Wikipedia talk:Stub

From the Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can change

IMO, this article doesn't use as "simple" english as it could .

What is the policy on stubs (short articles)? I guess as this is meant to be a dictionary as well, we should just write something every time we see a "?" link, and just leave it as a simple definition until someone with more knowledge can come along and write an article. -- Tango

general waffle on policies - Hmmm - well, I wouldn't say there is a policy. Policies need to be formed by consensus and until there's more discussion on such things we won't know if there is a consensus or not. In general I would say go with the rules of any other Wikipedia you are familiar with unless there is a good reason not to. Angela

my opinion on stubs - Personally, I am far more tolerant of stubs here than I am at the English Wikipedia. We are not really meant to be a dictionary, but I do think there is some value in having a page to describe a common term, especially if that term is complicated. The advantage is that you can then use that term in an article without having to simplify it. Simple words are best, but sometimes you need to use a complex or jargon word. The solution is to decribe it elsewhere so those who can not understand it can at least easily find out. An alternative is to have a page which contains the contents of lots of stubs, like instead of a page on addition and multiplication, you ould have one page on mathematical terms and redirect those two to that. Angela.

The general policy on most wikipedia's is that stubs are bad, as far as i know, but i think this wiki might benifit from allowing stubs. I didn't expect there to be a policy already, i was really just trying to start a discussion. I'm not so keen on putting pages together; a list of terms all linking to the relevent page would be good, but i think it is better to have the pages separate so they don't have to be separated later if someone wants to make them longer, which should be the aim of all stubs. -- Tango

If something has potential to be more than a stub, then you might be right - best to leave it. But I'm not sure if things like addition could be more than that. Angela

You and i can't see anything more to say, but some mathematician might come along and add all kinds of interesting stuff. Also, addition has non-mathematical meanings, eg. Colour Addition (as opposed to Colour Subtraction, light is one type, ink is the other, i can't remember which is which though). I don't think there is anything wrong with it having it's own page, there is no problem with it taking up too much space in the database, is there? -- Tango

No, database space isn't an issue. I have no objection to keeping it separate if it it could be useful. Angela

I'd say it's easier to join it together later than it is to separate it, so we may as well keep it separate until someone comes up with a good reason for joining them. -- Tango

I agree with Angela that policies require discussion and consensus. Stubs have been kept over an objection and RfD by Netoholic, so I think consensus says that they should stay. I also think that the template should automatically add the article to the stub category, rather than having to add it manually. This would add all articles with a stub tag to the category, which is a very good thing, since at the moment the category is empty except for a subcat. I am going to boldly make that change, and if someone later disagrees, they can boldly revert. I just hope they have a good reason and aren't going against consensus. --Cromwellt|talk 00:55, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

My apologies. My description of the situation was somewhat incorrect. There was no RfD by Netoholic, but there were two conversations on Wikipedia:Simple Talk in which Netoholic strenuously objected to the existence of stubs. He has also removed the category tag from the template three times, despite the fact that each time it was added by a different person and in spite of the conversation on Simple Talk. I think this is an example of Netoholic deciding what he thinks is best and doing it in spite of what other people think. If he/she does not want to use stubs, Netoholic does not need to, but that should not stop others from using stubs if that is the way they want to work. Isn't that part of the way Wikipedia is supposed to work? We need all kinds of people who act in good faith here, both those who like stubs and those who don't. --Cromwellt|talk 21:16, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

[change] Stub sorting

I think now that this wiki is definitely active and has long passed 10,000 articles, stub sorting would be a valuable addition. That way people who know more about a certain topic can find the stubs in that topic. Right now, stubs are not sorted in any way, and that means that if I wanted to work on English language stubs, I would be hard pressed to find them. Either I would have to look through all the stubs and pick out the ones that I think have to do with the English language, or I would have to look in a category like Category:English language or Category:English grammar (which for many themes does not even exist) and go through all the pages there to find the stubs. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 20:03, 6 September 2007 (UTC)