User:Alan Liefting/Essays/Stub categories are project categories
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To this end various guidelines and conventions are adopted. Any
One area of Wikipedia where the content and project separation is not kept is the categories. Throughout Wikipedia thousands of stub categories are displayed in categories that are otherwise for content sub-categories and articles. It has even led to a situation where the only subcategory, being a stub category, was prominently displayed at the top of the category page.[1]
The stub article system developed quite early on in the history of Wikipedia. At some later date the WikiProjects developed. The WikiProjects have a wide range of topic areas, as do the various stub messages. The WikiProjects now have a set of stub articles (along with other article class status settings) associated with the project and are give their own category. These these are all subcategories of Category:Stub-Class articles. Note that stubs are also sorted into the sub-categories of Category:Stubs.
Some editors wish to retain the status quo.[2] One rationale, which is quite understandable, is that it prevents readers who want to find stub articles in order to edit them. This is true to some degree but of little consequence. The categories are not visited as often as articles and there are other ways for a reader who does not have an account to find the stub articles.
As it can be seen, the stub articles are very well classified - and this is laudable since they require work in order to improve their usefulness to readers. But there is no reason for the stub categories to be visible in the content categories. Two simple solutions exist that will benefit readers and not prevent the work being done by editors on stub articles. Firstly, all the stub categories should be set as
- Alan Liefting
- July 2010 - April 20112
Notes
- ^ This occurred in Category:Carex until I removed the stub category and subsequently re-added.
- ^ See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub_sorting/Archive 15#Should stub categories be in Wikipedia namespace rather than article namespace?. Also, at least one attempt at hiding a stub category was quickly reverted.