Forum:Let's talk about stubs.
It's a difficult topic, but let's talk about stubs. Imagine what it would be like to have no arms or legs. Who would shake your thing after you used the loo?
Actually, I want to talk about wiki stubs. It seems that the ever-vigilant mods really don't like short articles, but it seems to me that Wikipedia has many short articles. They're short simply because they're short; there's not that much to say on the more esoteric topics like the Third Sultan of Brunei. Now, sometimes they get marked as stubs, and I don't know if the Wiki mods would ever delete stubs simply because they weren't expanded upon, but it seems that Uncyc is opposed to having short articles, say, a few short paragraphs or a couple longer ones. Correct me if I'm wrong.
You might say I have a vested interest in starting this debate, as I was just writing an article that has a maximum reasonable length of four short paragraphs. To make it longer would be stretching the humor. I mean really, what's so bad about a short article if it's polished, not a quick write-and-run?
--Iritscen 15:16, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
- Stubs and short articles are fine but crappy stubs, crappy short articles and one-liners are not. --Sir gwax (talk)
20:08, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
- A short article is not encyclopedic, and we are an encyclopedia. If there is really nothing else to be said about the third Sultan of Brunei, then he is not notable, hence he doesnt belong to wikipedia either, acording to their own rules. They don't delete the unnotable crap so efficiently as we do, only becouse they have one million articles to check. Besides, if we accepted stubs they would flood us, as it happens in WP, and they would also kill our parodic encyclopedic tone. So unless the article's length is part of the joke somehow, we don't appreciate stubs, as they don't match the site's spirit. Of course, there are allways exceptions.--Rataube 20:09, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
- The length of an article has no bearing on its quality. If a one-line article is hilarious and feels complete, then it's not a stub. (See Absolute Power for the perfect example of this.) Stubs are articles that need expansion, not articles that don't make your browser scroll. --Algorithm (talk) 20:26, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
First off: is it funny in that short time? If it is, then we can talk. Can you add a picture? That would make the article seem less stubby. If there a neat formatting trick you can do? Basically anything that makes the article look like it is short but complete, not short because no one cared, will improve its chances of survival. The other thing you can do if it is NRVed is talk to an admin and ask them to take a closer look. If it is high quality, merely the act of asking will probably be enough to give you what you want. A note will then be attached preventing subsequent NRVing. ---
Rev. Isra (talk) 22:05, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I am actually more inclusionist than most of my admins. I think that if a stub has even the slightest potential for humor, it should stay. Our current standard is a bit less lenient than that, more that, it should at least make somebody smirk. Does anyone agree with my stub theory? I think more stubs are better than less, but again, current policy doesn't follow this. --Chronarion 00:25, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Personally i think they should stay for a certain time.Really i think we should have a bot that cleans up stubs after a month or 2 and moves the article into the talk page or if a stub is very funny it is put up for protection against the bot. Really the stubs dont hert anyone so i see the main problem with them is they remove the fun for the next person coming. The impression i get from admins is that if we dont delete these stub uncyclopedia is going to crash and create a black hole. Personally i think those who are preoccupied with deleting need a boot but Hey Chron their your admins and you voted in the first lot who now only let themselves vote on who should be admin. ;)(so ima not expecting any solutions for everyone other then those who love deleting and controling) Also i feel all protected pages apart from the front page should be subject to being edited by everyone but are refresh 2 their protect form every 12-6 hours. --Da, Y?YY?YYY?:-:CUN3 NotM BLK |_LG8+::: 12:06, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
- My article is Incredibly Obscure Japanese Video Game, and it's a parody of the people who write ridiculously esoteric entries on Wikipedia about something that they and five other people like. (It's also a partial parodic reference to "Incredible Crisis", the video game with the Best Name Ever.) Maybe no one else will find it funny. But in any case, the article's naturally going to be short because it's an esoteric entry, remember? Being long would defeat its purpose. There are many actual Wiki entries just like this, but sans pictures. --Iritscen 14:45, 23 March 2006 (UTC)