[aninhumer]

I think these stubs have the benefit of reducing the barrier to entry for future contributors. If I search for something and find a stub, I can easily throw in even one sentence, and the article is incrementally improved. Whereas if there's no article, I am much less inclined to make a new one.

[kevinchen]

Exactly: creating a new Wikipedia page is pretty intimidating because most people do not understand WP's template system or how to make an infobox.