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August 14

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{{UK-current-MP-stub}} / Category:Current British MP stubs

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the stub template and/or category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was postpone


This one was created recently (without proposal as far as I remember). Several problems here: 1) According to Mais Oui, most relevant articles already are beyond stub size. 2) Such a category will be nothing but trouble to maintain, and is only used on a mere 8 articles. Delete. Valentinian (talk) 18:14, 14 August 2006 (UTC) (Nomination withdrawn).[reply]

  • Delete . "Current" anything is a bad idea for a stub template - it only means a later necessary change of template when a better thought-out scheme wouldn't. Grutness...wha? 22:58, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Mais Oui's wrong on the scope, I'm pretty sure; this came up as a viable split on my search for same on the UK-MPs. But I didn't propose it for the same reason Grutness mentions. Delete. Alai 02:50, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Very useful to a politics-interested editor to expland though... Dev920 12:16, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Admittedly politically "current" is a long time in Wikipedia: give or take resignations in favour of cushy jobs in Brussels, or indeed deaths, and the resultant by-election in either case -- or I suppose the whole government collapsing -- these contents are fixed for several years. Perhaps we could split the MPs by parliament, restricting tagging to the last/latest they sat in. That way if there's expansion of most of them by the next election, there's relatively few to re-tag when they're re-elected, but we avoid the messiness of "is this a current 'current', or an old "current" that hasn't been updated yet"? Alai 15:44, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Dev, there are plans afoot to split the main over-large stub category at the moment (see here), and one of the possible ways is by era. If that does happen, then it would probably mean replacing this one for a category including both current and recent ex-MPS - would that serve pretty much the same purpose for editors? Grutness...wha? 23:46, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like a good idea to me, as long as the eras are right. Discussion seems a bit confused over there. Maybe sort according to every 50 years or so?

Comment Firstly, this deletion nomination is kind of my fault, because I informed User:Valentinian that Stub Sense only finds 42 relevant stubs. Although this is true, I had not used our other methods of establishing potential size [Suggestion: at the main Stub soting page, could we not list all the useful methods to assist speedy research by stub sorters]. Also, per Grutness comment, that split "by parliament" has already started (see Category:MPs_of_the_United_Kingdom_House_of_Commons, by Parliament), and true to form, has gone straight to CFD (some people refuse to countenance any organisation of the ridiculously vast British MPs cat whatsoever!!!). Here is the CFD:

This stub would appear to be quite useful, so can we refocus/rename it, instead of deleting? I note that the relevant parent cat is currently named, rather unfortunately:

... but the creator has proposed that the names be shortened at CFD, which I and others support.

Thanks. --Mais oui! 07:32, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • It's something of an article of faith around here that Big (Stub) Categories Must Be Split, and it would be very handy if the permcat would obligingly split itself, so that we could follow along (and possibly save ourselves some work in the process, as it'd then be at least somewhat automatable). I missed these categories earlier as they seem to have just "missed the bus" on the last database dump, so they didn't figure in my prognostications about how it was feasible to split these. I'm now minded to put this on hold until the CFD and permcat splitting discussion is concluded, though equally there's little loss in deleting this and recreating a similar type later. Alai 14:40, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep, for lots of reasons (I created this category a few days ago, to separate out the stubs for current MPs from those for MPs from previous parliaments).
  • There are now 308 articles in Category:Current British MP stubs, so the viability is surely not in doubt. (I had manually allocated this stub to only a few articles, but after a quick AWB run to allocate it to all stub-tagged current MPs, I discovered this SFD. As the stub-creator, it's a pity that the nominator didn't alert me of the nomination).
  • The parent category for this stub is not "MPs of the 54th Parliament", but Category:Current British MPs.
  • There are over 300 stub-tagged articles on MPs from the past, and it is useful to separate out the stubs on current MPs, who may be of more immediate interest, and where the sources are readily available to expand the articles beyond stubbiness. (NB: In my AWB run today, I unstubbed only those articles which were very clearly unstubby, but I thnk that a lot more of them could readily be unstubbed without expansion).
  • The usefulness or otherwise of Category:Current British MPs is surely a discussion which belongs elsewhere? From my POV, updating that category after an election is only about two or three hour's work, and only needs be done every few years. It may be better to ditch it and use MPs-by-parliament instead, but that's another discussion. --BrownHairedGirl 15:01, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Struck my earlier bold-faced-comment for clarity, lest it not be clear the later one was intended to override it. I realize what it's current parent is, but I was suggesting it should have the "of the 2005 parliament" as a parent, for the reasons I outlined: "current" is a maintenance nightmare waiting to happen (and don't say it won't be a problem: if stub articles were that well-tended, they wouldn't be stubs, and we have very little notion of who is likely to be on hand and inclined to do this, come 2009 or 2010). I'm not addressing the existence of the perm-cat, just its "suitability as a parent" for the stub type. BTW, as stub creator, it's a pity you didn't follow the stub creation guidelines and propose this in the first place (as I'm semi-ritually obliged to tell anyone complaining that their unproposed stub type has been nominated for deletion without telling them -- then again, it is rather crucial to remember to tag the template and category for that reason). Alai 15:26, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
(after edit conflict). Sorry BrownHairedGirl, I thought I'd already added {{Sfd-t}} / {{Sfd-c}} to this material. My apologies. I still don't like the word "current" in this context, but we seem to have a lot more material than I expected. I'll buy Alai's suggestion of putting this nomination on hold until it is decided how to procede with Category:British MP stubs. I still don't like the word "current" for this kind of material, but I don't like stub categories deviating from the article categories either. (Just my 2 cents). Valentinian (talk) 15:29, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks!, Valentian. First, big apologies to everyone for not following the stub creation guidelines; I simply didn't know of their existence. Sorry, I'll know in future, and thanks to Alai for alterting me.
I'm not entirely happy with the word current, but I think that the alterantive of something like 2005-MP-stubs could be a bit horible too, because it could lead to a new stub type for each parliament. With about thirty parliaments in the last century, that could get kinda horrible.
I think Alai's point about stubs being by definition poorly-tended merits a little further examination, because it's crucial here.
Yes, stubs are by definition in need of expansion, but expansion is a very difft job to categorisation. Expansion is very time-consuming, but categorisation can be very quick — as evidenced by my AWB run this afternoon attaching this stub tag in only 50 minutes. I expect that many of the more obscure backbenchers may remain stubby ad infinitum, but that's a different issue to ease with which they can be recategorised with a tool like AWB. Who'll be around in 2009 to do that? I dunno, but I'd be very surprised if there aren't a bevy of skilled wikipedians with sufficient interest in parliament to do the job quickly! In fact, if theren't, I'd that as a critical sign that wikpedia was ossifying, and I try to be a wiki-optimist :)
In the meantime, I hope that this new stub category allows us to more speedily unstub the current MPs who do have significant articles, and to expand more of those with real stubs. --BrownHairedGirl 15:59, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough, BHG: first one's free, the thumbscrews we reserve for serial unilateralists. :) A stub type per parliament's exactly what I propose, at least for however far back would pass the threshold of 60 per cat (tagging each MP only with their most recent stint, otherwise things would get messy). I'd guess that there will be enough obscure outgoers at each recent general election to fill several such, and it's even more like to be the case going forward as current population appears to be complete. Several parliaments back we can lump them into several terms smooshed together, and once we get before 1922 I think we might as well just leave them all in a single GB/UK&I stub type, if early indications of size prove accurate. I'll grant you that it's unlikely that the "old currents" and the "new currents" would stay jumbled up for long, but why make life more complicated and more work than it has to be, and set precedents for other "high maintenance" type? At any rate, some sort of split is fairly urgently required, and it seems a racing certainty that party, time in some form or other, or some combination of the two is the solution in some form. Alai 18:33, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Alai, I hope that when you apply thumbcrews, you do so with a liberal dose wikilove ;)
Seriously, though, I don't think that the numbers require another split of stubs. There are currently about 300 articles tagged with {{UK-MP-stub}}, about 300 with {{UK-current-MP-stub}}. The current-MP-stub count will inevitably decline as articles are expanded, while the non-current stub-count could go either way. But I think that creating ten or twenty new stub categories is unlikely to be helpful unless the stub count increases substantially: at the moment, each would only have (on average) about 20 MPs.
There is a maintenance problem to, arising from "retreads": MPs who lose their seats, but come back later. It's easy enough with the high-profile ones, but the likes of Rifkind, returning after an 8-year gap, are not actually that rare. Parliamentary careers are not often smooth and linear. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:52, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oops! Sorry, miscount of non-ciurrent-MP-stubs, so most of above deleted. Proper reply Split of British_MP_stubs. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:06, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think we can resume deliberation of these now, as the CFD has closed. (If no discussion ensues either here at /P in a couple of days, I suggest this be closed as "deferred", and relisted later (if necessary), however. Alai 17:06, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I'll close this on that basis if there are no speedy "holdons". Alai 22:09, 29 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this section.
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