Basic information[]
A stub is an article containing only one or a few sentences of text that, although providing some useful information, is too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject, and that is capable of expansion. Non-article pages, such as disambiguation pages, lists, categories, templates, talk pages, and redirects, are not regarded as stubs.
If a stub has little verifiable information, or if its subject has no apparent notability, it may be deleted or be merged into another relevant article.
While a "definition" may be enough to qualify an article as a stub, Wikipedia is not a dictionary. The distinction between dictionary and encyclopedia articles is best expressed by the use–mention distinction:
- A dictionary article is about a word or phrase and will often have several different definitions for it
- An encyclopedia article is about the subject denoted by the title but usually has only one definition (or in some cases, several definitions that are largely the same) but there may be several equivalent words (synonyms) or phrases for it.
Sizable articles are usually not considered stubs, even if they have significant problems or are noticeably incomplete. With these larger articles, a cleanup template is usually added instead of a stub template.
How big is too big?[]
Over the years, different editors have followed different rules of thumb to help them decide when an article is likely to be a stub. Editors may decide that an article with more than ten sentences is too big to be a stub, or that the threshold for another article may be 250 words. Others follow the Did you know? standard of 1,500 characters in the main text. AutoWikiBrowser is frequently set to automatically remove stub tags from any article with more than 500 words.
There is no set size at which an article stops being a stub. While very short articles are very likely to be stubs, there are some subjects about which very little can be written. Conversely, there are subjects about which a lot could be written, and their articles may still be stubs even if they are a few paragraphs long. As such, it is impossible to state whether an article is a stub based solely on its length, and any decision on the article has to come down to an editor's best judgement (the user essay on the Croughton-London rule may be of use when trying to judge whether an article is a stub). Similarly, stub status usually depends on the length of prose text alone – lists, templates, images, and other such peripheral parts of an article are usually not considered when judging whether an article is a stub.
Ideal stub article[]
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See also: Wikipedia:Writing better articles
Any registered editor may start a stub article.
When you write a stub, bear in mind that it should contain enough information for other editors to expand upon it. The key is to provide adequate context—articles with little or no context usually end up being speedily deleted. Your initial research may be done either through books or reliable websites. You may also contribute knowledge acquired from other sources, but it is useful to conduct some research beforehand to ensure that your facts are accurate and unbiased. Use your own words: directly copying other sources without giving them credit is plagiarism, and may in some cases be a violation of copyright.
Begin by defining or describing your topic. Avoid fallacies of definition. Write clearly and informatively. State, for example, what a person is famous for, where a place is located and what it is known for, or the basic details of an event and when it happened.
Next, try to expand upon this basic definition. Internally link relevant words, so that users unfamiliar with the subject can understand what you have written. Avoid linking words needlessly; instead, consider which words may require further definition for a casual reader to understand the article. Lastly, a critical step: add sources for the information you have put into the stub; see citing sources for information on how to do so in Wikipedia.
Once you create and save the article, other editors will also be able to improve it.
How to mark an article as a stub[]
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After writing a short article, or finding an unmarked stub, you should insert a stub template. Choose from among the templates listed atWikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types.
Per the manual of style, the stub template is placed at the end of the article, after the External links section, any navigation templates, and the category tags, so that the stub category will appear after all article content. It is usually desirable to leave two blank lines between the first stub template and whatever precedes it. As with all templates, stub templates are added by simply placing the name of the template in the text between double pairs of curly brackets (e.g., {{Wikipedia-stub}}). Stub templates are transcluded, not substituted.
Stub templates have two parts: a short message noting the stub's topic and encouraging editors to expand it, and a category link, which places the article in a stub categoryalongside other stubs on the same topic. The naming for stub templates is usually topic-stub; a list of these templates may be found here. You need not learn all the templates—even simply adding {{stub}} helps (see this essay for more information). The more accurately an article is tagged, however, the less work it is for other sorters later, and the more useful it is for editors looking for articles to expand.
If an article overlaps several stub categories, more than one template may be used, but it is strongly recommended that only those relating to the subject's main notability be used. A limit of three or, if really necessary, four stub templates is advised.
Stub-related activities are centralised at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting (shortcut Wikipedia:WSS). This project should be your main reference for stub information, and is where new stub types should be proposed for discussion prior to creation.
Removing stub status[]
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Once a stub has been properly expanded and becomes a larger article, any editor may remove its stub template. No administrator action or formal permission is needed. Stub templates are usually located at the bottom of the page, and usually have a name like {{something-stub}} if you are using the classic wikitext editor rather than VisualEditor.
Many articles still marked as stubs have in fact been expanded beyond what is regarded as stub size. If an article is too large to be considered a stub but still needs expansion, the stub template may be removed and appropriate {{expand section}} templates may be added (no article should contain both a stub template and an expand template).
Be bold in removing stub tags that are clearly no longer applicable.