FutureNovo:Stub
From FutureNovo - Anticipating things to come
An article too short to provide more than rudimentary information about a subject should be marked as a stub by adding a stub template from the list here to the end of the article. Anyone can edit a stub article, or remove a stub template from an article which is no longer a stub.
The objective of this article is to provide a general guide for dealing with stubs.
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[edit] Basic information
A stub is an article containing only a few sentences of text which is too short to provide serious coverage of a subject, but not so short as to provide no useful information. Sizable articles are usually not considered stubs, even if they lack adequate formatting or copy editing. With these articles, a cleanup template is usually added instead of a stub template. Note that if a small article has little properly sourced information, or if its subject has no inherent notability, it may be deleted or be merged into another relevant article.
While a "definition" may be enough to qualify an article as a stub, this is not the function of FutureNovo. If little other information is ever likely to be added, the entry should be incorported into a larger article.
[edit] Ideal stub article
- See also: Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles.
Any registered editor may start a stub article.
When you write a stub, bear in mind that it should contain enough information for other editors to expand upon it. The key is to provide adequate context — articles with little or no context usually end up being speedily deleted. Your initial research may be done either through books or reliable websites. You may also contribute knowledge acquired from other sources, but it is useful to conduct some research beforehand, in order to ensure that your facts are accurate. Use your own words: directly copying other sources is plagiarism, and may in some cases be a violation of copyright.
Begin by defining or describing your topic. Avoid fallacies of definition. Write clearly and informatively.
Add sources for the information you have put into the stub; see citing sources for information on how to do so in Wikipedia.
Once you create and save the article, other editors will also be able to enhance it.
[edit] Categorizing stubs
After writing a short article, or finding an unmarked stub, you should insert a stub template. By convention this is placed at the end of the article, after the External links section, any navigation templates, and the category tags, so that the stub category will appear last. It is usually desirable to leave two blank lines between the first stub template and whatever precedes it. Stub templates are transcluded not substituted.
Stub templates have two parts: a short message noting the stub's topic and encouraging editors to expand it, and a category link, which places the article in a stub category alongside other stubs on the same topic. The naming for stub templates usually topic-stub; a list of these templates may be found here. You need not learn all the templates — even simply adding {{stub}}
helps. The more accurately an article is tagged, however, the less work it is for other sorters later, and the more useful it is for editors looking for articles to expand.
If an article overlaps several stub categories, more than one template may be used, but it is strongly recommended that only those relating to the subject's main notability be used. A limit of two, if really necessary, three stub templates is advised.
Stub-related activities are centralized at FutureNovo:Stub sorting. This page should be your main reference for stub information, and is where new stub types should be proposed for discussion prior to creation.
[edit] Removing stub status
Once a stub has been properly expanded and becomes a larger article, any editor may remove its stub template. No administrator action or formal permission is needed.
Many articles still marked as stubs have in fact been expanded beyond what is regarded as stub size. If an article is too large to be considered a stub but still needs expansion, replace the stub template with an {{expand}}
template (no article should contain both a stub template and an expand template).
