Charles Matthews wrote:
Providing an _optional_ template might not do a lot of
harm; but given
the way stubs operate, thought should be given as to which 'fields' are
really compulsory. I've been seeing quite a number of Indian/Chinese
music and dance articles recently - do we really expect references and
web sites for these? From the point of view of increasing Wiki-en's
reach, we do need the stub that simply points out a gap. WP is founded
on stubs, after all.
If they know what a stub is and to put in {{stub}}, they don't need the
template.
There is a tension: the more complete WP is on things
about which being
fairly complete is not so hard, the more difficult it is to make
articles in the less-favoured areas match up. I don't want to see this
develop into a your-reach-is-greater-than-your-grasp faultline.
There is that. OTOH, refs are a good way for a newbie stub not to take a
quick journey via Votes For Deletion. It depends whether the ego bruising
from the VFD process is worse than the effort to say where they got some
piece of information.
- d.