Hi. Thankyou for your participation in the challenge series or/and contests. In November The Women in Red World Contest is being held to try to produce new articles for as many countries worldwide and occupations as possible. There will be over $4000 in prizes to win, including Amazon vouchers and paid subscriptions. If this would appeal to you and you think you'd be interested in contributing new articles on women during this month for your region or wherever please sign up in the participants section. The articles done may also count towards the ongoing challenge. If you're not interested in prize money yourself but are willing to participate and raise money to buy books about women for others to use, this is also fine. Help would also be appreciated in drawing up the lists of missing articles. If you think of any missing articles please add them to the sub lists by continent at Missing articles. Thankyou, and if taking part, good luck!♦ Dr. Blofeld 08:48, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
About a month ago the fossils by state categories were nominated for deletion because some widespread fossils were in dozens of states and many editors objected to the clutter at the bottom of their articles. I'm replacing the categories with full fledged list articles (example: Draft:List of the Paleozoic life of Michigan). As far as I remember the deletion discussion only applies to the US state and Canadian province categories so country-level categories in South America are probably fine at least for now. Abyssal ( talk) 03:12, 25 October 2017 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article
Cuche Formation you nominated for
GA-status according to the
criteria.
This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by
Legobot, on behalf of
FunkMonk --
FunkMonk (
talk)
15:01, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
The final round of the 2017 WikiCup is over. Congratulations to the 2017 WikiCup top three finalists:
In addition to recognizing the achievements of the top finishers and everyone who worked hard to make it to the final round, we also want to recognize those participants who were most productive in each of the WikiCup scoring categories:
Over the course of the 2017 WikiCup the following content was added or improved on Wikipedia: 51 Featured Articles, 292 Good Articles, 18 Featured Lists, 1 Featured Picture, 1 Featured Topics, 4 Good Topics, around 400 Did You Knows, 75 In The News, and 442 Good Article Reviews. Thank you to all the competitors for your hard work and what you have done to improve Wikipedia.
Regarding the prize vouchers - @ Adityavagarwal, Vanamonde93, Casliber, Bloom6132, 1989, and SounderBruce: please send Godot13 ( talk · contribs · email) an email from the email address to which you would like your Amazon voucher sent. Please include your preference of global Amazon marketplace as well. We hope to have the electronic gift cards processed and sent within a week.
We will open up a discussion for comments on process and scoring in a few days. The 2018 WikiCup is just around the corner! Many thanks from all the judges. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 ( talk · contribs · email), Cwmhiraeth ( talk · contribs · email), and Godot13 ( talk · contribs · email) MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 11:41, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
So the 2017 WikiCup has come to an end. Congratulations to the winner, to the other finalists and to all those who took part. 177 contestants signed up, more than usual, but not all of them submitted entries in the first round. Were editors attracted by the cash prizes offered for the first time this year, or were these irrelevant? Do the rules and scoring need changing for the 2018 WikiCup? If you have a view on these or other matters, why not join in the WikiCup discussion about next year's contest? Sturmvogel 66 ( talk · contribs · email), Godot13 ( talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth ( talk · contribs · email). MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 13:59, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
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Hello, Tisquesusa.
I've seen you editing recently and you seem knowledgeable about Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. |
Hello, Tisquesusa. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
Template:Voynich manuscript complete has been
nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at
the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page.
Frietjes (
talk)
18:00, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
The article
Cuche Formation you nominated as a
good article has failed
; see
Talk:Cuche Formation for reasons why the nomination failed. If or when these points have been taken care of, you may apply for a new nomination of the article. Message delivered by
Legobot, on behalf of
FunkMonk --
FunkMonk (
talk)
07:21, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article
Cesar-Ranchería Basin you nominated for
GA-status according to the
criteria.
This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by
Legobot, on behalf of
Lappspira --
Lappspira (
talk)
01:02, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article
Honda Group, Colombia you nominated for
GA-status according to the
criteria.
This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by
Legobot, on behalf of
FunkMonk --
FunkMonk (
talk)
15:02, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
The article
Honda Group, Colombia you nominated as a
good article has failed
; see
Talk:Honda Group, Colombia for reasons why the nomination failed. If or when these points have been taken care of, you may apply for a new nomination of the article. Message delivered by
Legobot, on behalf of
FunkMonk --
FunkMonk (
talk)
19:01, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
And so ends the first round of the competition, with 4 points required to qualify for round 2. With 53 contestants qualifying, the groups for round 2 are slightly smaller than usual, with the two leaders from each group due to qualify for round 3 as well as the top sixteen remaining users.
Our top scorers in round 1 were:
Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 1 but before the start of round 2 can be claimed in round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.
If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 ( talk), Sturmvogel 66 ( talk), Cwmhiraeth ( talk) and Vanamonde ( talk) 15:27, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
The article
Cesar-Ranchería Basin you nominated as a
good article has failed
; see
Talk:Cesar-Ranchería Basin for reasons why the nomination failed. If or when these points have been taken care of, you may apply for a new nomination of the article. Message delivered by
Legobot, on behalf of
Lappspira --
Lappspira (
talk)
18:21, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Hi, I see you have created many Colombia geology related articles in one big outpouring of effort. Do these have equivalent Spanish language pages that should be linked up? Graeme Bartlett ( talk) 02:38, 19 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
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 08:03, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Tisquesusa, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Azimut ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)
It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot ( talk) 09:53, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
The second round of the 2018 WikiCup has now finished. Most contestants who advanced to the next round scored upwards of 100 points, but two with just 10 points managed to scrape through into round 3. Our top scorers in the last round were:
So far contestants have achieved twelve featured articles between them and a splendid 124 good articles. Commendably, 326 GARs have been completed during the course of the 2018 WikiCup, so the backlog of articles awaiting GA review has been reduced as a result of contestants' activities. As we enter the third round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed in round 3. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met; most of the GARs are fine, but a few have been a bit skimpy.
If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 ( talk), Sturmvogel 66 ( talk), Vanamonde ( talk) and Cwmhiraeth ( talk) 06:10, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
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 06:25, 4 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:WikiProject Portals#Rendering PAGENAME inside categorytree tag doesn't work (it does now).
In the meantime, see ya around the portals! — The Transhumanist 16:04, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
Hi Tisquesusa, I've found a recent thesis that I think would be interesting for future editions, particulary the Chapter 4, which deals with new fossils from the Castillestes, Codore and Ware formations from Colombia and Venezuela. The chapter 4 also is published as part of the Smithsonian contributions to paleobiology: [1]. Here is the link to the whole thesis: [2] Cheers! -- Rextron ( talk) 07:19, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited San Antonio Formation, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages Rana and Equus ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 10:24, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
Hi. Thankyou for your participation in the challenge series or/and contests. In November The Women in Red World Contest is being held to try to produce new articles for as many countries worldwide and occupations as possible. There will be over $4000 in prizes to win, including Amazon vouchers and paid subscriptions. If this would appeal to you and you think you'd be interested in contributing new articles on women during this month for your region or wherever please sign up in the participants section. The articles done may also count towards the ongoing challenge. If you're not interested in prize money yourself but are willing to participate and raise money to buy books about women for others to use, this is also fine. Help would also be appreciated in drawing up the lists of missing articles. If you think of any missing articles please add them to the sub lists by continent at Missing articles. Thankyou, and if taking part, good luck!♦ Dr. Blofeld 08:48, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
About a month ago the fossils by state categories were nominated for deletion because some widespread fossils were in dozens of states and many editors objected to the clutter at the bottom of their articles. I'm replacing the categories with full fledged list articles (example: Draft:List of the Paleozoic life of Michigan). As far as I remember the deletion discussion only applies to the US state and Canadian province categories so country-level categories in South America are probably fine at least for now. Abyssal ( talk) 03:12, 25 October 2017 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article
Cuche Formation you nominated for
GA-status according to the
criteria.
This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by
Legobot, on behalf of
FunkMonk --
FunkMonk (
talk)
15:01, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
The final round of the 2017 WikiCup is over. Congratulations to the 2017 WikiCup top three finalists:
In addition to recognizing the achievements of the top finishers and everyone who worked hard to make it to the final round, we also want to recognize those participants who were most productive in each of the WikiCup scoring categories:
Over the course of the 2017 WikiCup the following content was added or improved on Wikipedia: 51 Featured Articles, 292 Good Articles, 18 Featured Lists, 1 Featured Picture, 1 Featured Topics, 4 Good Topics, around 400 Did You Knows, 75 In The News, and 442 Good Article Reviews. Thank you to all the competitors for your hard work and what you have done to improve Wikipedia.
Regarding the prize vouchers - @ Adityavagarwal, Vanamonde93, Casliber, Bloom6132, 1989, and SounderBruce: please send Godot13 ( talk · contribs · email) an email from the email address to which you would like your Amazon voucher sent. Please include your preference of global Amazon marketplace as well. We hope to have the electronic gift cards processed and sent within a week.
We will open up a discussion for comments on process and scoring in a few days. The 2018 WikiCup is just around the corner! Many thanks from all the judges. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 ( talk · contribs · email), Cwmhiraeth ( talk · contribs · email), and Godot13 ( talk · contribs · email) MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 11:41, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
So the 2017 WikiCup has come to an end. Congratulations to the winner, to the other finalists and to all those who took part. 177 contestants signed up, more than usual, but not all of them submitted entries in the first round. Were editors attracted by the cash prizes offered for the first time this year, or were these irrelevant? Do the rules and scoring need changing for the 2018 WikiCup? If you have a view on these or other matters, why not join in the WikiCup discussion about next year's contest? Sturmvogel 66 ( talk · contribs · email), Godot13 ( talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth ( talk · contribs · email). MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 13:59, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
![]() |
Hello, Tisquesusa.
I've seen you editing recently and you seem knowledgeable about Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. |
Hello, Tisquesusa. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
Template:Voynich manuscript complete has been
nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at
the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page.
Frietjes (
talk)
18:00, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
The article
Cuche Formation you nominated as a
good article has failed
; see
Talk:Cuche Formation for reasons why the nomination failed. If or when these points have been taken care of, you may apply for a new nomination of the article. Message delivered by
Legobot, on behalf of
FunkMonk --
FunkMonk (
talk)
07:21, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article
Cesar-Ranchería Basin you nominated for
GA-status according to the
criteria.
This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by
Legobot, on behalf of
Lappspira --
Lappspira (
talk)
01:02, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article
Honda Group, Colombia you nominated for
GA-status according to the
criteria.
This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by
Legobot, on behalf of
FunkMonk --
FunkMonk (
talk)
15:02, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
The article
Honda Group, Colombia you nominated as a
good article has failed
; see
Talk:Honda Group, Colombia for reasons why the nomination failed. If or when these points have been taken care of, you may apply for a new nomination of the article. Message delivered by
Legobot, on behalf of
FunkMonk --
FunkMonk (
talk)
19:01, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
And so ends the first round of the competition, with 4 points required to qualify for round 2. With 53 contestants qualifying, the groups for round 2 are slightly smaller than usual, with the two leaders from each group due to qualify for round 3 as well as the top sixteen remaining users.
Our top scorers in round 1 were:
Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 1 but before the start of round 2 can be claimed in round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.
If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 ( talk), Sturmvogel 66 ( talk), Cwmhiraeth ( talk) and Vanamonde ( talk) 15:27, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
The article
Cesar-Ranchería Basin you nominated as a
good article has failed
; see
Talk:Cesar-Ranchería Basin for reasons why the nomination failed. If or when these points have been taken care of, you may apply for a new nomination of the article. Message delivered by
Legobot, on behalf of
Lappspira --
Lappspira (
talk)
18:21, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Hi, I see you have created many Colombia geology related articles in one big outpouring of effort. Do these have equivalent Spanish language pages that should be linked up? Graeme Bartlett ( talk) 02:38, 19 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
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 08:03, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
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The second round of the 2018 WikiCup has now finished. Most contestants who advanced to the next round scored upwards of 100 points, but two with just 10 points managed to scrape through into round 3. Our top scorers in the last round were:
So far contestants have achieved twelve featured articles between them and a splendid 124 good articles. Commendably, 326 GARs have been completed during the course of the 2018 WikiCup, so the backlog of articles awaiting GA review has been reduced as a result of contestants' activities. As we enter the third round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed in round 3. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met; most of the GARs are fine, but a few have been a bit skimpy.
If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 ( talk), Sturmvogel 66 ( talk), Vanamonde ( talk) and Cwmhiraeth ( talk) 06:10, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
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 06:25, 4 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:WikiProject Portals#Rendering PAGENAME inside categorytree tag doesn't work (it does now).
In the meantime, see ya around the portals! — The Transhumanist 16:04, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
Hi Tisquesusa, I've found a recent thesis that I think would be interesting for future editions, particulary the Chapter 4, which deals with new fossils from the Castillestes, Codore and Ware formations from Colombia and Venezuela. The chapter 4 also is published as part of the Smithsonian contributions to paleobiology: [1]. Here is the link to the whole thesis: [2] Cheers! -- Rextron ( talk) 07:19, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
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