Template talk:Stub

Stub overuse

Right now the wiki has 1473 content pages. It also has marked 719 of those articles as stubs. Almost exactly 50%. I think the stub template is wildly overused. Are really half the articles here so short on information to be deserving of a stub status? I certainly think not. Some of them could be chapters in a book, yet here they are marked as stubs. I don't think this makes sense. All articles can be expanded upon in some way probably, but that doesn't mean they should be given a stub status. Stub ought to be used for truly "too short" articles, very bareboned ones. Pangaea (talk) 16:52, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

2.5 years later, but I've only just seen this. You're right that they don't meet the requirements of Wikipedia-esque stubs. But unlike Wikipedia, we have a much more limited remit. Wikipedia by definition can't cover every detail, but we can cover all detail for our subject matter. The issue becomes knowing when there is information missing and prompting users to add it. Its the unknown unknown issue - things that the reader doesn't know aren't known they can't seek out or add- even more simply they might not know that we should cover it, or those aspects may be forgotten by editors, or may be overlooked. By adding them in the stub tag, we can note that the information is required and prompt readers and future editors to add it. Co-opting something with an existing definition from outside the wiki is not ideal, but honestly, true stubs are rare on this wiki and this is a better use for the template. {{Check Tag}} is also picking up some of the slack to reduce overuse by addressing some of the more casually required info. Harakoni (Wiki Moderator) (talk) 11:43, 7 March 2025 (UTC)