Wikiquote:Stub

This page is a guideline on Wikiquote. It illustrates standards of conduct, which many editors agree with in principle, but it is not policy. Feel free to update the page, but please discuss major changes on the talk page first.

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Stubs, as the name suggests, are articles which have not yet grown beyond a few quotes. These articles have been created, but do not include enough information to be truthfully considered "articles" or collections of quotations. However, the Wikiquote community believes that stubs are far from worthless; they are, rather, the first step articles take on their course to becoming complete.

Identifying a stub

A stub is an article which is too short to be truly useful, but not so short as to be useless. In general, it should have at least one quotation, and should have some identifying information of the article's title (be it a link to Wikipedia, 2-3 sentences of introduction, etc.). If the article lacks the former, it could be a candidate for speedy or regular deletion, while a page that lacks the latter, especially for a long time, might also be nominated for deletion (see {{no-intro}}).

Categorizing stubs

After writing or finding a stub article, the editor should insert what is called a stub template, which makes it possible for the article to be flagged as a stub. By convention, these stub templates should be placed near the top of the article. (If the article has a short introductory paragraph, placing the tag immediately after this is both useful and elegant.)

Stub templates are composed of two distinct parts: first, a short message stating that said article is a stub of a particular kind and encouraging editors to expand it; second, a category link, which places the article on a stub category, together with other stubs on the same subject.

The need for stub categories arose when the main stub category—Category:Wikiquote stubs—became so full that it became quite hard to find articles on a specific topic. With stub categories, if an editor is, for example, television fan, he or she can look for articles with the tag {{tv-stub}} in Category:TV stubs and easily find stubs to edit.

In general, the naming convention for stub templates is topic-stub; for a complete list of these templates, refer to the stub list. When marking articles as stubs, please be as precise and accurate as you possibly can—it saves other editors a lot of work further down the road. If an article overlaps two potential categories, two different stub templates may be used, but using more than two is strongly discouraged.

Ideal stub article

When you write a stub article, bear in mind that its main purpose is to be expanded, and thus it should include enough information to allow other editors to expand it. By preference, your subject should have a Wikipedia article. (You can create a Wikipedia stub yourself; see Wikipedia:Stub for the Wikipedia stub guidelines.) In either case, a short introduction is useful, and is strongly encouraged if there is no Wikipedia article. Your initial research may be done either through books or through a reliable search engine such as Yahoo! or Google. You may also contribute with knowledge you have acquired from other sources, but it is useful to conduct a small amount of research beforehand.

Then, you should find at least one quotation. Sourced quotations (those with a specific, verifiable reference) are preferable, but widely attributed quotes are also accepted, as long as they are clearly marked as "attributed". Even though the stub message puts the article into a stub category, you are strongly encouraged to put the article into a regular category as well; see Category:Categories.

One important source for quotations, particularly of literary works, is related works from other people. Chances are, if one author found it worth quoting, then it's probably good Wikiquote material as well, and this may help you track down the original source. (A good number of Wikiquote articles started out this way.) You might also look for reviews, summaries, or biographies of your subject for pertinent material; material from these sources may help to start an "About" or "Criticism" section. (You should probably avoid consulting other compendia of quotations, however, unless you are willing and able to track down the original source; such publications sometimes have inadequate or inaccurate references.)

Once you have submitted the article, there are a number of courses it may take. Another editor might get interested in it and develop it further, or you could expand it yourself once you have found more quotations related to the subject or once you have more free time on your hands.

Locating stubs

Category:Wikiquote stubs the main list of stub categories and of articles contained within them

Special:Shortpages

Wikiquote:Stub/sort is an experiment at stub sorting