[Wikipedia-l] Truth in advertising

Tue Sep 24 04:57:53 UTC 2002

On Monday 23 September 2002 02:32 pm, The Cunctator wrote:
> To implement this we need two components:
> * a way of denoting "insufficient" entries (or "sub-stubs" or
> "micro-stubs", etc.) similar to the "watch this page" function
> * a way of marking such entries in the text of the entries; e.g. different
> link coloration or a "!" instead of a "?"

This has already been suggested in one way or another by several people now, 
including me. This could in fact be married with the proposed 500 
byte/character article definition cut-off whereby any page that is less than 
500 characters yet meets the current criteria for automatic article detection 
would be marked as being a stub. 

I could also see having a function where an article that is above the 500 
character minimum threshold but is still obviously inadequate to human eyes 
to be even a minimal article on the subject, could be "voted" to be counted 
as a stub.  

For example, a 700 character article on US history could only be a stub under 
most anybody's definition -- a simple list of major conflicts the US has been 
involed in and the most important presidents and generals would be more than 
1000 characters. On the other hand, a 510 character article on some obscure 
Mayan god that even most present day Maya decendents are unaware of, could 
possibly classify as a minimal article and not a stub so long as it is well 
written. So I see the range of 500 to a 1000, or maybe even, 1500 bytes as 
the major subjective stubiness realm.    

Of course, I still argue that that 95+% of encyclopedia topics objectively 
can't be covered even as minimal articles with fewer than 500 characters. I 
would further argue that it is not possible to have a decent definition using 
fewer than 100 characters, but that is a different thread.... 

It is very interesting that you mention the use of ! for denoting stubs -- a 
newbie posted /exactly/ that suggestion on my talk page. It is strange 
sometimes how the same idea is simultaneously proposed by several different 
people at once. I guess good ideas are infectious. :-)

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

PS, I'm still a bit mad, but I'm glad we are on rational speaking terms again 
Cunctator. 