This is an archive of Wikipedia conversations, kept for one reason or another.
Stub categories still don't "count"; this needs to be official edit
Right now, a page with no categories except stub categories is automatically tagged by Alaibot (and perhaps other bots as well) for being uncategorized. Based on the point made at this talkpage, I have raised the question of whether this is how things should be done, most recently on the Stub types talkpage.
The mixed responses to this question have tended towards the feeling that yes, a stub category is still not sufficient categorization, largely because when the stub template is removed, the page will have no categories left. So, for example, it's not only an OK but a necessary redundancy for a basketball player stub to have both Category:Basketball biography stubs and Category:Basketball players. (Yeah, I know that such articles are technically organized by team and nationality, etc, but this is for argument's sake.)
Therefore, my proposal is to make this notion "official" by having it stated overtly on all relevant project pages, including Category:Uncategorized (and subcats), Template:Uncategorized, Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting, and its stub types subpage, in addition to any other pages people feel make sense for this. Lenoxus " * " 05:49, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
- Sounds commonsensical, go for it. >Radiant< 12:48, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
- This seems to be based on an incorrect assumption about what Alaibot is doing, which I've already attempted to clarify elsewhere, which see for further details. But very briefly:
- No, that not what it's doing;
- It is generally agreed that a stub category is not "full categorisation" as such;
- In the past, when at least one bot was tagging topic-sorted stubs with "uncat", there were disagreements -- and indeed complaints -- about this, as a result of which that bot stopped doing so, and Category:uncategorized stubs was created.
- I would strongly suggest care be taken when adding "overt statements" that we not get into a mass recapitulation of previous to-ings and fro-ings on this (e.g. people being led to believe that adding {{uncat}} to the 60,000+ articles with only a stub category is a great idea). Alai 16:47, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
- General practice at WP:WikiProject Stub sorting is to add a permanent category to any otherwise uncategorised stubs sorted. The important word is "permanent". The main categorisation scheme is permanent for the benefit of readers. The stub categorisation of any article for the benefit of editors is temporary and will be removed once an article is expanded beyond stub size. The simple removal of a stub tag by an editor will return an article to an uncategorised state unless it is also marked with a permcat. As such, it makes sense that stub categories "don't count" as far as categorisation is concerned, in exactly the same way as other cleanup categories do not count for the purposes of article categorisation. Having said all that, I'd also advise caution for exactly the reasons Alai notes. Grutness...wha? 23:36, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
- I am not sure, if something is categorized {{stub}} then I would call it uncategorized, but if it is {{BritishColumbia-geo-stub}} then it has been categorized a bit. If the stub category is removed them it becomes uncategorized, but that does not mean it was uncategorized before. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 23:39, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
- This all depends on what problem it is we're trying to solve. (Or cause? I've lost track.) If anyone is removing Category:Xs from articles on the basis that it's redundant with it having a {{X-stub}}, which categorises into Category:X stubs, then the logic of this should be explained to them. If this happens on a somewhat frequent basis, then it should be made (more) explicit someplace. Iterate as necessary. (I'm personally not aware of it happening at all, but please enlighten me.) There's already regular complaints about how large and crufty WP:STUB is, so I'd hesitate to add it there. (Some sort of general refactoring of that material is probably called for at some point.) If the point is to suggest that we should be mass-adding {{uncat}} to articles with a sorted stub type (and bear in mind that Category:stubs is relatively empty for most of the time), then I'd urge we avoid this, for the reasons already alluded to. Come to that, even mass-tagging with {{uncatstub}}, while it would probably be fairly uncontroversial, would in the short-to-medium term be fairly ineffective, given the size of the existing categorisation backlog. Indeed, might be less than great for morale...
- Perhaps this would be a good time to mention those people plugging away at Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories/uncategorized, chipping away at a backlog of 11,000+ articles... Alai 05:11, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
- Wow, this has grown a lot faster than I would expect, insane. Is it just because I linked it from my page...? Anyway, good points all, to which I have nothing to say at the moment... Lenoxus " * " 15:32, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
- Well, OK, for starters: WikiProject Uncategorized is precisely why I started this proposal: because I would love to just dive right into it, but it appears that a near-majority of the tagged articles are in stub categories, and not knowing which way to go about it is driving me insane. We don't want redundant categories, right? (Like, say, the same article being in Writers and Finnish writers). So is having same-meaning stubcats and permanant cats "bad" or "okay"? The real conondrum is that it's not even clear what should be the "default" in the case of no consensus -- some sort of decision needs to be reached one way or the other. Maybe I should have rephrased the proposal, and if this conversation gets big enough, I will start a new one on a blank slate. Lenoxus " * " 15:40, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
- It seems to me we've already had at least one do-over too many, as I answered this in detail when you raised it at WSS -- which, incidentally, would be my guess as to why the decision has now moved (or been recapitulated) here, it seems to me. (And I've addressed it again, above.) A Finnish writer stub should be in Category:Finnish writer stubs and Category:Finnish writers (or some more specific sub-category, as will often be the cases), as well as whatever other cats apply (most obviously DoB and DoD/living people cats). Each of those follow from the corresponding guidelines (stubs and categorisation), and nothing exists to suggest any conflict between the two. It strikes me as not a good idea to try to write guidelines in such a way as to anticipate every possible interaction with other guidelines: we'd end up with massive bloat of same. If there's some actual need to document this non-conflict, let's do so with as light a touch as possible, and not on dozens of projectspace pages. Perhaps add something to WP:OVERCAT, to the effect of "a permcat and a stubcat with the same effect aren't overcategorisation". (Or to whichever (one) policy or guideline people feel it is that suggests such a conflict, if people really do feel that, and can identify exactly what guideline or that is.)
- If it's only in Category:Finnish writer stubs, it shouldn't be tagged with {{uncat}}, however. (Likewise {{uncat}} isn't applied in the case of partially categorised articles, with some (permanent) categories, but missing some others it should also have.) This is a matter of allowing a reasonable amount of prioritisation, so as to make the whole process manageable: category triage, if you will. (In my opinion, detailed work on categories with some missing categories is much better done in a more "distributed" manner, say at WikiProject level, but very few subjects seem to be on top of that in any systematic manner.)
- As to this "near-majority of the tagged articles are in stub categories": once again, this isn't my bot's doing (unless it's developed unexpected behaviour that hasn't been brought to my attention). If people are adding stub tags after the articles have been identified as uncategorised (without permcats also having been added), I'll be able to get an accurate idea of how common this after the next db dump. If this really is very large, I can split those off with the parallel {{uncatstub}} tag, as was done previously. Mainly that would seem like an indication that the threshold for what's an "(uncategorised) stub" vs. just an "uncategorised article" is currently too low, though, which is a topic I've already raised at WSS. Alai 05:15, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
- On a side topic, Alai, your "There's already regular complaints about how large and crufty WP:STUB is, so I'd hesitate to add it there. (Some sort of general refactoring of that material is probably called for at some point.)" - you might want to look at comments I've made at Wikipedia_talk:Stub#request_simpler_instructions. Grutness...wha? 08:48, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
- Well, OK, for starters: WikiProject Uncategorized is precisely why I started this proposal: because I would love to just dive right into it, but it appears that a near-majority of the tagged articles are in stub categories, and not knowing which way to go about it is driving me insane. We don't want redundant categories, right? (Like, say, the same article being in Writers and Finnish writers). So is having same-meaning stubcats and permanant cats "bad" or "okay"? The real conondrum is that it's not even clear what should be the "default" in the case of no consensus -- some sort of decision needs to be reached one way or the other. Maybe I should have rephrased the proposal, and if this conversation gets big enough, I will start a new one on a blank slate. Lenoxus " * " 15:40, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
- While in principle, I don't think there's any reason for a non-robot user to tag something as uncategorized instead of finding the appropriate category, I suppose I understand why this might happen anyway. Therefore, perhaps what's really needed is an "insufficient categorization" template explaining that while the article in question has at least one category, it needs at least one more, either an appropriate stub category or (more likely) an appropriate specific category (e.g., Finnish writers). Would that make any sense? Lenoxus " * " 18:55, 5 April 2007 (UTC)