Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting

Some Wikipedians have formed a project to better organize and categorize stubs and stub categories. This page and its subpages contain their suggestions; it is hoped that this project will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians. Everyone is welcome to help; for more information please inquire on the talk page or see the "To do" list.

Project goals

This WikiProject aims primarily to sort stubs in Wikipedia. To do this the project has the following aims:

1. Ensure better categorization of stubs
2. Ensure that stubs are sorted as uniformly as possible
3. Aim to keep categories at moderate sizes
4. Maintain stub categories and templates
5. Ensure that any new stub categories and templates are reasonable, usable, and useful

Why is stub sorting important?

Stub articles are generally short, or below the high Wikipedia standard, or both. If they are not sorted, then it means they are less likely to be edited to higher quality as nobody necessarily knows the page is in need of attention. Even if a page is sorted into a category indicating it is in need of attention, such as the articles needing a cleanup, it is still not as good as putting it in a stub category. This is because stub categories attract experts in specific areas (chemists can see chemistry stubs for example), whereas generic cleanup and dead-end categories do not.

Helpful hints

• RTFM (read the friendly manual)
• A field guide to stub sorters
• When is a stub not a stub?

Parentage

• One parent of this WikiProject is Wikipedia:Maintenance.
• Another parent of this WikiProject is Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates.
• The third parent of this WikiProject is Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories.

Structure

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types for more information on existing stub types.

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/List of stubs for a compact list of all stub types.

Guidelines and criteria

• To see the current guidelines and other information on stub sorting and stubs in general, see: Wikipedia:Stub.
• To propose new stub categories/templates, see /Proposals.
• If you feel that a stub type should be deleted, nominate its template at Categories for discussion.

Important page links

• Wikipedia:Stub (WP:STUB) - official definition and instruction on stubs.
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types (WP:WSS/ST) - lists all stub categories.
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub type sizes - gives numbers of members of all stub categories.
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals (WP:WSS/P) - for proposals on new stub types and other stub-related discussion.
• User:DataflowBot/output/Popular low quality articles (id-2) - list of popular yet low-quality articles, replacing the long-deprecated Wikipedia:Most wanted stubs
• Special:Shortpages
• Category:Stub categories - the main list of stub categories and of articles contained within them
• Category:Stubs (CAT:STUB) - Articles tagged with generic {{stub}}. Frequently overpopulated and needs constant maintenance.
• Wikipedia:Database reports/Stubs included directly in stub categories
• Wikipedia:Database reports/Unused stub templates

See also: Category:WikiProject Stub sorting and all subpages of this page

Archives

The following pages are not longer actively used:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Discoveries (WP:WSS/D) - past discoveries of newly discovered stub types.
• Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion (WP:SFD) - archive of old discussions for deletion, merging or renaming of stub templates and categories; now handled at WP:CFD.
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria/Archive - for archives of old proposals and discussions.

Participants

The full list became too long for this page. It has been moved to Category:WikiProject Stub sorting participants. An older list is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Participants.

The current number of participants is 313.

Stub sorting methods

General rules

• To put an article into a stub category, change the existing stub tag (if it exists) from {{stub}} to, for example, {{chem-stub}} if it is a chemistry stub. If it has no stub template but is clearly a stub, then add an appropriate stub template at the bottom of the article (below any categories).
• Never subst stub templates.
• The guideline Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout § Standard appendices and footers states that any stub tags should be placed at the very bottom of the article, after all other templates and categories. Two blank lines should be left between the first stub tag and whatever precedes it.
• When sorted, you may leave an edit summary like this to encourage others to help: Stub-sorting. [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting|You can help!]]
• You may wish to inform the creator of the stub that the use of {{stub}} is no longer recommended by putting {{subst:stubsort}} on their talk page. Alternatively, you may use {{subst:Stub sort}}.
• No stub article should sit in only a stub category as this association is meant to be temporary. If no other category is listed, please add the standard article category that is the parent of the stub category.
• Please remember to use the list of stub categories to make sure you are putting stubs in the correct category.
• If the article is no longer a stub, remove the stub template. Refer to Wikipedia:Stub for more information on this matter.
• If it interests you, consider checking talk pages of stub articles to see whether they've been tagged by some appropriate WikiProject. Adding a suitable project banner to a stub's talk page can help bring it to the attention of the right editors more quickly.

Things to do

• See the project's "To do" list for those categories which are very large and those categories for which new sub categories have recently been added and thus need to be resorted.
• Category:Stubs frequently reaches staggeringly large numbers; help is always needed sorting articles into more specific sub-stub categories.
• All other stub categories need watching as well, to sort out mislabeled stubs and subsort them further, if applicable.
• Stubs without any stub tags can be found on Special:Shortpages, Special:Newpages or Special:Randompage.
• If a large (> 800 stubs) stub subcategory interests you and there are not yet any subcategories in it, propose some subcategories at WP:WSS/P.
• A longer list of oversized stub categories to be split, in order of size, is here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/To do. This might also be used as a holding area for proposals not yet created, and for sub-categories in need of being sorted-down into.

Tools

To shop for more tools, see Wikipedia:Tools, Wikipedia:Tools/Browser tools and Task-oriented tool list.

• User:SD0001/StubSorter: provides a HotCat-style search field for searching for stub templates and adding them.
• User:Danski454/stubsearch: provides a hierarchical interface for searching for and adding a stub tag.
• Navigation popups: This script causes a small box to pop up when your mouse hovers over a wikilink. The box can show you the first paragraph of an article, whether it's tagged as a stub, how many categories it has, etc. Can be useful for finding stubs and for categorizing an article according to the text in the first paragraph.

As of November 2016, a different version called Hovercards is in a fairly stable beta. You can activate it in your Preferences under the Beta features tab. See also Wikipedia:Hovercards (or avoid the soft redirect and go directly to mw:Beta Features/Hovercards).

• PetScan: Essentially a Boolean search tool. Enter a category or template and find items that use a different category or template, find all items under a certain size, find images, etc.
• AutoWikiBrowser: A semi-automated Wikipedia editor for Microsoft Windows, designed to make tedious repetitive tasks quicker and easier. It is essentially a browser that automatically opens up a new page when the last is saved. When set to do so, it suggests some changes (typically formatting) that are generally meant to be incidental to the main change. AutoWikiBrowser can create a list of articles from single or multiple categories, "what links here", the wiki links on an article, a text file, a Google search, a user's watchlist, or a user's contributions.
• {{DEFAULTSORT:}}: Used to set the default sort key for an article for all categories on a page. For instance, on George Washington, {{DEFAULTSORT:Washington, George}} would cause a subsequent [[Category:United States presidents]] to be equivalent to [[Category:United States presidents|Washington, George]], not [[Category:United States presidents|George Washington]]. This is especially useful when the article belongs in many categories.

Project templates

These are the project's templates. They are not the same as the stub templates used by the project.

• Template {{WPSS-cat}} is used at the top of stub categories. It appears like this:

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

• Template {{Stub category}} is also used at the top of stub categories. It appears like this:

This category is for stub articles relating to foo. You can help by expanding them.
To add an article to this category, use {{Foo-stub}} instead of {{stub}}.

• Template {{Parent-only stub category}} is similar to {{Stub category}}, and is for parent-only categories It appears like this:

This category is for stub articles relating to foo. You can help by expanding them.
This stub category is a parent-only category, that is, all stubs within it should be in one of its subcategories, or marked with a template that may eventually have a separate subcategory. To add an article to this category, please use the appropriate template for one of its subcategories.

• Template {{Upmerged stub category}} is used on category pages where there are upmerged templates feeding into that category. It appears like this:

This stub category contains upmerged templates which use this category, although they describe a more specific type. If an upmerged template is used on more than 60 stubs you can request a sub-category at WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals.

• Template {{Very large stub}} is used at the top of stub categories which are oversized. It appears like this:

This stub category is very large. Subcategories may be helpful for browsing.
To view existing subcategories, please visit Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types.
To propose new subcategorization methods, please visit Wikipedia: WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals.
This tool is useful for finding which stubs can be moved into subcategories.

• Template {{WPSS-new}} is used on some of the project's discussion pages, and on other pages related to stubs. It appears like this:

• Template {{WikiProject Stub sorting}} is used on the talk pages of some more editwar-prone stub templates. It appears like this:

• Template {{WPSS-talk}} is used on the talk pages of some stub categories and templates. It appears like this:

See also

• Wikipedia:Stub Makers
• "Stub" section of the Editor's Index to Wikipedia