[WikiEN-l] RE: Articles for Creation vs. Requested Articles

Fri Dec 9 14:34:07 UTC 2005

Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 08/12/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>   
>> What exactly is an "eternal stub", anyway?  I thought by definition a
>> stub was able to be expanded.
>>     
>
> An eternal stub is one that is eternally able to be expanded... but
> no-one ever does.
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
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>   
A workflow-based idea: how about auto-marking "eternal stubs" (defined 
by a year of no edits with a stub notice present) with a template 
warning that they will be deleted on a given date in another year's time 
if they have still not been edited? The deletion could be done 
automatically by the software: the process would be stopped 
automatically, and the timer canceled, by removing the template, and 
also removing the stub notice would prevent the article from being 
marked again.

This would have the effect of removing stagnant dross automatically, 
whilst keeping anything even slightly controversial, since all that 
would be required would be to make a single edit to keep the stub.

Category pages could be used by the various clean-up crews to make sure 
that any article-worthy stubs were expanded and the templates removed.

The same "auto-delete after x time if template not removed" principle 
could also be used for things like license problems on images.

-- Neil