Editing Stub

A '''stub''' is a very short article, generally of one paragraph or less.  Most stubs fail to cover all but the most trivial subject completely.

A '''sub-stub''' is, informally, an extremely short article, shorter even than most dictionary entries.  The term implies the information in the stub is insufficient or hard to interpret, e.g., "''An '''airplane''' is a flying machine with wings''," or ''"'''Douglas Adams''' was a famous author who has died in the United States''". While stubs are legitimate and useful articles, sub-stubs can be considered otherwise, as they are sometimes confusing or misleading. They may therefore be deleted, depending on the situation.

The wikimd software can display links to stubs differently if you set the '''Threshold for stub display''' higher than 0, for example 200 to mark articles shorter than 200 characters. This makes it easy to find/fix (add content to) a stub. See [[Special:Preferences]] to set your threshold, or [[Preferences]] for help on this and other settings.  

For lists of stubs, see the section below on '''lists of stubs'''.  See also these helpful pages:
:[[wikimd:Page size|Page size]] || [[wikimd:Perfect stub article|The perfect stub]] || [[wikimd:Requests for page expansion]] || [[wikimd:Topical index]]

== Stub alert! ==
If you create a stub, please add the following tag at the end: '''<nowiki>{{msg:stub}}</nowiki>''' <font size=-1>(See [[wikimd:MediaWiki custom messages]] for more information)</font>.  This will make the article display the following text from [[Template:stub]]:

: {{stub}}

and thus encourage other users to expand the article.

When you've added to the article, and it no longer looks like a stub, remove this message.

== Lists of stubs ==
To find a stub, use the following lists (to see what links to this and similar pages):

'''Automated''':
[[wikimd:Most wanted stubs|Most wanted stubs]] || 
[[wikimd:List of stubs without msg|Stubs w/o stub-msg]] || 
[[wikimd:Shortpages|Shortpages]]
<!--  || [[Special:Shortpages]] (static, rarely updated) -->

'''By what links to special stub pages''': 
[[Special:Whatlinkshere/MediaWiki:stub|MediaWiki:stub]] || 
[[Special:Whatlinkshere/wikimd:Find_or_fix_a_stub|Wp:ff/stub]] || 
[[Special:Whatlinkshere/MediaWiki:Tolkienstub|Tolkien stub]]
<!--
*[[Special:Whatlinkshere/Stub|Stub]]
*[[Special:Whatlinkshere/wikimd:Stub|Wp:Stub]]
*[[Special:Whatlinkshere/Stub_article|Stub article]] || 
*[[Special:Whatlinkshere/wikimd_utilities/find_or_fix_a_stub]]
*[[Special:Whatlinkshere/Stubs]]
*[[Special:Whatlinkshere/WP:STUB]]
-->
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