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Wikipedia talk:Stub types for deletion/Archive 2 

Archive This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Adding {{sfd-t}} to redirects

It is possible that, at least for a while, many of the items coming up here for deletion will be redirects. Adding the {{sfd-t}} breaks the redirect if added either above or below the redirect line. This is ok for redirects that have been orphaned, but what about those that have not been? Should the deletion notice template be added to these? Courtland 12:29, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC)

I don't know what the official rule is, but when I've sent redirects to tfd in the past I've usually put the template on the redirect's talk page and also added a note to the talk page of the template it redirects to (so with baseball stub I'd put sfd-t on Template talk: Baseball stub and make a note about it on Template talk:Baseball-stub. Grutness...wha? 12:39, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
There is a problem with simply adding templates to redirects, as has been done at {{biostub}}. Because the template text, including the category, is no longer included, whenever any of the articles are edited, the category is depopulated. Furthermore, if the articles are not edited afterwards, which could easily happen when there is a decision to keep, the category will remain depopulated. An alternative could be to include the target instead of redirecting there, an example being {{sfd-t}}{{bio-stub}}. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 07:32, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Deletion of redirects

OK, I'm fed up with complaints about redirects being deleted.

Let's just keep 'em all and hide them so that new people won't come along and use them but old people won't be "inconvenienced". That solution should satisfy most people, then some bold person comes along and makes {{About United States stub}} and we hide it away so that that person can still use it and he/she doesn't complain while not giving others the suggestion to use it versus {{US-stub}}. Then when the person who created the template tires of stub creation and tagging (which should take about a week in most cases) it will effectively never be used again.

This solution doesn't fit within the comfort zone of people who like beuracracy or neatness or nice clean edges, but it will work to satisfy the concerns of the persons this project serves ... which is not us the stub sorters.

With that said, I'd like to withdraw all the redirect deletion requests and get back to the business of making a difference, or trying to do so.

Courtland 13:02, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC)

If you withdraw those deletion proposals, I'll renominate them. We've got redirects that aren't being used, and we've had people complaining about too many "non-standard" names (check out Wikitalk:WSS). Sure, the project doesn't serve the stub sorters, the stub sorters serve the project. And the way they can do it best is by knowing what label to stick on a stub, and by making the stub names as facile for those who don't want to learn the entire list as is possible. And if, as the developers keep telling us, redirects are bad for the servers because things have to be called up twice, then the less redirects there are, the better. I like the suggestion of not listing redirect names, it is a good compromise - but I for one am not going to stop trying to get rid of any inherently bad template names just because they're now only redirects! And let's face it - the aim of sfd is to be be as much like tfd and cfd as possible. And that means there will be healthy debate with people saying "keep". It isn't a rubber-stamp to get rid of templates. Grutness...wha? 13:38, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The existence of "inherently bad template names" is the issue here, isn't it? I'm all for consistency because it is the way forward toward bot-assisted activities (which we neeeeed for this project). The problem we have, if indeed there is a problem really, is the clash between a desire for consistency and perception of utility and a clash between those who have set precedent and those for whom precedent doesn't mean much versus convenience.
I'll not withdraw the items I've placed as you've indicated you would re-post them. No need to get into an edit skirmish. If I were 100% convinced that they shouldn't be there, I'd have removed them without fishing for input.
As far as "hiding" redirects, I still think it might be a good approach to encouraging the use of "inherently good template names". Thoughts on this proposed action? Grutness has already indicated above it's not a bad idea ... looking for input from others as well
Courtland 17:35, 2005 Jun 19 (UTC)
Hiding the non-standard redirects = good. For those who are using a particular template (which is a redirect) and feel the desperate need to continue doing so, can. For those who don't know about them, they will refer to the list. Hopefully that makes everyone happy (or at least not unhappy). --TheParanoidOne 18:07, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I've made a suggestion for revisions to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types that incorporates the removal of redirects from the main listing while leaving a link to a listing of them; see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types#Proposed_revisions_to_page_format_-_aiming_for_cleaner_look_with_less_text. Courtland 17:03, 2005 Jun 20 (UTC)

First blood

{{sikhi-stub}} is the first stub type to be deleted as per this page. Congratulations! See Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion/Log/Deleted/June 2005. -- grm_wnr Esc 12:34, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

May it be the first of many. :P --Sn0wflake 19:55, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
There needs to be a hearty "Mwuhahaha!" inserted in there somewhere ... --TheParanoidOne 21:38, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
...or at least a "Today {{sikhi-stub}}, tomorrow the {{world-stub}}!!!" Grutness...wha? 01:27, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
{{world-stub}}? Wouldn't that mean... {{geo-stub}}? Image:Villianc.svg -- grm_wnr Esc 07:44, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Template?

Hi there! I find the green template put on CFD and TFD rather appropriate, but could you please make it a bit smaller vertically? Radiant_>|< 12:40, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

I've tried to compact it a bit, by sorting the entries by type. It looks a little crowded to me, though. Anyone have any suggestion for improvement? --TheParanoidOne 14:42, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I suppose we could always reduce the font size a bit more... an alternative option is simply to reduce the number of stubs being voted on, but there are just so many that should be nominated... Grutness...wha? 00:58, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Consensus

"After a voting period of seven days, action will be taken if there is consensus on the fate of the stub type". What exactly constitutes "consensus" here? We're about to have the first one with several votes per side pass the seven day barrier (nickelodeon-stub). I'm not certain what the rule is here - is it kept if there's less than a 2/3 vote for delete, with possible renomination later, or what? Grutness...wha? 00:56, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • IMO keep if there's less than a 2/3 vote for delete. No practical definition for consensus is given, nor yet established, for SfD. So I assume that a criterion of 2/3 similar to VfD should apply here.--Nabla 2005-06-28 16:42:34 (UTC)
    • note to readers: this is not a side-vote; it is a consideration of the present voting.
      This is the eternal question around all deletes and changes. Maybe we can do something a little more intense here owing to the relatively small volume of material? I'm thinking really scrutinize the votes and think on what the issues are ...
Issue: voters
  • title of stub can lead to confusion: grutness
  • potential for growth is low ~ overcategorization: lochaber, idont, nabla, blankverse, lifeisunfair
  • potential for growth is high: snowflake, sherri
  • potential for growth doesn't matter: falphin
Looking at things this way, there's a 5:2 split on the matter of growth potential. One might but a hold and say to snowflake and sherri that if they can indeed produce 50 articles that could be stubbed to this type then that would demonstrate sufficient potential for growth to keep.
Courtland June 28, 2005 21:33 (UTC)

Purging sfd-current

At what point should an entry be removed from the sfd-current template? With items that have been deleted it's obvious. But with items like the movie/film rename, it's not as clear cut. The decision has been made, but the item is still on the SFD page in some capacity. Remove when a decision has been made, or keep until it's worked its way through SFD completely? I would go for the former. --TheParanoidOne 28 June 2005 21:42 (UTC)

  • I would suggest removing it after the decision has been made. We could add to the sfd-current template a brief note saying "completed decisions are listed at xxxxx" wherever we have a log file of completed decisions. Courtland June 28, 2005 23:33 (UTC)

orphaned stub categories

Does anyone here monitor Category:Orphaned categories? There are currently 30 or so stub categories listed from user:Beland's May 16 analysis. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) June 30, 2005 02:38 (UTC)

That would be Category:Orphaned_categories#Stubs and yes, it's indeed worth checking out. Good find! -- grm_wnr Esc 30 June 2005 19:31 (UTC)

Added to another policy page

I suddenly realised this page wasn't listed at Wikipedia:Deletion policy - I have remedied. Grutness...wha? 2 July 2005 12:22 (UTC)

I ran across Wikipedia:Current surveys and added it to the deletion section as well Rx StrangeLove 2 July 2005 17:18 (UTC)

Several rules worth repeating from Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion

The following rules at WP:CSD are well worth noting with regard to SFD:

  • Redirects can be immediately deleted if they have no useful history and they refer to non-existent pages. (Before deleting such a redirect, it's a good idea to check to see if the redirect can be made useful by changing its target.)
  • Empty categories (no articles or subcategories) whose only content has consisted of links to parent categories [may be speedily deleted].
  • Empty categories (no articles or subcategories), 24 hours after the last page was removed from them[may be speedily deleted]

It's quite likely that several of the items that are coming through sfd can be speedily deleted under these rules. Grutness...wha? 2 July 2005 12:31 (UTC)

  • off stub topic comment that last item seems to provide an opportunity for widespread abuse by activist administrators .. that that's a comment on the Speedy Deletion guidelines as a whole and hasn't anything to do specifically with stub categories. Courtland July 2, 2005 15:11 (UTC)

SFD-Current on SFD page?

Is it worth adding {{sfd-current}} at the top of WP:SFD? No, not to have it deleted, just for display. That way we'll instantly be able to check whether what's on the template tallies with what's on the page. Grutness...wha? 09:39, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a reasonable plan. --TheParanoidOne 10:25, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I've added it. I've also moved the "how to use this page" instructions nearer to the top, because a lot of people seem to be ignoring them :( Grutness...wha? 12:35, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

"US"/"American"/"United States"

(Copied across from "Criteria" talk page, where I first posted it): There are numerous stub categories relating to the United States, and there seems to be no common pattern of naming. Do we need one, and if so, what should it be? I mistakenly told one person that they should use US to name a particular category because it was our standard naming, but I see now I was completely wrong. Personally, I'd prefer not to use "American", as it is ambiguous, and stick with "United States" throughout, but I'm hoping to hear arguments on all sides of this one. If we stick to one standard it will mean a lot of categories coming through here for renaming (templates, I'm glad to say, all use US). Grutness...wha? 14:53, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

  • I strongly agree with not using the term 'American' (e.g. the continent) when referring to the United States (e.g. the country). Radiant_>|< 09:58, July 13, 2005 (UTC)
  • I also agree with using United States instead of US or American. --Kbdank71 13:39, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Strongly agree with all above comments. "American" is ambiguous at best. "United States" seems to be the best alternative. DoubleBlue (Talk) 14:51, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
  • I disagree with all of the arguements above but agree with the result. American is the term to describe U.S. citizens obviously. On other categories it has been already changed and I suggest the same here. The only exception is culture which on all the article still follows, Danish culture, German culture etc so should the American. The use of U.S. is pointless as it is just an abbreviation. The same is true for the United Arab Emirates. Falphin 15:10, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
  • I am very strongly of the opinion that either US or North American should be used. It is a self-absorbed, absurd and derisory idea to attribute a classification that refers to all inhabitants of a continent to something or somebody from a single country, as if the other countries were not worthy of mention. That's why we have {{Germany-stub}} and not {{Europe-stub}} for articles pertaining Germany, for example. --Sn0wflake 20:20, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
  • NOT "American". Categories should use "United States" or "United States of America". I don't mind if templates use US, USA or UnitedStates. --Scott Davis Talk 12:52, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
  • If one is to avoid the use of American in stub categories, we'll need to go to always using nouns and never adjectives. The correct adjective for things related to the United States is American and no other, so if one is going to go on a pendantic quest against American, consistency of from requires eliminating all use of "British", "Canadian", "French", et cetera. I don't mind if in the name of pendantry we go after all use of adjective place names, but if we single out "American", I shall be most irritated. Caerwine 19:36, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
    • What adjective do United States Americans use to refer to something of the continent(s) of America? The issue here is not whether "American" is the right adjective for "things of the United States of America", but whether it is unambiguous. It is not, and neither are Georgian or Chinese. Australian is ambiguous about whether it refers to a country or a continent, but for almost all purposes it is an irrelevent distinction, which is not the case here. --Scott Davis Talk 00:22, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
      • Speaking purely for myself, I don't use an adjective for the two continents, any more than I would use an adjective when describing something that pertains to Eurasia and Africa considered as a unit. I'd use either "of the Americas" or "of the New World" if I needed an adjective form or possibly use "New World" as adjectival noun. Caerwine 02:25, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
    • But I can say European, Asian and know that Eurasian is the union of both sets, and Southeast Asian is a subset of Asian. However for you, North American is a superset of American, and South American is either disjoint with it (Argentina, Brazil etc), or a subset (Alabama, Louisiana etc). We only get confused by things like the highest mountain in Australia (correct answers are Mount Kosciusko and Mawson Peak, with a nod to Mt McClintock). --Scott Davis Talk 07:24, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
  • I've already had to abandon the proposal of one very useful category because an "American... category" existed (the category was to be for Politician stubs for the whole of the Americas - there aren't enough for separate Mexican, Central American, South American, and Caribbean categories). Using "American" to refer to only the United States is really annoying - especially when the term "United States" is frequently used adjectivally. Grutness...wha? 23:53, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd rather have just nouns used, instead of adjectives. Not only is there the problem with "American" and others as mentioned, there's the problem as to whether some terms refer to people from an ethnic group or a country. The current mix of adjective and noun forms seems to be rather haphazard. --Mairi 00:35, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Help needed

As you might know, I've been the main closer on this page since it's beginnings. Well, I've been out of town for a week now and couldn't close the discussions. Noone else did so either, so now I'm looking at a great big heap and actually, I don't have much time on my hands this week as well. I can close some of the easy ones (orphaned and ready to delete), but there's lots of discussions requiring restubbing and I can't really do that alone. SO: Please help orphaning stub types that have been cleared for deletion! Administrators, please close and archive a few discussion, or the backlog will swell to tremendous proportions before I can find the time to clear it. -- grm_wnr Esc 14:30, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I want to help, but I'm not entirely sure what to do. Some appear to be simple, eg. rename of Category:Computer Specialist Stubs. This has been done, so should this entire discussion just be moved to Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion/Log/Deleted/July 2005? If that is all that is needed, I'll go ahead and do it. But how about others which are more complicated? --TheParanoidOne 20:13, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
Ditto. I've been closing discussions on CfD for months now, but I don't want to screw anything up with the templates here. I took care of a few easy ones, hopefully that will help. --Kbdank71 20:29, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Template:Stub-base

I'm not sure where to put this, so I'll just add it to the Talk page. Currently WP:TFD has Template:Stub-base nominated for deletion. Since it's really just an incomplete version of Template:Metastub, and since one person has suggested that it redirect to Metastub, the template probably should be handled by WP:STD instead of WP:TFD. BlankVerse ∅ 11:53, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

{{VRC-Stub}}, concensus and resubmission

{{VRC-Stub}} and its associated category were nominated by me for deletion but they have now moved beyond the seven day period, with no votes. A single person's vote is not a consensus, so the status quo should be maintained, ie. leave the stub type as is.

There doesn't seem to be anything written in the SFD guidelines about resubmissions, though. Are they possible? How long until an item can be resubmitted? And so on. --TheParanoidOne 14:29, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Just thinking aloud here... maybe a month (two months?) after the close of voting for "no consensus"... but no voters isn't really no consensus - I'd think that in cases where the nominator is the only vote, resumbission should be possible pretty near straight away as long as it is clearly stated that no-one voted the previous time. Grutness...wha? 19:45, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
Hm. I think the closing admin's action (e.g. to delete) also counts as a vote, if the admin hasn't voted already. But two votes also do not a consensus make, I think... I'd say just relist it at the top with a note that it is a relisting, and if it attracts no votes again, I'd be inclined to see consensus for deletion. -- grm_wnr Esc 22:40, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, but doesn't the vote of the nominator count at all? If there's not a single keep/merge etc. vote, obviously there are no objections to the deletion, especially if you count the closing admin's vote (although I'm not really sure you should do that, because I for one would expect impartiality from him). Btw, how would you define consensus anyway, with this community having over 350.000 registered users? Not having voted at all would constitute mutual consent, imho. And: not everyone partakes in every vote; speaking for myself, I try only to vote about issues where I possess at least a certain knowledge Lectonar 10:23, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

X-related country stubs

It may not be according to the rules, but couldn't we make one bulk vote here (I know, I know, there's copy and paste). Also, there seems to be more here than meets the eye... as the discussion wasn't properly concluded anyway Lectonar 10:11, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

There are no more Categories in the X-related change. If a proposal to change from X-related to X is made, perhaps part of the proposal should be for a batch StD. (SEWilco 18:29, 3 August 2005 (UTC))
Which discussion? (SEWilco 18:29, 3 August 2005 (UTC))

Archiving

As things stand at the moment, I seem to be doing the bulk of the archiving on sfd. I don't mind, overly, although I'm a little uneasy about it since I'm heavily involved in a lot of the votes, and ISTR that on pages like vfd voters are encouraged not to be the people who do the archiving. I'm open to any advice on this one. Also, I deliberately haven't archived one or two votes that are not unanimous or seem less-clear cut. Again, any advive or help would be welcome. Grutness...wha? 05:57, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

I probably could do this (although I do a fair amount of voting myself, and I don't always see eye-to-eye with everybody else), but I don't know the pertaining policy and procedure (doesn't one have to be an admin? how do we get it deleted, if the vote comes out as such etc.) + I'm not going to be around that much for the next 2 months. Another problem I see is that one can't avoid involvement with stub-sorting per se, and so is kind of always biased. And you do such a lot around the stub-things, I'm not quite sure if it isn't considered your pet by now :) Lectonar 10:19, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Heh. Well, I certainly feel too possessive of the geo-stub section :). I do do a lot of stubby-stuff, so I was hoping to shift some of the archiving work a little so that I can get some real-world things done occasionally. Even an occasional bit of archiving by someone else would be a big help, either here or on the proposals and/or discoveries pages. As to the rules of it and whether it's necessary to be an admin to do it - you do need to be an admin to delete items, and decisions relating to consensus are at a page directly aimed at admins (Wikipedia:Deletion_guidelines_for_administrators). But if the decision for a stub type is a clear keep, then there should be no problems for a non-admin archiving is. Similarly, if it's a clear delete and the template needs to be orphaned a non-admin can at least clear the template ready for deletion. It also begs a further question, but that's one for your user talk page... Grutness...wha? 11:44, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
I seem to recall responding with similar questions from a similar request by grm_wnr a while back. I don't recall getting any definitive answers. Given what's just been said though, I think I'll go ahead and do something if it seems like its ready to be done. --TheParanoidOne 19:17, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
I made my first attempt at archiving the other day, with the Proposal page. Did I do anything horribly wrong? I'm assuming I didn't or somone would have swooped in and fixed it. :) --TheParanoidOne 10:43, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

fire-alarm-stub

{{fire-alarm-stub}} and it's associated category have now passed the 7 day voting period. I would say the concensus is to delete both, so I started to clear it out when I saw that the template never had sfd-t applied to it. This is a first - deletion concensus on an item that was never actually nominated for deletion. Anyone using said template would not be aware of the deletion debate. Should it be removed along with its category, as decided? --TheParanoidOne 10:39, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

The original nomination was simply for the category, and the vote for that was 3-0 for deletion. I added a nomination for deletion of the category, and there was no objection to that in subsequent votes. In other words, the template was nominated, just slightly after the category. Therefore, when I removed the stub type, I deleted both. I suppose that I should have waited an extra day, since the template was nominated the day after the category, and if I was remiss in not leaving it long enough, then I apologise. But since there was no objection after six days, it probably didn't make much difference. Grutness...wha? 07:08, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
The length of the nomination was not really what I was getting at. It's the fact that the sfd-t tag was not added to the stub template which I saw as possibly causing problems. ie deletion of a template without any immediate notification that this idea is even being proposed. But anyway, it's done now. So I'll leave it at that. --TheParanoidOne 15:56, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
Oop! I never even noticed that I'd forgotten that when I deleted it. Mea culpa. Well, if anyone complains, send them to me - all my fault. Grutness...wha? 01:05, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Closing debates

There's been a couple comments on votes that are past the 7-day point, and below the marker (on the debates about {{Video game music composer-stub}} and {{Japcorp-stub}}). Assuming ones below the marker are "closed", in that no one should comment/vote on them, that probably ought to be more clearly marked somewhere... --Mairi 05:11, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I see you're a bit miffed by zippedmartins votes; so am I :)); the problem seems to be that we ought to delete them faster...Lectonar 06:31, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
That I am. The problem with deleting them faster is that there seems to be only a couple admins active here to delete them...--Mairi 06:41, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
And the ones active are active in the voting, too, and this should, IMHO, prevent them from closing the sfd's (I know thats not corresponding to wiki-reality)...perhaps I should take up on Grutness's suggestion.... Lectonar 07:25, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
is there perhaps some way we can add template "clips" round them, like on cfd and afd, putting boxes round the closed votes? Grutness...wha? 10:10, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Bot?

Has anyone created a Bot for the replacement/renaming of templates? -Ravedave 03:13, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure there's one that's used every now and then. It's logical to use one for direct replaces - the problem comes when a template needs to be split between two or more existing ones. Grutness...wha? 05:36, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
I should to do more research. I vagely remeber seeing a bot that would present a page to you with the proposed changes and you just had to ok it if it was correct. Could probably write one that looks for the name of a state and suggests a template. Maybe I'll have to learn perl -Ravedave 05:41, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

I've put a request on Wikipedia talk:Bots#Mairibot for permission to run a bot (using pywikipedia) to take care of the renames here. And it seems like most our renames (atleast for large categories) are direct replaces, so it ought to help alot. It'd also make it more practical to tackle removing -related from the country categories. --Mairi 05:17, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

That would be very useful. The Sydney stubs await! :) Grutness...wha? 10:22, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, it's now been a week and there haven't been any objections there... I'll be offline until Sunday evening, but once I'm back I'll start the bot working on the backlog we have (unless they're any objections to the bot by then). --Mairi 04:08, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

SPUI and stub redirects

I've just had to rollback User:SPUI for his unilateral that stub redirects shouldn't be handled on this page and removal of a large block of voting. I'm adding a note to the top of the page to make it clearer that stub redirects are discussed here (although everyone else seems to be well aware of how this page works now). Grutness...wha? 00:28, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

On a somewhat related note, I noticed that putting {{sfd-t}}, which reads

Feel free to edit the template, but the template must not be blanked, and this notice must not be removed, until the discussion is closed. For more information, read the guide to deletion.›, on stub redirects is actually highly misleading on the articles affected. I've created {{sfd-r}}, which reads

, for stub template redirects, which should be clearer, and adjusted the instructions accordingly. -- grm_wnr Esc 18:04, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Speedying "related" categories?

Is there any way of speedy renaming the categories with "-related" as part of their names? The changes were all debated thoroughly at WP:WSS/P and the (unanimous IIRC0 consensus was to remove the word from category names (at least as far as country-specific categories was concerned). It would save a lot of them coming through here in dribs and drabs if all of them were speediable. Grutness...wha? 02:08, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

It'd likely be a good use of Wikipedia:Ignore all rules, if we're feeling bold, as there was unanimous consensus in the earlier discussion (for country names). But since it's such a large undertaking, there's a chance that'd draw some criticism. But I'm not sure how else we could speedy them... --Mairi 07:24, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Can I suggest that it they be listed "collectively" on the project page (perhaps with a link to an off-page list of those affected), and that the speedy-ing be done "by acclaim"? i.e., if three or four people call for expedition, and no-one objects. If anyone requests separate discussion for a given case, split it out to a separate listing. I wouldn't personally be upset by being bolder still, but equally it doesn't seem so urgent as to really demand that, either. BTW, Mairi, kudos on the efforts of your robotic counterpart on these. Alai 22:47, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Sounds like a plan. --Alynna 04:40, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Sounds good. I'd say to wait until my bot get's its botflag (which ought to happen whenever a steward gets around to checking the permissions page on meta...), as then it can work even faster. By then we should have the backlog cleared out too. --Mairi 07:50, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Bot work

Mairibot is now working on renaming Category:Football (soccer) player stubs to Category:Football (soccer) biography stubs (via null edits). Once that's done, I'll deal with UK-depot-stub (I wanted to start with a null-edit one), and then work thru the remaining renames. Some of them will still take a while, because of the required time between edits. --Mairi 04:11, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Done with the football player stub renames. Changed plans and am now working on the smaller Eng-club-stub. Then i'll probably go thru from the oldest to newest (maybe with a bias towards doing ones that just require touching). --Mairi 04:37, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Substology

There is some discussion regarding the subst'ing of templates, and a bot is under development that will automate the task. I would like to ask your opinion on subst'ing stub templates. Please take a look at Wikipedia:Subst. Radiant_>|< 15:51, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Very bad idea. Though I can understand it working well for most types of templates, It would cause quite some problems for ones which are frequently changed (like stub templates). Stub templates should never be subst'ed IMHO. Grutness...wha? 00:12, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
Subst'ing any kind of template that changes more than rarely, and especially stub templates, seems like a Bad Idea... Also, I think it makes it more difficult for editors to move or remove various tags when there's a long paragraph rather than a short few words that are clearly in a template. --Alynna 02:04, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
  • No worries, people, stub templates are not going to be subst'ed any time soon. That's why we asked your opinion before actually doing anything :) Radiant_>|< 00:11, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Template redirects

They work abit oddly now, and it affects orphaning them for deletion. Before, if you had Template:A that redirected to Template:B, uses of A would show up in Special:Whatlinkshere/A and on the page it's used on as a use of A. Now it only shows up on Special:Whatlinkshere/B. To make it more confusing, old uses (pages that haven't been edited since the change - I'm not sure when it happened, but within the past month), still follow the old method. The new method makes it alot harder to tell if a redirect has been orphaned when it's a frequently-used template that's redirected to - especially trying to change them by hand; it's doable, although an additional step, by bot. --Mairi 17:14, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Then do what I do. When it's time to delete the template, simply take off the sfd notice and turn it back into a standard redirect. It should then show all the articles that use it. Grutness...wha? 01:10, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
The problem is that it doesn't necessarily show articles that use the redirect. For example, I marked User:Mairibot/Completed tasks with {{Incomplete}} (which redirects to {{sectstub}}). However, it doesn't show up on Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Incomplete but only on Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Sectstub. --Mairi 04:10, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Renaming stub types

I have a quick question regarding the renaming of stub templates.

When something is renamed, the old name is turned into a redirect to the new name. If a template has been renamed via SFD, should the redirect remain, or should it be deleted as well?

The reason I ask is that if it is the former, anyone can carry out template renames and log them. Whereas if it is the latter it would require an admin to carry out the deletion step.

There is of course the third option - a per-stub type decision.

I can't find anything about this on the SFD page. Any thoughts? --TheParanoidOne 06:39, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Often of course, the category's to be renamed (well, "renamed") at the same time, in which case it'd be necessary to have an admin do it, or at least, undesirable to leave the job half-done. But not always, so it's a good question. I'd say it depends just how "useful" (or v.v., just how badly-named) the old template is. Certainly people are able to specify, as per AFD and RFM, that they want the redirect deleted (or not), but I suppose the issue here is, should we have an established default, where the "vote" isn't decisive on this point, or more likely, doesn't mention it at all? One could argue it either way; redirects are somewhat useful, but in the case of stub-types, not to readers (or linkers, or general editors), only to stub sorters (hard-core or occasional). In cases of erratic spacing, caps, hyphenation, etc, they may be worse than useless, by obscuring the alleged conventions for what stub-tags "always" look like, thereby leading to more confusion that it copes with. But even if the default was otherwise, I wouldn't object to doing that case by case. Alai 18:26, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Personally, I think the redirect should usually be deleted - but not always. If the redirect that left doesn't fit in with the naming guidelines for stub templates (eg moving Hp-stub to HarryPotter-stub), then keeping it would be a mistake. If, however, it's from a viable alternative name (e.g., the redirect car-stub for auto-stub), then there's nothing wrong with keeping it. Grutness...wha? 01:41, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

More on speedies...

Recent cases on this page have made me inclined to think that we need to be a bit more formal about what's "speediable", and what's not. The "speedying by acclaim" is all well and good, but if stub creators show up to protest the fate of their badly-named or entirely needless stub type, as is often the case, in practice it runs the duration (or longer!). I think we should agree some likely candidates for speedying, and have them "approved" for listing in the main listing of speedy deletion criteria. For starters, what about:

  • Any stub template not ending in "-stub";
  • Any stub category not ending in " stubs";
  • Any template or category using a variant spelling, capitalisation, or other style of reference from the corresponding article on the main topic, and/or parent permanent category, where applicable in each case.

We can expand as necessary in conjunction with tightening up the stub type naming conventions, ideally with the latter somewhat ahead of the former, being incorporated as and when simple, established, and uncontroversial. Alai 18:02, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

{{sfd-current}}

While I appreciate the courtesy of this template, I think that everybody who wants to follow SFD has caught on to it by now, so I guess it may not be necessary any more to use the template to list all SFD discussions at CFD and TFD. Not sure if that'd save a lot of time actually but I thought I'd point it out. Radiant_>|< 15:49, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

It was only ever intended as a temporary measure... but we probably need to put something on the CFD/TFD etc talk pages before removing it). It would speed up the nomination process and reduce instruction creep, too, which can only be a good thing. Grutness...wha? 01:12, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm asking around. R[[User_talk:Radiant!|adiant]][[meta:mergist|_<font color="orange">&gt;|&lt;</font>]] 10:14, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    • No objections on CFD talk, and not much on TFD talk either. Suggest replacing it by a simple link to SFD. Radiant_>|< 00:23, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Passing along a comment...

...that I found while stub-sorting. It was appended to Cincinnati Subway, which was tagged with the generic {{stub}}.

<!--Note to stub sorters: I would have tagged this as something other than a generic stub but have become disgusted with the deletion of redirects like {{us-rail-stub}} to {{US-rail-stub}}, which make it harder for me to get the "proper" name correct.-->

The comment was left by User:SPUI(talk). I thought I'd post it here, so that it reach the appropriate audience. I don't really know what he/she's talking about, seeing as {{us-rail-stub}} exists and works, although it's got an ugly message on it, which is maybe the problem. -GTBacchus(talk) 07:11, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

User:SPUI has a bit of a bee in his bonnet about this page, seemingly thinking that he's the only one keeping time properly and everyone else is marching out of step (he's even gone as far as deleting entire sections of SFD in the past when a vote has been going against him by a margin of 4-1 or 5-1). With any luck he'll snap out of it sometime soon and realise that Wikipedia's about consensus. Grutness...wha? 10:07, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
The problem is that {{us-rail-stub}} is going to be deleted because it's not "properly capitalized". Thus instead of trying to figure out the proper capitalization/term/whatever, I am now just using {{stub}}. --SPUI (talk) 17:13, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
SPUI, please don't do that, it seems so counter-productive. Doing that makes more work for me, and others who tend Category:Stubs, who aren't necessarily the same people you're irritated with. Is is really that hard to remember that "US", being the name of a country, is capitalized? Or just keep a link handy to WP:WSS/ST, like I do? On the contrary, it also seems a bit wanton to me to delete useful redirects, and I've said so in the appropriate place, awaiting discussion, but I really can't condone willful use of a deprecated template in order to make a point. Consensus is what it is, and working on Wikipedia without respecting consensus is like. . . I don't know what it's like, but it seems like a questionable use of one's energy. -GTBacchus(talk) 17:39, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
{{stub}} had been serving us well for a long time. Then someone said "hey, this is too big" and started this whole stub sorting thing. There has never been anything wrong with using simply {{stub}}, and such a thing is not a POINT, especially as nothing is disrupted. It is merely a personal decision to spend the time writing articles rather than searching for the correct stub template. --SPUI (talk) 17:58, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
So, you're coming out against the very existence of stub categories? I mean, how was {{stub}} "serving us well", by creating an 80,000+ article behemoth category that was of no use to anyone? Stub categories are a Good Thing, they let people find articles in their field of interest or expertise that are in need of expansion. The {{stub}} template is serving us well now, I guess, because it's kept as empty as possible by a few people who've memorized all the correct capitalizations of all the categories, so I guess you can just tag things as {{stub}} and let others sort them for you, but pretending you're not creating more work for others is just that - pretending. Is it really that hard to capitalize the 'U' and the 'S' in US, every time, from now on, not just on stubs, but in every context, because that's how it's spelled? -GTBacchus(talk) 18:12, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
I have no problem with the existence of stub categories - what I have a problem with is the notion that not using them is somehow disruption. --SPUI (talk) 18:18, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
You know, I don't care whether it's a disruption, that wasn't my point, and I'll grant it to you, if that's important to you. I'll ignore the fact that WP:STUB says not to use the old template, and that your using the old one creates more work for people who've chosen to look after Category:Stubs, and that consensus favors the use of stub types. Forget all that - you're not causing any kind of disruption, and I'll never again suggest that you are. I retract my above link to WP:POINT, while maintaining the entire content of the sentence it was in (and to which it was unnecessary anyway). Your behavior isn't disruptive, it's.... well, it would just be common (non-disruptive) willful ignorance (which we haven't got a policy or guideline against), but the fact that you appended a snarky little "note for stub sorters" makes it garden variety (non-disruptive) pig-headedness (which we haven't got a policy or guideline against). Now I know to ignore you, so thanks for the heads-up. -GTBacchus(talk) 19:54, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I have to ask: What actual benefit is there to deleting {{us-*-stub}}s, etc? Surely process should take second place to ease of use. - SoM 18:16, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Hear, hear. -GTBacchus(talk) 19:54, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

What benefit?

  1. Redirected templates put more strain on the servers;
  2. Since all redirects have to be checked to make sure there isn't something wrong with the way they have been constructed, the less of them there are, the less work there is to do and the less likelihood that stubs won't turn up where they're meant to;
  3. Many redirect names are misleading, which is certainly the case with many of the redirects that use lower case country initials. If one is kept, then very soon others will start appearing ("Hey, if the US can call itself the us, why can't we call ourselves the xq?"). We've already had to delete things like sa-stub - almost certainly created in that form because us-stub and uk-stub existed (what the hell is a sa?), and not to delete the equivalents from other countries would show a clear bias;
  4. What is more difficult about using US-stub than us-stub, since in normal typing you'd type US to refer to the United States? If anything, it's harder to use us-stub, since it's a less natural thing to type.

That enough reasons? They're just four quick ones off the top of my head... Grutness...wha? 22:37, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I don't find those reasons at all convincing. In particular, #4 is empirically wrong, for many many people, in this universe. It seems perfectly natural to you and me, I daresay, but there are people who just don't think about words in terms of spelling and capitalization. I find it unfathomable, but it goes on, even at Wikipedia, and it's not the battle you want to choose.
Reason #2 fails because of this: functioning redirects encourage users to leave well enough alone. Once you make sure a redirect works, you never have to mess with it again. They don't tend to pick up long edit histories. Non-existent templates, on the other hand, that people are likely to type in, which empirically are the ones we're dealing with, prompt users to create new templates, badly formed ones at that. You cannot guarantee that someone typing in {{us-bio-stub}} and finding a red link will not just click the red link, create the template and move on. In fact, you can guarantee that's exactly what will happen, again and again, every time you delete it.
To put it bluntly - mark my words, if you delete these template redirects, they will reappear as malformed templates later on, and cause more trouble. I won't be the one to create them, but somebody will. As for reason #1, that seems to me an argument for redirect maintenance, which, rather than deleting them, consists of going occasionally to the "What links here" page and restubbing those articles, which a bot should be able to do quite easily. That kind of maintenance is much easier than the kind where you have to discover, identify, and re-delete malformed stub templates, possibly months after some poor misguided soul has created them and used them on dozens of articles. Am I making sense here? I'm willing to bow to consensus on this, but I'd like to think that my argument is at least being heard.
Oh, and I'm not trying to ignore your reason #3. I kind of see where you're coming from there, but... it seems that the solution again is not deletion but being clever about redirecting. Laxness with capitalization, I'm willing to cover for with redirects. Templates with names that are just unclear - those should probably redirect to a category like {{mislabeled-stub}}, which could be patrolled much more easily than recreated malformed stubs could be rediscovered and redeleted. We could even set up {{mislabeled-stub}} so that its stub message contains a link to WP:WSS/ST to help the editor find the correct template. Now that would reduce our workload! -GTBacchus(talk) 01:15, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Reason 1 is the most important, and for a project that's only got one bot (which is in full-time use) it's simply not practical to use it to re-stub templates on a regular basis.
Reason 2 doesn't encourage people to leave well enough alone. Quite the opposite - it encourages people that they can create shorthands stub redirect names whenever they want. The number of misnamed redirects is going down gradually, as people become aware that they are deleted. Which they are as soon as they try to use one and get a redlink. With the exception of one or two rebels, it's very very rare for anyone to re-create a stub redirect that's been deleted. it's happened maybe twice to my knowledge since sfd went live. That sort of improvement alone shows that cutting out redirects which don't conform to naming guidelines works.
Reason 3...are you serious about "mislabeled-stub"? It sounds like the sort of thing which would get us loads of complaints of the type received recently when a newbie stub sorter added a WSS template to an article talk page. Non-stub sorters don't want to be told to move something to a different stub - they want stub sorters to do it for them. So it won't get done - we'll just have a new stub category that exactly parallels the main Cat:Stubs when we could, instead, delete the unclear template to make sure it's no longer used.
As for Reason 4, it's exactly the sort of battle I want to choose. This is supposed to be an encyclopaedia - one that struggles enough with people thinking it's not much good because anyone can edit it. Misspellings and miscapitalisations do nothing to improve its reputation, and the more they can be eliminated, the better. Page redirects from misspellings are fine - after all, page redirects aren't used by editors, they're used by readers. Templates are used by editors, and any encouragement editors can be given to spell and capitalise things properly, the better - otherwise that sort of sloppiness will carry over into the articles thmselves. Grutness 04:59, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Hmmm... thank you for your thoughtful reply. You make good arguments, and although I remain skeptical about deleted redirects staying deleted, I must bow to your better knowledge of what actually goes on with stub types. I was basically thinking aloud with {{mislabeled-stub}}, and I'm willing to pursue the train of thought, so if that means I'm "serious", then yes. What occurs to me is this - and if this is just completely off the wall and silly, then there's nothing lost in just forgetting about it, but check it out:
What if malformed stubs were made to redirect to something called {{mislabeled-stub}} or something, which had a stub message saying: This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. You can also help by replacing the stub template with one from this list. All mislabeled stubs would redirect to that, so they'd be easy to find all in one place, and it wouldn't be a red link, but a blue link to the stub types page, and if the editor didn't feel like finding a type, that one would suffice until stub sorters come along.
The message attached to {{stub}} could also say the same thing - it would be great for it to link to the stub types page, and it shouldn't upset anyone any more than the message on the {{attention}} template, namely, Please also consider changing this notice to be more specific. We could even use the same wording, rather than what I wrote above. Even if the {{mislabeled-stub}} is a bad idea, letting the {{stub}} template ask for specification and link to WP:WSS/ST might be worth considering.
Just thinking aloud, like I said. -GTBacchus(talk) 05:43, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd have no objections to mislabelled-stub or whatever personally, though I do wonder if it might not lead to users of templates that redirect there ending up yet more "disgusted" (etc, etc) than they already are with redlinks or stubs-for-deletion messages. One might want to make the wording as "gentle" as possible, if one does anything along those lines. Alai 19:06, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
for what its worth i hate capitals and am not a good natural speller but it reminds me to get into "editing mode" and check what im doing when i try a template and it redlines. with the mislabelled stub message youd probably get people complaining about a link on a template to a wikiproject. there have been lots of arguments about that at template talk:stub. BL kiss the lizard 08:03, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Speediable categories

I'd like to propose a potential group of speediable categories. technically, they're almost certain to be already speediable under the category rules, but spelling things out may help clarify things. This doesn't come up very often, but there's one on today's nominations which fulfils these criteria: Any category which is

  • empty of stubs,
  • not linked to a template,
  • not used as a parent category, and
  • over 24 hours old is speediable

These are usually either malformed or deprecated, and in stub-specific cases wouldn't get any articles unless someone added a template to them, so, by being over 24 hours old, they are guaranteed to have been empty for that time (unless a template has just been deleted or redirected, in which case, it's highly unlikely that a new one is about to be added). As such they would almost certainly come within the "24 hours and it's gone" rule for categories. Grutness...wha? 07:52, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

  • What if they satisfy the above, but User:Grutness (who he) has added a "please do not delete" notice? e.g., Cat:Bangladesh stubs, and a half dozen or so others?  :) I assume these are hold-overs from the great "-related" debate, but haven't been moved-to yet? Alai 08:01, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
    • heh. Good point. And yes, they are a hold-over of that debate. I suppose if anyone wanted they could be speedied then re-created when needed. Things were in a bit of a state of flux during that debate though, hence the notices. Hopefully they won't be around much longer. Grutness...wha? 08:23, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
      I think I've tracked the last few of those down now, they're all on sfd. Grutness...wha? 08:26, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Strange problem - with sfd-t?

I've just come across a weird one, possibly a problem with sfd-t, although I suspect it's probably with {{Cayman-stub}}. Have a look at the bottom of the double-stubbed Grand Cayman. Seems OK, but the template that's up for deletion isn't Caribbean-geo-stub, it's Cayman-stub. so why is the sfd message above the geo-stub? My guess is that cayman-stub has somehow been coded to appear last on the article, but my knowledge of html isn't enough to know whether this is the real reason. Anyone have any ideas? Grutness...wha? 08:25, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

{{Cayman-stub}} was missing table and tr end-tags, and adding them fixed the problem. Not sure why that'd cause the templates to appear in the reverse order, but it's not too suprising invalid html would do strange things. --Mairi 08:34, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Possibly connected with the shutdown of the automatic fixer-upper that caused sigfile troubles earlier in the week? Whatever, thanks for fixing it. Grutness...wha? 09:24, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Assorted state highway stubs mess

Since karmafist logged the discussion without actually doing anything to the template (not even removing {{sfd-t}}), I decided it was about time to get something done. The only thing there seemed to be consensus for (and that guidelines unambiguously call for) is ending in -stub, and having hyphens. So I renamed all the templates to end in -stub, and have hyphens. All except 2 are of the form Foo-State-Highway-stub, which being closest to the old names seemed the most sensible in absense of consenus. The exceptions are {{Arizona-State-Route-stub}} (the original category and template used State Route, so that got kept) and {{Washington-state-highway-stub}} (which matches the capitalization of the existing stub category and main category). All of them have redirects of the form Foo-state-highway-stub (and Foo-State-Highway-stub for Arizona and Washington); Arizona also has {{Arizona-state-route-stub}}. The old names were kept as redirects, but the more anomalous ({{Arizona State Route Stub}} and {{New-Hampshire-State-Highway-stub}}) could probably go. If you want redirects from anything else, go create them.

My suggestion, for anyone who cares deeply about such things, would be to check the main category and stub category and see if they match as far as capitalization and use of highway/route. If they don't, nominate one or the other for renaming; as there's little point in having them be different. Individual nominations, or groups where you want the same exact thing to happen, would be far simpler.

It's a mess, but hopefully this brings abit more order to it. --Mairi 21:01, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Also, most of these categories don't have any parents listed, so if anyone feels like cleaning them up... --Mairi 21:07, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm asking for {{Washington-state-highway-stub}} to be moved back to {{Washington-State-Highway-stub}}. The uncapitalized category predates the WikiProject, and I'm asking for that to be fixed too. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 02:25, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Mairi's sounds like a reasonable compromise - as a temporary measure at least. I'm of the opinion that these should have been dealt with separately rather than in one clump, and won't be at all surprised if they drift back to SFD on an individual basis over the next few months. As for Rschen7754's suggestion, I'm strongly against it. Why have this one as "-Stub" when every single other stub template is at "-stub"? Having it as {{Washington-State-Highway-stub}} would make some sense though. Grutness...wha? 06:07, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Oops... that's what I meant. I corrected it above. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 06:31, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
It was most certainly intended as a temporary measure, with the idea that something needed to be done, and it's atleast better than what there was before. It's still far from desirable, since, for example, 35 of the 40 subcategories in Category:State highways are lowercase, while 1 of the stub categories is. --Mairi 01:09, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm happy with the standard as it is now: {{StateName-State-Highway-stub}}. But inevitably they will find their way back to SFD... Should we fix California to meet this standard? Texas has been fixed, and when I create the new stubs (at WP:WSS/P) I'll create them to this standard. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 06:43, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I have an additional debate at User talk:Rschen7754/Highway Capitalization. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 03:15, 2 December 2005 (UTC)


Redirect deletion guidelines

Arguments are frequent on WP:SFD as to delete or not delete certain template redirects. I think establishing a guideline for redirect deletion would be helpful, such as:

Any redirect to a stub template that does not comply with the naming guidelines AND does not provide any signifcant convenience for the editors should be deleted, as it puts additional stress on servers and is difficult to maintain by WP:WSS.

or:

All redirects to stub templates should be kept, as they are a help to editors.

Or some middle way. This could be used to simplify the deletion process. Conscious 08:25, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

the first way sounds better but add "unless there are special circonstances" after the "deleted". just in case weve forgotten something. BL kiss the lizard 08:48, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Historical Fiction Bookstub

I think that this stub category should not be deleted. The "book" section already is overpopulated, and it makes more sense to keep it so that people more interested in expanding articles about novels than articles about non-fiction books can navigate more easily. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sophysduckling (talk • contribs)

You need to add your input the relevant section of the project page. Not the talk page. --TheParanoidOne 06:50, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
anyway were only talking about renaming it not deleting it. BL kiss the lizard 06:54, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Looking to help clear out the SFD backlog

Greetings.

One of the things I mentioned in my recent RFA was that, if promoted to Admin, I would be more interested in helping out with the various xFD areas, where "x" doesn't equal "A". AFD gets all the admin glory, whereas the other various xFD pages seem relegated to the status of afterthought. Indeed, when I mention SFD on IRC, many people don't know what it stands for. (The common response is "What's SFD? Shit for Deletion?")

In any case, I was indeed promoted to admin a hair over a week ago, and now seek to make good on my campaign promises. I, along with a few other new admins, have already brought WP:RFD into some semblance of cohesion. However, at the time I was nominated for RFA, WP:RFD was pretty much ignored, had a backlog dating back 45 days, and nobody was showing much interest. So when I got the mop and bucket, there were no toes to step on when I started working on RFD.

WP:SFD, on the other hand, gives the impression of a well-established process, with regular participation by a core group of folks. In other words, many toes to potentially step on for novice admins like myself who might inadvertently allow their enthusiasm to exceed their experience.

I have raised these concerns on TheParanoidOne's talk page, and he feels that I should just dive in and help start clearing up the backlog, cleaning out the more obvious discussions. So that's what I'd like to do. But I figured that a little circumspection would go a long way in this case, so I'm giving folks a heads up here on the talk page.

All the best.
→ Ξxtreme Unction|yakkity yak 20:26, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Welcome on board! It's often "all hands to the pump" here. The main problem is that there's only one bot that does a lot of the major shifts (Mairibot - currently changing that big pile of "-related" categories over). A lot of the smaller changeovers can be done manually, though - and there's the logging of course... any help is much appreciated! Grutness...wha? 22:38, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
One thing that could help, even for the -related categories, is that I still end up doing some parts by hand: changing the category on the stub template, creating the new category (mostly copied from the previous category), changing over the subcategories (since the sorting is usually quite strange) and changing other (non-talk) links to the category. While the latter 2 could be done by bot, there's enough other minor changes I end up making that it seems better to do by hand. So if anyone wants to help doing those, that'd make the botting go a fair bit quicker.
One other thing is that it's generally better to leave [old] redirect deletions to be done by bot, as some of the pages that use the redirect will show up in the page that the template redirects to, meaning that those have to all be checking. And that's naturally far quicker by bot. (There's an explaination somewhere, perhaps early on this page, about the issues with template redirects). --Mairi 22:57, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
By [old] redirects, do you mean the stuff listed under the "Unfinished Business" heading? → Ξxtreme Unction|yakkity yak 23:08, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Nah, I meant ones that've existed for months before being listed for deletion. If it was createdly shortly before being nominated for deletion, there's alot less chance that it's been used. --Mairi 23:41, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

If a stub is moved or otherwise redirected, is it necessary that the original stub be orphaned? → Ξxtreme Unction|yakkity yak 03:58, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Depends.
  • If the consensus is to change the name of the stub category, then all stubs must be editted in order to place the stub articles in the new stub category even if the stub template itself keeps the same name.
  • If the consensus is that the old name of a stub template will not be kept as either a stub template or a redirect, then the articles must be restubbed or a red link for the deleted stub template will appear in the stub articles that use it.
  • If the consensus is to keep the old stub template as a redirect and the category is not being changed, then while it is considered desireable to restub so as to reduce server load to restub to the new template name, it is not absolutely necessary.
Hope that helps. Caerwine Caerwhine 04:18, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Not unless the redirect is going to be deleted. Which is usually the case around here (I'd say that's what always happens, unless there's consensus otherwise, but I'm not sure that's entirely true.) I generally orphan them anyway (unless it's a redirect from a more specific subject); but then again, that's alot easier with the bot... --Mairi 04:21, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Usually if the vote is for the template to be renamed, it is implied that the original name is deleted, unless there's a specific vote of keeping the old name as a redirect. A major reason for template renames on sfd is that the current names don't conform to naming guidelines, so the (misnamed) original versions aren't often kept. Grutness...wha? 09:18, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Templates for renames

Given the occassional confusion, I've created two new templates for renames: {{sfr-t}} and {{sfr-c}} (I can't see redirects being renamed too often). The syntax is {{sfr-t|New-name-stub}} and {{sfr-c|New name stubs}}. The parameters are optional (for when there isn't a specific name in mind), and there's no ugly wikicode visible when the parameter is left out. I've left the text on {{sfd-t}} and {{sfd-c}} as "deletion or renaming" for now, until people are aware of the new templates. --Mairi 23:02, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Heh. I was thinking of doing this myself sometime - glad to see you beat me to it! :) Grutness...wha? 09:19, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
I've been bold and added them to the directions at the top of the page. --Mairi 07:07, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

"The last of the -related's" from November 24th

This is just one big giant ... mess, for lack of a better word. This has so many problems with it. Too many items proposed in one go. Some have splintered off into their own SFD nominations (some dealt with, others not). Some have been renamed but others haven't. Claims to be the last, only to be followed by some more later on. Some have the sfd-c template on them, others don't. The sheer volume of entries and the splintering also makes it difficult to gauge what the concensus is for a particular entry. I have pushed through the changes for a few but I don't think I can reasonably do any more.

So I propose that we abandon this quagmire by logging the entire discussion under the Deleted section and noting down exactly what items were renamed. Possibly a note in the Not Deleted section as well, noting what wasn't changed (if anything) and pointing to the discussion on the Deleted page. Any items that still require changing can be renominated as appropriate.

I also propose that we never do anything like this again. Ever. (Please!)

Thoughts? --TheParanoidOne 23:00, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

  • It was indeed an attempt to deal with a problem at one swoop that was a bit over ambitious. However, execpt for the twelve categories that were renominated on December 2nd to explore possibilites other than a simple category renaming that had been raised during this discussion, the consensus was to simply rename them all. Unless a category from this one got relisted for further discussion on the 2nd, go ahead and work on it under this entry. Caerwine Caerwhine 03:57, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • To be fair, it's far less of a mess than the state highway stub debacle. As Caerwine says, we probably tried to bite off too much at once, but with the exception of the 12 stub types that needed to be dealt with separately (and are being dealt with separately), it's all been pretty straightforward. it's simply that there's such a lot of work in changing things over that's made it clog up the bottom of the page for so long. Grutness...wha? 05:50, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

rename from WP:CFD

From Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 December 14 there was a consensus to rename a number of Tanakh related categories, including

Does anyone here think it's necessary to run this through sfd as well, or should someone just do the rename? -- Rick Block (talk) 18:13, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

It probably should, but only because whether to rename the stub template to {{Tanakh-stub}} at the same time and whether to keep the old template as a redirect if a change is made probably ought to be discussed at the same time, as less work and fewer edits are involved in changing both the stub template and teh stub category at the same time than if we were to change first one and the other. If there were no chance of a template change, I'd say this would be one of the things that on any reasonable list of things to be done speedily with stubs, tho we don't have such a list as of yet. Caerwine Caerwhine 18:37, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
definately. those should never have gone thru cfd in the first place. it says so in step 1 of the instructions for cfd.as such the discussions at cfd probably arent valid ones. then again i doubt anyone would mind in this case since HeBible is a messy name. BL kiss the lizard 22:53, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
This one already came up on SFD in the non-geographical section of "The last of the -related's" and the suggestion was Category:Hebrew Bible/Tanakh-related stubs → Category:Hebrew Bible/Tanakh stubs. I mistakenly took the {{cfd}} tag on the category as an {{sfd-c}} tag and created the latter category. Currently, roughly half of the 300+ stubs have been moved over to the new category. --TheParanoidOne 23:47, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Delete this page?

Please note that SPUI has taken his WP:POINT crusade against this page to the village pump. Radiant_>|< 03:24, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

  • you might also want to look at this: [1]. Grutness...wha? 03:26, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
    • That appears to be a severe case of WP:POINT. I have blocked SPUI for 24 hours. Radiant_>|< 03:43, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Note: The MFD for this page, previously on speedy delete, has been reopened. xaosflux Talk/CVU 04:06, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Reviving the RFD/SFD discussion regarding stub redirects.

Greetings.

I have revived the discussion regarding the issue of where stub redirects should properly be addressed on the RFD talk page. My comments there are, in the main, a repo