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Stub policy

Last updated: 13.06.2026
Version: 1.0
Written by: Dominik Jais, Rory Fogerty, Aimee Fenech

The purpose of this policy is it is to keep the Permaculture Network website useful, trustworthy, and valuable for visitors and members and not to punish members.

Problem​

On the Permaculture Network website, stub content reduces the usefulness, and value, of the platform. Visitors should be able to understand who a teacher is, what a project or place offers, or what an event is about. Content that only fills the mandatory fields but gives little or no meaningful information creates confusion, wastes visitor’s time, and erodes confidence in the platform.

Definition of a Stub​

A stub is a piece of content that is too short, incomplete, or too vague to provide useful information about its topic. The term “stub” is commonly used on Wikipedia for short or incomplete articles that need further development.

From Wikipedia: A stub is not defined only by word count. Short content can be acceptable if it clearly provides the necessary information. Longer content may still be considered a stub if it is vague, irrelevant, or does not help visitors understand the topic.

Examples of a stub​

Stub content may include, but is not limited to:

  • a public teacher profile that contains only one sentence
  • a teacher profile containing irrelevant text
  • a course or event listing where only the mandatory fields are filled in
  • any content that is extremely short and does not contain enough useful information for visitors to understand the topic
  • content that appears to have been created mainly to fulfil a technical requirement, for example maintaining a status, without providing real public value

Handling of stub content​

If editors identify content that appears to be a stub, they will contact the author and ask them to improve it.

The author will usually be contacted through the forum. If this is not possible, editors may contact the author by email.

The author will be given two weeks to update the content. The update should add enough relevant information so that visitors can understand the teacher profile, project, place, course, or event.

If the content has not been sufficiently improved after two weeks, editors may delist the content

For teacher profiles, this means that the profile may be removed from the public teacher directory until it has been updated.

For events, this means that the event may be removed from the listing. and may no longer count towards requirements connected to teacher assurance or other public statuses on the website.