Category talk:Stubs

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[edit] Just what is a stub?

According to Dot com, incomplete articles are not necessarily stubs. He defines a stub as "an article that is so bare bones that it can't be considered encyclopedic yet". This means that barely any of the 165 pages in this category are real stubs. Should we replace the {{stub}} template on 99% of these pages? Should we change the definition of a stub? What should we do about this? What is a stub really? Gfdgsgxgzgdrc 02:24, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Okay, now I'm more confused. On Talk:Fonts, both It's dot com and DorianGray state that "a stub is a page that's incomplete", and that Fonts will continue to be a stub until every font on the site is listed. This seems contrary to It's dot com's definition I quoted above. Again I ask, what is a stub? Gfdgsgxgzgdrc 22:58, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

As a regular stub-expander, I would say that a stub is an article that's missing certain parts (such as a cartoon without a transcript or a fun facts section). There are several different categories of stubs; regular stubs, section stubs (for those cartoon pages), incomplete lists (for running gags and research trends), and just plain ol' incomplete pages (like the SBCG4AP Responses). But stub tags tend to have inertia and stay on pages long after they're no longer needed. I'd do whatever I can to complete an incomplete list, but if I can't think of any additional examples to add to an already extensive list, does that mean I can pull off the stub tag? -- 68.37.43.131 03:25, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

That's how the stub template is most often used, but I'm asking about the official definition. As stated above, one source (backed up by two sysops, supported by most of the pages in this category) states that any incomplete page is a stub regardless of substance, while a more recent source (from one of the aforementioned sysops) says that stubs are unencyclopedic bare-bones articles where the current content is just a placeholder, and that most of the articles in this category are not stubs. These are two very different definitions. What is the definition of a stub, and should it be changed to fit the category's scope, or vice versa? Gfdgsgxgzgdrc 00:19, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Well, what do you think it should be? DorianGray's and my opinions on what constitutes a stub don't carry special weight merely by virtue of our being sysops. I would hope that we are influential because we tend to exhibit good judgment on matters like these, but that means we convince to help shape the consensus—we don't outright dictate article or template content.

    Also, my comment on the Fonts article has to be taken in context. At the time, there were still a number of missing fonts, but with work we could finish the list as of any new toon. So I didn't advocate for a dynamic list template, because it's designed to stay on a page indefinitely, whereas the fonts page just needed to be completed. I don't think we had anything besides the stub template, so it stayed. Things have evolved since then. Nearly three years later, I created the {{incomplete}} template to supplement the stub template. I'm not sure it's doing much good. There's also the {{incomplete list}} template, which I didn't advocate for originally but is maybe not so bad.

    As for my current opinion on what constitutes a stub, I stand by what I said on your talk page, especially the part about how a lot of these so-called stubs are probably not stubs; they're just short articles where the list of appearances is essentially the whole content.

A stub is an article that is so bare bones that it can't be considered encyclopedic yet. The stub template is supposed to be a cue to the reader that the current content is basically a placeholder. Once there's some real meat to the article, it loses its stub status, even if it can still be expanded quite a bit. Likewise very short articles that can't be expanded because there's nothing else to add are not stubs. They're just short. I did a random sampling of the articles currently in the stub category and noticed that most of them are probably not stubs.

Remember, this is just my opinion that I hope to convince you of. It doesn't have the force of consensus until someone agrees with me. — It's dot com 16:38, 19 October 2022 (UTC)