This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | → | Archive 15 |
Hello Pbsouthwood. Your account has been added to the "New page reviewers
" user group, allowing you to review new pages and mark them as
patrolled, tag them for maintenance issues, or in some cases, tag them for deletion. The list of articles awaiting review is located at the
New Pages Feed. New page reviewing is a vital function for policing the quality of the encylopedia; if you have not already done so, you must read the new tutorial at
New Pages Review, the linked guides and essays, and fully understand the various
deletion criteria. If you need more help or wish to discuss the process, please join or start a thread at
page reviewer talk.
The reviewer right does not change your status or how you can edit articles. If you no longer want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. In case of abuse or persistent inaccuracy of reviewing, the right can be revoked at any time by an administrator. ~ Amory ( u • t • c) 11:51, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
Hi. Thanks for letting me know about that; I haven't seen Template:Short description being used much before, so I didn't think to add them to the articles. By any chance is this the same thing Wikidata's "description" field in pages would handle? Maybe I just need to give the beetle stubs their own Wikidata pages, if that is the case.
Monster Iestyn ( talk) 12:54, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
The Portals WikiProject has been rebooted.
You are invited to join, and participate in the effort to revitalize and improve the Portal system and all the portals in it.
There are sections on the WikiProject page dedicated to tasks (including WikiGnome tasks too), and areas on the talk page for discussing the improvement and automation of the various features of portals.
Many complaints have been lodged in the RfC to delete all portals, pointing out their various problems. They say that many portals are not maintained, or have fallen out of date, are useless, etc. Many of the !votes indicate that the editors who posted them simply don't believe in the potential of portals anymore.
It's time to change all that. Let's give them reasons to believe in portals, by revitalizing them.
The best response to a deletion nomination is to fix the page that was nominated. The further underway the effort is to improve portals by the time the RfC has run its course, the more of the reasons against portals will no longer apply. RfCs typically run 30 days. There are 19 days left in this one. Let's see how many portals we can update and improve before the RfC is closed, and beyond.
A healthy WikiProject dedicated to supporting and maintaining portals may be the strongest argument of all not to delete.
We may even surprise ourselves and exceed all expectations. Who knows what we will be able to accomplish in what may become the biggest Wikicollaboration in years.
Let's do this.
See ya at the WikiProject!
Sincerely, —
The Transhumanist 10:24, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for joining the Portals WikiProject.
Here's our first project-wide update. I hope you enjoy it...
The WikiProject reboot has been a success: the new re-envisioned project is up and running, with new members, ongoing discussions about automation, design, and upkeep; maintained task queques; and updates to members, like this, the very first one!
As you know, there's a proposal to delete all portals. It started out looking pretty dismal for portals, with primarily posts supporting their demise. It turned out that the proposer didn't post a deletion notice on the very pages being nominated for deletion (a requirement for all deletion discussions). Once that was done, a flood of opposition came in and has apparently turned the tide.
RfCs generally run for 30 days. It started April 8th, and so it has about 14 more days to run its course.
The more work we can do during that time on the portals, the stronger the reasons for keeping them will be. And the more prepared we will be for any MfDs that follow the closing of the RfC.
You may be wondering why we asked for AWB experience in the member-sign-up list.
We are gearing up to do maintenance runs on the entire set of portals, and the more people we have who can use AWB, the better.
But we're not quite ready to start this yet.
To be able to use AWB on the portals, we first need to know what the end result needs to be. Like on the news sections, do we comment out the out-of-date ones, or do we place the code to activate the newsbot on those pages? That would require an assessment of WikiNews and its news generating performance (areas covered, volume in each area), etc.
You can help us figure this out at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals#Discussions about news sections.
Another area we're gearing up for, to do passes with AWB, are upgrades to the intro sections of portals. Many of these have static (copied/pasted) excerpts that go stale over time.
We're trying to figure out how to make self-updating excerpts to replace the existing static excerpts that are on many portals, and once this is done, AWB will be used to place the new code. See the discussion on this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals#Discussions about selective transclusion in intros.
There are 3 major areas of activity right now:
There are a few hundred existing portals that are missing from this list.
The list of missing entries, and instructions on what to do, can be found at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet.
We need everybody's help on this. It's a big chore for one persons. But, many hands make light work. Please help chip away at this chore as much as you can. A little each day, form all of us, will get this done pretty quick.
In addition to browsing the portals in the 2 lists mentioned in the section above, you should take a look at the portal name space itself and what is in it.
That can be done at Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Watchlist.
There are discussions on many aspects of the WikiProject's operations, with more to come.
Such as about the purposes and functions of portals, design discussions, and so on.
There's even a automated design discussion over at Village Pump Technical, on selective transclusion.
I hope to see you on the talk page.
In addition to the automation efforts mentioned above, we will be looking into how to automate the selection and display of alternating excerpts, and alternating pictures, for the various portal sections.
Watch for these discussions on the Wikiproject's talk page.
Get ready, get set, go! — The Transhumanist 22:54, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
P.S.: The main example given at the RfC of the problems of portals was Portal:Cricket. Therefore, it's the top priority portal to update. Please lend a hand. - TT
Hello Peter
Sorry, I had missed your notes on the WikiFundi grant proposal. Embarrassing. I apology.
So... I think the core tech part of it is now in its rails (hopefully), so I will dedicate myself to the other elements now. I would VERY GRATEFULLY accept any help !!! Do you think possible that we both have a talk (on skype or hangout) in the next few days so that I give you a bit more insights and you can see where you would feel confortable and happy getting involved ? Also, Isla should be back to Cap very soon (she might be in the air right now...), coming back from Wikimedia Con. I think it would be a good idea if you meet her for a chat. I am not 100% sure of that, but she may have at least one raspberry box left as well as one SD card. What is your preferred platform for communication otherwise ? I use slack a lot with Isla (along with Skype). Otherwise messenger, or what's app, or email, or wiki pages of course :) Anthere ( talk) 17:54, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Anthere, No problem, I have not run out of things to do yet. Email is usually best - my internet speed is not great, and my talk page is fine, I am usually at my computer or out of reach. I can do Skype by appointment - this computer does not have a sound card. I have used hangout on the laptop with Douglas and the local crowd, but can't remember the details as he sets up the meetings and we just link in at the time.· · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:04, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
The article Diver communications you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Diver communications for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Harrias -- Harrias ( talk) 11:21, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
The 2017 Cure Award | |
In 2017 you were one of the top ~250 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs. |
Thanks again :-) -- Doc James along with the rest of the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 03:03, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
Hello Pbsouthwood, I'read you in Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Portals#Beta_testing. Well, it is a shame that I can not make you a ready gift ... but I can give you a good idea if you want it. For Portal:Underwater_diving it might be a nice feature to have a map of shipwrecks. Unfortunately, it looks like something needs to be done to make it more complete like this map of shipswrecks. Especially for Portal:Underwater_diving it could be of higher interest to have a similar map for Index of recreational dive sites. HTH. -- Tom ( talk) 09:33, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
We now have 52 members, and more are joining daily.
Attention portal maintainers!
There's a new template to improve existing and new portals, called {{ Transclude lead excerpt}}.
It is a lot easier to use than copying and pasting text from articles, as it displays the paragraphs you specify automatically for you.
It makes excerpts so that they are always current and never go stale or fork.
It is more powerful than it looks, because it has the Lua Module:Excerpt supporting it.
Be careful, as it is alpha software. Please notify the WikiProject talkpage of any problems you come across.
To give you a sense of the reaction this template is generating, here is an excerpt of a discussion thread from the WikiProject's talk page:
I wrote a comment in the the April 26 section of the RfC explaining what we are up to. I liked the excerpt above so much, that I went back to my RfC posting, and inserted it.
What's this? An old oil lamp. It's so dirty, I think I'll polish it...
*poof*
Whoa! Are you a WikiGenie? In that case, I get 3 wishes!
I wish...
Please make my wishes come true. See you around the portals! — The Transhumanist 08:02, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
I do see you've copied the whole script on your common.js. Like any script if you wish you can import it by putting: "importScript('User:Galobtter/Shortdesc helper.js');" Galobtter ( pingó mió) 18:10, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2018).
equals_to_any
function can be used when checking multiple namespaces. One major upcoming change is the ability to
see which filters are the slowest. This information is currently only available to those with access to
Logstash.Thank you for being a member of the Portals WikiProject, and thank you for all the work you have all been doing on the portal namespace. To see the activity, check out the watchlist.
This is our 3rd issue, see previous issues at the Newsletter archive.
The top, and one of the most visible parts, of the portal system is Portal:Contents/Portals, which is intended to list all (completed) portals on Wikipedia.
About half of the missing existing portals have been added since this WikiProject's reboot (April 17th). Thank you to RockMagnetist, TriNitrobrick, Polyamorph, PratyushSinha101, Ganesha811, Bermicourt, Javert2113, Noyster, Ɱ, Lepricavark, XOR'easter, and Emir of Wikipedia, for working on this.
We are half-way to completion with this. We need everyone to chip in until it is done. Instructions, and the list of missing entries are at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet.
I hope you'll join me there. ("Many hands make light work").
Thank you.
We're at 66 members, with more joining daily. We even have 6 WikiGnomes!
I have awarded Certes with a portals barnstar on his talk page for his work on the new excerpt templates that are revolutionizing the portal system ( Template:Transclude lead excerpt & Template:Transclude random excerpt). If you'd like to show your appreciation, please feel free to stop by his talk page and add your signature to the barnstar itself.
Thank you Certes. You are enabling this WikiProject to get the right things done, fast.
By the way, the templates have already gone international. After being told about the templates, Mossab wrote:
Thanks You very much!. Those are fantastic and great templates! I transferred them to Arabic Wikipedia and they do a magic great job. I worked to improve portal anatomy here and i do every thing i can to improve it and i am very sad for the nomination for deletion of portals :(. I am glad to be member on WikiProject Portals and i added my name with pleasure. Kind regards
As you know, the (April 8th) proposal to delete all portals and the portal namespace inspired the reboot of this WikiProject. RfCs typically run for 30 days, which means there are 5 days left including today, before the RfC will be closed. The !votes are predominantly "oppose", but many editors have shared their disappointment with the portal system. We have our work cut out for us in correcting the problems of the portals to address their concerns. Complaints ranged from being out of date and lacking maintenance, to taking up the time of editors that they felt (due to low traffic) would be better spent improving articles.
This past week has been somewhat stressful for me, with more than a little conflict...
It culminated with my being reported at the Administrator's Noticeboard "for spamming and canvassing". This is the second time I've been reported there during the RfC; the first one was for posting notices of the deletion discussion (the RfC) at the top of all portal pages.
The accusations were 1) Posting notices of the deletion discussion (the RfC) at the top of all portal pages, 2) Adding an Article alerts section to the Portals WikiProject page, and 3) posting notices (invitations) about this WikiProject on user talk and portal talk pages.
None of which fall under the Wikipedia definitions of spamming or canvassing.
Thank you, Lionelt and Lepricavark, for coming to my rescue. I don't know how the discussion would have turned out if you had not spoken up.
The discussion was closed as "no action necessary".
After that, the person responsible posted their thoughts to my talk page. Here they are, with my response:
Congratulations, it appears your relentless targeted advertising of the RFC, your beating the RFC Supporters with a stick by posting countless times there, your dishonest insistence that Current Events was on the chopping block, and your obstruction of clean up efforts at MfD are paying dividends. Have fun playing with Portal space where no one will read your work. I'm sure someone will eventually clean up the mess when your interest wanes. Cheers. Legacypac
The main advancement we've made so far is applying selective transclusion Transclusion is template technology, showing a page on another page. Selective transclusion shows only part of that page. We use it to show excerpts that always match the source. The two templates we have so far, are Template:Transclude lead excerpt and Template:Transclude random excerpt.
Excerpts are migrating toward the base page of each portal, and where this is done, a subpage is no longer needed.
Template:Transclude lead excerpt will be able to be used to put the intro excerpt directly on the portal page, rather than on an intro subpage, once we adapt a portal design to accommodate this.
Template:Transclude random excerpt is currently being used on 1st-level subpages, and eliminates the need for 2nd-level subpages. (Many portals have 2 levels of subpages).
There are about 1500 portals, but there are around 148,000 subpages in portal space. Further discussions are needed to develop designs and components that do not require them.
It is my hope that the portal of the future will be a single page, or close to it, pulling in excerpts from specified dynamic sources (like category pages), filtered by ratings. This would obviate the need for subpages at all (except for maybe the header and footer subpages, which store a portal's settings). A more likely near-term solution would be subpages with a list maintained by a bot, or editors using semi-automatic tools.
Since the reboot, a new portal has been created:
Some central pages in the portal system. The more eyes on them, the better.
There's more in the works, like a rating system, further redesigns, etc. Keep an eye on the discussions on the project's talk page. They should start showing up there soon.
Hope to see you there. Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 06:23, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
Have you used the new page previews feature yet?
It enhances the usefulness of existing outlines.
Thoughts? — The Transhumanist 08:14, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
(please mention me on reply; thanks!)
You are doing a heroic amount of work here, but the start of the first sentences of articles are generally not designed to be treated in this way. I'd suggest for paintings, not giving the technique (oil on canvas) etc. More important information is the subject, where it is not clearish from the title, the date and perhaps the location. For churches and houses there is too much address; an indication of the date and style is more important. I've changed a few: [1], [2], [3], all I think reducing the characters. Johnbod ( talk) 14:50, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
This edit just popped up on my watchlist and I admit I was ignorant of this template until now. I just finished reading up on it, but one things remains unclear. Is the eventual idea to have these on every page? Some of the documentation implies that it's beneficial on pages where it might be unclear to the searcher what they've found. In the case of MoBA, the template seems to be of little use in that regard—in other words, the title of the article leaves little doubt about what the article is, and the template simply duplicates the first sentence. From my humble perspective, it's adding "markup noise" for no obvious gain. -- Laser brain (talk) 13:40, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
Working Man's Barnstar | ||
It's only a small token of gratitude but I'd like to offer you,
Peter, this barnstar in recognition of your generous time and craftsmanly care in hopping in to resolve a difficult table template issue on the
Jingili article, providing the page with two which will prove invaluable for hundreds of others articles in this group.
Nishidani (
talk) 20:27, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
Nishidani, you are welcome. We each do what we can, and pay forward for the help we get from others. I am not so skilled with tables that a bit of practice is not good for me. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 08:25, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
|
We've grown to 73 members, and morale is high. Thank you for joining. Here is some news, and some tasks...
2018-05-11: preparations are being made to close the RfC. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure#Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/RfC: Ending the system of portals.
When there, be sure to notice the consultation link.
We're trying to get a prototypical single-page portal developed in time to show the RfC closers before they make their final decision. You can help. It's Portal:Humanism. So far, we've applied selective transclusion (automation) to excerpts, and have made the following sections without subpages: intro, selected article, selected biography, categories, related portals, wikiprojects, things to do, and wikimedia. Eight down, 4 to go, plus 2 formatting subpages (not sure we can migrate those). Automating every section, would also be nice.
Our main objectives currently, are:
The intro section of many portals transcludes an "Intro" subpage that has an excerpt in it.
We're replacing that with a selective transclusion directly in the intro section, bypassing the subpage. Though, there's a little more to it...
For instructions, see: Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Transclude intro excerpt directly on the portal base page.
Please skip Portal:American Civil War, as that is specifically being maintained by hand.
One of the sections on many portals links to sister projects on the subject. This needlessly takes a subpage. The subpage can be made obsolete by using the template {{ Wikimedia for portals}} directly on the portal base page.
This has been done for several hundred portals so far.
See Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Obsolete a Wikimedia subpage for instructions.
Certes figured out how...
{{subst:Text|<category|tree>}}{{subst:PAGENAME}}{{subst:Text|</categorytree>}}
For more information, see the thread Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals#Rendering PAGENAME inside categorytree tag doesn't work (it does now).
In the meantime, see ya around the portals! — The Transhumanist 15:55, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
I was just checking for WPSCUBA articles without short descriptions using your petscan queries but the query to find those hung. So I tried testing just for articles having template {{ WikiProject Scuba diving}} ( https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=4480069 ) and got 688 results. It seems that there must be articles in the category Category:WikiProject SCUBA articles (834 total) that don't have the {{ WikiProject Scuba diving}} template. I'll see if I can track them down. -- RexxS ( talk) 12:23, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
We are at 74 members. If you know anyone who might find this WikiProject interesting, please invite them.
The RfC was closed May 11th, and a closing statement was posted May 12th which says "There exists a strong consensus against deleting or even deprecating portals at this time."
Some major activities that we are in the middle of include:
During his work on portals, Broter found a quote randomizer. It is {{ Random quotation}}.
Broter has transformed the Portal:Community of Christ so it is comprised of only 3 pages in portal space: the base page, its box-header subpage, and its box-footer subpage. Its other other subpages are now obsolete and are waiting for deletion. Nice job, Broter!
Well, that's all for now. See ya around the portals. — The Transhumanist 06:39, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your edit on Portal:Herbalism, it looks better now. The inconsistent widths were vestigial from a T-pac manouvre on a floating div during development. Cheers, Cesdeva (talk) 14:28, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
ACTRIAL:
Deletion tags
Backlog drive:
Editathons
Paid editing - new policy
Subject-specific notability guidelines
Not English
News
We have grown to 79 members.
Please provide a warm welcome to our latest additions, Wpgbrown, Cactus.man, JLJ001, and Wumbolo.
A lot is going on, much of it on the WikiProject's talk page, so be sure to go there and join in on any of the many discussions taking place there.
Elsewhere around the portal project, or related to portals, the following is happening...
Evad37 has created a new template, with supporting lua module, to handle news in portals...
{{ Transclude selected current events}} is ready to be tested in some actual portals. Let Evad37 know if you need help with the search patterns.
Noyster commented that "This is the best portal innovation since sliced bread!"
See the relevant discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals#Alternative to Wikinews.
Thank you, Evad.
Our WikiProject is now subscribed to the bot that makes automatic article alerts, but the subpage where they are posted has not been added to our WikiProject page yet because of a weird problem...
Featured portal nominations from two years ago keep popping up on there.
Please check Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals/Article alerts to see if you can figure out how to fix this.
Once that is remedied, it will be posted on our WikiProject page.
Thank you.
Note that, this will only track base pages, because to track the rest, we'd have to create over 140,000 talk pages for the subpages, and that just isn't worthwhile (as we're trying to remove the subpages anyways). Therefore, any alerts for subpages will still need to be posted manually.
Your input/editing is welcome on the draft-in-progress of a new guideline for portals.
See or work on the draft at User:Cesdeva/sandbox11.
See also the discussion at: Wikipedia talk:Portal guidelines#RfC on new portal guidelines
There is a proposal to change the look of the table of contents at Portal:Contents/Portals.
See: Portal talk:Contents/Portals#RFC on layout update.
Thank you to those who have participated in portal deletion discussions. There are still some editors out there who despise portals, and this comes across in their argumentation style. Wow. Such negativity. But, there is some good news...
Current deletion discussions are posted on our WikiProject page.
While portal detractors are trying to get rid of portals via MfD, we have deleted many of them via speedy deletion (per {{ Db-p1}} or {{ Db-p2}}). Essentially, they were bare skeletons, with maybe a little meat on them. The plus here is that speedy deletion is without prejudice to re-creating the portals. They can easily be restarted from scratch without getting approval, or be undeleted by request by someone willing to work on them. We have kept track of these, for when someone wants to rebuild them. They are listed at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet.
We are also removing subpages, the functions of which have been migrated to portal base pages. To see which ones have been removed, look for the redlinks in our watchlist.
There is also an MfD concerning some of these at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Redundant subpages of the Cornwall portal.
For subpages that need to be deleted, you can conveniently place this speedy deletion template at the top of each of them:
{{Db-g6|rationale=of subpage clean up – this subpage's function has been migrated to the portal base page and is no longer needed}}
Then an admin will come along and delete them.
There are still 100 existing portals not yet presented on the main portal list at Portal:Contents/Portals. There were 400, so we've come a long way. Thank you! But we are not done yet...
Please list a couple of them. Every little bit helps. If each member of this project listed one more, it would almost all be done. Many hands make light work.
The list of missings, and instructions, are to be found at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet.
I hope to see you there!
These developments make up just the tip of the iceberg. I'll have more to report in the next update, soon. — The Transhumanist 00:32, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
There's an article about the Portals WikiProject in the new issue of Signpost:
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2018-05-24/WikiProject report
Enjoy.
P.S.: We now have 80 members. Evad37 just joined! — The Transhumanist 01:37, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
I'm contacting you because you indicated on the Portals WikiProject's members list that you use AWB.
We are now working on a task that requires your help.
Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals#AWB team please tackle maintenance run on intro sections.
Thank you. — The Transhumanist 22:38, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | → | Archive 15 |
Hello Pbsouthwood. Your account has been added to the "New page reviewers
" user group, allowing you to review new pages and mark them as
patrolled, tag them for maintenance issues, or in some cases, tag them for deletion. The list of articles awaiting review is located at the
New Pages Feed. New page reviewing is a vital function for policing the quality of the encylopedia; if you have not already done so, you must read the new tutorial at
New Pages Review, the linked guides and essays, and fully understand the various
deletion criteria. If you need more help or wish to discuss the process, please join or start a thread at
page reviewer talk.
The reviewer right does not change your status or how you can edit articles. If you no longer want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. In case of abuse or persistent inaccuracy of reviewing, the right can be revoked at any time by an administrator. ~ Amory ( u • t • c) 11:51, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
Hi. Thanks for letting me know about that; I haven't seen Template:Short description being used much before, so I didn't think to add them to the articles. By any chance is this the same thing Wikidata's "description" field in pages would handle? Maybe I just need to give the beetle stubs their own Wikidata pages, if that is the case.
Monster Iestyn ( talk) 12:54, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
The Portals WikiProject has been rebooted.
You are invited to join, and participate in the effort to revitalize and improve the Portal system and all the portals in it.
There are sections on the WikiProject page dedicated to tasks (including WikiGnome tasks too), and areas on the talk page for discussing the improvement and automation of the various features of portals.
Many complaints have been lodged in the RfC to delete all portals, pointing out their various problems. They say that many portals are not maintained, or have fallen out of date, are useless, etc. Many of the !votes indicate that the editors who posted them simply don't believe in the potential of portals anymore.
It's time to change all that. Let's give them reasons to believe in portals, by revitalizing them.
The best response to a deletion nomination is to fix the page that was nominated. The further underway the effort is to improve portals by the time the RfC has run its course, the more of the reasons against portals will no longer apply. RfCs typically run 30 days. There are 19 days left in this one. Let's see how many portals we can update and improve before the RfC is closed, and beyond.
A healthy WikiProject dedicated to supporting and maintaining portals may be the strongest argument of all not to delete.
We may even surprise ourselves and exceed all expectations. Who knows what we will be able to accomplish in what may become the biggest Wikicollaboration in years.
Let's do this.
See ya at the WikiProject!
Sincerely, —
The Transhumanist 10:24, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for joining the Portals WikiProject.
Here's our first project-wide update. I hope you enjoy it...
The WikiProject reboot has been a success: the new re-envisioned project is up and running, with new members, ongoing discussions about automation, design, and upkeep; maintained task queques; and updates to members, like this, the very first one!
As you know, there's a proposal to delete all portals. It started out looking pretty dismal for portals, with primarily posts supporting their demise. It turned out that the proposer didn't post a deletion notice on the very pages being nominated for deletion (a requirement for all deletion discussions). Once that was done, a flood of opposition came in and has apparently turned the tide.
RfCs generally run for 30 days. It started April 8th, and so it has about 14 more days to run its course.
The more work we can do during that time on the portals, the stronger the reasons for keeping them will be. And the more prepared we will be for any MfDs that follow the closing of the RfC.
You may be wondering why we asked for AWB experience in the member-sign-up list.
We are gearing up to do maintenance runs on the entire set of portals, and the more people we have who can use AWB, the better.
But we're not quite ready to start this yet.
To be able to use AWB on the portals, we first need to know what the end result needs to be. Like on the news sections, do we comment out the out-of-date ones, or do we place the code to activate the newsbot on those pages? That would require an assessment of WikiNews and its news generating performance (areas covered, volume in each area), etc.
You can help us figure this out at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals#Discussions about news sections.
Another area we're gearing up for, to do passes with AWB, are upgrades to the intro sections of portals. Many of these have static (copied/pasted) excerpts that go stale over time.
We're trying to figure out how to make self-updating excerpts to replace the existing static excerpts that are on many portals, and once this is done, AWB will be used to place the new code. See the discussion on this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals#Discussions about selective transclusion in intros.
There are 3 major areas of activity right now:
There are a few hundred existing portals that are missing from this list.
The list of missing entries, and instructions on what to do, can be found at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet.
We need everybody's help on this. It's a big chore for one persons. But, many hands make light work. Please help chip away at this chore as much as you can. A little each day, form all of us, will get this done pretty quick.
In addition to browsing the portals in the 2 lists mentioned in the section above, you should take a look at the portal name space itself and what is in it.
That can be done at Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Watchlist.
There are discussions on many aspects of the WikiProject's operations, with more to come.
Such as about the purposes and functions of portals, design discussions, and so on.
There's even a automated design discussion over at Village Pump Technical, on selective transclusion.
I hope to see you on the talk page.
In addition to the automation efforts mentioned above, we will be looking into how to automate the selection and display of alternating excerpts, and alternating pictures, for the various portal sections.
Watch for these discussions on the Wikiproject's talk page.
Get ready, get set, go! — The Transhumanist 22:54, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
P.S.: The main example given at the RfC of the problems of portals was Portal:Cricket. Therefore, it's the top priority portal to update. Please lend a hand. - TT
Hello Peter
Sorry, I had missed your notes on the WikiFundi grant proposal. Embarrassing. I apology.
So... I think the core tech part of it is now in its rails (hopefully), so I will dedicate myself to the other elements now. I would VERY GRATEFULLY accept any help !!! Do you think possible that we both have a talk (on skype or hangout) in the next few days so that I give you a bit more insights and you can see where you would feel confortable and happy getting involved ? Also, Isla should be back to Cap very soon (she might be in the air right now...), coming back from Wikimedia Con. I think it would be a good idea if you meet her for a chat. I am not 100% sure of that, but she may have at least one raspberry box left as well as one SD card. What is your preferred platform for communication otherwise ? I use slack a lot with Isla (along with Skype). Otherwise messenger, or what's app, or email, or wiki pages of course :) Anthere ( talk) 17:54, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Anthere, No problem, I have not run out of things to do yet. Email is usually best - my internet speed is not great, and my talk page is fine, I am usually at my computer or out of reach. I can do Skype by appointment - this computer does not have a sound card. I have used hangout on the laptop with Douglas and the local crowd, but can't remember the details as he sets up the meetings and we just link in at the time.· · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:04, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
The article Diver communications you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Diver communications for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Harrias -- Harrias ( talk) 11:21, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
The 2017 Cure Award | |
In 2017 you were one of the top ~250 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs. |
Thanks again :-) -- Doc James along with the rest of the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 03:03, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
Hello Pbsouthwood, I'read you in Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Portals#Beta_testing. Well, it is a shame that I can not make you a ready gift ... but I can give you a good idea if you want it. For Portal:Underwater_diving it might be a nice feature to have a map of shipwrecks. Unfortunately, it looks like something needs to be done to make it more complete like this map of shipswrecks. Especially for Portal:Underwater_diving it could be of higher interest to have a similar map for Index of recreational dive sites. HTH. -- Tom ( talk) 09:33, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
We now have 52 members, and more are joining daily.
Attention portal maintainers!
There's a new template to improve existing and new portals, called {{ Transclude lead excerpt}}.
It is a lot easier to use than copying and pasting text from articles, as it displays the paragraphs you specify automatically for you.
It makes excerpts so that they are always current and never go stale or fork.
It is more powerful than it looks, because it has the Lua Module:Excerpt supporting it.
Be careful, as it is alpha software. Please notify the WikiProject talkpage of any problems you come across.
To give you a sense of the reaction this template is generating, here is an excerpt of a discussion thread from the WikiProject's talk page:
I wrote a comment in the the April 26 section of the RfC explaining what we are up to. I liked the excerpt above so much, that I went back to my RfC posting, and inserted it.
What's this? An old oil lamp. It's so dirty, I think I'll polish it...
*poof*
Whoa! Are you a WikiGenie? In that case, I get 3 wishes!
I wish...
Please make my wishes come true. See you around the portals! — The Transhumanist 08:02, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
I do see you've copied the whole script on your common.js. Like any script if you wish you can import it by putting: "importScript('User:Galobtter/Shortdesc helper.js');" Galobtter ( pingó mió) 18:10, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2018).
equals_to_any
function can be used when checking multiple namespaces. One major upcoming change is the ability to
see which filters are the slowest. This information is currently only available to those with access to
Logstash.Thank you for being a member of the Portals WikiProject, and thank you for all the work you have all been doing on the portal namespace. To see the activity, check out the watchlist.
This is our 3rd issue, see previous issues at the Newsletter archive.
The top, and one of the most visible parts, of the portal system is Portal:Contents/Portals, which is intended to list all (completed) portals on Wikipedia.
About half of the missing existing portals have been added since this WikiProject's reboot (April 17th). Thank you to RockMagnetist, TriNitrobrick, Polyamorph, PratyushSinha101, Ganesha811, Bermicourt, Javert2113, Noyster, Ɱ, Lepricavark, XOR'easter, and Emir of Wikipedia, for working on this.
We are half-way to completion with this. We need everyone to chip in until it is done. Instructions, and the list of missing entries are at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet.
I hope you'll join me there. ("Many hands make light work").
Thank you.
We're at 66 members, with more joining daily. We even have 6 WikiGnomes!
I have awarded Certes with a portals barnstar on his talk page for his work on the new excerpt templates that are revolutionizing the portal system ( Template:Transclude lead excerpt & Template:Transclude random excerpt). If you'd like to show your appreciation, please feel free to stop by his talk page and add your signature to the barnstar itself.
Thank you Certes. You are enabling this WikiProject to get the right things done, fast.
By the way, the templates have already gone international. After being told about the templates, Mossab wrote:
Thanks You very much!. Those are fantastic and great templates! I transferred them to Arabic Wikipedia and they do a magic great job. I worked to improve portal anatomy here and i do every thing i can to improve it and i am very sad for the nomination for deletion of portals :(. I am glad to be member on WikiProject Portals and i added my name with pleasure. Kind regards
As you know, the (April 8th) proposal to delete all portals and the portal namespace inspired the reboot of this WikiProject. RfCs typically run for 30 days, which means there are 5 days left including today, before the RfC will be closed. The !votes are predominantly "oppose", but many editors have shared their disappointment with the portal system. We have our work cut out for us in correcting the problems of the portals to address their concerns. Complaints ranged from being out of date and lacking maintenance, to taking up the time of editors that they felt (due to low traffic) would be better spent improving articles.
This past week has been somewhat stressful for me, with more than a little conflict...
It culminated with my being reported at the Administrator's Noticeboard "for spamming and canvassing". This is the second time I've been reported there during the RfC; the first one was for posting notices of the deletion discussion (the RfC) at the top of all portal pages.
The accusations were 1) Posting notices of the deletion discussion (the RfC) at the top of all portal pages, 2) Adding an Article alerts section to the Portals WikiProject page, and 3) posting notices (invitations) about this WikiProject on user talk and portal talk pages.
None of which fall under the Wikipedia definitions of spamming or canvassing.
Thank you, Lionelt and Lepricavark, for coming to my rescue. I don't know how the discussion would have turned out if you had not spoken up.
The discussion was closed as "no action necessary".
After that, the person responsible posted their thoughts to my talk page. Here they are, with my response:
Congratulations, it appears your relentless targeted advertising of the RFC, your beating the RFC Supporters with a stick by posting countless times there, your dishonest insistence that Current Events was on the chopping block, and your obstruction of clean up efforts at MfD are paying dividends. Have fun playing with Portal space where no one will read your work. I'm sure someone will eventually clean up the mess when your interest wanes. Cheers. Legacypac
The main advancement we've made so far is applying selective transclusion Transclusion is template technology, showing a page on another page. Selective transclusion shows only part of that page. We use it to show excerpts that always match the source. The two templates we have so far, are Template:Transclude lead excerpt and Template:Transclude random excerpt.
Excerpts are migrating toward the base page of each portal, and where this is done, a subpage is no longer needed.
Template:Transclude lead excerpt will be able to be used to put the intro excerpt directly on the portal page, rather than on an intro subpage, once we adapt a portal design to accommodate this.
Template:Transclude random excerpt is currently being used on 1st-level subpages, and eliminates the need for 2nd-level subpages. (Many portals have 2 levels of subpages).
There are about 1500 portals, but there are around 148,000 subpages in portal space. Further discussions are needed to develop designs and components that do not require them.
It is my hope that the portal of the future will be a single page, or close to it, pulling in excerpts from specified dynamic sources (like category pages), filtered by ratings. This would obviate the need for subpages at all (except for maybe the header and footer subpages, which store a portal's settings). A more likely near-term solution would be subpages with a list maintained by a bot, or editors using semi-automatic tools.
Since the reboot, a new portal has been created:
Some central pages in the portal system. The more eyes on them, the better.
There's more in the works, like a rating system, further redesigns, etc. Keep an eye on the discussions on the project's talk page. They should start showing up there soon.
Hope to see you there. Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 06:23, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
Have you used the new page previews feature yet?
It enhances the usefulness of existing outlines.
Thoughts? — The Transhumanist 08:14, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
(please mention me on reply; thanks!)
You are doing a heroic amount of work here, but the start of the first sentences of articles are generally not designed to be treated in this way. I'd suggest for paintings, not giving the technique (oil on canvas) etc. More important information is the subject, where it is not clearish from the title, the date and perhaps the location. For churches and houses there is too much address; an indication of the date and style is more important. I've changed a few: [1], [2], [3], all I think reducing the characters. Johnbod ( talk) 14:50, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
This edit just popped up on my watchlist and I admit I was ignorant of this template until now. I just finished reading up on it, but one things remains unclear. Is the eventual idea to have these on every page? Some of the documentation implies that it's beneficial on pages where it might be unclear to the searcher what they've found. In the case of MoBA, the template seems to be of little use in that regard—in other words, the title of the article leaves little doubt about what the article is, and the template simply duplicates the first sentence. From my humble perspective, it's adding "markup noise" for no obvious gain. -- Laser brain (talk) 13:40, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
Working Man's Barnstar | ||
It's only a small token of gratitude but I'd like to offer you,
Peter, this barnstar in recognition of your generous time and craftsmanly care in hopping in to resolve a difficult table template issue on the
Jingili article, providing the page with two which will prove invaluable for hundreds of others articles in this group.
Nishidani (
talk) 20:27, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
Nishidani, you are welcome. We each do what we can, and pay forward for the help we get from others. I am not so skilled with tables that a bit of practice is not good for me. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 08:25, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
|
We've grown to 73 members, and morale is high. Thank you for joining. Here is some news, and some tasks...
2018-05-11: preparations are being made to close the RfC. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure#Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/RfC: Ending the system of portals.
When there, be sure to notice the consultation link.
We're trying to get a prototypical single-page portal developed in time to show the RfC closers before they make their final decision. You can help. It's Portal:Humanism. So far, we've applied selective transclusion (automation) to excerpts, and have made the following sections without subpages: intro, selected article, selected biography, categories, related portals, wikiprojects, things to do, and wikimedia. Eight down, 4 to go, plus 2 formatting subpages (not sure we can migrate those). Automating every section, would also be nice.
Our main objectives currently, are:
The intro section of many portals transcludes an "Intro" subpage that has an excerpt in it.
We're replacing that with a selective transclusion directly in the intro section, bypassing the subpage. Though, there's a little more to it...
For instructions, see: Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Transclude intro excerpt directly on the portal base page.
Please skip Portal:American Civil War, as that is specifically being maintained by hand.
One of the sections on many portals links to sister projects on the subject. This needlessly takes a subpage. The subpage can be made obsolete by using the template {{ Wikimedia for portals}} directly on the portal base page.
This has been done for several hundred portals so far.
See Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Obsolete a Wikimedia subpage for instructions.
Certes figured out how...
{{subst:Text|<category|tree>}}{{subst:PAGENAME}}{{subst:Text|</categorytree>}}
For more information, see the thread Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals#Rendering PAGENAME inside categorytree tag doesn't work (it does now).
In the meantime, see ya around the portals! — The Transhumanist 15:55, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
I was just checking for WPSCUBA articles without short descriptions using your petscan queries but the query to find those hung. So I tried testing just for articles having template {{ WikiProject Scuba diving}} ( https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=4480069 ) and got 688 results. It seems that there must be articles in the category Category:WikiProject SCUBA articles (834 total) that don't have the {{ WikiProject Scuba diving}} template. I'll see if I can track them down. -- RexxS ( talk) 12:23, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
We are at 74 members. If you know anyone who might find this WikiProject interesting, please invite them.
The RfC was closed May 11th, and a closing statement was posted May 12th which says "There exists a strong consensus against deleting or even deprecating portals at this time."
Some major activities that we are in the middle of include:
During his work on portals, Broter found a quote randomizer. It is {{ Random quotation}}.
Broter has transformed the Portal:Community of Christ so it is comprised of only 3 pages in portal space: the base page, its box-header subpage, and its box-footer subpage. Its other other subpages are now obsolete and are waiting for deletion. Nice job, Broter!
Well, that's all for now. See ya around the portals. — The Transhumanist 06:39, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your edit on Portal:Herbalism, it looks better now. The inconsistent widths were vestigial from a T-pac manouvre on a floating div during development. Cheers, Cesdeva (talk) 14:28, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
ACTRIAL:
Deletion tags
Backlog drive:
Editathons
Paid editing - new policy
Subject-specific notability guidelines
Not English
News
We have grown to 79 members.
Please provide a warm welcome to our latest additions, Wpgbrown, Cactus.man, JLJ001, and Wumbolo.
A lot is going on, much of it on the WikiProject's talk page, so be sure to go there and join in on any of the many discussions taking place there.
Elsewhere around the portal project, or related to portals, the following is happening...
Evad37 has created a new template, with supporting lua module, to handle news in portals...
{{ Transclude selected current events}} is ready to be tested in some actual portals. Let Evad37 know if you need help with the search patterns.
Noyster commented that "This is the best portal innovation since sliced bread!"
See the relevant discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals#Alternative to Wikinews.
Thank you, Evad.
Our WikiProject is now subscribed to the bot that makes automatic article alerts, but the subpage where they are posted has not been added to our WikiProject page yet because of a weird problem...
Featured portal nominations from two years ago keep popping up on there.
Please check Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals/Article alerts to see if you can figure out how to fix this.
Once that is remedied, it will be posted on our WikiProject page.
Thank you.
Note that, this will only track base pages, because to track the rest, we'd have to create over 140,000 talk pages for the subpages, and that just isn't worthwhile (as we're trying to remove the subpages anyways). Therefore, any alerts for subpages will still need to be posted manually.
Your input/editing is welcome on the draft-in-progress of a new guideline for portals.
See or work on the draft at User:Cesdeva/sandbox11.
See also the discussion at: Wikipedia talk:Portal guidelines#RfC on new portal guidelines
There is a proposal to change the look of the table of contents at Portal:Contents/Portals.
See: Portal talk:Contents/Portals#RFC on layout update.
Thank you to those who have participated in portal deletion discussions. There are still some editors out there who despise portals, and this comes across in their argumentation style. Wow. Such negativity. But, there is some good news...
Current deletion discussions are posted on our WikiProject page.
While portal detractors are trying to get rid of portals via MfD, we have deleted many of them via speedy deletion (per {{ Db-p1}} or {{ Db-p2}}). Essentially, they were bare skeletons, with maybe a little meat on them. The plus here is that speedy deletion is without prejudice to re-creating the portals. They can easily be restarted from scratch without getting approval, or be undeleted by request by someone willing to work on them. We have kept track of these, for when someone wants to rebuild them. They are listed at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet.
We are also removing subpages, the functions of which have been migrated to portal base pages. To see which ones have been removed, look for the redlinks in our watchlist.
There is also an MfD concerning some of these at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Redundant subpages of the Cornwall portal.
For subpages that need to be deleted, you can conveniently place this speedy deletion template at the top of each of them:
{{Db-g6|rationale=of subpage clean up – this subpage's function has been migrated to the portal base page and is no longer needed}}
Then an admin will come along and delete them.
There are still 100 existing portals not yet presented on the main portal list at Portal:Contents/Portals. There were 400, so we've come a long way. Thank you! But we are not done yet...
Please list a couple of them. Every little bit helps. If each member of this project listed one more, it would almost all be done. Many hands make light work.
The list of missings, and instructions, are to be found at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet.
I hope to see you there!
These developments make up just the tip of the iceberg. I'll have more to report in the next update, soon. — The Transhumanist 00:32, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
There's an article about the Portals WikiProject in the new issue of Signpost:
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2018-05-24/WikiProject report
Enjoy.
P.S.: We now have 80 members. Evad37 just joined! — The Transhumanist 01:37, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
I'm contacting you because you indicated on the Portals WikiProject's members list that you use AWB.
We are now working on a task that requires your help.
Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals#AWB team please tackle maintenance run on intro sections.
Thank you. — The Transhumanist 22:38, 28 May 2018 (UTC)