Wowpedia talk:Stub policy

Deprecated Stubs!
I went through all the articles linking to the deprecated stubs and used (hopefully) the correct stub. I Categorized the Lore articles with Stub/Lore, even though it doesn't exist just yet so that I wouldn't have to go back and recategorize them. I will probably create this soon if no one else does, but now would probably be a good time to just delete the deprecated stub templates that we don't want people using?? Also as I was categorizing the old section stubs and such a lot of them where using the sectionocat template even though they never actually used the section template that adds a category, so I have to agree with his comment on the front page that is probably not needed.--Ralthor 09:31, 3 June 2006 (EDT)


 * I've tagged all the deprecated templates for deletion (except itself, for good reason I believe) after making sure that they weren't even being linked to. --Mikk 13:25, 4 June 2006 (EDT)


 * Personally, I'd want to get rid of both of the Stub/Section tags. They're making zero sense to me. We could just as easily rephrase the other stub tags so that they say "article/section", and then people can use those. Actually, I'll just start a vote about it I think. --Mikk 10:36, 4 June 2006 (EDT)


 * I'm not all too fond of Sub/Section, however there may be a place for it. Let's say, under Orgrimmar (for example) all other sections of the city are covered, but not the Drag, you might want to tag that with a section stub. On the other hand, it might be best to just tag the section with Stub/Location or whatever would best belong there. Upon actually reading your comment better, I completely agree with you, Mikk. Wonder of wonders! Schmidt 10:54, 4 June 2006 (EDT)


 * Vote started below. --Mikk 13:25, 4 June 2006 (EDT)

= Proposal to get rid of Stub/Section and Stub/Section2 =

''I assume I have to do this as a policy proposal, since the stub policy is .. well.. a policy? --Mikk 11:00, 4 June 2006 (EDT)''

Stub/Section and Stub/Section2 do not make sense to me. There's no way of guessing what kind of page you'll end up on if you browse Category:Stubs/Section.

I think deprecating them and just rephrasing the rest of the stubs to work in a section context also makes more sense.

--Mikk 11:00, 4 June 2006 (EDT)

Policy ratification vote

 * Yes :


 * No :

Comments

 * I've already edited the stub templates to say "article or section". They might be a bit too bloaty for use in sections though. I think I'll go through and make some things &lt;small&gt;. --Mikk 07:05, 5 June 2006 (EDT)
 * I'm giving a qualified support, since the regular stubs are pretty bloaty to be used just for unfinished sections. The whole section stuff was an idea to indicate the article was mostly filled out (not really a stub), but an important section was effectively empty. --Fandyllic 7:40 PM PDT 24 Jun 2006


 * Ratified. All uses of Stub/Section and Stub/Section2 have now been changed to categorized templates. --Mikk 07:50, 13 July 2006 (EDT)

= New Comments =

New stub type
I'd like to see a Stub/Category for sticking onto a category which hasn't had stuff added to it. I've got a preliminary stub up, if anyone wants to use it, at User:Bobson/StubCategory. --{{user|Bobson}] 06:47, 22 December 2006


 * Sounds like a good idea. I would start a policy vote for it. -- Fandyllic (talk) 1:50 PM PST 22 Dec 2006

Proposed: The creation of a Category Stub, to place on any category page which needs to have more articles placed into that category. Useful for when you create a new category and don't want to hunt down every example, or when you stumble across an almost-empty category. An example bar is above, but if you don't like the specific wording, suggest a change.

Policy ratification vote

 * Yes :


 * No :

Comments
Ok, I moved my page to Template:Stub/Category, but I'm not sure what else needs to be done to implement this. Someone else want to point me in the right direction or do it themselves? --Bobson 15:04, 7 January 2007 (EST)


 * I've added it to the stub pages. Anywhere else you see it missing? -- 15:18, 7 January 2007 (EST)

Stub/NPC vs. Stub/Mob
Just hoping for some clarification. I've seen both in use: (Category:NPC stubs and Category:Mob stubs). The policy page only mentions Stub/NPC. I can see the usefulness of differentiating the two, since the Stub/NPC category can get very, very large. Alternatively, some other way of breaking down Stub/NPC could be considered. --Beep2 14:26, 30 December 2006 (EST)

When is an article a stub?
I nominated Crusader Strike for deletion because I didn't think a blank article with some categories attached to it was enough to even be a stub. (The deletion nomination was reverted.) On Wikipedia, for an article to exist as a stub, it must have some content, but what about on WoWWiki? I've seen tons of articles that should remain, IMO, red text because there's nothing on them but a stub marker. Is this how WoWWiki is "supposed" to be setup? For reference, here is Wikipedia's defintion of a stub...
 * "A stub is an article that is too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of the subject, but not so short as to provide no useful information. To qualify as a stub it must at least define the meaning of the article's title. Often that means three to ten short sentences, but less text may be sufficient to qualify as a stub for articles on narrow topics, and complicated topics with more than ten sentences may still be stubs."

...and I think it's a pretty good one, personally. RobertM525 16:44, 21 January 2007 (EST)
 * It's a tough call. If you leave it as non-existant red links, then it'll be obvious to users that it doesn't exist, but there's no easy way to find it to create it.  If you create it as a stub, it'll show up along with all the other stubs for people looking for what to work on, but it'll be annoying to users.  I'm of the opinion that neither's good. Instead, when you create it, you should go in there and at least put in the information you put on the page you added the link to it on.  What level you get it, which class it's for, maybe mana cost... --Bobson 19:14, 21 January 2007 (EST)

Which are the guidelines?
I would ask that the "Marking a page as a stub" and "Dealing with a stub" sections be labeled explicitly as "Guidelines", as I do not believe they are intended to be inflexible.

Some visual break between "the policy" section and the rest of the page is needed to clarify that that first section is the whole of the policy. IMO, putting all the guidelines under an H3 section would not work well because the H4 and H5 (=== and ====) sections are not terribly distinct. A custom "ambox" might work, though

... that, or we should agree to adopt it as part of the policy. We've had them as guidelines for a good while without change, so there might be a lot of consensus on that. However, I feel they should remain specifically as guidelines. Guidelines are easier to change, and text is almost never "final". --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 21:58, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Meh, I don't think guidelines and policy should be on the same page. Just gets confusing. -- 22:27, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Any page's text should be easy to change, especially when we're being descriptive of wiki-working. That said, I can point to policy pages outside of WoWWiki (but in the wiki world) which explain how to apply the policy just as much as to tell what the policy is. --Sky (t · c · w) 22:37, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree, Sky. It's not the page name that's the important part of what I was commenting on, it's the policy/non-policy nature of the content. And Pcj, having the content split between two pages seems unnecessarily awkward, provided that the policy CAN be distinguished from the guidelines.  Thus, my suggestion.  Try it, see if it is still confusing. --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 22:42, 9 April 2009 (UTC)