User talk:Pbsouthwood/Archive 8

This is an archive of past discussions about User:Pbsouthwood. 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.

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New page reviewer granted

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.

URGENT: Please consider helping get the huge backlog down to a manageable number of pages as soon as possible.
Be nice to new users - they are often not aware of doing anything wrong.
You will frequently be asked by users to explain why their page is being deleted - be formal and polite in your approach to them too, even if they are not.
Don't review a page if you are not sure what to do. Just leave it for another reviewer.
Remember that quality is quintessential to good patrolling. Take your time to patrol each article, there is no rush. Use the message feature and offer basic advice.

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)

Re: Short descriptions

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)

Monster Iestyn, It is not the same as the Wikidata description field, in that it is local on Wikipedia, can be edited and watched on Wikipedia but in many cases the same content will be appropriate for Wikdata's description field, and can be used there too. If you are willing to create Wikidata pages, that is fine, but please put the short description on Wikipedia anyway, or someone else will have to do it sometime. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:16, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Ah okay. In that case I'll start adding short descriptions when I next create pages. Monster Iestyn (talk) 19:12, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Monster Iestyn, that will help. You can also add a short description to any page which does not already have one, if you feel able to do so, or improve one which is already there, just like any other page content on Wikipedia. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 01:57, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Invitation to WikiProject Portals

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)

Portals WikiProject update, April 22, 2018

Thank you for joining the Portals WikiProject.

Here's our first project-wide update. I hope you enjoy it...

Reboot

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!

The RfC

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.

AWB?

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.

"What can I do?"

There are 3 major areas of activity right now:

Update the main portal list at Portal:Contents/Portals

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.

Familiarize yourself with the portal system

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.

Join in on the discussions

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.

What's coming?

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.

Summing up...

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

WikiFundi

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)

Ok :) Let's start with an email then. I sent you a wiki mail to enquire about which is your proposed option. In the meanwhile, here is the cleaned-up page on the English wikipedia related to content in the tool Wikipedia:WikiProject WikiFundi Anthere (talk)

Also, if you are interested, there is a email mailing list related to offline solutions (https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-l). And we are currently thinking of setting up a recognized user groups (see m:Offline Projects)

Your GA nomination of Diver communications

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)

Probably on behalf of Mike Christie, but thanks to both Mike and Harrias anyway. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:22, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors!

please help translate this message into your local language via meta

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)

No problem Doc, It just seems to happen. My surprise was being so high on the list from relatively incidental editing. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:19, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

You doubled your editing from last year :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:39, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Doc, I have no idea why. I hope not too much of it was talk pages and project stuff, but that is probably what it was. Still that is all part of the process, and I still have just over 75% article space edits overall. How do you get the stats? Do they include talk and project page edits? · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 11:36, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

These are just main space edits. User:Edgars2007 did the calculations. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:04, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Even more astonishing - they were probably almost all productive, or at least fixing unproductive stuff by others. I will contact Edgars2007 to ask what is involved. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:09, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject_Portals#Beta_testing

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)

Hi Ｔｏｍ, thanks for the thought. I would like to include a dynamic map for recreational dive sites, but most of the divesites I know do not have reliable sources for their positions and other information, so I write about them on Wikivoyage where original research is welcome. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:33, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

You can do this, but I already had conversation on wikivoyage about similar stuff. My suggestion is to start the process on your own - rather to find others to do this work. It is not so complicated to add some coordiates from places you can veryfy by osm & googlemaps ... isn't it? BTW try this map Best --Ｔｏｍ (talk) 13:56, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject heads up, April 27, 2018

We now have 52 members, and more are joining daily.

New and easier way to handle excerpts

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:

This new template is fantastic. I've added it to the intro sections of the portals on Australian cities (eg P:PER) and it works brilliantly. My compliments to its creators. It can probably also be used in other sections of many portals (eg "Selected article" and "Selected biography"), and, for that reason, will probably make the task of maintaining portals a great deal easier. Bahnfrend (talk) 09:02, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for being so brave. Portal:Adelaide/Intro just got a lot simpler! Certes (talk) 10:43, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Kudos on a wonderful template. — The Transhumanist 03:27, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

This is amazing stuff. I'm going to get to work on using it on the selected content at most of these portals very soon. Waggers TALK 13:40, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

The RfC

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.

Please add Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals to your watchlist

Wish list

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...

...that Portal:Contents/Portals becomes up-to-date. (The missing entries are listed on the talk page, with instructions).
...the WikiProject to have Article Alerts. ({{WikiProject Portals}} templates have already been placed on all portal talk pages).
...that Portal:Cricket becomes a shining example of portal excellence. (It was the main example of a crappy and unmaintained portal at the RfC).

Please make my wishes come true. See you around the portals! — The Transhumanist 08:02, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Regarding my script

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)

Galobtter, Thanks for that explanation, I knew that importing was possible but not how to actually do it. Does the import occur whenever I log in or refresh with shift-reload? I assume this gets me the latest version automatically if you update the code? Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:17, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Every shift-reload. Yeah it gets the latest version. I'll create a User:Galobtter/Shortdesc helper I suppose soon with all that sort of instruction. Glad you liked it! Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:19, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

So far it does everything I want, though on one occasion it would not save after an edit. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:28, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Hmm. If that reoccurs/happens often let me know, I'll see if I can figure out why. Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:36, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

So far just the once. I will let you know if it recurs. It makes adding short descriptions much easier and quicker. Really useful. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:40, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

It might be because my internet speed is shitty tonight. I am sometimes waiting 20 to 30 seconds for a refresh or page load, where it usually takes only a few seconds. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:54, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, there is no visible indication of an edit happening (that'd be a good to do actually, though). So it may have just seemed like the edit didn't go through, but actually it was taking a long time for it to do the edit and reload Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:59, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Usually the browser indicates activity during a save by a little moving indicator in the tab (dot moving from side to side in Firefox current version) and a change from the arrow-arc to an X top left. This is probably enough visible indication in most cases. Neither of those showed on that occasion. For this edit Vector skin did not load, which is a sign of slow internet. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 19:08, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2018).

Administrator changes

None

Chochopk • Coffee • Gryffindor • Jimp • Knowledge Seeker • Lankiveil • Peridon • Rjd0060

Guideline and policy news

The ability to create articles directly in mainspace is now indefinitely restricted to autoconfirmed users.
A proposal is being discussed which would create a new "event coordinator" right that would allow users to temporarily add the "confirmed" flag to new user accounts and to create many new user accounts without being hindered by a rate limit.

Technical news

AbuseFilter has received numerous improvements, including an OOUI overhaul, syntax highlighting, ability to search existing filters, and a few new functions. In particular, the search feature can be used to ensure there aren't existing filters for what you need, and the new 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.
When blocking anonymous users, a cookie will be applied that reloads the block if the user changes their IP. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. This currently only occurs when hard-blocking accounts.
The block notice shown on mobile will soon be more informative and point users to a help page on how to request an unblock, just as it currently does on desktop.
There will soon be a calendar widget at Special:Block, making it easier to set expiries for a specific date and time.

Arbitration

The Arbitration Committee is seeking additional clerks to help with the arbitration process.

Obituaries

Lankiveil (Craig Franklin) passed away in mid-April. Lankiveil joined Wikipedia on 12 August 2004 and became an administrator on 31 August 2008. During his time with the Wikimedia community, Lankiveil served as an oversighter for the English Wikipedia and as president of Wikimedia Australia.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:05, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject Portals Overview, May 04, 2018

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.

Top priority: Main list of portals needs updating

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.

Membership

We're at 66 members, with more joining daily. We even have 6 WikiGnomes!

Special thanks

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

RFC

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.

Anti-WikiProject drama

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

Thank you. I accept your congratulations on behalf of Wikiproject Portals and the portal-loving community – it was a team effort. In addition, I'd like to clarify some things about your claims above...

Each page nominated for deletion must have a notice at the top of its page, per the deletion guideline. Not to have one there, would be unfair to those who use such pages, and would constitute a secret deletion tribunal. We don't do things that way on Wikipedia.
As new facts became available (e.g., a motivated and thriving WikiProject to support the portals, new building blocks, etc.), it was appropriate to post the developments to the RfC, to support informed decision making.
Proposals are literal, not figurative. The proposal specified "all portals". All means all.
The fact is, the rebooted WikiProject is cleaning up the mess, rather rapidly. By updating and upgrading the portals, rather than getting rid of them.
I think I'll be hanging around for awhile, but the project is more than likely to achieve critical mass and may outlive us all, due in part to the development of tools to assist editors in building, upgrading, and maintaining portals that are fully dynamic and self-updating.

Portals are more fun to work with than ever. Thank you for your role in making this happen. You made us try even harder, and inspired us to pull together as a team. You'll have a warm place in our hearts, forever. The Transhumanist

Automatically refreshed excerpts

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.

Obsoleting subpages

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.

New portals

Since the reboot, a new portal has been created:

Portal:Limited recognition

Please watchlist these pages

Some central pages in the portal system. The more eyes on them, the better.

Wrapping up...

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)

Page previews and outlines

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!)

The Transhumanist, I have been using navigation popups since I discovered their existence. How do page previews differ? · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:03, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

They came on-line in April (earlier for other languages). They work by default for non-registered users, and therefore they comprise a basic feature of the site (they work for hundreds of millions of users instead of tens of thousands). They will be made the default for registered users, except for those with navigation popups installed. While they lack recursiveness, visually they are more eye-catching, are easier to read (larger font-size), and have much better image support.

So, for outlines, the change from before April is that most readers of outlines now have Page Previews active.

I'm just not sure what the ramifications are, how this might affect annotations, short descriptions, etc. — The Transhumanist 09:27, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

(please

mention me on reply; thanks!)

The Transhumanist, I like the navigation popups, but page previews also look good. They give you less but are prettier. I wonder if they would be improved by displaying the short description at the top. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:45, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

I don't know if short descriptions would go well with Page Previews. Though, I think Page Previews are a game changer. But they change the game, how? — The Transhumanist 09:55, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Time will tell. We move through adjacent possibilities. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 10:22, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Short descriptions

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)

Johnbod, Thanks for your improvements. I will try to follow your advice, but feel welcome to make further improvements whenever you feel the inclination. Art is not my forte, it is just at the top of the list of FAs. My primary concern is that the information is correct and not misleading. Like any other content, short descriptions are subject to improvement at any time, and I am happy to see someone taking constructive action. I expect that over time preferred styles will develop for the various categories of article, but at this stage there is too much to do to spend a lot of time optimising. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 15:06, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

MoBA

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)

(talk page watcher) In that case, yeah it doesn't seem that useful; it is intended to be used on most pages at-least. I think there was thought on those pages where it wasn't useful to have empty short description to specify that it should be left empty? Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:51, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
That is correct, but until we have 2 million short descriptions om Wikipedia, WMF will not allow a blank to be displayed, so for FAs I prefer to have something reasonably appropriate rather than risk something worse from Wikidata. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 14:05, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

[ec} Laser brain, That is one of the examples where it is perhaps not as useful as most cases, but we have the choice of having Wikipedia based short descriptions where we can at least maintain them fairly well and ensure that they are appropriate if not always optimum, or leaving WMF to draw a description from Wikidata, where we have very little control over them. If you have an idea for a better short description for MoBA or any other article. please go ahead and edit to improve, they are Wikipedia content and should be managed as such. I am working my way through FAs at the moment, which is a fairly large task, but nothing compared to the 5.5 million total. Others more skilled at coding than I are automating the process where possible, but I think our best articles are worth a little extra effort. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 14:02, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks... I guess? Not your fault at all, but it's absolutely nutty that the first time people hear about this is when it's lighting up their watchlist. I'm a coordinator at WP:FAC and I have lots of Featured articles on my watchlist as a result. The fact that we're going around adding this to every article with very little community discussion and in response to something the foundation did, is bonkers. --Laser brain (talk) 16:06, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Laser brain, This happens all the time. There was (relatively) extensive discussion in a fairly major RfC late last year. WMF do not seem to understand the difficulty of getting the Wikipedia community to notice something happening. Not that it would have made a lot of difference in this case, as the relevant RfC decided that WMF should not use Wikidata to describe Wikipedia articles, but they are apparently not constrained by what Wikipedians want. The Wikipedia:WikiProject Short descriptions is to some extent damage control, but the short descriptions potentially have other uses, so not an unmitigated evil. More of a pain in the butt and a time-sink, but that is typical Wikipedia. Feel free to complain to WMF, specifically to User:DannyH (WMF) and the reading team, who are responsible. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 16:20, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

A barnstar for your splendid assistence.

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)

I see some cruft tagging in on this section below due to my ineptitude. No doubt you have the wit to fix it and make it disappear! Nishidani (talk) 20:29, 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)

PS: I don't see the cruft, so no problem

PPS: Added missing closing bracket

WikiProject Portals update, 11 May 2018

We've grown to 73 members, and morale is high. Thank you for joining. Here is some news, and some tasks...

The RfC will be closed soon...

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.

Main objectives

Our main objectives currently, are:

Replace static excerpts with selective transclusions, so that the excerpts always stay fresh (that is, match the source content). We are now doing this on the portal base page as much as possible, to reduce the number of subpages that are needed. See #2...
Migrate the functions of subpages to the portal base pages. There are around 150,000 subpages in portal space. We aim to make these obsolete by using templates and other calls from the portal base pages.
Improve portal design to make portals self-update. Semi-dynamic sections update from a static list, as used in {{Transclude random excerpt}}. Fully-dynamic sections would update from a list maintained elsewhere on Wikipedia, like a category. We haven't found a way to do this yet, other than to create a bot (which we will probably need to do).

Maintenance pass #1: Upgrading the intro section

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.

Maintenance pass #2: Obsoleting the Wikimedia subpages

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.

Maintenance pass #3: calling the category tree from the portal base page

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).

More to come...

In the meantime, see ya around the portals! — The Transhumanist 15:55, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

WPSCUBA articles with short descriptions

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)

RexxS, Thanks, and please let me know how if you get it right. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:41, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

RexxS, Some of them are redirects. There may be a way to automatically add {{short description|Redirect page}} to all redirects, which would be sufficient. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:23, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Ah, of course, Peter. Thanks. It would be a trivial job for a bot to add a short description for each redirect page (or even a job that AWB could do), if we could be sure that there was any point in having a short description on a redirect page. Let me have a think about that, because at the moment I'm not seeing who would find it useful. --RexxS (talk) 16:39, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update, 15 May 2018

We are at 74 members. If you know anyone who might find this WikiProject interesting, please invite them.

The RfC has ended

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."

Ongoing tasks

Some major activities that we are in the middle of include:

Adding the missing existing portals to the main portals list at Portal:Contents/Portals. Instructions are on the talk page. There are about 125 portals left to be processed. (There were 400). Keep up the good work!
Development discussions on how to migrate the subpages to the base pages. There are around 150,000 subpages in portal space, associated with the various sections on a typical portal. We are trying to obsolete them section type by section type. Currently, we're working on obsoleting the intro subpages and the "selected articles" subpages. Please join in.

Other tasks

The list of portals not ready to be listed on the main list can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#These are not listed yet (scroll down to see them - they are marked Not ready). They are incomplete. If you want a specific portal to work on, please consider choosing one from that list.
Over the years, some incomplete portals (portals under construction) got added to Portal:Contents/Portals. Therefore, every portal listed there needs to be inspected, and any that are incomplete should be removed from that list and added to the not ready list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#These are not listed yet (scroll down to see it). On Portal:Contents/Portals, I'm already almost done inspecting the portals in the culture section, and so you can skip those. The types of things to look for are empty sections (most will have a redlinked subpage), lack of "selected" sections, portal stubs with just an intro and end sections, and very poor layout (like seriously unbalanced columns).

Portal-building resources

During his work on portals, Broter found a quote randomizer. It is {{Random quotation}}.

Trailblazer: approaching the one-page portal

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

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)

NPR Newsletter No.11 25 May 2018

Hello Pbsouthwood, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

Notability
General notability guideline
Subject-specific guidelines
Academics Astronomical objects Books Events Films Geographic features Music Numbers Organizations and companies People Sports and athletes Web content
See also
Notability essays Guide to deletion Common deletion outcomes Why was my article deleted?
v t e

ACTRIAL:

WP:ACREQ has been implemented. The flow at the feed has dropped back to the levels during the trial. However, the backlog is on the rise again so please consider reviewing a few extra articles each day; a backlog approaching 5,000 is still far too high. An effort is also needed to ensure that older unsuitable older pages at the back of the queue do not get automatically indexed for Google.

Deletion tags

Do bear in mind that articles in the feed showing the trash can icon may have been tagged by inexperienced or non NPR rights holders. They require your further verification.

Backlog drive:

A backlog drive will take place from 10 through 20 June. Check out our talk page at WT:NPR for more details. NOTE: It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing. Despite our goal of reducing the backlog as much as possible, please do not rush while reviewing.

Editathons

There will be a large increase in the number of editathons in June. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.

Paid editing - new policy

Now that ACTRIAL is ACREQ, please be sure to look for tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary. There is a new global WMF policy that requires paid editors to connect to their adverts.

Subject-specific notability guidelines

The box at the right contains each of the subject-specific notability guidelines, please review any that are relevant BEFORE nominating an article for deletion.
Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves with the new version of the notability guidelines for organisations and companies.

Not English

A common issue: Pages not in English or poor, unattributed machine translations should not reside in main space even if they are stubs. Please ensure you are familiar with WP:NPPNE. Check in Google for the language and content, tag as required, then move to draft if they do have potential.

News

Development is underway by the WMF on upgrades to the New Pages Feed, in particular ORES features that will help to identify COPYVIOs, and more granular options for selecting articles to review.
The next issue of The Signpost has been published. The newspaper is one of the best ways to stay up to date with news and new developments. between our newsletters.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:35, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update, 25 May 2018

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...

New news template ready for testing

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.

Coming soon: Automatic article alerts (but there is a glitch)

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.

New portal, still needs work

Portal:Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, courtesy of Mozart834428196. See also, the discussion.

Drafting a new portals guideline

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

RfC on new TOC layout for main portal list

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.

Deletion discussion survivors

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...

Portal:Quidditch survived its 2nd deletion nomination
Portal:Prehistory of Antarctica did the same

Current deletion discussions are posted on our WikiProject page.

Portal space clean up

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.

Please help list the unlisted portals!

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!

Wrapping up

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)

Whoa, I missed one...

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)

AP Diving page

I have ventured to move page AP Diving to mainspace again, and I have scavenged around for more references. (How well known is AP Diving and its products in the USA rather than in Britain or Europe?) Anthony Appleyard (talk) 16:08, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
Anthony Appleyard, That is fine by me, if you think the refs are sufficient to establish notability. I am sure that the company is notable, but have not been able to find satisfactory references, probably because they are mainly in print, and I don't have those documents. I have no idea how well known they are in US vs UK and Europe, as I am in South Africa, but as far as I know they are the longest established manufacturer of recreational ECCRs,and have had the most recorded accidents associated with their product, mainly because it is used most often and has been produced in the largest numbers. However I don't have documentary evidence. It is just a matter of time before we find the evidence needed. ( now I think of it I will look in Rebreather forum 3. there may be something usable there.) Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 17:05, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

It's time: the Portals WikiProject AWBers are needed for a task...

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)