Forum:The Trouble With Stubs

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An Introduction by Zombiebaron with a couple of Special Guests

Alright. This is an issue that has nagged at my "brain" for awhile now. You see, articles marked with {{stub}} (and there are tons) are supposed to have "50 words or less". Sounds like instahuff material to me, or at least ICU fodder. The only problem is that most of the articles marked with {{stub}} are old. Thus, I suggest two things. First, I suggest that we (and by "we", I mean "people with time on their hands") go through and make a list of all the articles marked with {{stub}} that should have been huffed ages ago, and remove the template from all other articles. Second, I suggest that we change {{stub}} so that it adds articles to Category:NRV, and thus gets them deleted in 7 days. So, I thrust it at you, the people reading this, to do what I say, or at least come up with a clever excuse. -- The Zombiebaron 19:45, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

First of all, Excuse me, for I am drunk, but it has been an busy and hot day and I like my refreshing alcoholic beverages. But that aside. Stubs.. The whole deal with them has bothered me for a while ( both sober and intoxicated ). Why are stubs a problem ? lost of them are more to the point and more funny than lots of full length and sometimes even featured stuff (imnsho) . Some ideas out there that are stubs and will not improve at all when attributed large amounts of drivel. Some short works are all that they have to be and are perfect within that concept. Also the stub templates do not help that much, change it to something like This article is a stub, you can possibly ruin a genuine idea by adding bullshit to it so it can reach a full length of unfunny shit nobody will bother to read. Not that stubs are good per say, but some one liners two liners and three liners have to be excused for being all that they can be. If a short article contains a great idea but just does not make it .. stub.. if it is 3 words that make it complete, so be it. I really dunno if any of this has been talked about earlier, I can imagine it has. But why do some people feel stubs must go ? Is it a genetic wiki media thing ? --Vosnul 21:15, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

We're an encyclopedia, pretty much. So, we try to be like an encyclopedia, and not any old meme factory. We do (did) have an Undictionary. It failed, pretty much. So... while once we thought your point was valid, practice says that stubs suck and don't go anywhere or do anything or visit their mothers at christmastime. --KATIE!! 21:33, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I understand, albeit being really hot-boiled and pretty shitfaced, did it mention naked ?? No ? great , forget about that then , But I do. It is pretty obvious that the very nature of stubs invite more crap like "Simon Joe Dandy suck big balls because his momma.. etc etc" then full layed out pages do simply because of the effort involved probably. But could it not be true that if stubs cause such pain because the editing policy just may be .. unrefined ? --Vosnul 22:02, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Add the NRV category, let a few months pass as no new stubs are created, while the old ones get whittled down. Then when we're close enough to see the bottom, we remove the last few, and go completely to ICU. Sir Famine, Gun ♣ Petition » 06/8 21:27

That also sounds like a feasible plan. ~ Dame Ceridwyn ~ talk DUN VoNSE arc2.0 10:56, 08 June 2007

Also, adding Stubs makes Famine angry. And you wouldn't want to see him angry. -- Sir Mhaille  (talk to me)

What People Have To Say

I like icecream. Firemen are hot. -- Sir Mhaille  (talk to me)

The trouble with stubs is that you haven't got any hands. If you haven't got hands, how are you supposed to type? --KATIE!! 19:57, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

The secound part sounds good to me! With the "list of all articles that should have been huffed ages ago" I assume the necessary action would be taken... In which case I'll all For this! I hate crappy pages which have gone under the radar too long. ~ Dame Ceridwyn ~ talk DUN VoNSE arc2.0 08:48, 08 June 2007

I think that there are some funny stubs that could be saved, but not as they are. The normal suggestion is to expand them into a larger article, but that hardly ever happens. I think we should instead encourage people to incorporate the stubs into related articles. We could compile funny stubs into one area. We could call it "Joke Depot" and it could be a one-stop shop for people who are struggling for a witty line in their article. All they have to do is go to the depot, search for their subject, and pull the quote. People could also submit one-liners and stubs directly to the depot for future articles. This is just an idea I had two seconds ago and I was up far too late last night and so it might be stupid. -- » Sir Savethemooses Grand Commanding Officer ... holla atcha boy» 20:56, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

While the idea is interesting, how would it be anything diffrent from Undictionary? -- The Zombiebaron 00:05, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Um... cuz it would be called Joke Depot. So there's that. And, uh... it wouldn't be asking for made-up definitions about anything, per se. Just any joke that might pertain to a particular category or subject that doesn't have a full article could be housed there. Or something. -- » Sir Savethemooses Grand Commanding Officer ... holla atcha boy» 01:36, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Start it in your namespace. I don't think that it will last for very long, though. Newbies and IPs will swarm that page with poor quotes and cruft in no time. --~

Jacques Pirat, Esq. Converse : Benefactions : U.w.p.

04:17, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Meh. I'm not in love with the idea. -- » Sir Savethemooses Grand Commanding Officer ... holla atcha boy» 06:36, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Stubb was actually one of my favorite characters from Moby-Dick. Granted, his banter gets a bit trying sometimes but I wouldn't say he's "trouble" exactly. —rc (t) 21:40, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't see the problem with just using VFD to get rid of the bad ones. It sounds like an excuse for mass deleting of short articles regardless of content to me. • Spang • ☃ • talk • 11:55, 08 Jun 2007

I agree. We have enough articles that need deletion for being unfunny. Shortness in itself is not the problem. -- 15Mickey20 (talk to Mickey)  23:11, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Aww, cmon - stubs are the things that are quite funny but just a bit short (but probably more than 50 words in actuality...). If you're finding it on crap then either it's being placed wrong (replace it with something more threatening) or you're just being a short-pages hater... And surely sticking them all into NRV will just create chaos. There are a lot of stubs out there. I know certain people would be happy to go through and huff them all without looking at them (no offense, certain people), but presumably there was a reason why they got "stubbed" instead of ICUed. Also, please can we leave at least one tag I can use to suggest to an author that they might like to add more without the threat of their page being huffed tomorrow? All these tags seem so heavily policed these days, and everybody wants to get rid of them all as well... poor old tags. Also, ditto Spang. Also, I stubbed my toe. -- (but) Untrue  Whhhy?Whut?How? *Back from the dead* 01:22, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Rc is a stub. Lololol. (Ask Spang, he told me.. I did *not* have sexual relations with that woman (by woman I mean rc)) —Braydie 01:32, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Kill all stubs

Stubs don't grow. They're always left as stubs. Hell, why do we even have that? The people who care use Template:Construction anyway. --Crazyswordsman...With SAVINGS!!!! (T/C) 04:43, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Stub the toes of Stubs. Then eat them. --Lt. High Gen. Grue The Few The Proud, The Marines 04:56, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like you're going blindly for quantity over quality. The point is that some articles are better short. A lot of bad articles are short, yes, but those marked as stubs should be the ones that are short, but still good and don't really need expanding. • Spang • ☃ • talk • 05:07, 09 Jun 2007

That defeats the purpose of stubs, though, does it not? "Stub: an article that needs expanding." --L 08:54, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I think he means "don't need expanding enough to blindly delete" at any rate. Like I said, I use stub to say "okay, you've expanded enough that I won't put the ICU back on. This can survive on its own, but if you'd care to add more to it that would be great". And I don't want to have to go back and re-/untag everything I've done that to, thanks... I think perhaps what people are finding and complaining about here is old stuff that was good enough for stub at the time but now doesn't cut it. In which case it should be VFDed like all the rest of the things that aren't good enough any more. It's a slow process, but it's better than deleting good stuff... -- (but) Untrue  Whhhy?Whut?How? *Back from the dead* 09:19, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that anybody has mentioned the deleting of good stuff. All that has been proposed is the deleting of the large piles really really crappy stubs, and then discouraging the creation of any more. -- The Zombiebaron 15:16, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

ICU-Like Do-over for Stubs?

After a night off to drink and watch TV, and rest my brain, I had a second thought about stubs:

At the moment, we have "ICU for a week" and "Random other maintenance templates with fuzzy timelines". Perhaps it's time (yeah, I know DOWN WITH ORDER C]-[@05 RU13Z!) to create a "Long-term Care" template system. That would be a step down from ICU, assuming that enough work had been done on the article. But it would NOT be "slap a redlink template on it and leave it". I'm envisioning a 1 month system where after that,(like ICU) we whack it if it's still not done.

My thought is that with this we could use the "sub=" as in ICU to take the place of Stub, Redlink, Incoherent, Merge, Clean-up, etc. At the same time, we could throw in a "You're Grammer is Unhappy" sort of sub and point the Proofreading Cabal to that.

Theoretically, after a month or two to clean out all the old templates, we'd be down to ICU and LTC. Then ala ICU now, we have one page for LTC to check each day, which shows the articles that spent the last one month untouched. I'm assuming that just as we seem to have significantly less short, crappy pages floating around now, we'll ultimately end up with less semi-done pages smeared with maintenance templates. At the same time, it gives a more consistent framework for people to work on cleaning up pages.

I'm not anti-stub, but as we have it now, there seem to be too many maintenance templates for people to want to weed through them and fix things up. I'm hoping that less templates might make such work more appealing. And for those who delight in un-redlinking, coherentizing, etc, we could add in the appropriate category to each sub, to make those specific articles easier to find. Any thoughts? Sir Famine, Gun ♣ Petition » 06/9 13:48

I like the idea. Alot. Let me also point out that for quite a long time now I have been using {{ugly}} on most of the pages that would qualify for Long Term Care, because {{ugly}} expires after a month. The only problem with what I've been doing is that some people get kinda confused, and either complain to me or take the template off. But if we had something different, then I would get less compliants, which is always better. -- The Zombiebaron 15:12, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Can we have Long Term Care separate from the current tags? I think it's a very good idea and would provide a consistent framework where currently there is none (which has led to large parts of this discussion), but I like some of the current tags (e.g. stub) as non-maintained gentle suggestions as to things people might like to work more on (see above). -- (but) Untrue  Whhhy?Whut?How? *Back from the dead* 20:21, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Having said that, I'm now changing my own mind about this. If something's huff-worthy, why wait a month? And if it's not, why tag it with the threat of being huffed in a month? Are there some shades of grey I'm not seeing in this? Hmm... I need food now to help me think... -- (but) Untrue  Whhhy?Whut?How? *Back from the dead* 20:21, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

The idea of waiting is so that the author of this page goes, "Hey, remember that time I wrote an article?! Let me go see how it's doing!" And then they go, "Hey wait... there's a This Is Crap sign on it. I should fix that!" And then they do, and there is much rejoicing. Except usually they don't, but since we want more good pages, we figure we'll give them a chance. Old pages don't work like this as often... but a waiting period would give cleanup brigades time to go through and fix things up. But really really hopeless stuff gets instahuffed always. Discretion is key. I guess this long term care unit would be a chance for people who like to fix things up to fix things up. And there was much rejoicing. --KATIE!! 03:36, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

So, essentially would we be doing away with a lot/some of the warm-fuzzy-please-fix-this-article-with-sugar-on-top tags? If so, then I'm for it. I think we could afford to be a lot more ruthless. Honestly, if it can't be made into a decent article within a week/month, we are better off without it. If the idea is that good, it will come back again. Also I like the idea that the tag could have a sub= for proofreading. Just point it to Category:Proofread. I'm trying to encourage ppl to just use that now rather than having to list the article on the User:Ceridwyn/Proofreading Service page.

In short, less tags in general, which point to time based sections which ruthlessly huff them without mercy at the end of the time if not improved, sounds like my idea of bliss. ~ Dame Ceridwyn ~ talk DUN VoNSE arc2.0 01:50, 10 June 2007