Categories for stories without summaries
Opening Post
I think this is fairly self explanatory. A lot of stories on this wiki, be they prose, audio, or comic, don't have real summaries. It's something we're often criticized for, be it fair or unfair. One way to help this issue is to create categories for stories without plot summaries so that we can better track where work needs to be done on this wiki.
In my mind the question becomes "which categories" and "are they visible or hidden"?
{{hidecat}} explicitly says that we should refrain from making categories hidden without good cause, but these categories are explicitly for wiki editors to use as bookkeeping. I'm unconvinced that there's good reason for them to be visible. Maybe since Category:Maintenance isn't exactly a thing most people are aware of, making it so there are more ways people can stumble across it is a good thing? But I think this is a marginal benefit, a lot of things would have to line up for these categories being visible leading to additional people seeing these lists.
That leaves us with what categories. Quite frankly, should we just have "story without a summary"? "Prose work without summary"? "DW prose without summary?" "VNA without summary?" There's levels of specificity here that we can delve into, and I believe precedent wants us to be as specific as possible. I can see arguments both for and against. (For: It makes it easier to find the specific area you want to work on. Against: It obscures precisely how many stories don't have summaries.) Overall though I think specificity is a good thing here though.
I think this proposal is a relative no-brainer. It's just something to make our lives easier, but is weird enough that it probably needs a forum thread.
As points of technical implementation, might I suggest that the relevant category (Category:Works that need summaries or w/e) be in Category:Articles with sections in need of expansion, and that this issue is big enough that it's given its own section on T:TO DO. I think those are small ways in which this policy could be made most useful. Najawin ☎ 07:58, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
Discussion
I wholly support this proposal, as I have felt for a long time that the wiki is incomplete without these, and frankly some lack plots as well, but I’m not sure if there should be a seperate thread for that or not. And I can’t even add anything in myself because I have no idea what these works are about.
As for the name, I suggest the last thing you said, Category:Works that need summaries, as that is broad enough to cover them all, as I feel dividing them up in TV, audio, prose and so on will just be too confusing for the wiki. Danniesen ☎ 14:46, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
- Seems like an excellent idea, having a system of sub-stubs is a great way to encourage editing. OS25🤙☎️ 14:51, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
- I think categories like Category:Short stories that need summaries, for example, would be good. We can divide based on medium, not series. And some may be more willing to do a plot summary for a short story or television story than a full novel or video game, so some sorting can help that IMO. We could also perhaps modify {{prose stub}} and it's ilk to check if #Plot has anything more than ''to be added'', and if not, for it to add the category. 15:02, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
I support this proposal. Given that this category would mark an article as incomplete, i.e. a "stub", maybe it should be named following the existing format for subcategories of Category:Stubs. Category:Summary stubs, perhaps.
I've mocked up a template, {{summaryTBA}}, which would we could put in an empty "Summary" or "Plot" section. It shows up as "to be added", just like the current placeholder text, but it also sneakily puts the page in the summary stubs category, whatever we end up calling it. Another upside is that it would allow us to make sure the placeholder text is standardised across the wiki. – n8 (☎) 17:52, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
- If people want this to be one giant group, Category:Summary stubs, that seems like a good way to implement it. But I think it goes against precedent and is a bit unwieldy for people who want to look through the list to find works that they might own to summarize. They could easily feel overwhelmed by such a large list. And let's be honest. It's going to be a large list. The category tree I was thinking of is something like:
- Obviously a really, really rough sketch, but it shows the rough hierarchy. This might be a bad idea, but I think it's what aligns best with precedent, and I think it would prevent people from being overwhelmed. It might frustrate them to click through the tree though. Najawin ☎ 20:10, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
- I support this, and as far as category structure goes, given how many stories lack a plot / plot summaries we can't really over categorise at this point.
- Having more categories helps lessen the maintenance mental load. When you're looking at categories that have more than 100 pages in them needing work it's kinda overwhelming. Breaking all of that down into sub-categories helps work flow and just working it all out. --Tangerineduel / talk 14:37, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
Ah, there seems to have been a wild mistake on my part.
I meant for this thread to refer to "plot summaries", the ones in the "plot" section, not the "publisher's summary". That's rather embarrassing. I have absolutely no concern with expanding the idea to other sections! But that wasn't my original intent, and we'd have to change the wording on the categories slightly. No big deal, but it deserves mention and clarification. Najawin ☎
- I support the proposal and the suggested category tree or something similar. Time God Eon ☎ 23:19, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
I'd go for simplicity, since maintenance category names don't need to be as polished as regular content categories. Category:Missing summaries or Category:Missing plot summaries, with subcategories such as Category:TV stories missing plot summaries. (Compare against Category:Needs crew check.)
I should also note that I'll be able to run a bot to add this eventual category, at the very least for empty to be added sections.
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 01:55, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
This proposal is straightforward enough and I think would be rather beneficial. So I support it, including a sub-category tree. Chubby Potato ☎ 09:30, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Conclusion
This thread has been quiet for quite some time and should have probably been closed sooner so sorry about not getting around to it before now. Suffice to say, this thread was very uncontroversial and hence the general idea of it has been passed. However, there are still a number of specifics to discuss:
- These categories will be hidden like other maintenance categories and hence will use {{hidecat}}.
- General consensus is in favour of having many subcategories and hence this is what we will go with. Specifically, we will use Najawin's suggested category tree.
- This means that N8's {{summaryTBA}} won't be suitable without serious adaption. Therefore, we will add the categories manually for now. This can be changed or done automatically using a bot later on.
- SOTO's suggestion for naming categories (Category:Missing plot summaries, Category:TV stories missing plot summaries, etc.) seems reasonable and inline with current practise with maintenance categories and hence this naming scheme should be used.
