MYSTlore:Stubs
From MYSTlore
Stubs are hapless little articles on MYSTlore that aren’t large enough to be considered substantial, but aren’t quite small enough to be considered useless. They often provide useful information that pertains to the topic at hand, but usually only a fraction of the information available — mere shadows of what the articles could become with the right nourishment and care. While an editor may need to conduct specific research to add to a fleshed-out article’s already abundant (and hopefully eloquently-expressed) content, little more than a quick web search can often suffice to expand on a stub.
A good example of a MYSTlore stub would be "Myst is an island with a mountain and pine trees. There are puzzles and also columns." While perfectly accurate, this, as we all know, does absolutely no justice to the marvel that is Myst, and is little more than a cry for help. Time for us to get to work.
[edit] Tagging a stub
If you just so happen to stumble across an article that appears to fall into the above definition of a "stub", then you can either expand on the article yourself, if you’re up to it, or you can simply wimp out and add a stub tag — {{stub}} — at the bottom of the article. This will add a convenient little box to inform other editors of its stubbiness:
…So that they know it's in desperate need of elaboration.
After tagging, it can be also be a good idea to use the article's talk page to describe what, in particular, can be added to the article to make it more (or sufficiently) complete.
[edit] Writing a stub
When writing a stub, it's important to be as succinct and compelling as is possible. The idea is to give editors enough information for them to know how to expand on it, but to make it interesting enough that they want to expand on it.
[edit] Removing stub status
Once an article has grown to considerable size and can now be seen as a decent source of information on the topic, it's important to remove the stub tag so that it can grow on its own and editors can stop paying undue attention to it. It's important to remember, though, that some articles are naturally longer than others; while a paragraph of information may be more than enough information on a Quaffler Fig, it's not nearly enough to describe, say, the D'ni language. There's no clear line when it comes to defining a stub, so you, the editor, just need to use some common sense and categorize things as you see fit.
