Fanlore Challenge: Stub September

[smarieru]

Stub September is a challenge for Fanlore editors and gardeners to pick a stub and expand on it. A stub is an article on Fanlore that is under-developed and missing important information. Right now, there are nearly 1800 existing pages on Fanlore that are already identified as stubs. You're invited to use the list and the index at the top of the page to find a page where you know something more and edit the page to add your new information. It's as simple as that.

In addition to the identified stubs, there are also pages that are missing specific examples to define or illustrate the page topic. This category, examples wanted, is much shorter and needs more specific information. If you know any examples, please just add them to the page.

In other words, Stub September is a good month to add more information to existing Fanlore articles. Have fun and good luck!

ETA: Feel free to post links to the articles you work on, whether it is updating a stub yourself or reviewing a stub and upgrading it to the examples wanted template. Comment here and let your editing colleagues know what you've been doing. We all want to share the experience when we're improving on Fanlore.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Mrs. Potato Head here:

Stub September! An excellent challenge!

While EVERY ENTRY, always, can be improved by more info, a stub, as I understand it, is an entry that has hardly even the bare minimum of information: a name is necessary to make the entry and a TINY description, if even that and nothing else. Any information on these entries is valuable, both in itself, and super in how it helps link to other fannish things. The circle of life and all that.

One fun thing, at least it sounds like fun to me, would be to look at that list and take the "stub" category OFF on things that have surpassed that level of incompleteness.

Have fun!

~ MPH

[espresso_addict]

I've been skimming those articles whose title I recognise in the stubs list and replacing 'stub' with 'examples wanted', where appropriate. It's a nice easy way of getting that warm glow of achievement!

[espresso_addict]

Somewhat at a disadvantage here, cos I started doing a sweep through stubs at the end of August and had already got to S. But some stubs I worked on in September...

Scoradh, the HP author
Serenity, the Firefly movie
Silverlake, the multifandom archive
Chloe Sullivan, the Smallville character
Switchknife, the HP author & reccer
Tesla, the Buffyverse/X-Files author

They almost all need a lot more love from fans who know more than I do, if anyone's out there?

[espresso_addict]

I had a go at another couple:

Model Building‎, about making fannish models, which really needs attention from an expert!
Snape/Hermione‎‎, the Harry Potter pairing

[tiyire]

I forgot how much I dislike deciding whether or not something qualifies as a stub. But I like taking stub notices off, so I started looking around: What is Eternal?, Welcome to the Black Parade, High Voltage, SGA Saturday, and I'm sure I'll find some more.

[espresso_addict]

It is difficult isn't it? There's always the feeling that by leaving the tag on, others might come by and help, but with so many at the moment, it's probably best reserved for the very shortest articles. A bunch I filled in were just the infobox with no text at all...

I recall a discussion elsewhere about creating a tag for articles that aren't stubs, don't need examples, but are definitely missing things -- the more I poke around the stubs, the more I think it could be useful.

[tiyire]

I remember that discussion! I was hoping to continue it once we can make it more public and involve more people. (Hopefully soon, we just want to make sure first that we can handle feedback & moderation.)

[espresso_addict]

Yes, I definitely think it's best to wait until the wider contributor base has a chance to join in. And fingers crossed -- we can really do with somewhere to have cross-wiki discussions.

[aethel]

That reminds me. I started a draft notice for this:

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:Expand_section

[otw_staff]

Hi Wiki! Claudia from Comms here. I came across this link through my alerts and wanted to ask if this is an event you'd like to publicize more widely? Do you want contributions from anyone or is this just an internal project?

[espresso_addict]

This was my original suggestion and I'd say, yes, publicise it on OTW -- the wider the contribution base the better, and if we get people taking off stub tags that should remain, we can always just put them back!

[otw_staff]

I'll draft a post then, and ticky Wiki to take a look to add any corrections needed.

[tiyire]

Hi Claudia,
no, this is not just an internal project, and it'd be great to have more people aware of it! I have to admit that I know little of what Comms does, so I didn't even think of talking to you guys. Maybe we could work something out so that in the future we can work together better :)

[otw_staff]

That would be great! If you'd like I would be glad to attend one of your meetings and talk a bit about what Comms does, can do, and can't do. My schedule is pretty flexible so just let me know what might work for you all.

[magician113]

Hey there, brand newbie to fanlore--aware of its existence but not much beyond that. This shout-out looks like fun. I've looked at the Examples Wanted list and see a couple I'd like to work on, but no obvious info on how to do it. Do I have to have an account? Is there a template?

Also, one of the entries is incorrect, specifically which episodes the character appeared in, as well as the info on him could use beefing up. Is it acceptable to correct errors or is that a faux pas?

If you'd rather answer through email, I'm merlin dot 113 at hotmail dot com

Thanks.

[aethel]

Hi, there!

You need an account to edit Fanlore. Once you login, go to the page you want to edit, and you should see an EDIT link in the upper right hand corner. There's an editing tutorial here.

Be aware that for spam reasons, new users are prevented from creating new pages for the first 4 hours after they sign up.

Please correct anything you see that is incorrect! As for beefing up character info, we go back and forth a lot on how much is too much canon info. The focus of the site is on fan activity, rather than canon details, but some canon details end up inspiring a lot of fan activity and need to be explained. If in doubt, you can post a question on the talk page accompanying the article in question. (Click on the DISCUSSION link.)

[magician113]

Thanks for the quick response. You are awesome.

[on_verra]

I edited a stub entry! I edited a stub entry!

*feels good about herself*

Sorry, this was my first real fanlore edit. Well, I may have created a stub or two back in 2009 but that barely counts. So I just thought I'd share my excitement :D

[espresso_addict]

Brilliant! Now how can we tempt you towards the 1725 others... :)

[tiyire]

You edited a stub entry, yay! :D Have some virtual Fanlore cake (vanilla, with sprinkles.)
There are plenty of stubs left, if you want to try again. :)

[tiyire]

We have a new template: ExpandArticle, for articles that aren´t quite stubs but aren´t complete either. You´re welcome to work on those, too, or replace stub notices with this one if you think it fits better :)