AmtWiki:Stub
A stub is an article that is too short to provide a full understanding of a subject. What constitutes a stub, as well as what to do with them, is detailed on this page.
Contents
About stubs
A stub is an article that, although providing some useful information, is too short to provide coverage of a subject in an Amtgard-based context, and that is capable of expansion. Non-article pages, such as disambiguation pages, lists, categories, templates, talk pages, and redirects are not regarded as stubs.
Sizable articles are usually not considered stubs, even if they have significant problems or are noticeably incomplete. With these larger articles, a cleanup template is usually added instead of a stub template.
Size of stubs
There is no set size at which an article stops being a stub. While very short articles are likely to be stubs, there are some subjects about which very little can be written. It comes down to the editor to determine what constitutes a stub.
Consider an article that has maybe three short paragraphs of information, amounting to less than a screen's length of information on a laptop. It's not a long article. But is it a stub? The answer depends on the topic of the article.
A small article on a relatively small subject is far less likely to be considered a stub than the same sized article on a far larger or more important topic. The article on the bliaut might only be a handful of short paragraphs, but is has a sufficient amount of information regarding its use in Amtgard.
If the article on Amtgard itself were the same size as this article, it would be considered a stub. An article consisting of only a few short paragraphs, as an early verion did, would be a stub of embarrassing proportions.
Creating a stub
Main article: Page Creation
Any registered editor can create a stub article.
When you write a stub, add as much relevant information as you can, to allow other editors to expand on it. Stubs with little to no context are recommended for deletion.
Begin by describing your topic. Write clearly and informatively. State what the topic is, why it is relevant to Amtgard, and where the topic originated.
Next, try to expand upon this basic definition. Internally link relevant words, so that users unfamiliar with the subject can understand what you have written.
Lastly, add the article to an appropriate categories, to keep the wiki organized and make the stub easy to find for other editors.
Marking the article as a stub
After writing a short article, or finding an unmarked stub, you should insert a stub template. Choose from among the templates listed at Category:Stub Templates.
The stub template is placed at the beginning of the article. It is usually desirable to leave two blank lines between the stub template and whatever follows it. As with all templates, stub templates are added by simply placing the name of the template in the text between double pairs of curly brackets (e.g., {{Amtwiki-stub}}).
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 is usually topic-stub; a list of these templates may be found here. You need not learn all the templates—even simply adding {{stub}} helps.
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. Stub templates are usually located at the bottom of the page, and usually have a name like {{something-stub}}.
Finding stubs
- Category:Stubs, the main list of stub categories and of articles contained within them
- Special:Shortpages
