Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion/Archive path to creation

This is an archive of discussion leading to the creation of

The following is from Wikipedia_talk:Stub_types_for_deletion. Additional '=' have been added over that appearing in the original discussion. The items here were all contiguous as shown.

First thoughts

Looks good so far - should there be some mention of telling tfd and cfd about any new templates? If so, there are three ways that this could be done that I can think of:

1. simplest would be just adding a line of text at the top of each of those pages saying "for discussion of stub templates/categories for deletion, see WP:SFD". That would save having to edit everything every time a new stub was listed.
2. most work, but possibly best, would be to list each stub as it comes up at tfd and cfd - posibly in a separate section to the main list - saying "this is now up for discussion at WP:SFD".
3. I don't know if it is possible, but could that second suggestion be worked by means of a template that updates every time something new is aded to the page? If so, both TFD and CFD could have a box which contains "Currently being discussed at CFD", followed by the contents box from CFD, or some similar listing?

Oh, and note too that 5 days is now thought too short at tfd - even though the yellow box still says 5 days, in practice 7-10 days is more often used. Grutness...wha? 01:11, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I changed the review period to seven days. As for telling TfD and SfD - well, getting independent from them was the reason for starting this in the first place. My suggestions (we can use one or several of these, listed in descending order of my personal preference):

• IMO, if SfD is supposed to have any authority at all, in the long run it has to be able to make its own decisions. A static link from {{
  deletiontools
  }}, where it would be included, would be sufficient.
• The two proposed SfD templates, {{sfd-c}} and {{sfd-t}} will contain categories, and these categories could be linked to from the relevant SfD pages.
• We could set up a grace period (one month?), during which we list each entry here on TfD and VfD as well, but only as a link to this page, and see what we do afterwards - specifically ask at TfD and CfD what we should do afterwards.
• Your proposal 3 is not possible in this automatic form; however, as a compromise, we could create a template called {{nowonsfd}}, which could be included in both TfD and CfD, and nominators on SfD would be required to list their nominations on there as well. This would cut the additional work by half.

But before we discuss how we link to this page, I want to make sure first that all the criteria, guidelines, processes etc. on this page are fine. Or did I do so well with my first draft? -- grm_wnr Esc 02:29, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• I think this is an excellent idea. It's a good centralized place for stubbish discussions.
• Two thoughts for consideration...
  WP:CFD has 'speedy renaming' criteria, just to keep things going swiftly. And second, a seven-day waiting period may actually be rather long; I'd think that WSS'ers can quickly evaluate the usefulness of a stub. Radiant_*
  11:18, May 27, 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea of a one-month grace period and {{nowonsfd}} - that would work pretty well, I think. But you're right, policy first, links later. Radiant's idea of a speedy process sounds useful, too, and would encompass the "nonsense/insulting template" item listed that is "What this page is not for". Grutness...wha? 11:50, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of minor changes

I've made a couple of minor changes.

• I moved "Misnamed templates" up so that they can be part of the sfd process. Most of them will probably become redirects, but it is quite likely that there will be a few that are so badly named that we will want to get rid of them entirely.
• I added the standard please don't vote by simply saying "I like it" comment under the voting options.

Grutness...wha? 11:50, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I just took a quick look, and everything looks pretty good. I will try to come back and give it a more thorough perusal later. One suggestion: Although I was unable to get consensus for this idea at TFD, I'd like to propose the addition of some language that says something like: "As a common courtesy, it is recommended that the person who has proposed a stub template for deletion should notify the stub's creator, as well as any relavant WikiProjects or Regional notice boards." BlankVerse ∅ 12:00, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I listed this at the talk pages of TfD and CfD...

...and am now awaiting not one, but two angry mobs with pitchforks. But better now than later... -- grm_wnr Esc 05:31, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• No angry mobishness from me - makes sense for items that only deal with a particular project to be dealt with by that project. Personally, I don't really see any reason to continue listing things at TfD and CfD, once this page is up and running. Over at CfD, at least, I don't recall ever seeing any discussion about the stub-categories that are put up. We generally try to defer to a WikiProject when they say something should be deleted. --Azkar 05:54, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The name

"Stub messages for deletion"? Bit clunky, ain't it? Plus, the messages are the templates. The name implicitly ignores the stub categories. - SoM 02:01, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, but "Stubs for deletion" makes it sound like the articles. How about "Stub types for deletion"? Grutness...wha? 07:30, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"Stub templates for deletion" [Actually, I want to name it "Stub Templates Under-consideration-for Deletion" so that the shortcut would be WP:STUD. ;-)]. BlankVerse ∅ 09:52, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Unuserifying...?

Page is looking in very good shape. Wouldn't it now be appropriate to move it to the WP: namespace, but with the proposal template intact, as a final step before going "live"? Alai 03:49, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• Be bold - do it! :) Grutness...wha? 06:59, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just so long as User:Grm wnr don't construe this as vandalism of his user space, I'm certainly willing to take the rap for it ending up in the wikipedia 'space, sure... Alai 07:06, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Well, ,my comment was really aimed at Grm wnr (I should have made that clearer), but I doubt he'd complain, anyway. Grutness...wha? 07:29, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, go ahead, as long as no one has a problem with the proposed location. User:SoM raised a valid point about the name above, but I don't know a better alternative - "Stub templates and categories for deletion" is even more clunky, and "stubs for deletion" is just plain wrong. -- grm_wnr Esc 07:31, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oh, just read your message above - I'm fine with "Stub types for deletion" (In line with our "stub types" page too), so that's where it's going... now. -- grm_wnr Esc 07:40, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm fine with "Stub types" - SoM 19:00, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• I've just gone through the document replacing the term "stub message" with "stub type" wherever it was, for the sake of consistency - please check that it still looks OK. Grutness...wha? 12:52, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

How soon?

How close is this to being usable, and is there any specific bureaucracy that needs to be gone through to take it from proposal to actual policy? There are a pile of possible stub deletions that I've been holding off of taking to tfd/cfd (the ones at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria#several_from_the_.22Iceberg.22_.28above.29), but if this is within days rather than weeks of being useful they'd make a good start for sfd. Grutness...wha? 00:53, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Since the page seems to be quite stable, I'll list it on the Village Pump (again) and also on

WP:RFC. If no critical objections turn up within a week after that I think the page can go live. -- grm_wnr Esc

10:20, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I've added a link to
  bureaucracy, most of this is really common sense, and people have already been asking "what does WSS say" regarding stub tls/cats. However, I'd say it's appropriate to list deleted stub cats/tls to CFD/TFD as appropriate, with a notice "we want to delete this, any objections?" for at least the first couple of weeks, to see if anyone objects. Radiant_*
  11:38, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
  • Umm, I had already done that (CFD/TFD, that is)... So to sum it up: This has been noted at: CFD, TFD, VP, W, RFC and I also put it in the /topic of #wikipedia. I think that's enough. If no objections come in, we can go ahead in a week or so. -- grm_wnr Esc 12:30, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Are there going to be enough of these to warrant a separate *FD?

Are there really going to be enough of these on an ongoing basis that we need a separate process? It doesn't seem to me that the alternative (simultaneous, linked, listings on TFD and CFD) is that bad. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:03, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

There are two sets of reasons for the creation of a separate stub deletion process.. Both the TFD & CFD processes are growing, and will only grow larger as the Wikipedia's popularity grows. On the other hand, many of the people involved in TFD & CFD don't know much about stub templates. Separating out the template stub deletion decreases the burden on TFD & CFD, it puts the stub deletion before a group of editors who are very familiar with stubs, and it also creates a process for dealing with stubs which will likely end up as busy as TFD & CFD currently are. BlankVerse ∅ 14:13, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'll put this another way - Is this a problem we think we might have in the future, or a problem we do have now? I watch both TFD and CFD and haven't noticed what I'd call an overwhelming amount of traffic due to stub management. I'd think TFD/CFD/SFD traffic would be somewhat proportional to the number of templates/categories/stubs, respectively. Are stubs even 5% of templates/categories? If the goal is actually to reduce TFD/CFD traffic, I'm all for it - but isn't there something bigger than stubs we could slough off? -- Rick Block (talk) 18:19, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

In addition to the points mentioned by BlankVerse: Another aspect is that the triple-listing is very annoying. First discussion on the

WP:WSS

whether to nominate it for deletion, waiting for comments, then nomination on TFD and CFD, waiting for comments. Also, what happens if CFD and TFD vote differently? That wasn't a problem yet, but mostly because nearly all stub nominations on there came from WSS, were voted on by members of the WSS and were actually labeled "Not our business, ask WSS" by some *FD regulars. So, here we could do it all in one go.

As per numbers, since SFD was on the horizon, I (and others I guess) stopped listing stub templates on TFD and CFD and kept waiting for SFD instead. We are currently sitting on a backlog of at least 50 (rough guess) clearly deletable stub types. After that has been cleared, based on my checks on new stub types I guess that roughly 3 to 6 stub types that might get concensus for deletion are created per week - and the frequency is rising.

As to the ratio of stub templates and categories (I'll use t/cs from now on) to normal t/cs - it's probably pretty low, but due to the WSS the scrutiny on all things stubby is quite higher than on normal content, since we care a lot about keeping the stub hierarchy clean - making the percentage of stub t/cs considered for deletion higher than the percentage of all t/cs considered for deletion. -- grm_wnr Esc 19:14, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I would conservatively estimate there are a couple of dozen or more stub types currently awaiting voting. What's more, about 30% of templates at tfd in recent times have been stub templates, and the high proportion there clearly irritates some of the tfd regulars. Meanwhile, at cfd stub categories are rarely ever commented on - the general feeling seems to be "WP:WSS knows what it's doing, so we don't need to vote". Creating sfd will help not just at WP:WSS, but also at both cfd and tfd. Grutness...wha? 02:11, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I think it's a good idea not because of alleged or expected crowdedness of TFD and CFD, but because listing something in three different places is confusing, and already has occasionally risen to such quirks as the category being deleted and the template kept. Radiant_* 14:13, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

1st June entries

There are already some (non-joke) entries listed. I thought it wasn't "live" yet? --TheParanoidOne 14:28, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It's not. Courtland shouldn't have listed them - removed. - SoM 16:46, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I put them up to provide examples of how one might be able to list things. I'm not planning to put these up on

WP:TFD at all because there are lots of related things. I didn't see anything wrong with starting the ball knowing full well this is a development area. Courtland

23:31, 2005 Jun 1 (UTC)

I gave it a thought when drafting this up but concluded that it would be overkill for this page, especially since the method of starting the subpage (the fd template to be included on the Category creates a link to the subpage using {{PAGENAME}}, from which you can create it directly) doesn't work in this case. -- grm_wnr Esc 17:55, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It seems I confused this with VfD, which uses transcludes on single entries. CfD uses per-day transcludes. I still think it wouldn't be necessary, but I'm open for change if I'm the only one who thinks so. -- grm_wnr Esc 18:19, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

TfD has also just started using transcludes, IIRC - I doubt there would be the traffic on this page for them though. Grutness...wha? 02:06, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Probably not necessary for now. TFD hasn't yet to my knowledge, but probably will soon since it's arguably useful there. Radiant_* 14:14, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)
  • Ah - you're right about TFD - the new header on the page (almost identical to that on vfd) fooled me. Grutness...wha? 01:39, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Going live?

I think we have done everything to make this page public (short of the mailing list, but that'd be overkill) at least a week ago. So, can we start using it? -- grm_wnr Esc 14:08, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It isn't overkill, I just posted to the list. – ABCD 13:54, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Done? When will this page be useable? --

Ec5618

02:52, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Now. It's been live for a couple of days. Oops. Just noticed when the question was posted. --TheParanoidOne 12:45, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Malformed stub types and "What this page is not for"

Following from the discussion around {{Baseball stub}}, should the item "Malformed stub types to which no further deletion reasons apply - fix them or tell the Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting" be removed from the section Wikipedia:Stub_types_for_deletion#What_this_page_is_not_for? Courtland 12:22, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC)

I'm in favour of removing that line. I think that there's a good chance we could see a lot of redirects coming through here in the next few weeks. Grutness...wha? 13:14, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

See my comment in the {{baseball stub}} discussion. -- grm_wnr Esc 13:36, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Is your desire then to bar redirects from being put up for deletion until later, based on the "lesser of problems" criterion? Courtland 14:28, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC)

I think stub redirects are within the scope of this page. So list stub redirects here if you really want to see them go, but I, personally, will not do so for the time being. Maybe we should only allow for listing of orphaned stub redirects though, since they don't create additional work when closing the discussion? My comment was really aimed at the question of malformed vs. wrongly titled, with the redirect statement more of an afterthought. -- grm_wnr Esc 16:06, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)