Wikipedia talk:Permastub

Why is this a guideline?

This is a guideline, "which many editors agree with", yet it doesn't even have a talk page. Could this not be merged somewhere else? Stevage 11:55, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

• Probably to Wikipedia:Stub. It's also not a guideline since it's not actionable, it's merely a dicdef. Radiant_>|< 22:50, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Irony

I find it extremely ironic that the section on Permastub, which contains instructions to merge the stub into another article, is

• itself a stub, and
• flagged to be merged.

J. Paupore 01:31, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

That irony is almost reason to keep it in said state indefinitely. The best definitions are demonstrations. :) —mako (talk•contribs) 17:49, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Is this a permastub?

Matthew Algie. There's not much room for expansion beyond stub status, yet it still has 12 references. I wouldn't recommend this one for deletion at all (it was kept in an AfD) but it also has very little prospect for expansion and could probably never become featured due to the lack of sources, although it is still valid in and of itself. What's the minimum length for a GA anyway?-h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 18:51, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I find the advice in this essay questionable

I find the following advice, durrently in the essay -- questionable:

Where possible, they should be merged to larger articles and redirected there. When there is no possibility for any expansion, nor any topic that they could be merged into, it is possible that a permastub should be deleted.

In my opinion the advice in this essay shares a general weakness of the "mergist" philosophy -- it does not appreciate the importance of maintaining links in maintaining the usefulness of wikis like the wikipedia.

Wikis are like databases in that removing the links erodes the value of the information. It is possible to pore over a raw dump of the information in a database. Sometimes it is necessary to do this if the database software crashes, or the database itself becomes corrupted. Getting information from those raw dumps is possible, but it can take several orders of magnitude more effort.

I find mergists recommendations can be alarmingly arbitrary. Their recommendation as to which article should be the target of the merge, and which should be redirected are often completely arbitrary. And their recommendation that the information that won't fit in the merged article is beneath mention often strikes me as shallow and alarmingly arbitrary.

I have frequently found myself pointing out to merge proponents that the articles they suggest merging are related to multiple other articles, and that their recommendation to merge an article into a single other article is a disservice to those readers who are interested in the article's relationship to the other articles the mergists didn't recommend it being merged with.

The essay asserts:

A stub - even a stub on what you see as a trivial topic - is not a permastub if there is verifiable and encyclopedic information that can be added to it.

Well, sometimes a topic is important, and could be extensively covered, except that most of the sources remain classified. The dark prison and the salt pit are examples of articles that would be much longer if most of the official documents about them didn't remain classified. Geo Swan (talk) 20:35, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Small incorporated cities or unincorporated places?

Sometimes small towns with very low populations can be permastubs, but it seems compulsory to have these pages, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albany_Township,_Harlan_County,_Nebraska — Preceding unsigned comment added by Greeninventor999 (talk • contribs) 03:47, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

But those can be added to by visiting the place and taking pictures, talking to the people, etc. The real problems are towns than no longer exist due to merging, plagues, or are ghost towns. Time is the true information deleter IgnoredCelery (talk) 17:33, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Contradictory

This essay is contradictory. On the one hand, it makes the perfectly reasonable claim that:

Finished [informative, concise] permastubs ... don't need expansion.

On the other hand, it makes the rather absurd claim that:

Some permastubs may be unsatisfying articles—they leave little potential for future editing.

(As though "potential for future editing" is what makes for a great article, or as though the proper business of an encyclopedia is to be edited, rather than to transmit accurate knowledge of the world to its readers! Surely by such a criterion, every bad article is a "satisfying" article!)

IMO, the latter, absurd claim should be removed from the essay, both because it is absurd without being amusing or otherwise of value, and because it contradicts the other claim. Say "aye" if you agree - for whatever reason - that it should be removed. Otherwise, please say "nay", and help me to understand why you think it should be kept. Thanks. Zazpot (talk) 22:38, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Agree, have boldly edited it out, thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 10:39, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Diderot - Aguaxima

Just going to leave this here. Diderot's entry for aguaxima:

Aguaxima, a plant growing in Brazil and on the islands of South America. This is all that we are told about it; and I would like to know for whom such descriptions are made. It cannot be for the natives of the countries concerned, who are likely to know more about the aguaxima than is contained in this description, and who do not need to learn that the aguaxima grows in their country. It is as if you said to a Frenchman that the pear tree is a tree that grows in France, in Germany, etc . It is not meant for us either, for what do we care that there is a tree in Brazil named aguaxima, if all we know about it is its name? What is the point of giving the name? It leaves the ignorant just as they were and teaches the rest of us nothing. If all the same I mention this plant here, along with several others that are described just as poorly, then it is out of consideration for certain readers who prefer to find nothing in a dictionary article or even to find something stupid than to find no article at all.

— Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:50, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Thoughts

The primary objection to permastubs is that they can never be expanded. While this is not a problem for paper encyclopedias -- if anything, it is a virtue due to strict limits on space in print media -- it is an irritant for many Wikipedians. They are often evidence of articles ported from old, public domain encyclopedias. New Wikipedians see them, attempt to expand them only to fail, & become discouraged in their abilities. Established Wikipedians dislike them because they inflate the number of stubs on Wikipedia -- which hovers embarrassingly at about 50% of all articles. And there is the issue that with so many permastubs they are potential targets for trolls & troublemakers, who can insert nonsense or untruths in Wikipedia knowing their vandalism is likely to persist for years. (Everyone would admit there are too many articles on Wikipedia for its active editors to adequately monitor.)

One solution would be not to create them in the first place. If possible add the content to an existing relevant article, or to hold off from creating the article until more information can be collected. Nonetheless, sometimes creating a permastub is unavoidable; on that occasion, all we can do is wish there was a better label for this category, which would make their presence less obnoxious. -- llywrch (talk) 21:30, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Confusing

This article gives some information on what is or may be a permastub:

A permastub is an article that is currently a stub and has no reasonable prospect for expansion. There can be many reasons for this. These include:

• The article is a finished article, in no need of improvement.
• There is little verifiable information to be found on the subject.
• There is not much to say about the subject.

Permastubs are articles that either cannot be expanded or have little potential.

In WP:STUBLENGTH, it says "There is no set size at which an article stops being a stub. While very short articles are very likely to be stubs, there are some subjects about which very little can be written."

If an article cannot be expanded because there's no more information to be added, it's by definition not a stub. And if permastubs are articles that cannot be expanded, permastubs are by definition not stubs. Am I missing something obvious? Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 07:07, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

Reading both pages it seems to me that they are just each using a different definition of "stub" from the outset. WP:PERMASTUB looks like it is using a definition based on solely length while WP:STUB defines it in terms of length and content together.

You alluded to it already at the end of your comment, but one could also say that there is no contradiction if you start from the presupposition that a permastub is something completely different from a stub rather than a type of stub. Wikipedia is not a stranger to terminology idiosyncrasies (Notability meaning something other than it's normal English definition is a common confusion point). Whether that is the intention of this essay is something I cannot say, though I doubt it. Nebman227 (talk) 15:37, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I don't think that's their intention given the first sentence links to WP:STUB. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 15:43, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

STUBLENGTH does not say that any article that cannot be expanded is not a stub. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:52, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

I read the sentence at STUBLENGTH: "While very short articles are very likely to be stubs, there are some subjects about which very little can be written." to pretty explicitly be saying that a subject not having much that can be written about it precludes it from being a stub as it uses the "while, exception" sentence construction. I honestly am having a hard time seeing another meaning other than little being able to be written about the subject being an exception to "stubbiness." If that is not what it's meant to mean, that sentence is causing more confusion than anything else. (and maybe shouldn't be there? though that's probably a discussion for another venue) Nebman227 (talk) 14:23, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Hi Nebman227, that discussion is happening at WT:STUB at the moment. Our read is apparently not the intended meaning, so hopefully we can come up with something better that serves the same purpose. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 14:36, 7 July 2025 (UTC)