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Icon-policy Wowpedia:Policies

Policy status and phases

Category
Copyright
Deletion
Speedy deletion
Disallowed content
NDA
Editing
Disruptive editing
External links
Fan fiction
Images

 

Item articles
Lore
Naming
Neutrality
Personal articles
Player character pages
Projects
Stubs
Three revert rule
User naming
Vandalism
Voting

See also: guidelines, administrators
policy sign

This page is an official policy on Wowpedia.

This policy has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow.

  • Feel free to propose any changes to this policy, but please make sure that changes you make follow the official process and reflect consensus on the discussion page before you put them into practice. Any big changes need to be Adopted or Decreed to be enforced as policy.
  • See Wowpedia:Policies for an overview of Wowpedia policies.
  • See Category:Policies for a list of proposed and adopted policy articles.
  • Shortcut: WP:STUB

A stub is an article which still needs improvement or that which is not complete. A stub template/tag is a placeholder indicator or marker for an unfinished article in a wiki.

Its purpose is to inform visitors that they've arrived at a very unfinished page (as opposed to a normal wiki page which simply never gets finished), and also to automatically classify the page to make it easier for contributors to find and fill out.

The other implication of a stub is that the editor who added the stub marker probably doesn't intend to fill out what they think is missing in the near future.

The policy[]

"Stubs shall be marked as stubs, using properly categorized stub tags from the list below."

However, please note the following:

  • Do not create pages containing a stub tag but absolutely no content, e.g. a page of article management templates and empty sections. Stubs are for expanding info currently present, not a method for removing red (broken) links.
  • Similarly, do not add sections that contain a stub tag, and no actual content, to an article.
  • Do not stub pages that cannot feasibly be expanded in the near future. If no more information exists, it's not a stub.

Marking a page as a stub[]

Add an appropriate stub template at the top of the article. These are templates that add the article to a stub category so that they can be tracked down later for further addition and expansion.

The {{Stub/<sub-category>}} tag can be used at the top of pages, as well as inside sections of the page.

If you're stumped (as to which category to use), use {{Stub/Other}}, but please try to use one from the quicksheet below and to the right.

Dealing with a stub[]

It's simple: add information to the article! You can remove the stub template if you think the article or section has been sufficiently filled out.

Throughout Wowpedia are articles with little or no content that have been created with the intention of filling them in. These are referred to as stubs and are tagged specifically to tell visitors that they are, in fact, stubs, and to make it easier for other contributors to find them.

Finding stubs[]

If you created a stub previously and need to find it again, or just want to help fill out some stubs, start looking in Category:Stubs. It contains a listing of all the stub categories – each of the different stub templates place articles in their own category, e.g. "Stubs/Item", "Stubs/Quest", etc.

Fixing a stub[]

  • If you see a stubbed article you'd like to work on, feel free to add to and edit it, but keep in mind the editing policy.
  • Looking at the Discussion page, or pages that link to the page ("What links here" link in the left hand toolbar), might give you valuable clues to what the page should contain.
  • While working on the article, you should generally leave the {{Stub/<sub-category>}} tag in.
  • If you think the article you worked on is complete enough (has the basic information the article's title suggests), you can remove the stub tag.

Details on stubs[]

Stubs Quicksheet
WoW Gameplay
WoW Patches
Warcraft universe
UI
Others

Current stubs in use at Wowpedia:     [edit]

Gameplay
{{Stub/Ability}} - Any article about a class ability, spell, enchants, or anything that the user triggers with a button. Not to be confused with talents. Also includes NPC or mob powers.
{{Stub/Achievement}} - Any article about an achievement.
{{Stub/Item}} - Any page about an item.
{{Stub/Location}} - Any location in the Warcraft universe - dungeons, instances, cities, zones, continents, etc.
{{Stub/Mob}} - NON-interactive, non-player characters or monsters (mobs).
{{Stub/NPC}} - Interactive non-player characters (NPCs).
{{Stub/Object}} - Any page about an object.
{{Stub/Profession}} - A profession article that isn't an item or a recipe, such as a transmute or an enchant.
{{Stub/Quest}} - Pages about specific quests.
{{Stub/Strategy}} - A strategy or tactics stub for mobs, like instance bosses. Needed when there is a lack of strategies on a boss page.
{{Stub/Talent}} - Any article about a class talent. Not to be confused with abilities.
{{Stub/Tech}} - Article stubs related to game mechanics.
Patches
{{Stub/PTR|<x.y.z>}} - Article stubs related to content currently on the PTR.
  • As new patches are released, the text for this changes to "this is a patched article"
{{Stub/PTR-section|<x.y.z>}} - Article stubs related to content currently on the PTR. (Smaller version)
Warcraft universe
{{Stub/Lore}} - Articles dealing with official World of Warcraft lore.
{{Stub/TCG}} - Articles related to the Trading Card Game.
UI
{{Stub/API}} - A World of Warcraft API stub.
{{Stub/UI}} - Other UI-related stubs.
Others
{{Stub/Category}} - For categories required more pages to be categorized into it.
{{Stub/Other}} - Anything that doesn't fit in the above categories.

Please do not use the generic {{Stub}} tag on Wowpedia.

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