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.

September 2018 Information

Moot

 – Closed before I got to it.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Basketball. Legobot ( talk) 04:25, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Bug hunt!

As you know, portals are now supported by a number of new templates, which are in turn supported by some new Lua modules.

Those templates and modules are being put to the test, in the new portals that have been created since this WikiProject rebooted, plus a number of existing portals that have been revamped.

The new portals, and revamped ones, can be found at Category:Single-page portals.

Please browse the new portals at your leisure, and report any and all problems that you spot. Post bug and other portal problem reports at WT:WPPORTD. Please report bugs, quirks, awkward aspects, or anything weird or off that you notice. Compliments and suggestions are also welcome. :)

When you report a bug, please indicate the portal's name, the section that the problem appeared in, and the name of the article appearing (first) in the section with the problem. Most problems will likely be encountered in the Selected general articles" section, due to quirks in a displayed article's wikicode that the lua modules don't handle yet. Your help in spotting those is of utmost value. Thank you.

Don't delete portal subpages just yet

For portals that have been converted to the single-page design, we are not deleting their subpages at this time, because we are working on ways to harvest the data from those pages. For example, the Selected picture subpages include filenames and captions that would be valuable for the image slideshows. Please don't delete portal subpages, for now. They'll be slated for d-batch speedy deletion after harvesting. Thank you.

Development notes

We are currently testing a feature added to {{ Transclude files as random slideshow}} that allows it to accept both sourcepages and filenames. Courtesy of Evad37. This will pave the way for harvesting files and their captions from portal subpages, for use in image slideshows.

We need your help

The bulk of the work is being done by a handful of editors. But we can't do it all. We need help with spotting bugs, refining the search parameters in new/revamped portals (in the "Did you know..." and "In the news" sections), adding images to slideshows for a broader selection (they default to showing the images on the root article page but are capable of showing so much more), adding panoramic pictures at the top of the intro section of region portals (cities, counties, states, provinces, countries, continents, and other regions), to name but a few task types.

It is rewarding to be a part of the growing portal phenomenon. And you get to see its expansion and refinement up close.

Feel free to join in on the fun. ;)

Thank you,    — The Transhumanist   23:33, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Fast Stanton
VNEA- I/ R

Fast Stanton chillin'

Since you're a big-time pool hustler, upon finding this essay, I thought of you. Just so you know, the content of the essay did not remind me of you in terms of who you are, your editing, etc., I just thought you'd find it interesting relative to pool, since you're a cue sports fan. Cheers, North America ¹⁰⁰⁰ 07:19, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

@ Northamerica1000: Well, yeah – I wrote that one!  :-)  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:55, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

WT...Fudge. Well, I didn't check the page history. Go figure that Fast Stanton wrote it. You're too fast for me, FS! North America ¹⁰⁰⁰ 13:58, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Perche. Legobot ( talk) 04:26, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Moot

 – Already closed by the time I looked.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Red Hand Commando. Legobot ( talk) 04:26, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Would you consider writing for the Signpost? I like your user page and a lot of what you have there is appropriate. Best Regards, Barbara  ✐   ✉ 23:16, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

@ Barbara (WVS): Sorry for the delay; was taking a long wiki-break. I've thought of submitting something to the SP before, but don't have the time or energy to commit to doing anything regular. I'm not sure if you're soliciting an editorial (and if so, whether you had something specific in mind), or are looking for a regular columnist or reporter. Please don't be fooled by my little WP:On the Radar thing. I write very little of it (it's mostly just pointers to others' articles). I hardly ever update it – just when I see something that relates strongly to off-site entities colluding to manipulate our content, and other major but soto voce threats to WP's long-term viability. Most of the non-article and non-talk stuff I write here is catalogued at User:SMcCandlish/Essays.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:03, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

I really don't expect anyone to volunteer to do something on a regular basis because I don't think it is necessary to cajole anyone into anything they don't want to do. I just found such interesting things on your user page that I think others would find it interesting. I would like to grab one of your essays to reprint it in the Signpost if that is okay. Best Regards, Barbara ✐ ✉ 00:45, 10 November 2018 (UTC) (I have changed my signature)

@ Barbara (WVS): That would be neat. Which one? I may want to revise it a bit – some of them haven't been touched in years, and I swear I find a new typo in every one of them no matter how many times I proofread! Heh.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:52, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

This is great! Thanks for doing this. Just tell me which essay you want to use, I will put into Signpost draftspace, give you the link and you can work on it there in your leisure. We are going to publish early because of the Holdays. If that isn't enough time, don't sweat it. We will move to the next issue. You know, I can't find the 'tilde' character on my phone. Oh well, you know it's me. Barbara Page

Got caught up in other stuff. Will try to look into this shortly.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:13, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Resolved

Hello. I found your piece Wikipedia:Logical quotation on Wikipedia rather interesting, thoroughly researched and entertainingly written. So thank you. What confused me was that it was tagged as "humor' - you know, the one that says it's retained because it's funny.

I don't get this - neither the suggestion that it is humorous nor the idea ( ... retention) that if it wasn't funny it wouldn't be kept ... in fact, I found this latter bit somewhat patronizing: I feel it should be kept simply because it is useful.

I see that it has been tagged and untagged. I've untagged it and invoked BRD, much good though that may do! Did you intend it to be funny? I just don't see it, somehow, and would be interested to know your view. Thanks and best wishes DBaK ( talk) 10:01, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

@ DisillusionedBitterAndKnackered: It was WP:POINTy nonsense by one of my long-term antagonists. Thanks for fix it. —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 13:57, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Ah, right, I did wonder. Cheers DBaK ( talk) 18:33, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Portals progress report

Don't blink. You might miss something.

As of a few days ago, portals had doubled in about a month and a half.

Also, there were 98 incompleted portals in Category:Portals under construction. Now there are just 43.

The WikiProject page has been thoroughly revised

The goals, plans, and task sections have all been updated.

Orphaned portals need a home...

Many new portals are still orphans, and need links pointing to them:

1. A portal link at the bottom of corresponding navigation footer template. E.g., Template:Machines for Portal:Machines. See examples of a portals link at the bottom of Template:Robotics and Template:Forestry.
2. A {{ Portal}} box in the See also section of the corresponding root article for each portal. If there is no See also section, create one and place the portal template in that. (Rather than placing them in an external links section -- they're not external links).
3. A {{ Portal}} template placed at the top of the category page corresponding to each portal.

All new and revamped portals can be found at Category:Single-page portals.

Portal:Contents/Portals

This is the main list of portals.

Nearly 2,000 of the new portals need to be listed here.

They can be found at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet. Instructions are included there.

Customized Portal Rating system is now in place

Portals now have a new rating system of their own designed specifically to support portal evaluation! We were trying to use the standard assessment system for articles, but that doesn't fit portals very well.

Many thanks to Evad37, Waggers, AfroThundr3007730, SMcCandlish, Tom, BrendonTheWizard, and Pbsouthwood for their work and input on this.

The new system can be found at the top of all portal talk pages, in the WikiProject portals box. Those with "???" ratings need to be assessed, which makes up most of the older portals.

Most of the new portals were started out with an initial "Low" level of importance when their talk pages were created. Those deserving higher importance should be promoted as you come across them.

Improving the new portals

The starting point for new portals included minimal parameters and content, in the form of default values in the template(s) used for their creation.

Embellishing embedded search strings

So, for the search strings in the "Did you know..." and "In the news" sections, this was the magic word {{PAGENAME}}, which represents the portal's name. Unfortunately, the resulting term is alway capitalized, which limits its effectiveness as a search string for anything but proper nouns. Results for those two sections can be improved, by replacing the "PAGENAME" magic word with multiple search strings, and search strings that begin with lower case letters. There is no inherent limit as to how many search parameters may be included. Lua search notation is used. The more general the subject, the more subtopic search terms you may want to include. For example, on Portal:Avengers (comics), {{PAGENAME}} turned up nothing. But, when more parameters were added, as in the wikicode below...

{{Transclude selected recent additions | {{PAGENAME}} | Iron Man | Spiderman | Antman | Hawkeye | The Hulk | Incredible Hulk | David Banner | Captain America | Scarlet Witch | Black Widow | Tony Stark | Nick Fury | Age of Ultron | Infinity War | months=36 | header={{Box-header colour|Did you know... }}|max=6}}

... that returned several results in the portal's DYK section.

Be sure you make the improvements to both the DYK section and the "In the news" section, as they both require the search strings.

Expanding the slideshow contents

The default starting selection for the image slideshow in most new portals is whatever images happen to be in the corresponding root article (via the PAGENAME magic word). You can improve image slideshows by adding more sourcepages and filenames as parameters in the "Selected images" section of portals.

See Template:Transclude files as random slideshow/doc for instructions.

More exciting things are to come...

Portals used to take about 6 hours or more to create. Now, for subjects that have particular navigation support, we've got that down to about one minute each, with even more content displayed than ever. True, that means the new portals pick you, rather than the other way around. Creating a specific portal that doesn't happen to have the requisite navigation support is still pretty time consuming. But, we are working on extending our reach beyond the low-hanging fruit.

And efforts are ongoing to keep shaving time off of the creation process. Eventually, we may get it down to seconds each.

In addition to improving automation, we're always looking for new features and improvements that we can add to portals, and there is plenty of potential to expand on the standard design so that new portals are even better right out of the starting gate. Additional designs are also possible.

On the horizon, there are many more portals waiting to be created. And we can expect to see at least a few more section types emerge. I never expected slideshows, for example, especially not for excerpts. Who knows where innovation will take us next?

Keep up the great work everyone.

Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   06:21, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

I have just realized I haven't seen you around for a while and according to your contributions you haven't edited since mid-August! If you are just busy in real-life or taking a wiki-break then that's none of our business and I wish you all the best. Betty Logan ( talk) 14:23, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, the silence is slightly unsettling. Hope all is well, Johnbod ( talk) 02:53, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

I was thinking the same. Best wishes! DonIago ( talk) 13:04, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

On Aug. 12, S wrote, "I'm out of wiki time for the nonce". Sounds like he got busy with something else, so I'm not worried, but I do miss him, too. Dicklyon ( talk) 14:36, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

And he made an edit on 29 September. So around somewhere (looks around). Randy Kryn ( talk) 17:58, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

I just realized that was his last edit as of this post, too, so I have no clue when (let's go with that) the section I just created ( permanent link) will be answered. It has been nearly two weeks; doesn't he know that WP:YANI and WP:WPDNNY do not apply to him? Seriously, though, I hope all is well and that this is just a well-deserved wikibreak (or very lucrative work). — Nøkkenbuer ( talk • contribs) 22:27, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

@ Betty Logan, Doniago, Johnbod, Dicklyon, and Nøkkenbuer: Sometimes just need to do other stuff and give the wikigeekery a rest. Don't worry; if I die or go into a coma, that would be a major situational change, so I would be sure to log back in and update my User talk:SMcCandlish/Status.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:57, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Do...other...stuff? :p DonIago ( talk) 05:49, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Jimmy Page. Legobot ( talk) 04:23, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

Moot

 – Already closed by the time I got there.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:2016 in aviation. Legobot ( talk) 04:23, 3 October 2018 (UTC)