AKBAN-wiki:Stub
An Akban wiki stub (קצרון) is an article that is too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of the subject, but not so short as to provide no useful information. To qualify as a stub it must at least define the meaning of the article's title. Often that means three to ten short sentences, but less text may be sufficient to qualify as a stub for articles on narrow topics, and complicated topics with more than ten sentences may still be stubs. However, in reality, many articles which are labeled as stubs are much longer than that.
After writing or finding the short article, the editor should insert what is called a stub template, which makes it possible for the article to be flagged as a stub. By convention, these stub templates should be placed near the bottom of the article. Because the stub identification is rendered on an article page prior to hardcoded items like categories and inter-Wiki language links, the template is usually placed at the end of the article proper, after the External links section if it exists, and also after any navigation templates, but before categories or inter-Wiki links. However, since the stub category is the least important of the article's categories, some Akbanuts prefer to place the template after the category tags, so that the stub category will appear last.
When you write a stub article, it is important to bear in mind that its main interest is to be expanded, and that thus it ideally contains enough information to give a basis for other editors to expand upon. The key here is to provide adequate context; the extreme case of a very short article with little or no context to allow expansion is a criterion under which articles may be speedily deleted. Your initial research may be done either through books or through a reliable search engine such as Google, Yahoo!, Windows Live Search or Clusty. You may also contribute with knowledge you have acquired from other sources, but it is useful to conduct a small amount of research beforehand, in order to make sure that your version of the facts is correct and from a neutral point of view.
Begin by giving a definition or description of the topic in question. Since at times definitions are impossible, you should write a clear and informative description of the subject. State, for example, what a person is famous for, where a place is located and what it is known for, or state the basic details of an event and when it happened.
Next, you should try to expand this basic definition. The previously mentioned research methods will often fetch you enough information for you to be able to expose the basic points of the subject. Once you have a couple of well-structured and well-written sentences, you should internally link relevant words, so that users unfamiliar with the specifics of a subject can understand what is written on the article. Avoid linking words needlessly; in case you are in doubt, you should use the preview button and try reading the article from the point of view of somebody who has had no exposure to information regarding the subject. If no word seems hard to comprehend or relevant enough, simply do not link anything.
Anyone can contribute to complete a stub.
