Wowpedia talk:Stub policy

Most of this was moved in from the Category:Stubs talk page, which is now a redirect to here --Mikk 12:11, 4 June 2006 (EDT)

New Stub Suggestions

Could do with a 'Stub/API' for all the techie pages. --Vrisch 11:39, 20 Jan 2006 (EST)

Hell, we could do with a big API page with all that stuff on one page, even though the size would probably go well above 100 KB. The list of API stubs is very, VERY high. Jeoh 12:57, 24 Jan 2006 (EST)

There is one now, thanks to Template:Tlink: Category:Stubs/API --Mikk 06:20, 26 May 2006 (EDT)

Proposal:

Add the following stubs:

• Template:Tlink - API stub.
• Template:Tlink - Lore stub. For canon Warcraft lore.
• Template:Tlink - Stub for Role-playing articles, fan fiction and observations. Use Template:Tlink for role-playing player character articles. Use Template:Tlink for WoW in-game non-player character articles. Use Template:Tlink for other Warcraft non-player character lore articles.
• Try out my overly bureaucratic, but highly democratic voting template below... ;-)

Votes

Yes:

1. Yes Fandyllic 5:36 PM PST 20 Jan 2006 - (Gotta vote for my own proposals, right?)
2. Yes Jeoh 11:08, 23 Jan 2006 (EST) - (I agree with this proposal, though it will add some work to us Stubbifiers. ;))
3. Yes Schmidt 01:52, 26 Jan 2006 (EST) - (This proposal seems to go without vote, doesn't it? But the Stub/RP doesn't make sense to me, but that's just me.)
4. Yes CJ 08:10, 8 Mar 2006 (EST) - (Instead of RP, Make that one fanfic?)
5. Yes Ralthor 22:46, 6 April 2006 (EDT) - ()

NOTE:' THis proposal has enough votes and enough time has passed that I think it can be implemented, but I want to copy this vote over to the Stub policy Discussion area before I do anything. --Fandyllic 8:50 AM PDT 2 May 2006

Err what the heck; could have sworn I said this already. Must have not hit Save. I've gone ahead and implemented Stub/API. I changed all API/Uncategorized pages to Stub/API. --Mikk 05:56, 26 May 2006 (EDT)

Stub/RP exists now, also. I'm tagging this Accepted. --Mikk 12:11, 4 June 2006 (EDT)

Comments

Why does this need to be voted on? Isn't this in the direct demesne of the Stubmaster? Schmidt 23:59, 3 Jan 2006 (EST)

Current stubmaster, MyndFyre hasn't contributed since 22 Dec 2005. And I haven't seen much of SilverSide lately either (17 Jan 2006). It doesn't really need a vote, but I haven't gotten around to actually creating the templates or using them, so I figured a vote would raise awareness a little. --Fandyllic 1:07 PM PST 24 Jan 2006

Concerning a future Template:Tlink vs. something else, here is the reason I picked that instead of {{Stub/Fanfic}} or something else. I've noticed at least two types of RP articles in WoWWiki: Fan Fiction and what I've called Observations. The former is your standard fantasy history based on the Warcraft Universe, but the latter is a role-playing interpretation of an actual in-game events. The latter category doesn't really represent "fan fiction" per se, since it recounts actual events, so it really falls under general RP, but not fan fiction. So I figured Template:Tlink would handle fan fiction, observations, and any othe RP-like stuff that isn't a Template:Tlink biography page. Does that make sense? --Fandyllic 4:13 PM PST 8 mar 2006

Well I want to vote yes, but I am just not convinced of a Stub/RP, although I think API and Lore are a must (I would also like to see Guide). Stub fan fiction doesn't make any sense to me. If someone is going to create fan fiction it shouldn't be a stub because they are going to be the only contributor to that (considering they made it up). In the end fan fiction doesn't make a lot of sense on a wiki, unless it has some sort of backing in published material or is some kinda group effort fan fic. If someone is going to create fan fic and only put it on the wiki, then it can be edited by no one else or everyone else can just make up stuff on it, there is no 'fact' associated with it that anyone can reference or verify. --Ralthor 01:30, 6 April 2006 (EDT)

Even though, I'm not really into RP, I think your characterization of fan fic is a bit off base. Some of the fan fic people post is based on shared experiences in-game. For example there may be some shared fan fic between RP guilds that you might want to put on the wiki. Also, lots of what we consider "lore" isn't really backed up by published sources, but represents recall and interpretation on sources, some of which are spontaneous forum posts by Blizzard employees. If the wiki isn't a place for fan fic, then what kind of place is? I would argue that fan fic may be more appropriate to find in a wiki than other stuff you can just find anywhere like BlizzPlanet, LunarFalls, etc. --Fandyllic 3:38 PM PDT 6 Apr 2006

Alright you have convinced me of my ignorance of fanfic. ;) I'll vote for it sense I think the other two stub types are really needed, and I don't know anything about fanfic (don't read it or write it) so I will let the lore people deal with that stuff and not be a naysayer ;) Now that I think about it I am not into warcraft lore official or not at all--Ralthor 22:44, 6 April 2006 (EDT)

Add Char, Deprecate Character

Added:

• Template:Tlink - Put this on pages describing any characters not in the game but in the lore (books or web) or in previous Warcraft games.

Clarified usage. Shortened stub name to make it quicker to type. Why type out character each time?

Deprecated:

• Template:Tlink - This refers to any aspect of the game that relates to the player and that doesn't fit in one of the above categories.

It doesn't make much sense (at least it isn't clear to me what this was for exactly).

I don't think the impact of these changes will be that large, since people hardly use stubs correctly anyway.

--Fandyllic 4:46 PM PST 28 Dec 2005

Categorization of stubs

template:Stub/Ability: "Anything the user triggers with a button", other than a macro, since a macro doesn't necessarily have to call an ability. It might just be to say something such as "By the Light!" or "Cursed be you, %t!" or that sort of thing.

This seems to include profession skills, spells, and other class powers. This seems to conflict with the current definition of ability which currently excludes spells. --Fandyllic 11:51 PM PST 26 Mar 2006

template:Stub/NPC: Why should NPCs include those not in the game? I do understand that they just happen to be non-player characters, but I feel like they should be sectioned off, because they don't appear in the game – especially for the stubs categories.

template:Stub/Accuracy: Most properly, this should not have stub associated with it at all. This would be a disputed article, and indeed facts do need to be checked, but most precisely it's not a stub. It does require the same kind of work to correct, however.

It would be good to also check other templates already set up for other categories of stubs, such as template:pet-stub. There are probably others, but with my simple search that I made, that's all I found other than template:sectionstub and template:emptystub. Schmidt 01:28, 11 Dec 2005 (EST)

The NPC thing is well thought out - I want *ANY* character to appear in there - in other words, *ANY* intelligent being related to Warcraft *EXCEPT* for the player himself. Easier to understand? The accuracy one I did not create, I have no idea what the h*** that is about; the ability one is obvious, I didn't want to get that in-depth; and I think all three of the last need to be terminated (pet stub is a study in pointlessness, sectionstub is an O.K. idea that is rather deprecated by just marking the article itself as a stub, and empty stub... well, for an editor's purposes, how is an empty stub different from a stub with two, or four, or 8 lines of text in it?) --  _ℑilver§^ℑide 02:12, 11 Dec 2005 (EST)

LOL. "Study in pointlessness" is usually said "exercise in futility," whenever I've heard anything like that, but no matter. If you had said it either way, I still would have cracked up simply because it is so true. (I say stuff like that all the time, I'm sure.)

Just so you know, I feel like as long as Warcraft-universe, non-WoW characters are included in the same as the NPCs of the game, the title of it should be different from NPCs. Not that there's an especial problem with the inclusion itself, but the term NPC is usually reserved for someone that actually appears in the game you're referring to. This goes for movies, too. For instance, in a movie or a play or a narrative story, if a character never shows up on stage (or its counterpart), they're not really a play character; they're what I would call a Third Character. (I may have the term wrong, but it sounds right to me. In Waiting For Godot, Godot is one of these characters.) To me, lore characters fit in this Third Character category. They're spoken of, and they're known, but they never show up. Also the content of an NPC article would naturally be very different from the content of a Third Character article, largely because so many of the NPC articles here are on NPCs that are known only for being one or another kind of vendor or trainer or questgiver. But indeed, this isn't my sector, but I'm only giving you my rationale there.

As for the other templates I named, for all I care, go ahead and ditch them, but you might want to make a note that they're deprecated, if that concerns you. I do understand your logic there. Schmidt 02:27, 11 Dec 2005 (EST)

Also, I just noted that these are stub categories, not permanent categories, so it would probably help many of these stub guys if they were separate so they would know who's lore and who's not. And for the permanent categories, well, I've already expressed my thoughts on that. Schmidt 02:34, 11 Dec 2005 (EST)

*sigh* I never really appreciated my true inner genius... just kidding, just kidding rofl ok but here: have a {{Stub/Character}} for any character in-game; then SEPARATE a {{Stub/Lore}} for anything that doesn't have lore filled out, including characters in-game or our-of-game or items or whatever! Then the Bookkeepers can check the [[Stubs/Lore]] category for items that need lore information! That way we keep the lore and the game information stubbed separately even when they're on the same page! Does that make *any* sense? --  _ℑilver§^ℑide 15:25, 11 Dec 2005 (EST)

Yes, indeed. I reformatted your paragraph according to what I figured you probably had wanted it to be. Schmidt 17:51, 11 Dec 2005 (EST)

Stub policy

Is there any chance of creating a policy for correctly stubbing articles? --Jeoh 14:17, 24 Jan 2006 (EST)

There is a place-holder, but no actual policy. Ironically, the stub policy is itself a stub. If you have any ideas, put them here and I'll try to fill in the stub policy for a proposal and vote. --Fandyllic 1:17 PM PST 24 Jan 2006

I hope you don't mind the fact I added some information to it :) After all, we are all stubbifiers. --Jeoh 14:53, 25 Jan 2006 (EST)

I boldly went ahead and formulated the actual policy: "Stubs shall be marked as stubs, using properly categorized stub tags from the list below." and yanked the stub tag from the stub policy :-)   --Mikk 06:21, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

Deletion of API articles found here

I've commenced deleting about 99% of the articles here that are API related but empty. The reason is that it's more beneficial to all to see on the API list whether or not there's information. I'm certain that anyone who looks at that page agrees. Anyways, just so everyone knows, all of them that I've deleted were edited exactly once or twice by our dear little friend Puta20, that great bot, and incidentally, all of them have been edited by Muert to make the content exactly {{template:API/Uncategorized}}. Anyways, since there was no further information, I deleted them. Rest assured that I checked the history beforehand. If there were any articles that had any information in them, I haven't done anything with them, and don't intend to. (I have no working knowledge of mods, and I don't pretend to.) I hope this helps in determining what is lacking. Schmidt 00:43, 7 Mar 2006 (EST)

Deprecated Stubs!

I went through all the articles linking to the deprecated stubs and used (hopefully) the correct stub. I Categorized the Lore articles with Stub/Lore, even though it doesn't exist just yet so that I wouldn't have to go back and recategorize them. I will probably create this soon if no one else does, but now would probably be a good time to just delete the deprecated stub templates that we don't want people using?? Also as I was categorizing the old section stubs and such a lot of them where using the sectionocat template even though they never actually used the section template that adds a category, so I have to agree with his comment on the front page that Template:Tlink is probably not needed.--Ralthor 09:31, 3 June 2006 (EDT)

I've tagged all the deprecated templates for deletion (except Template:Tlink itself, for good reason I believe) after making sure that they weren't even being linked to. --Mikk 13:25, 4 June 2006 (EDT)

Personally, I'd want to get rid of both of the Stub/Section tags. They're making zero sense to me. We could just as easily rephrase the other stub tags so that they say "article/section", and then people can use those. Actually, I'll just start a vote about it I think. --Mikk 10:36, 4 June 2006 (EDT)

I'm not all too fond of Sub/Section, however there may be a place for it. Let's say, under Orgrimmar (for example) all other sections of the city are covered, but not the Drag, you might want to tag that with a section stub. On the other hand, it might be best to just tag the section with Stub/Location or whatever would best belong there. Upon actually reading your comment better, I completely agree with you, Mikk. Wonder of wonders! Schmidt 10:54, 4 June 2006 (EDT)

Vote started below. --Mikk 13:25, 4 June 2006 (EDT)

Proposal to get rid of Stub/Section and Stub/Section2

I assume I have to do this as a policy proposal, since the stub policy is .. well.. a policy? --Mikk 11:00, 4 June 2006 (EDT)

Stub/Section and Stub/Section2 do not make sense to me. There's no way of guessing what kind of page you'll end up on if you browse Category:Stubs/Section.

I think deprecating them and just rephrasing the rest of the stubs to work in a section context also makes more sense.

--Mikk 11:00, 4 June 2006 (EDT)

== Policy ratification vote ==

Yes

1. Yes Mikk 11:01, 4 June 2006 (EDT) - (my idea so...)
2. Yes Schmidt 20:06, 24 June 2006 (EDT) - ()
3. Yes Fandyllic 7:38 PM PDT 24 Jun 2006 - (See below.)
4. Yes Kirkburn 17:55, 25 June 2006 (EDT) - ()

No

Comments

• I've already edited the stub templates to say "article or section". They might be a bit too bloaty for use in sections though. I think I'll go through and make some things <small>. --Mikk 07:05, 5 June 2006 (EDT)
• I'm giving a qualified support, since the regular stubs are pretty bloaty to be used just for unfinished sections. The whole section stuff was an idea to indicate the article was mostly filled out (not really a stub), but an important section was effectively empty. --Fandyllic 7:40 PM PDT 24 Jun 2006

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