TaRapedia talk:Formatting/General

Stubs

 * The following text was copied here from User talk:Tetris L:

[...] On a side note, I'd like to have at least stub articles for all of the contacts as soon as possible. If we enter a mission's details for a contact article that doesn't exist yet, we should create the contact article, even if the only thing in it is the link to the mission. Over on the Paragon Wiki, we have a template named for precisely this purpose. We should consider having one here, too.

--TonyV 15:18, 30 June 2007 (EDT)


 * [...] Last but not least, stubs are a whole new issue. The concept is well known from Wikipedia, and many other wikis use it too. However, I left it away deliberately because on GuildWiki we did not have the best experience with stubs. When we started, and lots of new articles were created, pretty much everybody put the template on every article. But after a while it was usually forgotten to remove the stub tag, even if the article was well elaborated meanwhile. More than 50% of all articles in GuildWiki still bear a stub tag. That's THOUSANDS of articles. Effectively this makes it impossible to recognize which ones are the articles that actually need work, which renders the whole stub tag concept meaningless and useless. So, IF, and that is a big if, we introduce stubs on TaRapedia, then we should agree about a very strict policy regarding when to apply and when to remove the stub tags, to ensure that the tag actually means something and is helpful. --Tetris L 15:44, 30 June 2007 (EDT)


 * So, are we going to use stub tags on Tarapedia, or not? To get the ball rolling I'll create and  . --Tetris L 03:02, 3 July 2007 (EDT)

I think we should use them. As for policy, here's what I think should happen, let me know what you think.

A stub is a placeholder article with either no information or so little as to be useless. I often use them to simply jot notes down and mark the article to come back to later and format it and get it standardized. Once the article contains any worthwhile formatted information, though, it's no longer a stub, it's an article, even if incomplete.

On the Paragon Wiki, I also set up a template that marks an article as a "work in progress." These are articles that are somewhere around halfway done or less. I use it, for example, for store article that I've entered some information in but that isn't complete. It's a little misleading if people don't know that some items don't show up not because they aren't sold there, but because I just haven't finished entering them yet.

But if we use them, I do agree that we should keep a tight reign on what they're used for. Once an article starts being populated with information, it's no longer a stub, just incomplete. I regularly go through the Paragon Wiki and remove designations from articles that people have started working on.

--TonyV 11:01, 3 July 2007 (EDT)


 * Okay, lets go for it. is ready for use. Feel free to create  . I'm considering to create TBA ("more to be added"),  ("to be elaborated") and/or  . --Tetris L 05:36, 5 July 2007 (EDT)


 * We have one minor thing left to decide: Should stub tags be put at the bottom or top of an article? Wikipedia puts them at the bottom. GuildWiki puts them at the top. I prefer the latter. -- T ETRIS L 03:09, 10 July 2007 (EDT)
 * Stubs are now classified in the Category:Stubs. This will help us to just simply go down the list and unstub, delete or fix stubs. Stubs are basically part of a Wiki, unfortunately. The best we can do is just do our best. Imper1um 01:58, 16 August 2007 (EDT)

Table of Content position
We have to decide about the position of the TOC. There are various options: Discuss. -- T ETRIS L 03:35, 10 July 2007 (EDT)
 * MediaWiki's standard is to put the TOC above the very first heading of the article.
 * Wikipedia's standard is to begin each article with an introduction / overview / summary text, but without a heading. In combination with MediaWiki's standard this leads to the TOC below the introduction.
 * TonyV favors the TOC below the overview section, like Wikipedia, but unlike Wikipedia he prefers to start the article with a heading. This makes it necesary to force the TOC position.
 * Tetris L favors the TOC at the very top of an article (but below any tags and boilerplate notes like stub, disambiguation, etc.), above the introduction. One way to achive this is to start each article with a heading, like TonyV suggests, but not to force the TOC position, so that MediaWiki standard is applied.
 * There are templates available to position the TOC in a frame aligned to the top right. This can sometimes be handy to avoid the article text being shifted down.