Naive ideas to improve en-wp

[Kraken]

Here's a naive idea: ban stubs.

There was a time and place for stubs -- but that time is long past. If you can't write 250 referenced words or more about a subject, it isn't an encyclopedia article.

2,500

To any British kid, 500 words is a homework essay.

[Kraken]

A wholly automated mass merge and redirect of any stub article into a parent list, each article becoming a level 1 section. Copy over all text and boxes, leave behind a fully categorized redirect. Create multiple lists disambiguated by year or alphabetically if necessary for size reasons. De-index the lists and apply pending changes across the board. Full protect the redirects. Allow recreation of entries only if someone can demonstrate a 500 word Good Article as a draft.

[Kraken]

Here's a naive idea: ban stubs.

There was a time and place for stubs -- but that time is long past. If you can't write 250 referenced words or more about a subject, it isn't an encyclopedia article.

Here's a completely random Colts season stub. Whattaya propose doing about that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Balt ... lts_season

Laugh?

What the hell happened to result in a season article where only the games from week 3, 5, 6 and 14 merit a section summary?

Only on Wikipedia can you find work more suited to a bot being done by a human, badly.

[Elinruby]

Here's a naive idea: ban stubs.

There was a time and place for stubs -- but that time is long past. If you can't write 250 referenced words or more about a subject, it isn't an encyclopedia article.

2,500

To any British kid, 500 words is a homework essay.

That actually explains a LOT

[Kraken]

Here's a naive idea: ban stubs.

There was a time and place for stubs -- but that time is long past. If you can't write 250 referenced words or more about a subject, it isn't an encyclopedia article.

2,500

To any British kid, 500 words is a homework essay.

That actually explains a LOT

[Vigilant]

Here's a naive idea: ban stubs.

There was a time and place for stubs -- but that time is long past. If you can't write 250 referenced words or more about a subject, it isn't an encyclopedia article.

2,500

To any British kid, 500 words is a homework essay.

That actually explains a LOT

Sure. And that narcissism summer camp he went to.

[smallchief]

Here's a naive idea: ban stubs.

There was a time and place for stubs -- but that time is long past. If you can't write 250 referenced words or more about a subject, it isn't an encyclopedia article.

Here's a completely random Colts season stub. Whattaya propose doing about that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Balt ... lts_season

Does it really matter that there are fewer than 250 sourced words?

t

P.S. Welcome to WPO!

You establish a minimum number of byes for a list-type article as an exception to the number of words required for an article. Maybe 2,500 bytes or 250 words should be the minimum? I look at my own work and I see several articles I have created in the 300-350 words range. To me those articles seem adequate for the subject.

Thanks for the greeting. I'm a slow learner. 14 years after my first edit on Wikipedia I found this website.

[Elinruby]

Here's a naive idea: ban stubs.

There was a time and place for stubs -- but that time is long past. If you can't write 250 referenced words or more about a subject, it isn't an encyclopedia article.

Here's a completely random Colts season stub. Whattaya propose doing about that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Balt ... lts_season

Does it really matter that there are fewer than 250 sourced words?

t

P.S. Welcome to WPO!

You establish a minimum number of byes for a list-type article as an exception to the number of words required for an article. Maybe 2,500 bytes or 250 words should be the minimum? I look at my own work and I see several articles I have created in the 300-350 words range. To me those articles seem adequate for the subject.

Thanks for the greeting. I'm a slow learner. 14 years after my first edit on Wikipedia I found this website.

it wasn't here for all 14 of those years if it makes you feel any better.

[Kraken]

Thanks for the greeting. I'm a slow learner. 14 years after my first edit on Wikipedia I found this website.

Don't be too hard on yourself.

For most of the years it has indeed existed, it was considered the height of ill manners to even acknowledge it existed. If you had to speak of it at all, you had to use code. Even though it was and forever will be WP:NOTABLE. But Wikipedia is different now. Feeling lonely. Unloved. Unimportant. And a lot of formerly busy as hell Wikipedians are now increasingly finding themselves bored and in need of a distraction from the day to day drudgery of being an editor. Or Administrator. Or Arbitrator.

So they're seemingly more open to making friends from different walks of life. Mixing. Exchanging cultural views and experiences. Up until a few weeks ago it was even acceptable to openly link to threads here as context or further information of matters arising over there. Which was perhaps a step too far, too soon. There has been nipping and name calling. There have been tears. But such things pass. There will be healing.

So welcome. I hope you like it here. Chief of the Small people.

[Elinruby]

Thanks for the greeting. I'm a slow learner. 14 years after my first edit on Wikipedia I found this website.

Don't be too hard on yourself.

For most of the years it has indeed existed, it was considered the height of ill manners to even acknowledge it existed. If you had to speak of it at all, you had to use code. Even though it was and forever will be WP:NOTABLE. But Wikipedia is different now. Feeling lonely. Unloved. Unimportant. And a lot of formerly busy as hell Wikipedians are now increasingly finding themselves bored and in need of a distraction from the day to day drudgery of being an editor. Or Administrator. Or Arbitrator.

So they're seemingly more open to making friends from different walks of life. Mixing. Exchanging cultural views and experiences. Up until a few weeks ago it was even acceptable to openly link to threads here as context or further information of matters arising over there. Which was perhaps a step too far, too soon. There has been nipping and name calling. There have been tears. But such things pass. There will be healing.

So welcome. I hope you like it here. Chief of the Small people.

Kraken likes to tell me I am wrong, at enormous length. But I think it was Wikipedia Review for at least part of that time.

[Vigilant]

Here's an idea en.wp types...

Don't shit on people who you think can't fight back.
Hold your most 'powerful' people to a higher standard than the hoi polloi.
Don't shoot the messenger.

[Mojito]

It's quite likely that I've already complained about this, but I would benefit from a "notes" field in my watchlist. I often wonder why something is on there and have to look at the article or the history to figure it out. I would like to be able to just jot down "edited by sockpuppets of x" or "pedophile honeypot" or something like that.

Agreed, a "watchlist notes" feature would be very useful.

[Mojito]

Here's a naive idea: ban stubs.

There was a time and place for stubs -- but that time is long past. If you can't write 250 referenced words or more about a subject, it isn't an encyclopedia article.

Be careful, even whispers of dangerous ideas like this will get you labelled as a hateful deletionist!

[smallchief]

Here's a naive idea: ban stubs.

There was a time and place for stubs -- but that time is long past. If you can't write 250 referenced words or more about a subject, it isn't an encyclopedia article.

Be careful, even whispers of dangerous ideas like this will get you labelled as a hateful deletionist!

I'll take my chances. I'm not really a deletionist -- I just think that to be an "encyclopedia" you have to offer the reader something more than a one sentence definition of a subject. No more stubs! Flesh out those that already exist and/or create real articles.

[Beeblebrox]

It's quite likely that I've already complained about this, but I would benefit from a "notes" field in my watchlist. I often wonder why something is on there and have to look at the article or the history to figure it out. I would like to be able to just jot down "edited by sockpuppets of x" or "pedophile honeypot" or something like that.

Agreed, a "watchlist notes" feature would be very useful.

The struggle is real. I can't tell you how many times I've looked at the history of a page trying to recall why I could possibly have watchlisted it. Sometimes I can't figure it out and I'm left wondering if that means I should un-watch it or just wait and see.

[Beeblebrox]

Ironically, I just got a thanks notification for Isabel Pass (T-H-L), a stub I created fifteen years ago, using nothing but GNIS as a source. It was 27 words back then, and while still technically a stub is now about 290 words.

[Mojito]

Ironically, I just got a thanks notification for Isabel Pass (T-H-L), a stub I created fifteen years ago, using nothing but GNIS as a source. It was 27 words back then, and while still technically a stub is now about 290 words.

Time for a DYK nomination

[Beeblebrox]

Ironically, I just got a thanks notification for Isabel Pass (T-H-L), a stub I created fifteen years ago, using nothing but GNIS as a source. It was 27 words back then, and while still technically a stub is now about 290 words.

Time for a DYK nomination

Please, I already feel like a criminal for using GNIS as my only source.
You're not wrong though, the expansion it just got would seem to qualify it for a DYK and there's already a nice image.

[Yngvadottir]

Ironically, I just got a thanks notification for Isabel Pass (T-H-L), a stub I created fifteen years ago, using nothing but GNIS as a source. It was 27 words back then, and while still technically a stub is now about 290 words.

Subarcticsensing (T-C-L) is off to a fine start. :-) I hadn't realised until the mention of DYK that the expansion was so recent, and I see they've created another pass article. I wonder whether they know about DYK? (I learnt about DYK when I got a talk page notification that one of my first articles was on the Main Page. I was a bit bemused, I'm not even sure I'd looked at the Main Page at that point, but I subsequently started nominating my own articles at DYK.)

I'm afraid I can't endorse the idea of banning stubs. For one thing, people create articles in different ways, including making a stublet and coming back and expanding it. This article illustrates the big second reason: a stub is an invitation for somebody who knows about the topic, and isn't hung up on being listed as article creator, to expand it. (Like Randy's recent work on football players.) The third reason that comes to mind is completeness; we can't know what a reader may want to look up, and sometimes they just want to know what or who—as well as using the search box, readers could be looking at a mouseover of a link to the article, or at a Google panel derived from the article. Wikipedia's odd among encyclopaedias in being online, with links, but most paper encyclopaedias have some one-sentence articles for the same reason, and I believe the FA criteria include having all the linked articles de-redlinked, although knowing those folks they also require de-stubbing ...

One could argue, especially with geographic articles, that a redirect to a list would work just as well, but there isn't always a single best target (the athlete may have played for more than one team, for example), and it's less likely to get (re-)expanded by a knowledgeable person if they see it's been classified as not important enough for its own article. I think I annoy people by how often I use this example when the topic of red links comes up, but the lists at Þáttr (T-H-L) are kind of sad even now, mostly red, and I suspect having them all listed there has discouraged creation of the articles. As well as making it hard for a reader who doesn't know (or know how to type!) the official Icelandic/Old Norse name to search for the one they're interested in. I came along and in 2010 created Þiðranda þáttr ok Þórhalls (T-H-L), which from my point of view was a glaring omission, and I see I created the most obvious non-Norse redirect, Tale of Thidrandi (T-H-L), at that time. (As the first reference in the article states, a prominent English translation—the one I originally read as a teen—calls it "Thidrandi Whom the Goddesses Slew".) Redirection to a list is an alternative to deletion (certainly better than encouraging NPPers to regard stub articles as ipso facto unworthy of inclusion), but it has disadvantages.

[Midsize Jake]

This article illustrates the big second reason: a stub is an invitation for somebody who knows about the topic, and isn't hung up on being listed as article creator, to expand it. (Like Randy's recent work on football players.)

Does it really work like that, though? I doubt we'll ever be able to get numbers on this because it's all based on underlying personal motivators, but it seems to me that you could just as easily argue that enough people are hung up on being the article creator that having the stub there acts as a deterrent to increased participation. And since you take away the red link, there's also no handy visual indicator (at least within the text of one or more related articles) that Wikipedia actually might want the new article.

[Yngvadottir]

This article illustrates the big second reason: a stub is an invitation for somebody who knows about the topic, and isn't hung up on being listed as article creator, to expand it. (Like Randy's recent work on football players.)

Does it really work like that, though? I doubt we'll ever be able to get numbers on this because it's all based on underlying personal motivators, but it seems to me that you could just as easily argue that enough people are hung up on being the article creator that having the stub there acts as a deterrent to increased participation. And since you take away the red link, there's also no handy visual indicator (at least within the text of one or more related articles) that Wikipedia actually might want the new article.

Well there was one editor who was proposing articles for speedy deletion and then creating a new article at the same title so they could get the creator credit, or something like that ...

A lot of people, not just new editors, think a red link means the article was deleted or the topic is otherwise unworthy. Some of those who think the encyclopaedia is pretty much complete would probably look at that list of Íslendinga þættir and figure that if any of the red-linked ones were notable, someone would have written the article by now. That leaves readers either not able to find their answer or dependent on Google's "knowledge panel". That's increasingly often drawn from a short description on Wikidata that may be incorrect. And sometimes the red link (or the stub) gets "fixed" by an inappropriate redirect, like this (they're distinct works; the editor drew the wrong conclusion from a published translation that includes both). Redirects are perhaps even more likely to deter article creation; not only is the link blue, but apparently it was already decided the title was only worthy of a redirect (of course in some cases there was an actual decision, at an AfD).

I admit I'm likely at the extreme end of the "caring about getting credit" continuum. I dropped everything and fixed that incorrect redirect, and as recently as last year I expanded this not bad stub to this (that's also an example of a þáttr that's equally well known by a different title; I'd created the redirect 10 years before). One of the arguments for DYK is that it's a way to get kudos for expanding stubs, which some editors wouldn't otherwise do. But there are, and will continue to be, many editors who create numerous stubs, because completeness is important to them but they don't have the time, inclination, or knowledge to create start-class articles for all of them, or because they like having lots of article creation credits. In all but obvious cases where a list is better, the advantages of leaving the stub and hoping someone at my and Randy's end of the continuum does come along—and not discouraging those who think a red link indicates a bad topic—outweigh the risks, in my view.

And now you see why I have an inclusionist userbox despite having nominated several articles for deletion.

[Ming]

Ironically, I just got a thanks notification for Isabel Pass (T-H-L), a stub I created fifteen years ago, using nothing but GNIS as a source. It was 27 words back then, and while still technically a stub is now about 290 words.

Time for a DYK nomination

Please, I already feel like a criminal for using GNIS as my only source.
You're not wrong though, the expansion it just got would seem to qualify it for a DYK and there's already a nice image.

Ironically GNIS is pretty good for physical features, probably because the map interpretation needed is low.

Also, what you wrote was quite a step up from the usual "X is a Y in Z (coords)" geostub.

[Elinruby]

But there are, and will continue to be, many editors who create numerous stubs, because completeness is important to them but they don't have the time, inclination, or knowledge to create start-class articles for all of them, or because they like having lots of article creation credits. In all but obvious cases where a list is better, the advantages of leaving the stub and hoping someone at my and Randy's end of the continuum does come along—and not discouraging those who think a red link indicates a bad topic—outweigh the risks, in my view.

And now you see why I have an inclusionist userbox despite having nominated several articles for deletion.

When I was working on the war in Ukraine, I was very happy sometimes to find some of those stubs about hamlets in the Donbas. Ditto when I work on Latin America; there is a fair number of stubs where actually, there was a battle once. Or an important trade route. A lot of places mentioned in Regency of Algiers (T-H-L) did not have articles, and don't get me started on the Amour mountains. But but but there is still such a thing as "do we really need to know about a desert encampment with a current population of 12?" BY the way, I looked up your plane crashing into a mall article. Concord CA is a pretty big place, yanno. I don't know where the line is, really. The fact that I don't care about football, American or otherwise, Is probably not a universal sentiment. The fact that the helpdesk doesn't see the problem with Cewbot linking an 18th-century dey of Algiers to Ali Abdi (footballer) (T-H-L) is somewhat more so . But apparently I am ungrateful to the kind folk over there, so I bowed out. This is however a systemic problem and reverting the bot wasn't working, because the bot doesn't care either.

I think the fix is going to have to be in Wikidata -- I went through this again with Eduardo Maldonado, an extremely common name currently monopolized by a Bolivian senator even though somebody with the same name was involved in the 2009 Honduran coup d'état (T-H-L), which may be more notable than a very ordinary economist. And there are doubtless others. I am fairly certain I personally have met a dozen or more people named Maldonado. I tried moving the Eduardo Maldonato article, but of course this left a redirect and therefore changed nothing, And maybe there is important article history there,so maybe it shouldn't. Then there is Jean Bergeret (T-H-L). Someone or some bot decided that the extremely careful and detail-oriented Mathglot (T-C-L) clearly hadn't noticed that there was an English article with that title, and that his Template:Vichy France (T-H-L) should link to an 18th century doctor and not the general who signed for the surrender of France to the Nazis.

Apparently this is how things work now.

Rant over, going back to fiddling with some display text to fix another one of these.

(Later and after fixing some typos): On re-reading I am not certain I have made the issue clear. Forgive me if the following explanation sounds patronizing, but the help desk did not initially know what an interlanguage link was, and the above assumes you do.

Assume Juan Garcia, someone notable enough for his own article. A general, let's say, in a battle. English Wikipedia does not have an article but es. wikipedia does. So you set up an interlanguage link, on the theory that anyone interested can by gosh crank up Google translate. Meanwhile however, there already was or soon gets created an English-language article about Juan Garcia, let's say a winner of American Idol or something of the kind. Since there is an English-language article, the ILL to the general is getting converted to a wikilink to the singer. Even if they lived in different centuries and different countries and have different middle names, patronyms, occupations and places of birth. As best I can tell the only way to avoid this is to use all the names, and COMMONNAME be damned.

editing again for extra extra:

[Yngvadottir]

When I was working on the war in Ukraine, I was very happy sometimes to find some of those stubs about hamlets in the Donbas. Ditto when I work on Latin America; there is a fair number of stubs where actually, there was a battle once. Or an important trade route. A lot of places mentioned in Regency of Algiers (T-H-L) did not have articles, and don't get me started on the Amour mountains. But but but there is still such a thing as "do we really need to know about a desert encampment with a current population of 12?" BY the way, I looked up your plane crashing into a mall article. Concord CA is a pretty big place, yanno. I don't know where the line is, really. The fact that I don't care about football, American or otherwise, Is probably not a universal sentiment. The fact that the helpdesk doesn't see the problem with Cewbot linking an 18th-century dey of Algiers to Ali Abdi (footballer) (T-H-L) is somewhat more so . But apparently I am ungrateful to the kind folk over there, so I bowed out. This is however a systemic problem and reverting the bot wasn't working, because the bot doesn't care either.

I think the fix is going to have to be in Wikidata -- I went through this again with Eduardo Maldonado, an extremely common name currently monopolized by a Bolivian senator even though somebody with the same name was involved in the 2009 Honduran coup d'état (T-H-L), which may be more notable than a very ordinary economist. And there are doubtless others. I am fairly certain I personally have met a dozen or more people named Maldonado. I tried moving the Eduardo Maldonato article, but of course this left a redirect and therefore changed nothing, And maybe there is important article history there,so maybe it shouldn't. Then there is Jean Bergeret (T-H-L). Someone or some bot decided that the extremely careful and detail-oriented Mathglot (T-C-L) clearly hadn't noticed that there was an English article with that title, and that his Template:Vichy France (T-H-L) should link to an 18th century doctor and not the general who signed for the surrender of France to the Nazis.

Apparently this is how things work now.

The point you raise about the stubs on hamlets in the Donbas is my point about completeness: who knows what a reader may want to look up, or what someone may want to link to. I've searched desperately for many archaeological sites on Wikipedia. And of course today's desert hamlet may be yesterday's battle site (possibly under a different spelling) or the site of the next huge archaeological discovery ... or plane crash. (Concord's smaller than Memphis, but that mall is bigger than the mall you wrote about here.)

The interwiki thing is of course not about stubs, although some would say the solution is to write a stub about the relevant and missing Jean Bergeret, or Eduardo Maldonado ... I see Mathglot changed the red link in the template, using a longer version of the general's name rather than a disambiguator. Those interwiki templates that are replaced by a simple link when the article is created are marvellous, especially since there's a parameter to make a piped link so you don't need to have the disambiguator popping out of the text. But they are a crapshoot in that whatever article is first written on English Wikipedia at that title gets linked. And in turn Wikidata is biased towards English, so you do get false linkages, and new items being created over there when an item already exists for one or more other-language articles. I've racked up a lot of edits over there sorting out both problems as best I can given their opaque interface. I lean towards including disambiguators in the red link to reduce confusion (and I try to remember to check in preview whether my ILL is unexpectedly showing as a blue link), but I've given up arguing over who gets the undisambiguated title because in practice it's going to be whosever article is written first.

I don't actually recommend just throwing up a stub to make first dibs on the title. But add that to the reasons Wikipedia has so many stubs.

[rnu]

Today's smbc comic reminded me of this thread.

http://smbc-comics.com/comic/troubles

Wikipediocracy -- beating the ocean with a club

[Randy from Boise]

When I was working on the war in Ukraine, I was very happy sometimes to find some of those stubs about hamlets in the Donbas. Ditto when I work on Latin America...

The point you raise about the stubs on hamlets in the Donbas is my point about completeness: who knows what a reader may want to look up, or what someone may want to link to.

This is exactly right... Two sourced lines in a stub with a map with a location pointer beats nothing.

This also applies to high schools, by the way.

t