three. If you're going to claim that the UN's view (which so far as I know corresponds to the reporting of most reliable sources) is insufficient, it would seem odd to represent only the "rebel south" additional POV, and not the "occupying power" POV. The name "Western Sahara" might not be the preferred option of either party to the dispute, but it at least hedges between the two in an essentially "neutral" (if not quite NPOV) manner. Alai 15:50, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Fine, let's leave talk of escalation aside - I don't really care to lay blame. Alai, what exactly is the UN's view in your mind, then (I ask because the UN has called Morocco an occupying power in Western Sahara)? Do you advocate some change on Taiwan-stub? If you don't want to change the latter, then why? It would appear that this is, in fact, a double standard. As a corollary, I would be interested in knowing what you propose to do about the flag issue, but we can set that aside if necessary. -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 16:04, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
As I say above, so far as I understand it the general view of international organisations (and the framework of the reporting of the international media) is that that there's a "Non-Self-Governing Territory" called "Western Sahara", which has no generally recognised government (either internal or external). I'm resolutely not getting into the Taiwan issue here: it's wildly off-topic, and these things are difficult enough to resolve separately, without the combinatorics of trying to solve N of them in any "linked" manner. (But as you ask, on the flag issue, I'd for choice, not have any (on the basis of the lack of any generally accepted same), or if that fails, have an "array" of the various purported flags.) Alai 16:30, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Off-topic? It's the most relevant example. I don't see why you won't answer a fairly straight-forward question, Alai. -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 18:42, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
The most relevant? In what way? As I say above... well, I think I've quoted myself enough for one thread. If you have a point to make about Taiwan-stub in and of itself, raise it as such, and let's not get caught up in this "but this other template...!" stuff. Alai 18:58, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

It leaves us with the solution normally used in such cases. There is no reason on earth why a stub template has to have an icon, and many do not, especially those where disputes may arise. This template has managed well enough wothout an icon in the past, and could easily do so again. Grutness...wha? 05:00, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Artistic prettification should not take preference over dispute resolution, however much I appreciate art and prettification. Blast [improve me] 07.06.07 0557 (UTC)
Folks I'm more concerned about the wording and consequent scope of the stub template, not the flag issue. Please refer to my original post. -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 14:10, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

To Justin → WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. One other important point, as per Alai, is that if you put the SADR reference in the template some would add the Moroccan reference as well. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 17:00, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

And what would the "Moroccan reference" be exactly? And are you consequently advocating the "Russian reference" and "Moldovan reference" on the Transnistria stub, the "PRC reference" on the Taiwan stub, etc.? Obviously not. For some reason, a peculiar standard is being applied here and nowhere else, with no apparent justification. -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 18:42, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
The Moroccan reference would be something like "Southern provinces". The "no apparent justification" is that you want to include a POV stuff into a NPOV template. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 18:53, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
No, I don't. If you have the wording "Western Sahara or Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic," how is that POV? -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 19:10, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Because it represents the generally (or at least most common) accepted POV, and one minority POV, while omitting the obvious third (also minority) POV that stands in direct opposition to the second. That seems clearly more problematic than just having the first, whereas including all three would be unwieldy, and verging on the ridiculous. Alai 23:25, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

In any case, this template should definitely not include any stub image if kept at all. We have very few of these templates around, and for good reason. {{Transnistria-stub}} was not created by a member of this project but by a currently-blocked user. Said template was listed for deletion at WP:SFD where the regular stub sorters voted for deletion while a lot of people we'd never seen before voted to keep it. I remain categorically opposed to both that template and {{Somaliland-stub}} which was also created out of process. Other controversial templates have already been deleted, and the only reason why {{Chechnya-bio-stub}} (also created out of process) barely scraped through recently was after a strict neutralization of said template, so the same must apply here. Valentinian T / C 17:15, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I just realized that {{Somaliland-stub}} used the flag of the secessionist administration, so I've removed it from the template. Valentinian T / C 18:49, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Agree but the subject of this thread is about the wording/scope of a stub. Justin wants to add a mention to SADR (Western Sahara govt in exile) to the {{WesternSahara-stub}}. That would be totally against our policy of NPOV. The territory is disputed and parties are still negotiating under the UN umbrella. Western Sahara is disputed between SADR and Morocco so it is obvious that we avoid POVs here. As for his ROC analogies, i must remind him that Taiwan is governed de facto by its own govt, while most parts of Western Sahara are administered by Morocco. So why does he want to add RASD to the template? Opponent parties do not ask to add Morocco to it. So i consider it as NPOV in its actual state. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 18:59, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
To say that it is not an "actual state" is POV. If you write "Western Sahara or Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic" that necessitates that the two are separate phenomena. Also, for stubs that only relate to one and not the other, there could never be enough to justify an entirely separate template and category. Consequently, putting the text that was originally on there (not that I want to add it, as you claim, but restore it to what it was), will make the template inclusive of both phenomena and you can interpret that however you wish. -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 19:10, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Does that mean that people agree that the template shouldn't have any image at all? In that case, I'd consider that progress. At the end of the day, the simplest solution sounds most appealing to me: No image and no reference to either of the two administrations. Simply referring to the geographical entity "Western Sahara" will also minimize the length of the text. Valentinian T / C 22:51, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Not quite. I still don't see why this template shouldn't have a flag, but Taiwan-stub should. -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 23:51, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Is that a concern now Justin? The flag? -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 01:25, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't see how the ROC ( a full-fledged state) and the governement-in-exile of a guerilla movement compare!!. There are people pretending to the trowns of France, Greece, Bulgaria, etc. Following Koavf's reasoning of "To say that it is not an "actual state" is POV", it would be a POV not to call these pretenders "actual king of France ,..". "If you write "Western Sahara or Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic" that necessitates that the two are separate phenomena", so why not say "Western Sahara or Morocco's Southern Provinces" which of course necessitates that they are separate phenomena. Attempting to force the flag of one of the conflict parties or its unrecognized governement's name on the disputed territory's template/stub is a naked POV.--A Jalil 08:36, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
The ROC is recognized by c. 20 members of the UN as the legal continuation of the Republic of China that was formed in 1911 and was until the 1950s recognized by the overwhelming part of the world as the only legal representative of China. It occupied China's seat at the UN until the early 1970s. I'm not aware that the SADR administration has ever enjoyed undisputed recognition and physical control over the territory it claims. It could indeed be argued that the Taiwan template should not use any flag, but last time I checked, it was also used on some material relating to the pre-1949 situation, so it makes sense in that respect. Back to the matter here: in order to be neutral, this template must either read
ROC and SADR If the ROC is a full-fledged state, how is the SADR not? To write "Western Sahara or Morocco's Southern Provinces" is to refer to the same entity - a geographic region. To refer to a territory and a state is to refer to two separate things. Hence, Taiwan-stub says "Taiwan or ROC." The SADR controls a greater portion of its claimed territory than does the ROC, and it has never had universal recognition. At the same time, there is also no recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the region. So, unlike the PRC/ROC debate, where virtually every state has a position on the matter (in favor of the PRC), most states have no position on the sovereignty of the territory and among those that do, they all support the SADR. So, to the extent that there is any recognition in the conflict, it is of the SADR universally. Note also, Valentian, that the text you suggested initially neither mentions nor links to the main article itself (Western Sahara.) Clearly, that would not be ideal. I don't suppose you would suggest changing the Taiwan-stub template to read "Taiwan or ROC or 23rd province of the PRC..." would you? -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 03:36, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
I see the bolding is back, and so is the Taiwan OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument: neither is in the least helpful. There are no PRC "facts on the ground" in Taiwan, and the current wording quite adequately represents the PRC POV. OTOH, WS is de facto part of Morocco, and yet you insist on a wording that represents two POVs: one ignoring Morocco's, and the other directly contradicting it. Alai 15:01, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Valentinian, every word you wrote is truth and reason. The two options represent either both positions or the simple neutral wording. I would be happy with just any of them. But, unfortunately you have in front of you a guy (koavf) who is only here for one reason as he put it on his user page "and I try to particularly represent the interests of truth and the Sahrawis of Western Sahara (SADR)". We have tried before but failed and the community saw no way but to block him indefinitely. He is now on parole and given another chance and here we are. Neutrality is not his buisness and he is here to make the position of one of the parties to prevail. As to the neutrality of Wikipedia, it means nothing to him, and he can engage you into lengthy arguments (he enjoys) with no result. I write this because I pity the people trying to convince him with what is obvious neutral wording, if they don't know some background about whom they are talking to.--A Jalil 21:52, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Alai, I'm not sure that I understand what you're saying about the facts on the ground about PRC and Taiwan, but I will say this: the PRC claims Taiwan, and doesn't administer it. The ROC claims the mainland and doesn't administer it. Morocco claims Western Sahara and occupies and administers some of it. The SADR claims Western Sahara and administers some of it. The wording at Taiwan-stub does not represent the PRC POV; it doesn't even acknowledge it. You're ignoring the fact that WS is not de facto part of Morocco: they don't control a significant portion of it, and the vast majority of companies and states won't do business in it, even when they make agreements with the Kingdom of Morocco (e.g. the latest U.S./Morocco trade agreement.) So, no, in fact, it is treated quite differently than the territory of Morocco and is viewed as such by any third party. As for Jalil's comments, I won't get into a game of mutual mud-slinging but to say that any editor can make as many bad-faith allegations and assumptions about any other as he wants. I put that reference on the userpage about me to be honest and admit my own biases in editing. Everyone has biases and they inevitably come out in one's writing. That does not mean one should be disregarded in the discussion of those topics or that there is a presumption of guilt, incompetence, propaganda, etc. on his part when he edits. -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 22:07, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
  • koavf, what are you talking about??. Did you (try to ) forget again the fishing agreements between the EU (28 European countries) and Morocco where the waters of WS are included as part of Morocco??. And did you forget that the biggest American Oil companies were untill recently actively searching for oil in those same waters??. The phosphates of Bocraa is exported from the port of Layoune directly to Spain, and the delicious fish is canned in Dakhla to be exported to just any country and I have told you before that Algeria is consuming a part of it. Companies in the Canary Islands are working in WS and economical activity with Mauritania is done officially. I could even go on for long to show you WS is very active economically with the surrounding region and with many parts of the world. During the Algerian Civil War, there were even more international activity with WS than that Algeria itself had with the external world.
  • I think again about that comparision between Taiwan and the SADR and can't hold myself from laughing. For just a simple detail, the governement of the SADR is seated in a tent in Algeria. How about the governement of Taiwan?.--A Jalil 22:40, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Precisely my point: One fishing agreement with the EU, and that one was and is, contentious. One. And the American and international oil companies are not along the coast of the Sahara now precisely because they were pressured out due to international concerns; they weren't pressured out of Morocco. You're proving my point with your example of the oil companies. The ROC has a temporary capital in Taipei and the SADR has a temporary capital in Bir Lehlou. I don't see anything funny about the massive refugee crisis in Algeria, by the way. -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 22:44, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Contentious!!, well many treaties (shengen, the European constitution, ...) are contentious. It is about an agreement or not. And there is an agreement signed including WS as part of Morocco. There is no way to twist it. Kerr MG left after many years of work without a result, and it left not from only WS as you alledge but from all Morocco. Are not you ashamed to say the SADR gov. is seated in Bir Lehlu? I let recall that false allegation given the fact that they are seated in the Rabouni Camp in Algeria according to the Polisario's own press service.--A Jalil 23:10, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
You are twisting; for instance, you twisted my words to say that Kerr-McGee only left Western Sahara. I never wrote that. Regardless, my point remains: Western Sahara is not treated like any other part of Morocco and for good reason. I'm neither ashamed nor proud to say that the SADR is in Bir Lehlou; I have no personal investment in it. Polsario's press service explicitly mentions the SADR conducting elections and government conferences in Bir Lehlou on several occasions. -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 21:23, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Award?

Anyone know anything about this? Grutness...wha? 01:54, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

It's just a subst-me "wrapper" for the existing barnstar, right? Alai 13:30, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
It is. See the list on Wikipedia:WikiProject_awards/WikiProject where other templates have similar "wrappers" to make them easier to use. Valentinian T / C 13:43, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Is there a ribbon to go along with the star? Midx1004 17:37, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Old category names on Special:Wantedcategories

It looks like some of our former category names continue to clutter Special:Wantedcategories. Anything we can do about it? The links seem to relate mostly to old discussion pages, so we can't simply update them. Any chance Alaibot could convert the links to < code > < nowiki > form? Valentinian T / C 16:25, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The list of categories is here Valentinian T / C 16:36, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
I suppose; do you have a formula in mind for which link sources to apply such a conversion to? We presumably don't want to do it with current discussions, or "approved, pending creation" links, and I'm not sure about links from non-WPSS pages. Alai 16:40, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
I was thinking about converting them to "< code > < nowiki > unchanged old name < /nowiki > < / code>" format (removing the extra spaces of course). Wouldn't that do the trick? Valentinian T / C 17:17, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
But which ones? Alai 17:32, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

This is the list. Can't we make a "What links here" in AWB?

   * Category:Stub
   * Category:Historical stubs
   * Category:Substubs
   * Category:Movie stubs
   * Category:Buildings and structures stubs
   * Category:Corporation stubs
   * Category:Computer and video game stubs
   * Category:Ireland-related stubs
   * Category:US geography stubs
   * Category:Math stubs
   * Category:Russia-related stubs
   * Category:Christianity-related stubs
   * Category:India-related stubs
   * Category:Station stubs
   * Category:UK geography stubs
   * Category:Danish stubs
   * Category:Israel-related stubs
   * Category:Election related stubs

Valentinian T / C 18:40, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, I thought you meant something more automated. Yeah, for designated links that should be pretty straightforward. If there's a smallish number you might indeed be faster just doing it in AWB than waiting for bot approval. Alai 18:54, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
I was thinking about something automated, but the approval bit didn't cross my mind. The number is smallish, so I'll load up AWB instead. Valentinian T / C 19:00, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
And I've abandoned that idea again. The darn thing includes pages linked to procedure Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working/OldPages2 so it will probably be considered vandalism to tamper with the bot's pages, even though it hasn't used this one for most of a year. Darn. Valentinian T / C 19:12, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Oddness in Cat:Pterosaur stubs

A new stub category has just been made for pterosaurs (it was on the list at WP:WSS/to do)... and there's something odd with it. The category talk page is somehow listed as a stub in the category, and I can't see why. All that's on the talk page is WikiProject Pterosaurs' banner template, but I can't see anything in that template's history which would cause this irregular stubbing. Any ideas? Grutness...wha? 06:30, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

The bug is in the {{WikiProject Pterosaurs}} banner, probably due to the self-reference link to the pages the template is used on. I'm rather tempted to change the text to something resembling the text of {{WikiProject Estonia}}. Valentinian T / C 11:44, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Would someone delete these please?

Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/2007/May, Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/2007/April, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/2007/March are all nearly blank now (they consist of a one-sentence link), so would someone who's an admin please delete them? Thanks - Her Pegship (tis herself) 15:54, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Done. ~ Amalas rawr =^_^= 16:56, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Double spacing

Please stop the double spacing between the text and the stub template. It is against MOS and it is NOT necessary. The stub templates are clear enough breaks from the articles. There is already enough space between the text of the article and the stub template.199.126.28.20 05:46, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

My own personal experience - and that of those I've asked - is that the single empty line makes the code a lot easier to read, and it makes stub sorting easier by reducing copy-paste accidents that are more prone to happen if you have both categories, stub template(s) and interwiki links following each other without any breaks at all. Valentinian T / C 09:25, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
No, I'm talking about two lines of space separating the preceding text and the stub template actual text, not the wikitext.70.74.35.53 06:37, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Which is neither a distinction, nor a difference. Alai 19:48, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Ditto, V. And I think the double spacing is the least of WP's formatting worries. It pales in comparison to all the misspellings, bad formatting, and horrendous grammar... Her Pegship (tis herself) 22:12, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
I can't think what the MOS has to do with this: this isn't formatting of article text, this is formatting of markup code. As stub templates often look horrendous when jammed right up against the preceding text, especially if it comes right after a paragraph of text, I'd suggest just the opposite: please always use two blank lines before the first stub template. (At least until such time as the CSS coding of the tags is changed to make this unnecessary, concerning which there was a flurry of discussion some time ago, but so far as I know, no action.) Alai 18:38, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, the Manual of Style is neither relvant here nor does it address what 199.126.28.20 seems to think it does. In response to Valentinian, I find it hard to credit that anyone would genuinely feel that "Blah blah blah<return>{{stub-here}}" is somehow "easier to read", much less "much easier to read", than "Blah blah blah<return><return>{{stub-here}}", whether we are talking about the rendered view or the code view. I've heard of dyslexia, but not disblanklinea. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:29, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
But we want consistency. If double spacing is not allowed anywhere, why do stub template formatting have an exception?70.74.35.53 02:00, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
So far as know, there's no such general "rule". Going from "not a good idea between paragraphs" to "mustn't be allowed anywhere" would be a case of false generalisation. Alai 02:14, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't believe he said that. Alai 23:54, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Right. For one thing, double spacing is generally avoided, as a guideline, which is not an official policy, and secondly virtual all rules of any kind in most contexts have exceptions, and in Wikipedia I would have to say that working around display problems so that pages look presentable would have to be one of them. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:09, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
The anon later commented on my talk page that he was referring to double spacing occurring between "the preceding text and the stub template actual text, not the wikitext." Valentinian T / C 05:38, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
In that case, I have no idea what the point is. Is there some offending example to look at? How would this even happen other than by a stray <br /> inside the stub template's code? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:13, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Any news about the toolserver?

Has anybody heard any news about the toolserver? It seems like ages since StubSense worked with up to date data. Valentinian T / C 20:08, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

  • There was this fairly recently. So possibly "soon". Alai 20:24, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
"Hope is light green" (as we say in Danish). Valentinian T / C 20:28, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
I believe that the toolserver data is now current(ish), and actively replicating. However, stubsense still seems to be much less so: possibly it's still using the old database, or else there might be internal caching involved in the stubsense tool itself. Alai 01:23, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] StubSense down?

I get an error using StubSense ([2]) :( Table 'toolserver.categorylinks' doesn't exist at stub_sense line 301.. CatScan is nice for different approach, but both would be better... -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  14:36, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

StubSense seems to remain down. Is Interiot the only maintainer of this tool? Valentinian T / C 22:25, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lack of comments

I'm noticing a distinct lack of comments on many of the things brought to WP:WSS/P, WP:WSS/D and WP:SFD recently - has everyone given up, or are you hibernating (or out in the sun if you're a northerner)? Grutness...wha? 23:59, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] {{Sectstub}} formatting

Does anybody know what's happened to {{Sectstub}}? Valentinian T / C 18:59, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Don't know, but it could be something to do with debate at WP:TFD, which I'll mention below. Grutness...wha? 02:21, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] TFD debate on {{Expand}}

There's a long debate on whether {{Expand}} should be deleted, over at WP:TFD. Looks like the outcome will be "no consensus", but it's clear from the comments that a lot of people aren't sure when it should be used. I've put the case that it should never be used on the same article as a stub template (as mentioned here in the past), and also commented that it might be worth - once stubsense is back running properly - trying to seek out any articles that use both it and a stub template, in order to remove one or the other from those articles. Any thoughts on that? Grutness...wha? 02:21, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I have done that in the past, with little objection. Rich Farmbrough, 08:43 27 September 2007 (GMT).

[edit] Code cleanup on {{Stub}}

Would an admin please clean up the code on this template? We normally don't use the "This template will categorize articles that include it into Category:..." notices any more, so please clean up the code to something more standard. Valentinian T / C 18:26, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

The transclusion on {{Sectstub}} isn't standard either (neither is its formatting in general). The unorthodox code makes a little more sense here but I'm not a big fan of that one either. Valentinian T / C 18:37, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
I'd agree, but you should probably place a comment to that effect on the template talk page, lest it look like a WPSS stitch-up. And it's back to using "plainlinks", despite my having changed that earlier. (Is it just me that objects to have an edit link easter-egged to look like a "normal" one?) Alai 07:50, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Possibly. :-) I really detest having that "external link" icon appear next to a very internal link that just happens to have to use a different syntax due to MediWiki software deficiences. But maybe that's just me. Heh. (Or rather me, and who ever came up with plainlinks to deal with the problem.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:13, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Thing is, it's neither "external" nor "normal". Perhaps we should consider making it plain, but red, or something? There was some discussion of the (lack of a) convention in relation to the section-edit links. A standard 'edit link', distinct from both, would be a Good Thing, I reckon. Alai 03:08, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cat:stubs: bad news, good news

The root-of-all-evil stub cat is well north of two thousand again. But be of (somewhat) good cheer: it was actually almost empty until recently, and these are almost all from the recent db dump. So that seems to suggest the people at the coal face are actually keeping in touch remarkably well, so if they keep it up for the next couple of months, hopefully we'll be back down to zero(ish) by the time of the next one. (And some of them will actually be uncategorised disambigs (as I'm currently getting grief over), so those'll be some easy ones to do...) Alai 07:43, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Actors-repertory theater companies-stubs?

ResolvedWrong venue.

This is to propose the idea of stubs that deal with repertory theater companies and the actors affiliated therewith. It would be filed under Entertainment, Theater/Stage, Film, and Television, and would include lists of member actors of the repertory theater companies.

Parker Gabriel 21:36, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

This is not the proposals area; try WP:WSS/P. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:03, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] UN geoscheme

In a number of cases, we do some "lumping" of countries in a way that often doesn't correspond to the structure of the permcats, due to size considerations. This is fine, but what could do with further examination is on what basis we define these "lumpings". In particular, we oculd do with a bit of 'democratic centralism' about whether we're using the UN geoscheme or not. (Or what point in between using and not-using.) Alai 18:08, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Agree with the idea of implementing the UN geoscheme. Now that we've created geo- templates for most of the African nations and politician- templates for all of them, making the transition should be relatively simple. But it might be an idea to jot down a list of which country goes where in order to avoid inconsistencies, e.g. relating to Africa's minor island nations. Valentinian T / C 21:08, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea to me, too, as long as we're consisten. FWIW, as far as the geo-stubs are concerned, I've been slowly making upmerged geo-stub templates for most countries - the only ones without them now either have naming or politics-related problems associated with them. In the case of Africa, everywhere has a geo-stub template except for Mayotte and Western Sahara (political concerns) and the British Indian Ocean Territory (naming problems). In any case, as I've suggested elsewhere (Wtalk:WSS/P), the usfulness of having five separate subcontinental categories for Africa's geo-stubs is becoming less and less all the time, and ditching them might yet be a reasonable option. Grutness...wha? 23:39, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
What tends to happen, though, is it just gets pushed down a level (or thereabouts), and we end up with similar issues with the Southern African politicians, Eastern European buildings and structures, or Latin America and the Caribbean schools (say). But if the "old" subcontinental categories are on the way out, much the better the time to implement new such on a more consistent basis. Alai 01:17, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Good point, but see also my comment about potential problems at the SFD for Cat:Central Asia geography stubs. Grutness...wha? 01:59, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
To generalise from the particular: the geoscheme in every case uses integral countries. (Unlike, say, using continents...) Alai 03:29, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Btw, I generally don't think it will make sense to subdivide Europe into smaller segments (N, W, E, and S). On the other hand, Africa will remain a headache if we don't chop it down somehow, given the number of countries. I have the politicians in mind here. Africa was a major headache, and Asia will remain a bother, given that we still lack a lot of templates here, and due to the death of StubSense. Btw, it looks like StubSense's death is related to something relating to Interiot's counters. One of the two errors is due to a temporary fix in the code. [3] Valentinian T / C 06:46, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree it'll be required less often, if at all, for Europe. I'm not necessarily saying we should be making any more of these than we are at present, just that when we do, we should follow the UN geoscheme (in cases where there's no suitable permcat parent). Alai 02:26, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Agree completely. Valentinian T / C 09:26, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Assessment bot

A bot request was posted at Wikipedia:Bot requests#Assessment bot which could be a great help to stub sorting. Give it a gander. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 05:29, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

JMN has also filed a request for a "stub sorting bot", which goes a bit further than the initial request. Should probably have some wider WPSS input on that. Alai 13:25, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Upmerged templates for Asian politicans?

Some time ago, Thomas Macmillan sorted the entire material relating to African politicians by country, creating templates for next to all of these countries (if I remember correctly, Western Sahara is missing due to its status as a disputed territory and so are a few minor French islands near Africa). South and Central America are almost done as well, and I'm thinking about creating upmerged <country>-politician-stub templates for the Asian nations. Trouble is that I haven't done a proper count of this material for quite a while. Should I do a count for each of them and list them all on WP:WSS/P or is this too bureaucratic? My guess would be that {{Palestine-politician-stub}} would be only template that might cause problems, but on the other hand, we already have both {{Palestine-stub}} and {{Palestine-bio-stub}}, so I don't think we'll see any real problems here. Thoughts? Valentinian T / C 21:43, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

On second thought, moving this post to WP:WSS/P . Valentinian T / C 09:37, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Speedy delete for a duplicate stub type

I have proposed a speedy delete criteria for a duplicate stub type. This will make things much easier for Grutness. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 06:34, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sortkeys for stub categories

As you can see on Category:Southern United States road stubs, the five subcategories use two different sortkey methods, when both should be using the same format. Which one, if any, is considered "canon", if you will, for WSS? --TMF Let's Go Mets - Stats 06:23, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if we have an actual canon as such. I think "...stubs|*United States" was the original format, but most of the recent material omits the star (= "...stubs| United States" ). I think the latter format is the one mostly used on the generic categories, and I personally use the format without the star. Valentinian T / C 15:25, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
We don't have an established practice, for no better reason than we've failed to establish a practice. Either is OK, and certainly preferable to no "top-sorting" (or the rather bizarre "bottom-sorting" with \mu which I've seen on occasion, which seems to be just entirely confused). Obviously, it should be consistent within a given supercat. I'd vote for "*" across the board, on the basis that " " is typically reserved for the "main article" of a category, and is (I think) slightly less likely to be removed by some random editor who doesn't get what it's there for. But I'd be content with either, if it gets us towards a bit of democratic centralism (comrade stub-sorters). Alai 16:13, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
{{Stub Category}} uses µ, which I think is ridiculous, because you won't see the subcat till the last page. Also, * adds a separation that is not explained (and looks slightly odd). I personally feel that all subcats (not just stubs) should be given " " qualifiers so that they all show up on the first page of the category without separators. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 16:32, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but the sorting of stub cats within permcats we're at least consistent about, whatever the merits of it as a strategy. If all subcats were top-sorted, I'd have no objections to making the stub cat the last of those (say with "*µ", " µ", or some such) but generally, they're not, and people would probably object if the stub cat "jumped the queue" ahead of all the other subcats. Top-sorting subcats in general would need to be discussed elsewhere. Using "*" doesn't add a separation, an inconsistency between "*" and " " introduces that. (I'd imagine more use "*", but I might be wrong and/or biased.) Some times that's desirable, though (say with a stub type that's split both by nationality and by occupation/genre/other). Often, it's just people rowing in opposite directions. Alai 18:20, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Two types of stubs

Something was brought up at bot requests... There are currently two types of stub on Wikipedia, assessment-stubs and template-stubs. This is an odd double standard. I would think that either both should mean the same thing or there should be two different terms used. I have brought it up at the village pump, so please add any thoughts there. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 17:13, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

We've been arguing that here for ages. Having the assessmen-style templates called "Stub-Class" was a silly mistake from the beginning, since the stub system had already been in place for a considerable time. That's the reason why there's often a lot of confusion regarding what stub templates are among Wikiprojects. Grutness...wha? 00:18, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Need a laugh?

Anybody in need of a laugh? Try checking out the topic of this deletion nom. Valentinian T / C 23:55, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Expand and Sectstub templates

Hi all - there's rumblings over at Template talk:Expand about changes to {{Expand}}, {{Expand-section}} and {{Sectstub}} which may be worth commenting on by stub-sorteing regulars... Grutness...wha? 00:36, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] book-arts-stub

I proposed a stub July 17th (book-arts-stub) and I can't seem to find what happened to it. The link in my "contributions" page takes me to the July stub proposals [4], which have been archived. When I click that link[5] and search for book-arts I find nothing. I've also googled for it using site:en.wikipedia.org and didn't find anything. Where should I go to find out what happened with the proposal? You can reply here, I have this page Watched. Thanks! --Bookgrrl holler/lookee here 15:38, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Looks like it was lost in the process of page archival. The concluded discussion was in this revision (it was closed as "create upmerge template"). Alai 18:11, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Maribyrnong River /Victoria / Australia.

Hi there! I have noticed the Maribyrnong River on "Wikipedia" and I am very happy to have my local River included. However I can not find any entry's regarding "Canoeing/ Kayaking" on this River nor "Rowing" activeties. Thera are two Canoe Clubs and Rowing Clubs situatet on our River! Fred Jordan ( life member ) "Essendon Canoe Club est. 1925". <canoefrd@operamail.com.au> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.101.175.201 (talk) 01:02, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Not sure why you posted this here, since it's not in any way connected to the stub-sorting wikiProject, but... if you have information on that article, fix it. Just click on the edit link at the top of the page and edit the article. Grutness...wha? 06:40, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Full list of "nation-x-stub" names

Hi all - there is now a full list of nation-level (and nation-like, non-ontiguous or autonomous region-level) geo-stubs listed at User:Grutness/Geo-stub list. All of them are regular names, after NG fashion, at least, and there are now only a small handful of (mainly uninhabited) regions without such templates - all of which are currently awaiting naming suggestions on the proposals page (int, hint). Given that the geo-stubs are AFAIK the only near-complete by nation (and etc.) split of templates, these can perhaps be used as guides to the naming of similar splits for -bio- -politician- -hist- etc stubs. Grutness...wha? 00:07, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Sportspeople stubs

I recently added the missing "top-level" stub templates to the text of Category:Sportspeople stubs[6]. I noticed that there are lots of second- and third-level templates missing, e.g. {{Canada-lacrosse-bio-stub}}, {{collegefootball-coach-stub}}, etc. Do you think it's worth adding all the missing second- and third-level stub templates as well? DH85868993 16:11, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I'd add them to the subcategories - mentioning {{Canada-lacrosse-bio-stub}} in Cat:Canadian sportspeople stubs and Cat:Lacrosse people stubs (or whatever it's called) rather than in the top level category.But we don't have a hard and fast rule on it one way or the other. Grutness...wha? 23:40, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A template for a stub category which is being split off

Every so often, a new sub-category is created for a stub category, and the user who creates the sub-category doesn't have time to fully recategorize the stubs. I think we should have a template to place on such categories, which should look similar to the following:

Stub-sorting Wikiproject

This category is in the process of being split.
If you find any stub which seems to belong to Category:newtype stubs, please recategorize them.

What do you think about this? Od Mishehu 10:22, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Grutness...wha? 23:41, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
That seems sensible, and indeed would correspond to one of the sections of the "to do" list. I wouldn't use that appearance, though, as it's too similar to {{WPSS-cat}}, and also bear in mind that very often multiple subcats are created at once, and such cases tend to be the ones where re-sorting is most strongly indicated, so the parameter should probably be free text to allow for a description of this, or a parameter list, or something along those lines. Alai 02:27, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
As to the look, I note that the various deletion templates recently got a new look, and it's possible the merge and split ones did as well. Something along the lines of the "split into two articles" template (whatever it's called) may be a reasonable look. Would it also be worthwhile adding a link to the WSS to do list, or is that too "self-referential"? Grutness...wha? 07:27, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Stub categories are already self-refs, so I wouldn't see that as being a concern. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:11, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
What I might be inclined to do is to have that template feed into a meta-category (or is that a meta-meta-category by this point?) of Cat:stub categories to be split, in a similar way as do {{popstub}} and {{verylargestub}}, and put the to-do link on that category page. But that's just a nicety. Alai 15:48, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Sounds eminently reasonable. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 16:22, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal

I just made a proposal concerning this project at the village pump. Go there and discuss it, if possible. --CrazyLegsKC 05:26, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Misnamed? stub categories

I noticed that there are some categories misnamed. Instead of Cat:Figure skating biography stubs, and Cat:Speed skating biography stubs, the names are Cat:Figure skater stubs and Cat:Speed skater stubs. Should these be changed (and if so, how?) Also, the figure skating cat has a few subcats which are similarly misnamed. Neier 13:18, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

They probably should - categories like that are usually deliberately named so that they can include coaches and the like. The way to do it is to tag them with {{sfr-c}} and list them at Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion for discussion on the names. Grutness...wha? 23:20, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stub template photo

There's an illustration used in a stub template that's I like to suggest a change to. What do I do? Thank you. --24.211.242.80 00:17, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

  • You could tell us which template, and what photograph, for a start. Alai 00:44, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stub template standardisation

<pokes head above parapet> Over the years I have thought about the problems of stub templates, and have visited these pages from time to time, and while the stub sorting project is making great progress and is very sophisticated there are recurring problems with the templates themselves. So I created a template Template:Asbox - which deals with some of these problems, and allows for solutions to be developed for some others. Have a look.

Rich Farmbrough, 09:33 27 September 2007 (GMT).

(don't ask me how many of those I've converted by hand...), but on casual inspection OK otherwise. But what are these mysteriously-alluded-to problems this is intended to fix? Personally I generally settle for anything that doesn't screw up page layout, is reasonably brief, has a 40x30 or less icon, is free from meta-spam, and doesn't screw around with noinclude/includeonly more than my own personal indulgence of top-sorting the template, and "code" it by starting off some some obviously-related tag, fixing any of said issues with it, and basing the new one on that. But if I were so well-organised as to actually use {{metastub}}, like I'm currently supposed to, what would this do "better"? Alai 16:33, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Basically it is designed to be easy to retrofit to existing stub templates. Given this (which I have tested) it will allow the following - and I am tentative about this because I don't want to open a zillion old arguments right now about which/whether these are good ideas -
  1. Topsort all templates - allow keys to be given within the topsort.
  2. Support multiple (currently 2) categories.
  3. Remove the oft heard wail "that's a good idea, but do you have any idea how many templates we'd need to change?"
  4. Allows stub templates to support a common simple sort order syntax (default parameter 1).
  5. Making stub templates line up with each other within variation imposed by the icon (if any).
  6. Putting all templates in a category of stub templates if required.
  7. Allowing simple tests to identify/overrule image size.
  8. Making future changes simpler, because they can be done to {{tl:Asbox}} or because the majority of stub templates will be well formed.

Erm... that's all for now. Rich Farmbrough, 18:08 27 September 2007 (GMT).

If Alai fixes the overlinking..
9. does away with overlinking.
Rich Farmbrough, 18:09 27 September 2007 (GMT).

Oh, you're proposing this as a transcludable meta-template, rather than as a substitutable one? Egads. Well firstly, there's the oft-heard "do you have any idea how many templates we'd need to change?" to implement that in the first place (I'm not sure that wail is actually oft-heard otherwise, at least not about anything there's actual general agreement that it really is a good idea), but of more concern to me would be the 'single point of failure' issues with that, and the consequent performance issues that, however obvious, it's apparently developer-mandated that we STFU about. That's been suggested before, and I remain very dubious about the idea (though given the already massive shenanigans in the template space, maybe that ship has largely sailed). That aside, sort order parameterisation (of the stub article) I've always been opposed to as largely-wasted effort (stub types are supposed to more of a set for editors, not a list for readers), and given DEFAULTSORT, seems highly unnecessary these days. And besides, they confuse my bot when it comes time to re-sort them. :) The category of stub templates in my estimation isn't required: a set of such were deleted a while back, revisited somewhat later, and again left non-existant. But those quibbles aside, I do very much agree with the general aim of standardisation (I hate to think how many I must have edited in that cause by now, and probably far from entirely consistently at that), so I'll try not to be too dogmatic about the means. Alai 18:55, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, the documentation shows that I share your opinion on sort order being almost never necessary these days. Still it's cheap, as are the other benefits once it's in place. Rich Farmbrough, 20:07 27 September 2007 (GMT).
My opinion would be more on the lines that it's almost never of any conceivable application, and is most certainly never necessary, for the reasons stated. I also disagree that it's "cheap": it's yet more code clutter in the meta-template (which admittedly should be triply-fully-protected, and anyone spuriously editing it would be given electroshock therapy for putting a million articles on the job queue), and what's much worse it's an amount of code-complication in articles, for something that should be, can easily be, and by large has been, very, very simple. It would make sense to have it everywhere if you have it anywhere, as opposed to having in a minority and creating confused expections (and confused stub-sorters), but "nowhere" seems highly preferable to me. I'm not clear what you mean about the other benefits being "cheap"; they largely rely on editing the template, which is rather the main cost... Alai 22:22, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
It's already in there, some stub templates previously supported it. Yes, the cost of editing the template will eventually be larger, but at the moment it's similar to something like {{unreferenced}} or indeed {{tl}}. Rich Farmbrough, 11:50 28 September 2007 (GMT).

You will not believe me, but I was about to do the same. Good for me I went to look at this page first. I support the standartization and ready to join the effort in conversion, if one cannot do it by 'bot. Just drop me a note. At the same time I agree that a parameterized hypertemplate is kinda overkill here. I was thinking abut a single-param template for the text only. The rest of format is plain old cut'n'paste. Or am I missing some benefits of hypertemplates here? (besides the "single bottleneck" for screwing up) `'Míkka 07:21, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer - help always appreciated - it can't be fully automated. The trouble with cut and paste is that it diverges over time. Other possibilities of a common template are, for example, to put a link to WP:WSS in all the template pages (not that I'm espousing that), adding or changing CSS, reflecting style changes in WP as a whole etc. Rich Farmbrough, 11:50 28 September 2007 (GMT).
Pretty good summary, I think, especially on the latter point. The fact that this is now "pilot"-transcluded into about 45,000 stubs certainly makes me distinctly anxious about attempting to address the issues raised that having coding implications, lest I screw 45k articles up at once. Alai 10:58, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
45K items on the job queue later... Another coding niggle being, why is a conditional now being used to perform template top-sorting (or otherwise-sorting)? I've never seen anything so tortuous as that used on an actual stub template, at any rate. Alai 11:08, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes, you're absolutely right. I wasn't sure to start with whether people might object, to top-sorting for particular categories or projects. I will give it a few days to see what other changes are required and remove that - sure will make things simpler. Rich Farmbrough, 11:50 28 September 2007 (GMT).
Personally I'd suggest something like <noinclude>| {{{templsort|}}}</noinclude> as being most consistent with current practice, but I'm probably massively biased, since the main practitioner of that that style is, well, me, and that's not itself precisely "per WP:STUB" (though no-one seems to have complained, and several people seem to be doing the same thing, so one could argue that guideline-lag is at work there). Well, actually, my actual bias would currently be towards "do-over from the ground up", but I should sleep on that to see to what degree that really is just correctable bias, and to what degree this is as bad an idea as it currently seems. Alai 12:07, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
One consequence of which is, for example, that due to the net combination of RF's change and dmcdevit's (repeated) change(s) to {{vocab-stub}}, the template's in no category, which it's not obvious was the intent of either editor, and seems like a Bad Thing in general. Doubtless simple enough to fix, say by giving those parameters a sensible default, but definitely getting further out into "field servicing", here. Alai 11:19, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

If anyone but Rich (if even?) and I are paying attention at this point, transclusion costs and benefits gives a reasonably "fair and balanced" take on the pros and cons of mass use of meta-templates. (I might nudge that talk page to see if anyone wants to chime in here, indeed.) BTW, if the aim of this is standardisation, why wouldn't we be standardising things like image sizes in the process? Just replacing idiosyncratic inline code with meta-templatised code with idiosyncratic parameter values seems to give all the downside, and none of the claimed upside -- or certainly much less: granted there might be some tidying of table code and the like involved, I dunno. (Though obviously personally, I think we could just do the standardisation without the meta-templatisation, and amn't at all convinced of the need to build in scope to change what the "standard" itself is.) BTW, given the, um, strongly-expressed opposition to stub template parameterisation in some quarters, I'd suggest getting rid of all remaining provision for that in the m-t (again, that's if we really must have it at all). Alai 05:15, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

  • The more I see of this template as it is being used on stub templates, the more it appears to me to be causing far more problems than it's worth - largely for the reasons Alai mentions above. As it was described to me, it does seem that it wopuld have benefits,. however, the side-effects of asbox seem to be very bad ones and pretty far-reaching. I'm also now against the whole idea of it. Grutness...wha? 00:14, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
    • If we keep the template, but subst: all the existing (and any future) transclusions (much as metastub is currently employed, but with different parameterisation), then we'd get the benefit of standardisation to the current guideline. We would of course not get "flexibility" to change that standard in the way described above, and equally, have no "single point of failure". Might be an enlightened compromise vs. hauling it off to TFD, which I must admit I've been fighting the impulse to for some time. Alai 01:32, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I can't say I'm actually following this conversation, as I don't get the coding nuances. I came across {{Asbox}} while tweaking {{ya-novel-stub}} -- so now I'm confused. Do I still use the {{foo-stub}} template code? What does this all mean to the average stub drudge?? How does this change the user interface or indeed, the editor interface? help... Her Pegship (tis herself) 18:37, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
    • IMO the established practice is still that implied by WP:STUB, i.e. the {{foo-stub}} template code, in line with metastub and the majority of the existing template, Rich's rather extensive kite-flying exercise notwithstanding. I suggest if the new version makes you tense'n'nervous, or confounds what you're trying to do, change it back, but there's no global rush otherwise. The central coding issue is basically, do we on the one hand standardise by conforming to (more-or-less) the same "raw code", or do we do so so via parameters passed to a "meta-template" (that is, a template transcluded into all the others (well, several hundred of them, last time I looked, but by intent of the proposal, all)). Alai 05:23, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What is the point of stubs and stub icons

This is just to register a debate had over at Wikipedia:Stub_types_for_deletion/Log/2007/October/1 with which others might share some sympathy. I appeared to have walked into an area of notably strong views and not as much understanding of what I was saying as I would have hoped. I was unable to find much debate in the archived talk pages to support the non-negotiable guidelines. But that's not what I want to talk about.

Most stub templates produce the sentence: "This blank-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it", often including an icon, and with the word expanding linked to the edit this page button. This lead me to believe that the point of stubs was to increase the conversion rate on such articles, possibly by enticing new users into contributing there where it was almost impossible not to make an improvement. Ideally we want articles to leave the stub category, and not remain within it.

Unfortunately, no concept relating to conversion rate is listed under this project's goals. Instead, the goals appear focussed towards only making stubs technically tidy within a whole series of mandated categories. Double and triple stubbing is preferable to making parametrized stubs containing, for example, pointers to a Wikiproject where hints and encouragement can be invited from people with the expertise.

I have held people's hands while they made their first wikipedia edit, and there is often a big barrier to making that step. It is likely that the people most daunted by it could become the best editors -- if they got past it. It's easy for us to forget the barriers.

It seems to me that the more an article appears to be in someone else's territory, the less likely it will be edited by someone new. If this is true then it predicts that, since icons in stubs and multiple stubbing makes the article look more developed and official, the more you have of that the less the stub will achieve the desired result -- if the desire is to get it elevated out of the stub category, rather than just making something empty look kind of pretty. Here's a radical idea:

Consider getting rid of all stub icons.

The logic which people use on websites is unpredictable, and it can only be done experimentally, as I have found with my limited experience of tuning websites.

An experiment could be to hide the icons in half the stub templates, then come back in six months time to see whether more or fewer such articles remain in these stub categories than in the ones which do retain their attractive (and potentially discouraging) icons.

Such an experiment is unlikely to take place unless conversion rate was seen as one of the prime considerations of stub design. It would be nice if people thought it should be an important factor.

Goatchurch 20:08, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

We've considered it in the past, and actually tried working without icons on stub templates - and editors always put them back. If you hide the icons in 50% of stub templates, within a week, 80% of stub templates would have icons - in many cases ones far less approriate than those they had before. Other than protecting all stub templates, there's no way of stopping it happening, not with the limited number of stub-sorters there are, anyway.
Links to Wikiprojects within the templates have also been used in the past, but are derided by the "no self-reference" crowd, leading to edit battles between them and the individual wikiprojects concerned. edit wars in general are a bad thing - edit wars on templates are far wose, due to server cncerns. thus we use the compromise of linking to Wikiprojects in the stub categories rather than on the templates. In any case, if you are arguing that a stub template generates a feeling of one group staking a claim to an article, having a WP banner on the template would only make it far worse. By the way, as someone who has mentored new editors on and off for several years, I must say you are the only person I have ever heard suggest some form of ownership is implied. I'm not saying that perception doesn't occur, but I'm sure it is an extremely rare one - especially given the first credo of Wikipedia which is drummed into new users - anyone may edit any article. Does not the stub template say you can help by expanding the article?
As to conversion rate, yes, conversion rate is a very important thing, which is why we try to make the stub categories both precise and broad - a difficult tightrope to walk, but one that is necessary. We do what we can in that regard by keeping stub categories of a viable size so that editors are neither overwhelmed by the size of stub categories nor left picking among dozens of near-empty categories. Parameterised templates have been suggested prequently in the past, but always cause far too many problems to be effective - the size of the stubsorting wikiproject would need to be a magnitude larger at least before it can be handled from that end, and Wikipedia's servers would also have to be considerably stronger before it is worth the risk of crashing the system entirely (a real possibility given the high usage of stub templates). It also makes keeping the stub system manageable impossible without seriously prohibiting exactly what stub templates could be formed, which would require both policy changes and further limiting of editorial freedom.
In other words, while I understand your suggestions, there's nothing new in them. They've all been either tried or seriously considered in the past, and all of them have been rejected as doing more harm than good. Grutness...wha? 23:38, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Not all stub templates have icons: if you really think this is a worthwhile exercise, feel free to reconstruct such statistics from historical data. Personally, I think your hypothesis is a considerable stretch of what's credible, and don't really think testing it in the manner you suggest is worth the significant effort (if not to say outright disruption) it would entail.
On the whole "non-negotiable guidelines" and lack of "understanding" assertions that appear to motivate this intervention: extrapolating from your contributions to that particular deletion debate, I gather that your feeling is that your goals would be best served by maximising exclusivity and project-ownership of various articles. I suspect most stub-sorters (among others) would strongly disagree. You've advanced no other argument against double-stubbing, at any rate, just an assortment of things you apparently prefer. (Recall that the removal of "location in North Yorkshire" stub tags from, well, locations in North Yorkshire, is what led to the SFD nomination in the first place, rather than just the existence of that type in question.)
If you want to start a discussion on parameterised stub types and wikiprojects links, by all means do so, but I don't think it's helpful to take sideswipes in the process of purportedly addressing some other issue. I don't think an explicit "mission statement" would be especially beneficial (and indeed, in those terms it could be seen as tantamount to credit-stealing, since it's not us, as a project, that's doing the actual expanding). To say the tagging and sorting stubs with 4000+ templates that ask explicitly for articles to be expanded, is being done in the hope that they will be expanded, would seem to come under the heading of re(*4000)-stating the obvious, and anything beyond a hope is outwith the project's scope (or subscribing to the analysis that the prevalence of stub articles is the fault of the stub-sorting project). Lastly, "de-stubbing" is itself a fairly fuzzy issue, so measuring progress strictly in those terms could itself have a somewhat distorting effect (if anyone cared enough to engage in such). Alai 23:53, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How to write a script

From the functional spec we generate good script.

this is comes from devlopers.

writiing script is testers work for good quality script see below points

1. give brief information about the tool 2. give environment req to test 3. any kind of data testing and limited data testing to be mentioned in description. 4. any types users should be mentioned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.195.187.198 (talk) 12:03, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

  • I feel this may be mis-placed. Or if it's not, I'm just as lost. Alai 23:55, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Colour scheme for {{WPSS-cat}}

You may have noticed that the background colour for the stub category page boilerplate has changed; apparently it's been using markup intended for talk page templates all this while. I can't say I'm much taken with the new scheme, but that might just be the imprinting of having stared at thousands of 'em over time. There's a discussion at Wikipedia:Category message boxes about some sort of standardisation, but the current level seems to be approximately 'none'. We should probably given this some thought, at any rate. Alai 17:42, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I've restored the former colour. I personally found the old look much easier to read and the recent edit seems to have been motivated by a an editor trying to give the template two different looks depending on whether it is used on talk pages or other page types. I don't follow the logic in this modification since the template isn't intended to be used on talk pages at all. Valentinian T / C 17:49, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
And User:PEJL has already reverted it again citing that the colour is inappropriate for non-talk pages. It would be nice to see input from other editors regarding how which template they prefer, but for my sake it could be spotted green if people fancied such a look. Valentinian T / C 17:59, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
(ec) I made the original edit. The motivation was that I saw the template used on a non-talk page. I assumed the template was at least sometimes supposed to be used on talk pages, because it used talk colors, so that's why I used the conditional. If it's never to be used on talk pages it theoretically doesn't need a conditional. (It is used on quite a few talk pages, and on those pages, the talk colors blend in well with other templates.) Either way, the template shouldn't use talk colors on non-talk pages. Any other color scheme would be fine. --PEJL 18:02, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that by way of a placeholder, by the logic of "least surprising result", we for the time being use a colour similar to the long-standing one; but not identical, and not via the "talk page coding". Let's especially try not to get into needless revert wars on templates with thousands of transclusions. Alai 18:15, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Dang, didn't even know there was a "talk colour". Guess I should get out more often...Her Pegship (tis herself) 19:15, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
I've not heard about a "talk colour" before, and I don't see the point in trying to impose one. In any case, the current white is simply way too anonymous. This template's purpose is to be a visible warning against the creation of odd templates and categories that will merely make our work harder, but in its current shape, this template is as visible as a hole in space. Valentinian T / C 23:18, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Talk page templates for info on "talk colors" for templates, and Talk:Pinkerton (album) for an example of a talk page with such templates. Perhaps a style similar to {{warning}} (compared to the current style which is similar to {{notice}}) would work for you? --PEJL 23:35, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
I originally made the box that colour IIRC. At that time, the colour was used for all such templates on talk pages and non-talk pages such as categories. Hence its use/ I've no objection to a change of colour, though it should be something else that is both unobtrusive and noticeable (if that isn't an oxymoron). Perhaps apple green or something similar? Grutness...wha? 23:37, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Might work. Here are a few experiments (warrenty or guarantee of usefulness does *not* apply) :)

Stub-sorting Wikiproject

This category is maintained by WikiProject: Stub sorting.
Please propose new stub categories here before creating fresh categories and templates.

(original look)

Stub-sorting Wikiproject

This category is maintained by WikiProject: Stub sorting.
Please propose new stub categories here before creating fresh categories and templates.

(orange)

Stub-sorting Wikiproject

This category is maintained by WikiProject Stub sorting.
Please propose new stub categories here before creating fresh categories and templates.

(pale blue)

Stub-sorting Wikiproject

This category is maintained by WikiProject Stub sorting.
Please propose new stub categories here before creating fresh categories and templates.

(silver)

Stub-sorting Wikiproject

This category is maintained by WikiProject Stub sorting.
Please propose new stub categories here before creating fresh categories and templates.

(grey)

Stub-sorting Wikiproject

This category is maintained by WikiProject Stub sorting.
Please propose new stub categories here before creating fresh categories and templates.

(shamrock green)

Stub-sorting Wikiproject

This category is maintained by WikiProject Stub sorting.
Please propose new stub categories here before creating fresh categories and templates.

(lime)

Stub-sorting Wikiproject

This category is maintained by WikiProject Stub sorting.
Please propose new stub categories here before creating fresh categories and templates.

(olive)

Stub-sorting Wikiproject

This category is maintained by WikiProject Stub sorting.
Please propose new stub categories here before creating fresh categories and templates.

(jade)

Stub-sorting Wikiproject

This category is maintained by WikiProject Stub sorting.
Please propose new stub categories here before creating fresh categories and templates.

(moss green)

Thoughts? Valentinian T / C 00:19, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I like the silver or the moss green. I was thinking of something part-way between moss green and lime green when I mentioned apple - sort of the tones of the lime but the softness of the moss. Grutness...wha? 01:57, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

If we were working by "type", the closest I can find seems like {{consensus}}... which is the original, "talk page" colour. Oh well. I suggest an orange that's midway between that and "you have messages" orange used above, for the sake of making a minimal perturbation. If cat-page standardisation gets anywhere, after all, it may end up being changed significantly, so I'd prefer to avoid a series of rapid jumps in potentially opposite directions. Alai 02:20, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm fine with both green, silver and orange. The main issue is to avoid a template that is too anonymous. Valentinian T / C 16:29, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
I'd certainly also prefer any of the above to the status quo. Alai 16:28, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
The current white colour is too anonymous. How about we try with a nice green and see what happens? Valentinian T / C 20:36, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
The moss green above, perhaps? The text isn't as obvious in the other two, and text boxes like this are usually a pastel-ish shade. Grutness...wha? 22:40, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
The moss green one was the one I had in mind. I've been bold and updated the template. It might benefit from a thin outline, though. Valentinian T / C 08:18, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ordering the School stubs for United States

There has been very little feed back regarding the Ordering the School stubs for United States as found on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types with the discussion question asked at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types#Ordering the School stubs for United States Before being bold and just doing it, I would like a bit of feed back first. Maybe I was asking in the work place, so I am added a request here as well, Thank you in advance for your consideration of this subjectDbiel (Talk) 12:19, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the suggestion you made on WP talk:WSS/ST. Sounds sensible. BTW, not too many people probably monitor that talk page - especially since the stub type list has been split into subpages, which is probably why you didn't get many responses. I've added one of those "consider commenting here instead" banners to the top. Grutness...wha? 23:15, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Protection warranted?

Are stub templates sufficiently high-risk to be protected/semi-protected as high-risk templates? I just reverted an anon editors devious little work on {{euro-school-stub}} that added the schools to a category German national socialist ....yadda yadda. Consider whether these templates are high risk and whether you want anons to have free rein on adding different categories to them. Carlossuarez46 05:53, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

mmm. It's never been much of a problem in the past except on some which are obvious contention-magnets (e.g., {{Palestine-stub}}), though understandably high use ones like {{stub}} are protected. I think there'd be a loud complaint if all stub types were protected (we're accused often enough of being - ironically given the current case - "stub nazis" as it is). Certainly worth watching, though... perhaps we each need to put a few more templates and categories on our watch lists... Grutness...wha? 07:44, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
I think that mass-protecting, or even mass-semi-protecting, stub templates is a bad idea. However, given the widespread use of the templates, any template which is vandalized - should be semi-protected. Od Mishehu 08:05, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Personally, I'd be inclined to semi-protect the lot, and full-protect the ones with the highest use (and the ones with most scope for POV grief), but I think there's some truth to the "backlash" concern, so I'm inclined to be cautious about doing so without some sort of "coup excuse". Honestly, though, what new editor wants to start editing stub templates? And what's our incentive to facilitate non-new editors editing them from IP addresses?
The "high risk" aspect isn't really that bad, on a template-by-template basis: none has more than a couple of thousand transclusions, and most are in the range of a few hundred, which the WP:PERF mob would scoff at. (Mind you, they do do a lot of scoffing.) It's somewhat disheartening to find a template that's had its category removed, or made useless by a botched sort key, and then realize that it's been that way unnoticed (or at least, unfixed) for months, but I suppose that's just further evidence that sadly, the contents of many stub types are basically just left to languish en masse. Alai 17:14, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Not trying to be overly pesky or policy-bound, I should note that many templates are transcluded into BLP's so while the various BLP patrollers look at changes to the bios, there could be all sorts of mischief added through transclusion: imagine some varmint replacing the current text at {{US-actor-stub}} or any of the hundreds of others meant to be added to bios, with something about pedophilia or drug use etc.... Newbies probably shouldn't be messing about with templates; most newbies don't even know how they work or how to mess them up. But vandals with brand new accounts can and do mess with them from time to time. It's just a matter of when we find the problem and fix it. The euro-schools took 30 hours, some more used one probably shorter, but not necessarily. Carlossuarez46 19:26, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
It's a valid point. I must admit that's more obviously malicious than most template-tampering that I've seen, which tends to be either out and out newbie cluelessness, or semi-informed tinkering that goes wrong -- at least that I've noticed. If I were GodKing for a day, I'd pitch the ideal ease of editing these someplace between "autoconfirmed" and "admin" -- "manuallyconfirmed", as it were. As, however, I'm not, I suspect there might be some more persuading to do on this... Alai 03:00, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] {{nostub-expand}}

Hi all - I've nominated this for deletion at tfd - it was created by someone unaware that expand and stub templates aren't used together, and I'm having difficulty finding the actual documentation relating to it (several places which say "the documentation needs changing to show this", but no evidence that it's actually been done). Any input would be welcome. Grutness...wha? 23:06, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Collapsible tables

What about trying this on the stub types list? I used it on the category page for Cat:Computer stubs and it's really handy. Her Pegship (tis herself) 20:31, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

They'd be really handy - if they worked in Safari, which they don't. I can't get at any of the information in the table in Cat:Computer stubs, unfortunately, and anyone else using an older form of Safari will be in the same situation (I've complained about similar tables in articles on the help desk in the past with no success :( All that appears there for me is a thin unclickable line. Grutness...wha? 23:04, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
No joy. :( I have reverted it. Her Pegship (tis herself) 23:48, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
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