NOTE: This page is NOT for proposing new stub articles. To do that, please visit Wikipedia:Articles for creation.

Basic information

A stub is an article containing only a few sentences of text which is too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject, but not so short as to provide no useful information, and it should be capable of expansion. Sizable articles are usually not considered stubs, even if they lack wikification or copy editing. With these articles, a cleanup template is usually added instead of a stub template. Note that if a small article has little properly sourced information, or if its subject has no inherent notability, it may be deleted or be merged into another relevant article.

While a "definition" may be enough to qualify an article as a stub, Wikipedia is not a dictionary. The distinction between dictionary and encyclopedia articles is best expressed by the use–mention distinction:

• A dictionary article is about a word or phrase and will often have several different definitions for it
• An encyclopedia article is about the subject denoted by the title but usually has only one definition (or in some cases, several definitions that are largely the same) but there may be several equivalent words (synonyms) or phrases for it.

There is no set size at which an article stops being a stub. While very short articles are likely to be stubs, there are some subjects about which there is very little that can be written. Conversely, there are subjects about which a lot could be written - their articles may still be stubs even if they are a few paragraphs long. As such, it is impossible to state whether an article is a stub based solely on its length, and any decision on the article has to come down to an editor's best judgement (the user essay on the Croughton-London rule may be of use when trying to judge whether an article is a stub). Similarly, stub status usually depends on the length of prose text alone - lists, templates, images, and other such peripheral parts of an article are usually not considered when judging whether an article is a stub.

Ideal stub article

Shortcut:
WP:IDEALSTUB

Any registered editor may start a stub article.

Article creation ⇧
Basic help

• Getting started using Wikipedia
• Starting an article
• Your first article
• Stub creation

Concepts and guides

• Standard layout
• Stub articles
• Lead sections
• Sections
• Perfect article

Development processes

• Moving/renaming
• Merging/integration
• Categorization
• Requested articles
• Most wanted articles
• Articles for creation

Meta tools and groups

• Special:NewPages
• New pages patrol
• New ~ by topic
• WikiProject ~ for creation
• WP:DYK new additions
• Category:New templates

When you write a stub, bear in mind that it should contain enough information for other editors to expand upon it. The key is to provide adequate context—articles with little or no context usually end up being speedily deleted. Your initial research may be done either through books or reliable websites. You may also contribute knowledge acquired from other sources, but it is useful to conduct some research beforehand, in order to ensure that your facts are accurate and unbiased. Use your own words: directly copying other sources without giving them credit is plagiarism, and may in some cases be a violation of copyright.

Begin by defining or describing your topic. Avoid fallacies of definition. Write clearly and informatively. State, for example, what a person is famous for, where a place is located and what it is known for, or the basic details of an event and when it happened.

Next, try to expand upon this basic definition. Internally link relevant words, so that users unfamiliar with the subject can understand what you have written. Avoid linking words needlessly; instead, consider which words may require further definition for a casual reader to understand the article. Lastly, a critical step: add sources for the information you have put into the stub; see citing sources for information on how to do so in Wikipedia.

Once you create and save the article, other editors will also be able to enhance it.

How to mark an article as a stub

After writing a short article, or finding an unmarked stub, you should insert a stub template. Choose from among the templates listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types.

This is placed at the end of the article, after the External links section, any navigation templates, and the category tags, so that the stub category will appear last. It is usually desirable to leave two blank lines between the first stub template and whatever precedes it. As with all templates, stub templates are added by simply placing the name of the template in the text between double pairs of curly brackets (e.g., {{tree-stub}}). Stub templates are transcluded, not substituted.

Stub templates have two parts: a short message noting the stub's topic and encouraging editors to expand it, and a category link, which places the article in a stub category alongside other stubs on the same topic. The naming for stub templates usually topic-stub; a list of these templates may be found here. You need not learn all the templates — even simply adding {{stub}} helps (see this essay for more information). The more accurately an article is tagged, however, the less work it is for other sorters later, and the more useful it is for editors looking for articles to expand.

If an article overlaps several stub categories, more than one template may be used, but it is strongly recommended that only those relating to the subject's main notability be used. A limit of three or, if really necessary, four stub templates is advised.

Stub-related activities are centralised at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting (shortcut Wikipedia:WSS). This project should be your main reference for stub information, and is where new stub types should be proposed for discussion prior to creation.

Removing stub status

Shortcut:
WP:DESTUB

Once a stub has been properly expanded and becomes a larger article, any editor may remove its stub template. No administrator action or formal permission is needed.

Many articles still marked as stubs have in fact been expanded beyond what is regarded as stub size. If an article is too large to be considered a stub but still needs expansion, the stub template may be replaced with an {{expand}} template (no article should contain both a stub template and an expand template).

Be bold in removing stub tags that are clearly no longer applicable.

Locating stubs

• Category: Stub categories the main list of stub categories and of articles contained within them
• Category: Stubs deprecated, but still receives a few articles periodically
• Wikipedia: Most wanted stubs
• Special:Shortpages
• By setting stub threshold in Preferences to a maximum number of bytes for a page to be placed in class "stub" for markup purposes.

Creating stub types

Please propose new stub types at WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals so that they may be discussed prior to creating them.

In general, a stub type consists of a stub template and a dedicated stub category, although "upmerged" templates are also occasionally created which feed into more general stub categories.

If you identify a group of stub articles that do not fit an existing stub type, or if an existing stub category is growing very large, you can propose the creation of a new stub type which is debated at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals.

Example

An example of a stub template is {{Writer-stub}}, which produces:

The stub category, Category:Writer stubs, lists all articles containing the {{Writer-stub}} template.

Guidelines

Several guidelines are used to decide whether a new stub type is useful. These include the following:

1. Is there a stub type for this topic already? (Check Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types.)
2. Will the new type be well-defined? (Stub categories are a tool used by editors to expand articles. Good topic definition makes stubs easier to sort accurately.)
3. Does the new stub type cover ground not covered by other type, or create a well-defined subtype that does?
4. Will there be a significant number of existing stubs in this category? (Ideally, a newly-created stub type has 100-300 articles. In general, any new stub category should have a minimum of 60 articles. This threshold is modified in the case of the main stub category used by a WikiProject.)
5. Would your new stub type overlap with other stub types? (Stub types form a hierarchy and as such are usually split in specific ways. Compare other stub splits at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types.)
6. If you are breaking a subtype out of an existing type, will the new creation reduce the size of the parent by a significant amount? (This is not an absolute necessity, but is often a catalyst for the creation of stub categories. Stub categories containing over 800 articles are typically considered to be "over-sized", and in need of such sub-types.)

If you think you have satisfied these guidelines, it is highly recommended that you propose the new stub type at stub type proposals page. This allows for debate on matters relating to the stub type that may not have occurred to the proposer, and also allows for objections if the split does not satisfy stub guidelines. If there are no objections within five days, you may create the new stub type.