PathfinderWiki talk:Stub

Definition

The question has recently been raised as to when a short article should be marked a stub and when it shouldn't, and in the last few days I have asked the same question myself. Our current definition isn't very clear and, while I feel there will always be some room for interpretation on whether an article qualifies as a stub or not, I think we could do a better job of explaining it. This isn't meant to be a discussion on revision of a policy, as I don't think what is and isn't a stub should be so strict as to warrant that distinction, but I do hope we can discuss it and make a determination that is more helpful than the one we currently have.

I see three reasons why an article or section should be marked as a stub.

It is only a few sentences: It is difficult for an article shorter than a full paragraph to feel substantially different than the source material or like it's own article and not just a few thrown-together facts. In many cases, however, topics which deserve their own article have only brief or passing mentions in source material and this is the best we can do. Pros of making this our definition of stub is that we can set a minimum number of sentences required to qualify as a non-stub so that it is easy to determine what is and isn't a stub. Cons are that longer articles may still be substantially incomplete and should not be excluded from stub status simply for being longer than four (or whatever) sentences.

The article is lacking information: In these cases, a topic might not really cover everything that one feels that it should. A deity article may be a simple infobox with a few sentences of body or a nation article might mention government and geography but not history or culture. Likewise, a biographical article on an NPC might list their position in the town government but not their history, family, personality, or appearance. In each of these instances, it is clear that more information is needed to make substantive, complete articles. This alone is grounds for denoting something a stub. But in many (if not most) cases, these sorts of articles exist because there is quite simply no more information in publication on the given topic. Should an article which includes all available information be degraded to stub status when there is no way anyone could fix this? If stubs are meant to be a guidepost for people to make improvements, we don't want to tell them to work on articles which are, for all intents and purposes, as complete as they can be.

The article does not include all sources in publication: I find these articles the hardest to know what to do with. Take, for example, an article on Cheliax. It is entirely possible that a complete and thorough article could be written on this nation simply on the four pages it gets in the Campaign Setting and passing mention in relation to Korvosa or other nations. But now there's an adventure path set there as well as a 32 page Companion. Should the otherwise complete article be denoted as a stub because it doesn't include some of the detail that exists in canon, even though it is by most standards a complete article? Using this as a criteria does support the idea that a stub can be improved and expanded upon using available material, but it also means we have to continually update existing pages with the stub template every time a new book comes out on the topic. That's a lot of micromanagement. Also, we can't expect everyone in the community to have access to every book, so someone may simply not know that there is more information on a topic and write an article as best they can with what they do have.

So where do we draw the line? What is easiest, most intuitive, and most useful as an editing tool. If denoting articles as stubs isn't actually helping us to improve the wiki, are they even worth the trouble? What are others' thoughts on the matter? -- yoda8myhead 21:37, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this is clearly a problem. I think the heart of the matter might be that we're trying to use the term "stub" to describe too many states. At the risk of introducing too much complexity, I'd like to propose a finer-grained taxonomy:

To me, a stub is a short article. This may be a technically complete article, or a clearly incomplete placeholder (we'll say complete when we mean that all current sources have been consulted). This definition covers your first point.
Your second case, I would describe as an "incomplete article".
The third case is going to be a huge pain for us since we get three new sources each month. I'd say that these articles "need updating".

Therefor, I'd like to propose four new templates to address the issues you've identified. {{stub-complete}}, {{stub-incomplete}}, {{incomplete}}, and {{needs updating}}. A case could be made that {{stub-complete}} is redundant, and that {{stub-incomplete}} could be replaced by {{stub}}. The main issue that I see with this proposal is keeping track of and tagging articles that need updating.

This is, as usual, just an initial gut reaction. Praise and derision are both welcome. --Aeakett 18:00, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

It looks like Wikipedia has no firm rules for stub articles, making it a question of case-by-case editorial judgement. It seems like the main purpose of the "stub" is to have a category that points editors towards work that needs to be done.

Compared to Wikipedia, it is likely that this wiki, by the nature of its topic, will have more articles that are very short, but still a comprehensive overview of the topic. Hakotep I covers all the information known about that pharaoh; even the in-world Osirians know nothing about him besides that he built the slave pits. It may be a topic that is better served by a "List of pharaohs" treatment. In the past few days, I've probably marked a lot of articles like that as stubs when they probably shouldn't be. Cheliax, on the other hand, is may be article that will never have comprehensive coverage, since its a popular region that Paizo will keep setting adventures and organizations in. A long, relatively comprehensive article probably shouldn't be a stub. Ustalav seems like a good example of what a stub should be: a placeholder article for a topic that we know there is significantly more information on. --Goblin Witchlord 18:47, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree Aeakett, that we should have more stub-like tags, but I too think that it might get too tedious, Plus, getting all chroniclers, including casual ones, to adhere to more complicated stub policies might be unwelcoming and give the impression that contributing to the project is more work than it really is. Also, I think using more specific stub definitions is only really worth it if we're using these categories to improve the wiki. I can honestly say that in the year and a half we've had the wiki up, not once have I done a search for stubs for the purpose of clearing articles from the category. I don't know about others, but I don't know if we really go about editing the wiki in the same way a larger project like wikipedia or even the larger fan wikis like Wookieepedia, Memory Alpha, or WoWpedia might. So if we were to make the process more complicated, I have to ask myself if it's worth our time.

As for the "list of pharaohs" suggestion, I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea. I was actually thinking of putting together a pharaohs timeline, showing who preceded whom based on dates given and such, even though it would be incomplete. Perhaps something similar could be created in the vein of the language articles. There would still be no reason that a specific pharaoh like the Lich Pharaoh or Khemet III, on whom we do have more substantive information, can't be linked to from the list page for a more detailed article above and beyond the sentence or two that would exist on the list page. And if, at a later date, Paizo releases a 500 page tome on the history of Osirion (please, please, please!) we can revisit the whole thing and make them individual articles. -- yoda8myhead 20:29, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm a bit late to this discussion, but as I've created my first (or first intentional!) Stub I thought I'd add my opinion.

1. Generally, if you want to create a new article on Giant Space Hamsters, then create a proper one. Don't write seven words and then stop.

2. However, strange as it may seem, there are valid reasons for creating a new article on Giant Space Hamsters even though you have zero interest in the subject. Possibly the most common reason is that Paizo have stuck a picture of a Giant Space Hamster in the public domain. Pictures are one of the best parts of this wiki, and I applaud anyone who has ever created the stub of a new Giant Space Hamster article, even though he has no interest in the subject, just so that when the GSH fanboi finally gets round to submitting his 10,000 word opus on the topic he finds waiting for him a picture he would otherwise have missed.

3. In other cases, a two line article may be the most comprehensive article on this site. There might be only ten published words on GSH, yet by adding justifiable inference and extrapolation the GSH afficionado may be able to contribute a definitive fifty word article.

4. Sometimes, a valid GSH article is superseded by a later Paizo publication which provides extra detail. When that happens to me, and I notice, I go back and add to my original article. Otherwise, a kind soul puts an "out of date" tag on the GSH article, encouraging us all to update it.

5. In theory, someone might be motivated to improve the site by expanding some of the "stub" articles. In practice, I haven't, and you haven't, and I can't see why anyone else would either.

I don't think that adding the stub tag helps in any of the circumstances above, with the possible exception of #1, where in theory a person might be shamed into finishing the job. However, this is offset by #3, where the stub tag might be seen as belittling his efforts. I think we are better off without it. --Amethal2 22:45, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

A Primary Goal?

If eliminating stubs is "a primary goal" then we suck (the sub category currently runs to 785 pages). After adding my first ever deliberate "stub" article I have become part of the problem. Does anyone support this project? --Amethal2 22:56, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I think we all support the project in theory, but to date, we as a community haven't been real good at delegating responsibility to teams committed to one project or another. It's an area I'd like to see improve, but without a larger pool of frequent editors, we all have to work on multiple things. That said, if you have a suggestion on how we can better implement this initiative to improve the site, I'm eager to hear them. Obviously what we've been doing wrt stubs hasn't been working. —Yoda8myhead 08:40, 15 December 2010 (UTC)