Wikipedia:Historical archive/Substub

If stubs are the ugly ducklings of Wikipedia, then substubs are the Frankenstein's monsters of Wikipedia. If you come across one, try to distract it by inserting {{substub}} at the bottom of the page and then maim it by turning it into a regular stub.

Differences between a stub and a substub

• Stubs are actually long enough to have a tad of useful information in them. Substubs are usually no longer than a dictionary definition, and usually contain information that anyone would know.

• Stubs are usually easy to expand upon because they have some general information with which to build a much longer article, like asking a mason to draw a house: you get a pretty detailed floor plan. Substubs contain very little information, or worse, false or misleading information, like asking a three-year-old to draw a house and getting a box for the house and a triangle for the roof.

• Stubs are usually created by a person who wants to see the article expanded either expanded by himself or herself or someone who really knows the subject of the article well. Substubs are usually created by people just because they can, then they leave without looking back.

Examples

Stub: "An airplane is a machine that flies through the air. It was created by the Wright brothers in 1903. It are able to fly because the wing shape creates greater air pressure under the wing than above it.

Today, the Boeing 747 line of airplanes has revolutionized commercial air travel and mass transit, making inter-continental flights not only possible but commonplace."

Substub: "Airplanes are flying machines with wings."

Stub: "A computer in the modern sense of the word is a machine that computes information electronically. They nowadays use transistors and microchips to process data. They normally use the binary number system, which is composed of ones and zeros."

Substub: "A computer processes information with a mouse. It is in binary."

Bottom line

• Stubs are short. Substubs are really, really short.

How to fix a substub

How to insert the template message

1. Insert {{substub}} at the bottom of a substub page. If necessary, replace {{stub}} with it. You can see what the message looks like by going to Template:Substub.

If you can at least turn it into a stub

1. Provide a "This is a stub" message by adding {{stub}}. (See Wikipedia:Boilerplate text for more.)
2. Follow the standards of proper English. Write in full, clear sentences.
3. Give a clear, precise definition or description of your topic. Avoid fallacies of definition. For biographies and articles about non-concepts (e.g., about countries and cities), definitions are impossible, so begin with a clear, helpful, informative description of the subject. State what a person is famous for, where a place is and what it is known for, the basic details of an event and when it happened, etc. A good definition or description may encourage potential contributors by suggesting the limits of the article, indirectly summarizing what needs to be done. For example, Salvador Allende was the President of Chile from 1970 until 1973 would be a good description.
4. Try to give more than just a definition — at least a little more. It doesn't hurt to be provocative, as long as you attempt to be unbiased and reasonably accurate. What is interesting and important about the subject? If your introduction would make someone want to read further, then it will probably entice someone to write further. As little as one extra sentence can turn a good description into a brilliant stub, e.g. Salvador Allende was the President of Chile from 1970 until 1973. The CIA might have been involved in the coup that ousted him. With a start like that, you don't have to know any more yourself; a dozen contributors will be falling over themselves to fill in the details.
5. Make sure any relevant linkable words have been linked. But be careful about which words you link to; see naming conventions. e.g. Salvador Allende was the President of Chile from 1970 until 1973. The CIA might have been involved in the coup that ousted him.
6. Submit the article with a Summary comment that will attract the attention of others to your stub. If nothing else, cut and paste the stub itself into the Summary field when you save your article.
7. Feel some responsibility for your stub article. There is a fine line between helping by outlining out what needs to be done, and being annoying by not doing anything yourself. If nobody contributes to your stub for a few weeks, roll up your sleeves and expand it yourself. Take the fact that nobody has contributed as a hint that your stub might not have been that great, and if nothing else, try to make it a better stub.
8. Don't just add links. Links are fine normally, but just on their own, they say very little about the topic you are writing about.

If you want to turn it into a full article

1. Go for it.

If you don't want to turn it into a stub

1. Add {{substub}} to the bottom of the page and save your edit with upper case SUBSTUB at the start of the edit comment to make it easy for the RC watchers to notice that it needs work.
2. List it on Wikipedia:Cleanup.

If it should be deleted

If the subject of the substub is patent nonsense or vandalism, then it could be speedily deleted if you don't want to rewrite it. Please try a Google search first - some parts of some subjects are very weird-sounding if you don't know the field.

If it is a possible copyright infringement then you could report it as a possible copyvio but the words in a substub are likely to be so obvious that they are generic and uncopyrightable, so a quick rewrite is probably best.