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{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/header}}

WikiProject Stub sorting
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Information
Project page talk
- Stub types (sections) talk
- Stub types (full list) talk
- To do talk
- Naming conventions talk
- Redirects category talk
Wikipedia:Stub talk
Discussion
Criteria (A) talk
Proposals (A) talk
- Current month
Discoveries (A) talk
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Deletion (Log) talk
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Some Wikipedians have formed a project to better organise and categorise 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 categorisation 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[]

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Guidelines and criteria[]

  • To see the current guidelines and other information on stub sorting and stubs in general, see: Wikipedia:Stub.

New stubs[]

  • To propose new stub categories/templates, see /Proposals.
  • List newly found stub categories/templates at /Discoveries.

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.

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.

Tools[]

As of 2006, 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:}}: You can use this code to force an article to sort correctly (for example, without "The" at the beginning of a title, by last name first), no matter what category it's in, even in stub categories. From the January 2007 Technology Report:

The default sort key of a page for categories can be changed using the new {{DEFAULTSORT}} magic word. 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.

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