Wikipedia talk:Stub

See also: Wikipedia talk:Find or fix a stub for older discussion.

Statistics

I've added some statistical information about typical stubs. See User talk:BilledMammal/Average articles#c-WhatamIdoing-20240818051500-WhatamIdoing-20240818044000 for some of the background. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:08, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

A couple of quick numbers:

• 43% have 10 or fewer sentences
• 41% have 250 or fewer words
• 62% have 500 or fewer words

WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:20, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

stub articles

I've added a fair amount of new info/sources to an article deemed a 'stub' - how do I know when to remove the stub tag? In my opinion it's worthy to be removed. If someone is responding to these, I can give them the article name and get your opinion. Gregorcollins (talk) 14:07, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Stub#How big is to big? and then use your judgment. Like many of the "rules" in Wikipedia, that guidance is vague, and users have a lot of discretion in deciding when an article is no longer a stub. If it really is too long to be a stub, even if you don't remove the stub notice, someone (or a bot) may come along and remove it. Donald Albury 18:14, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Replace double-blank-line method with CSS

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T382578

The WP:STUBSPACING section says: Leave two blank lines between the first stub template and whatever precedes it (one blank line leaves the stub category notice butted up against any preceding navigation template; it takes two blank lines in the edited text to produce one blank line in the displayed text). Wouldn't it be better to use CSS? To maintain the current spacing, we could add something like

:not(p):not(.asbox) + style + .asbox {
	margin-top: 3em;
}

to Template:Asbox/styles.css. I would suggest using 1em instead of 3em, though. Aside from looking better IMO, it would allow us to spot pages using the double-blank-line method easily and correct them. But I'm fine either way.

What do people think of this idea? Mr. Starfleet Command (talk) 17:31, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

We last discussed this over six years ago (or two years ago, the discussion seems to have a span of more than four years) at Wikipedia talk:Stub/Archive 15#Double blank lines, again, and I offered a CSS rule which was somewhat simpler. The discussion also contains some links back to earlier discussions. Other participants included: Donald Albury; Grutness; Jonkerz; Kvng; Lugnuts; Mclay1; PamD; Pbsouthwood; Peter coxhead; SMcCandlish. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:59, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

@Redrose64 Thanks.

The benefit of my CSS rule is that it only applies the margin if the stub template isn't preceded by a paragraph, which prevents extra space being generated if the extra line hasn't been removed yet. Other than that, my CSS accounts for the style element that comes directly above the stub notice, which wasn't a factor in 2016 since TemplateStyles hadn't been introduced yet.

Mr. Starfleet Command (talk) 21:19, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't see any obvious problem. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 09:29, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Without fully understanding the technicality, that sounds good to me. I've always thought it would make more sense for the stub templates to provide any necessary extra spacing. Would this CSS also work if there are zero blank lines before the stub template? Mclay1 (talk) 23:17, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

@Mclay1: Yes, it would. Mr. Starfleet Command (talk) 23:20, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Switching to CSS seems eminently sensible, because hardcoded double newline always looked nonsensical in source, whereas if it's a CSS property it's presumably tunable by reader (user) preferences. --Joy (talk) 00:16, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Also, since we seem to have had at least 8 discussions about this over a period of 17 years, it should be noted that this is a matter where allowing each person to tune it to their preference is of more importance than usual. --Joy (talk) 00:22, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm definitely on board with this, as long as it gets tested well in various scenarios before wide implementation. If it's all working well, then the double blank lines stuff can be cleaned up by a bot job as part of any general-housekeeping edit the bot makes to a page (shouldn't be done as an edit on its own though, per WP:COSMETICBOT).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:38, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm on board with this, with one proviso - I take it this doesn't add blank lines between stub templates on articles where more than one template is in use? If, say, an articles is both a {{Belgium-struct-stub}} and a {{theatre-stub}}? It would still need to work if a stub template follows any other template (such as an infobox) - though theoretically stub templates should only be directly below categories and nothing else... Grutness...wha? 03:41, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

@Grutness Correct – it only adds a blank space if the thing above the stub template isn't another stub template. So if you have multiple stub templates one after another, only the first one gets extra space put in above it. Mr. Starfleet Command (talk) 03:48, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Seems good to me. Newbies are often puzzled by the double blank lines and either don't use them in a new article or remove them. This is a much better approach. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:31, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

• Support - While I don't understand how CSS works in this context, the description sounds like exactly what we want: whitespace added only when it is not already there. ~Kvng (talk) 17:45, 28 November 2024 (UTC)
• Comment: If this is implemented I foresee some massive bot-work removing the current blank lines on articles! Grutness...wha? 02:12, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

  Blank lines will not need to be removed, so should only be removed along with necessary/useful edits · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 04:49, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

I've made an edit request to add the CSS I suggested above to Template:Asbox/styles.css. Mr. Starfleet Command (talk) 23:02, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

The edit request above has been implemented on 19 December 2024. Accordingly, the overleaf advice at WP:TAGSTUB about two blank lines ought to be removed. The shortcut WP:STUBSPACING, now unnecessary, should also be removed. I'm not sure whether a mention of the previous advice and this change should be mentioned. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:04, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

I've changed the wording; feel free to modify it further if you want. Mr. Starfleet Command (talk) 13:31, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. Your wording looks fine to me. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:35, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Please leave WP:STUBSPACING in place for a while – there will be some collateral discussion about this elsewhere — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 09:00, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Good point. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 09:52, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I assume that this is so far just in EN? I have no idea what other wikis do about stubs — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 23:41, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure this CSS change is working. Compare Protocol-control information and Managed object. My understanding was that the change would result in the same rendering with or without the extra spacing. ~Kvng (talk) 19:56, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

@Kvng see this comment and its replies. This seems to be the same issue, and only affects some users (I'm seeing the two pages you linked correctly, as I do the pages mentioned at the above link). Mr. Starfleet Command (talk) 00:10, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

@Mr. Starfleet Command, I've checked and on both Firefox (134.0.1) and Chrome (131.0.6778.265) I am seeing more horizontal whitespace above the stub notice on Protocol-control information. This is also the case when I'm logged out (using private mode in the browsers). ~Kvng (talk) 02:08, 18 January 2025 (UTC)