Stub / Discussion

Do we need this page, or the associated editing convention, here? We're not trying to be Wikipedia...

Yes, I believe the associated editing convention is useful. -Jared

xela: This is something I don't understand about wikipedia, and it makes even less sense to me here. If a page is short, then it's obvious at a glance that it doesn't contain a lot of information. What is gained by adding a "stub" sign? To me it just looks ugly and pointless--but maybe I'm missing an important concept? (Let me say again: SL is not wikipedia!)

unkx80: In case people did not notice, I did the latest round of taggings only on pages on the wiki orphans list. My main purpose is to have them show up on the recent changes list. Please give them a home, and I don't mind the tags being off.

PeterHB: The 'needs attention' tag is nicely done. Concise, relatively discrete, and points to a longer explaination. The orphans stuff is fine, pages due for deletion should get one last chance.

Herman Hiddema: I think the most important point about the stub template is to make it easy to tags pages that are stubs, then find them back through the template search system. Now, if you run into a page you think is too short, it is a matter of seconds to click edit and add {{stub}} to the page. In the past, you would have to stop you browsing to look for the Stub page, and then manually add the page title of the page you were browsing to it. We might consider not displaying any banner on the stub page, though that banner makes it easy to see for other editors that the page has already been tagged.

Dieter: My thoughts exactly.

Herman Hiddema: Perhaps it is a good idea to add the stub template to the bottom of the page, instead of the top? That way, it will not interfere with the content, will still be easy to find through the template search function, and will still be visible quickly, as stub pages are short anyway.

Arno: if you don't want the template to show up, but still be indexed as part of the search, then use {{ !stub }} (note that the '!' is inside the template call, before the template name).

:Tapir: Sounds like a technical question. Sth. else, take a look at Lee Sula it is a very short pro player article, with three very similar templates bigger than the article right now.

Bill: Well, I can see the point of having incomplete pages. However, usually the problem with SL pages, IMHO, is that they are too long, not that they are too short. Better to use subpages and hyperlinks to related pages. :) I can also see the point of requesting somebody else to add something to a page, because you yourself are unable to do so, or to leave a reminder for yourself to do so later. In such cases it might be helpful to indicate what kind of material you want added to a page.

Out of curiosity I took a look at two of the stub pages, reckless and corner invasion. IMO, the problem with reckless is not that it needs more content, but that it already has too much. Reckless is not a go concept. Why not delete that page entirely? As for corner invasion, the page gives a tautological definition, which we could do without. But I do not recommend deleting it, because it can serve as an index to pages on SL about corner invasions. It has one such link now. If there is a problem with lack of content, it is that there are no more links. Maybe there are no other pages about corner invasions on SL, which indicates a gap in the go knowledge here. Calling either of these pages a stub seems inappropriate to me, and I found the box annoying.

Dieter: While reckless is not a go concept, solid or flexible aren't either. I'd rather have pages that describe a common English word in its application to the game, than the zillions of KabukiClanMay2007Contest pages that are now cluttering up SL. The call for reckless to be expanded is a subjective one, just like any other tag. My meta-complaint is not that there are pages wrongly listed as being in poor state of category x but so many pages in whatever poor state and only a small number of people going through the effort of improving on them, be it by tagging them with the tag they think most appropriate.

By the way, I think these templates and their application to searches is a big improvement and will certainly help visualising the library work better. Thanks!

On the other hand, I like the NeedsAttentionTemplate better than the StubTemplate. Stub is a subset of needing attention and possibly tries too much to be Wikipedia. I'd merge the lists. The help page can be separate, though it reflects what PleaseReviewMe originally intended.

unkx80: I was the one who renamed some template to the stub template, can't remember what the previous name was (sorry), probably something like "needs expansion". Two comments here:

• For something that is not an established practice on SL, I don't see the need to be deliberately different from Wikipedia if the function is the same. Makes life easier on people too.
• Please keep the name of the template short and sweet - preferably one or two words. I don't want to have to do a page title search every time I want to tag a page as such.

No objections for merging stub template with needs attention template through.

Herman Hiddema: I would prefer keeping these templates separate. Adding {{stub}} is quick and easy, adding {{need attention|reason=this page is very short, please expand it}} is more work. We can have as many templates as we want, why not use that? The original version of the needs attention template had parameters, so you could say {{needs attention|confusing=true}}, but even that is, IMO, overcomplicated. If need be, we can simply create a {{confusing}} template and get the same result. As there is no limitation on using the template search functionality multiple times on the same page, we can easily create grouped searches that list all pages containing any of a number of templates.

I would also like to note that: Although we are not trying to be Wikipedia, we are also not trying not to be Wikipedia. If Wikipedia has a good idea, lets use it. And at the same time lets not limit ourselves with useless Wikipedia rules.

Tapir: I don't want to argue about the merits of 4,5 or a dozen separate to-be-edited-templates... but I don't think that 4,5 (help needed, please review me, stub, wme needed etc.) or a dozen separate pages are needed to show the lists generated by the search template. Actually most templates / lists are a bit random, help needed and please review me, even stub contain a lot of pages which might have been on another list as well.