Some Wikipedians have formed a project to better organize and categorize stubs and stub categories. This page and its subpages contain their suggestions; it is hoped that this project will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians. Everyone is welcome to help; for more information please inquire on the talk page or see the "To do" list.
Stub articles are generally short, or below the high Wikipedia standard, or both. If they are not sorted, then it means they are less likely to be edited to higher quality as nobody necessarily knows the page is in need of attention. Even if a page is sorted into a category indicating it is in need of attention, such as the articles needing a cleanup, it is still not as good as putting it in a stub category. This is because stub categories attract experts in specific areas (chemists can see chemistry stubs for example), whereas generic cleanup and deadend categories do not.
To put an article into a stub category, change the existing stub tag (if it exists) from {{stub}} to, for example, {{chem-stub}} if it is a chemistry stub.
The guideline Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout#Standard appendices and footers states that any stub tags should be placed at the very bottom of the article, after all other templates and categories. Two blank lines should be left between the first stub tag and whatever precedes it.
When sorted, you may leave an edit summary like this to encourage others to help: Stub-sorting. [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting|You can help!]]
You may wish to inform the creator of the stub that the use of {{stub}} is no longer recommended by putting {{subst:stubsort}} on their talk page. Alternatively, you may use {{subst:Stub sort}}.
No stub article should sit in only a stub category as this association is meant to be temporary. If no other category is listed, please add the standard article category that is the parent of the stub category.
Please remember to use the list of stub categories to make sure you are putting stubs in the correct category.
If the article is no longer a stub, remove the stub template. Refer to Wikipedia:Stub for more information on this matter.
If it interests you, consider checking talk pages of stub articles to see whether they've been tagged by some appropriate WikiProject. Adding a suitable project banner to a stub's talk page can help bring it to the attention of the right editors more quickly.
See the project's "To do" list for those categories which are very large and those categories for which new sub categories have recently been added and thus need to be resorted.
Category:Stubs frequently reaches staggeringly large numbers; help is always needed sorting articles into more specific sub-stub categories.
All other stub categories need watching as well, to sort out mislabeled stubs and subsort them further, if applicable.
If a large (> 800 stubs) stub subcategory interests you and there aren't yet any subcategories in it, propose some subcategories at WP:WSS/P.
If you find new stub templates, list them at WP:WSS/D for discussion.
A longer list of oversized stub categories to be split, in order of size, is here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/To do. This might also be used as a holding area for proposals not yet created, and for sub-categories in need of being sorted-down into. Alai 17:30, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
User scripts: A user script is a bit of JavaScript that gets loaded each time you visit a Wikipedia article and that does things for you. Their use is very varied. Some add popups to links, others make editing easier (regex search and replace), others change the way an article is formatted or simplify common tasks. Usually the script is copied into a user's .js file.
Navigation popups: Installed in a user's .js file, this causes a small box to pop up when your mouse hovers over a wikilink. The box can show you the first paragraph of an article, whether it's tagged as a stub, how many categories it has, etc. Can be useful for finding stubs and for categorizing an article according to the text in the first paragraph.
CatScan: Essentially a Boolean search tool. Enter a category or template and find items that use a different cat or template, find all items under a certain size, find images, etc.
AutoWikiBrowser: The AutoWikiBrowser is a semi-automated Wikipedia editor for Microsoft Windows 2000/XP (or newer) designed to make tedious repetitive tasks quicker and easier. It is essentially a browser that automatically opens up a new page when the last is saved. When set to do so, it suggests some changes (typically formatting) that are generally meant to be incidental to the main change. At present, AutoWikiBrowser can create a list of articles from single or multiple categories, "what links here", the wiki links on an article, a text file, a Google search, a user's watchlist, or a user's contributions. More about AWB...
{{DEFAULTSORT:}}: You can use this code to force an article to sort correctly (i.e. without an article, or by last name first), no matter what category it's in, even in stub categories. From the January 2007 Technology Report:
The default sort key of a page for categories can be changed using the new {{DEFAULTSORT}} magic word. For instance, on George Washington, {{DEFAULTSORT:Washington, George}} would cause a subsequent [[Category:United States presidents]] to be equivalent to [[Category:United States presidents|Washington, George]], not [[Category:United States presidents|George Washington]]. This is especially useful when the article belongs in many categories.
These are the project's templates. They are not the same as the stub templates used by the project.
Template {{WPSS-cat}} is used at the top of stub categories. It appears like this:
This category is maintained by WikiProject Stub sorting.
Please propose new stub templates and categories here before creation.
Template {{Stub category}} is also used at the top of stub categories. It appears like this:
This category is for stub articles relating to foo. You can help by expanding them. To add an article to this category, use {{Foo-stub}} instead of {{stub}}.
This category is for stub articles relating to foo. You can help by expanding them. This stub category is a parent-only category, that is, all stubs within it should be in one of its subcategories, or marked with a template which may eventually have a separate subcategory. To add an article to this category, please use the appropriate template for one of its subcategories.
Template {{Underpopulated stub category}} is used on pages for new stub categories which need to be populated. It appears like this:
It has been requested that this stub category be populated.Please add any stub articles that fall within this category to it. Please remove this tag once the category has been populated. This tool can help find stubs that belong in this category.
Template {{Upmerged stub category}} is used on category pages where there are upmerged templates feeding into that category. It appears like this:
This stub category contains upmerged templates which use this category, although they describe a more specific type. If an upmerged template is used on more than 60 stubs you can request a sub-category at WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals.
Template {{Very large stub}} is used at the top of stub categories which are oversized. It appears like this:
