Many users like to create user subpages to store various bits of information such as welcome templates or other information. For example, if you are drafting a new page that is not ready to "go live", or proposing major changes in redrafting an existing page, a user subpage may be very useful.
To create a subpage simply visit your User page and then append the name of the subpage in your browser's URL bar. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CoolDude would become http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CoolDude/MySubpageName. When you press the ↵ Enter key you will be prompted to create the new subpage.
If you no longer need a subpage, or wish to have it deleted, you can mark the page with {{db-owner}} or {{db|reason}}.
{{portal category}} or {{portal category|nolinkinfo}} should be added to subcategories of Category:Portals that have "portals" in the title. You can do it yourself, or post it to the WikiProject. wumbolo^^^ 15:34, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
By purpose, indexes are identical to categories, in that both alphabetically list articles related to some topic. I looked at past discussions at talk pages related to indexes, and only found a small discussion and a request for comment (both here) about their existence. I see few arguments and they don't convince me. I will discuss some of them in the next paragraph.
Generally, categories aren't ported to offline versions of Wikipedia. I would propose some kind of "printworthiness" for categories like we have for redirects. Some editors were giving arguments for having list articles, but indexes are not list articles (in the sense that they have no room for expansion, by definition). Readers don't care much about categories, but if that is so, they don't care about indexes either. It is true that categories can't contain red links, while indexes can; I must say that I fundamentally disagree with that (just like infoboxes shouldn't contain "unknown" parameters, indexes of articles on Wikipedia shouldn't contain red-links). Some said at the RfC that indexes are more editor-oriented, and I believe that makes them unsuitable for mainspace. Another argument was that indexes can have related changes tracked; however, categories can do that as well. wumbolo^^^ 12:26, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
Wumbolo, good question. It's nice to see when an editor puts thought into the purposes and practices of the encyclopedia. I hope I can provide you with some good answers...
Each of Wikipedia's navigation systems, of which categories and indexes are two, have their own strengths and weaknesses. Categories are useful for some things, and not for others. The same applies to indexes.
Categories are split up, and so are not alphabetical across the whole subject. They are classified indexes, sorted by subtopic. The counterpart to classified indexes, are alphabetical indexes. Wikipedia's index articles are alphabetically arranged for their whole subject, where possible.
One thing you can do with indexes more easily than with categories is see related changes for all the topics (or at least many more of them) belonging to the subject. Categories are split up into many smaller groups, making the operation repetitive, quite tedious, and time-consuming when you want to cover the whole subject.
Categories are decentralized (as tags at the bottom of many different articles), while indexes are centralized. The main ramification of this is that there is a record of what happened with indexes, which makes them much better for tracking. When a category is removed from a page, the page disappears from those categories with no record in the categories' histories. You would have to notice that it is missing. With indexes, the removal of links from them show up in the indexes' histories.
Indexes support redlinks, categories do not. When a page is deleted, it disappears from its categories without a trace. On indexes, you can see the redlink, and look into the reason for it. Redlinks can also indicated that an article is needed for that topic, a benefit of list articles, including indexes. Providing redlinks is one of the ways that Wikipedia has expanded so rapidly. You just click on a redlink, and an editor opens up so you can start typing away. This ease of creating new articles is why redlinks are a core feature of the MediaWiki software, and thus a key feature of Wikipedia. Very powerful, and one of the factors leading to the most comprehensive encyclopedia in the world.
Categories are not ported to offline versions of Wikipedia, leaving those versions without an index. Printed encyclopedias have tables of contents and indexes, as they are very useful. And so does Wikipedia, as they are very useful, even more so than with paper encyclopedias, because WP indexes contain links you can click on, rather than page numbers that you would have to manually open a book to. Indexes utilize the power of hypertext very effectively, compacted, all on one page.
Both categories and indexes are a form of list, while indexes are a type of list article. While potential for expansion has no bearing on the qualification to be a list, as lists can be of finite sets of things, the scope of subject indexes expand as the scope of Wikipedia's coverage of their subjects expand. And Wikipedia is expanding all the time.
Indexes are alphabetical general topics list. There are two types of general topics lists on Wikipedia: indexes and outlines. Outlines are structured general topics lists. Outlines and indexes go hand-in-hand. Outlines serve as the subject-based tables of contents of Wikipedia, while indexes serve as the alphabetical indexes of Wikipedia. Analogous to books, but with the power of hypertext. How useful is a book with the table of contents and index ripped out? Which brings us to the issue of search...
It is not actually true that readers don't care about categories or indexes. The page views indicate that those are probably used mainly when search fails a reader, when readers are forced to find what they are looking for through browsing. Having these browsing backup systems are very important. Because you can't search for something you don't know the name of. Also, search fails miserably when you type in something like "Everything on geology". Wikipedia, on the other hand, provides lists of everything on geology. They are great for students wanting an overview of everything Wikipedia includes on a subject. In this regard, the mathematics topics lists are phenomenal, including both indexes and outlines, though they don't include those terms in their titles. Search works well most of the time, but not all of the time. For those other times, we have our browsing-based navigation systems.
If indexes were moved out of article space, then ported versions of Wikipedia would be indexless. The benefits mentioned directly above would not be available to readers.
The various navigation systems are synergistic. They are built in different ways by editors with different styles, and are useful in building each other. Indexes are useful to identify topics that need to be added to categories, and are much easier to build. Therefor, they are a useful preparation step for category building, and for outline and glossary building too, for example. Categories, in turn, help to provide terms that the other navigation systems can use.
Another aspect of indexes is that they exist, and can therefor be improved upon. You can't transform them into something even better if they no longer exist. Nobody knows what improvements or inventions may be made in the future regarding them. Take the portals, for example. They are currently being improved in ways nobody ever dreamed of before. The same type of thing (innovation) is also happening to outlines, and can also happen to glossaries, indexes, categories, etc. That's a good thing. Let's keep 'em all. See WP:CLN.
I hope I've shed some light on the usefulness of indexes. Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 21:57, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for the reply. Since there is no documented scope of indexes, I would like to propose that an article X belongs to an index Y iff a subtopic of Y is a defining characteristic of X. By making criteria for index articles kind of equivalent to those for categories, we could fully automate the generation of index articles. As a matter of fact, we would only need to pick a topic, select which subcategories are "true subtopics", and let the index be generated automatically (most likely we would have to resort to updating indexes using bots, as it seems unlikely that a MediaWiki proposal would pass). Red-links can be added manually and won't be removed by automated processes.
I reread your reply and believe that my solution fulfills the whole purpose of indexes. Categories don't have histories of add/remove operations, and my proposed automatic processes would generate an accurate summary of additions/removals each time the index is updated (perhaps daily). If indexes were automated, they wouldn't lose anything; they would only be more up-to-date.
I'm thinking about why indexes could use the WP:DEFINING logic, and will try to put some arguments. I took a look at Subject indexing, which linked Subject (documents). I read the latter; however, I can't really summarize the whole article. I do feel that it both applies to Wikipedia's concept of indexes, and that it doesn't deviate much from WP:DEFINING. wumbolo^^^ 12:49, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
Pbsouthwood has just gotten through the grueling RfA process to become a Wikipedia administrator. Be sure to congratulate him.
The reason he went for it was: "For some time I expect to be busy with subpage deletion for Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals as mentioned above. The amount of work is expected to keep me busy for some time. I am primarly a content creator and contributor to policy discussions, but would be willing to consider other admin work on request, providing that I feel that my involvement would be appropriate and not too far outside my comfort zone."
Old Town Sacramento, the capital as it looked like in 19th century
Sacramento from near the Sacramento River
Pocket Sacramento Canal
Sacramento Memorial Auditorium
Tower Bridge
US Bank Tower
Evad37 has figured out a way to let the user flip through pictures without purging the page. Purging is awkward because there is an intermediary confirmation screen that you have to click on "yes". In the new picture slideshow section, all you have to do is click on the > to go to the next picture or < to instantly show the previous feature. The feature also shuffles the pictures when the page is initiated, so that they are shown in a different order each time the user visits the page (or purges it).
We now have a one-page portal design. It isn't fully automated, nor is it even fully semi-automated, as there are still some manually filled-in areas. But it no longer requires any subpages in portal space, and that is a huge improvement. For example, Portal:Sacramento, California utilizes the one-page design concept. While is employs heavy use of templates, it does not have any subpages of its own.
There's more. A lot more. But it will have to wait until next issue, but you don't have to wait. See what's going on at the WikiProject's talk page. — The Transhumanist 02:13, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
a new portal-style with many little features currently developed by Chiananda for de:Portal:Ethnologie
New feature: Picture slideshow. Very nice. Thx. Is this also possible with a) random pictures? b) automatic changes?
Please make up your mind which elements of the above is worthy enough to be traced by Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals. Best --Tom (talk) 06:04, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
Picture navigation looks worthy of portal customization, by specific editors willing to put the time into making the images. Creation of these doesn't appear to be automatable at this time.
The picture slideshow randomizes every time you visit or purge the page, just like other "selected" sections. Adding pictures, or managing the list of pictures shown, is not automatic at this time. Though we will be working on it, it hasn't passed the discussion phase yet.
My answers to your other 3 list items will have to wait until I get a translator installed on this machine. — The Transhumanist 20:31, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
The portal project has lost a member. Hopefully this incident won't lead to auto-deletion of their portals. Certes (talk) 17:47, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
@Certes: Yes, that's unfortunate. It was a behavioral block, which he might be able to get forgiven for if he promises to change his ways. Regarding your concern, he wasn't a sock violating an existing block. Therefore, his previous works remain in place. They remove edits made by editors who make them while blocked (via a sock-puppet account). Those edits are invalid. Edits made while not blocked are not rendered invalid by becoming blocked. I hope this clarification helps. — The Transhumanist 18:06, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
Not sure if a simple barnstar can express the communities gratitude to the portal work that you're doing. Your an indispensable member of our community. Moxy (talk) 18:08, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
Moxy, thank you. I'm honored, and I receive this praise for the team, without whom there would be very little progress on portals. They are literally transforming them into something new. I'm glad to be a part of that. — The Transhumanist 18:20, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
Nevertheless ... may I also praise your work? You are doing a great job! Best --Tom (talk) 14:01, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
:: @Tom: Thank you. By the way, I saw your thread over at WT:WPPORT, and have touched up the Portal:Anatomy. Feel free to reverse, change, or expand upon anything I did. Enjoy. — The Transhumanist 20:35, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
@The Transhumanist: Pls. compare User:Tom (LT) versus my account User:Tom ... that another colleague ;-) Cheers --Tom (talk) 22:27, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
@Tom: Whoa, and I pinged a 3rd Tom. :) There's another Tom whose pagename looks exactly the same as yours, but with different underlying letters. Very strange. Haven't seen that before. I'm glad you like the work we're doing on portals. If you have any ideas on how else the portals can be improved, please let me know. Thanks. — The Transhumanist 23:17, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
As you may have already seen by the time I post this, I have reverted away the voluminous "update" information you just posted to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/RfC: Ending the system of portals. The discussion there is pretty much dead, and everyone who was interested in the topic has no doubt moved on. If you'd like to post a pointer to that information, most/all of which appears to be at Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals/Newsletter archive, please do. But I don't think posting about 40K of additional text to the RFC page is appropriate at this point. - dcljr (talk) 23:19, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for the heads up. I've added a more modest ending section to the page. Done — The Transhumanist 23:30, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
Everywhere I go I find your lengthy portal spam. Wikiproject Math? Assorted editor talk pages? No other WikiProject or function on Wikipedia posts all this detailed advertising all over the place. It's annoying and must be against some policy - amd if not - it should be. Legacypac (talk) 15:27, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
Hello again. But it's not WP:SPAM by the Wikipedia community's definition, and not even by the dictionary definition (as it is on-topic). And while what I've been posting are notifications of wiki activity which are entirely appropriate per WP:APPNOTE, thank you for reminding me that WikiProject advertising is also allowed, and that one of the WikiProject's participants has created an ad...
I've been spreading news about portals that portal supporters and related WikiProjects may wish to know. For example, there are several portals within the scope of the Mathematics WikiProject.
By the way, there is also news concerning the clean up of portal space that those who supported removal of portals may be interested in. Here it is:
Since the reboot of the Portals WikiProject, so far, we've speedy deleted:
A total of over 4,000 pages from portal space, including obsoleted subpages of existing portals
For the sake of clean up, we are undergoing an effort to obsolete most if not all of the 142,000+ remaining subpages in portal space. That is being done through automating portal features and migrating subpage functions to portal base pages (in the form of much more compact code). Having 100-page portals is maintenance-intensive, and so we are in the process of developing a one-page mostly automated portal model to which they can be converted.
Other concerns that supporters of portal deletion expressed during last month's RfC are also being addressed. For example, portals' being out-of-date and their lack of maintenance are being dealt with in the following 3 ways:
1) by a larger, more vibrant WikiProject
2) through the design of new portal tools and automated components
3) by the ongoing reduction of the number of portal subpages (as mentioned above). As the theory goes, remove 99% of the pages, and you remove the need for 99% of the maintenance.
Hi again - I think the new streamlining of portals broke Wikipedia:WikiProject Ohio. It seems it was set up using many of the same portal boxes as Portal:Ohio used. Can you help me repair this? Thanks ɱ(talk) · vbm · coi) 13:48, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
@Ɱ:Done It looks like it was caused by something wrong with its box-footer subpage. I've bypassed it. — The Transhumanist 17:49, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
The cat (Felis catus, or Felis silvestris catus, literally "woodland cat"), often referred to as the domestic cat to distinguish from other felids and felines, is a small, typically furry, carnivorousmammal. It is often called house cat when kept as indoor pet or feral/feral domestic cat when wild. It is often valued by humans for companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin. There are more than seventy cat breeds recognized by various cat registries.
Cats have a high breeding rate. Under controlled breeding, they can be bred and shown as registered pedigree pets, a hobby known as cat fancy. Failure to control the breeding of pet cats by spaying and neutering, as well as the abandonment of former household pets, has resulted in large numbers of feral cats worldwide, requiring population control. In certain areas outside cats' native range, this has contributed, along with habitat destruction and other factors, to the extinction of many bird species. Cats have been known to extirpate a bird species within specific regions and may have contributed to the extinction of isolated island populations. Cats are thought to be primarily responsible for the extinction of 87 species of birds, and the presence of feral and free-ranging cats makes some otherwise suitable locations unsuitable for attempted species reintroduction. Read more...
A mouse, plural mice, is a small rodent characteristically having a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (Mus musculus). It is also a popular pet. In some places, certain kinds of field mice are locally common. They are known to invade homes for food and shelter.
Species of mice are mostly found in Rodentia, and are present throughout the order. Typical mice are found in the genus Mus.
Mice are typically distinguished from rats by their size. Generally, when someone discovers a smaller muroid rodent, its common name includes the term mouse, while if it is larger, the name includes the term rat. Common terms rat and mouse are not taxonomically specific. Scientifically, the term mouse is not confined to members of Mus for example, the deer mouse. Read more...
The horse (Equus ferus caballus) is one of two extantsubspecies of Equus ferus. It is an odd-toed ungulatemammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, Eohippus, into the large, single-toed animal of today. Humans began domesticating horses around 4000 BC, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BC. Horses in the subspecies caballus are domesticated, although some domesticated populations live in the wild as feral horses. These feral populations are not true wild horses, as this term is used to describe horses that have never been domesticated, such as the endangered Przewalski's horse, a separate subspecies, and the only remaining true wild horse. There is an extensive, specialized vocabulary used to describe equine-related concepts, covering everything from anatomy to life stages, size, colors, markings, breeds, locomotion, and behavior.
Horses' anatomy enables them to make use of speed to escape predators and they have a well-developed sense of balance and a strong fight-or-flight response. Related to this need to flee from predators in the wild is an unusual trait: horses are able to sleep both standing up and lying down, with younger horses tending to sleep significantly more than adults. Female horses, called mares, carry their young for approximately 11 months, and a young horse, called a foal, can stand and run shortly following birth. Most domesticated horses begin training under saddle or in harness between the ages of two and four. They reach full adult development by age five, and have an average lifespan of between 25 and 30 years.
Horse breeds are loosely divided into three categories based on general temperament: spirited "hot bloods" with speed and endurance; "cold bloods", such as draft horses and some ponies, suitable for slow, heavy work; and "warmbloods", developed from crosses between hot bloods and cold bloods, often focusing on creating breeds for specific riding purposes, particularly in Europe. There are more than 300 breeds of horse in the world today, developed for many different uses. Read more...
The domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris when considered a subspecies of the wolf or Canis familiaris when considered a distinct species) is a member of the genus Canis (canines), which forms part of the wolf-like canids, and is the most widely abundant terrestrial carnivore. The dog and the extantgray wolf are sister taxa as modern wolves are not closely related to the wolves that were first domesticated, which implies that the direct ancestor of the dog is extinct. The dog was the first species to be domesticated and has been selectively bred over millennia for various behaviors, sensory capabilities, and physical attributes.
The Associated Wikimedia sections of the entire set of portals have been upgraded. These are now handled on each portal base page (bypassing the previously used corresponding subpages), using the {{Wikimedia for portals}} template rather than reiterated copied/pasted code.
So, to be more accurate on reporting upgrade progress, that's one section down (for the whole set of portals), with (about) nine sections to go. (Skipping curated portals, regarding custom content sections, of course).
Quality rating system for portals under development[edit]
Currently, there is no quality rating for portals: in the Portals WikiProject box on each portals' talk page, it just says "Portal". But times are a changin'. Quality assessment is on the way, and you can help. See the discussion.
Evad37 has figured out a way to apply the picture slideshow feature to displaying article excerpts (now you can check out the provided box above). :) This allows us to bypass page purging to see the next selection, and you can even click through them rather quickly. Currently, the wikicode for doing this for article excerpts is a bit eye-boggling, and so we are looking into simplifying it. A streamlined version may be just around the corner.
Note that this is a prototype, not ready for widespread use. Click on the box in between the lesser than and greater than signs, to see what I mean. It was meant for pictures, and so the thumbnail feature doesn't apply to article prose very well. I've presented it even though it isn't ready, to show the direction portal development is heading. See the discussion.
I'm amazed at how rapidly portals are evolving. And we're still within a single generation of portal technological evolution. Imagine what they might be in 2 or 3 more generations of developments. Pretty soon, portals will be able to shake your hand. :) — The Transhumanist 11:05, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
Hello. My name is Portal:San Francisco Bay Area. i am pleased to make your acquaintance. I became operational at the W.P.P. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 2018. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 07:57, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
PS: I didn't mean for you to manually do something special for me; rather, the idea was to change the template or outline that you use, to have regular boldfacing (and not ; markup either; that's really description list markup and we need to get away from abusing it). :-) — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 03:12, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
Hi Transhumanist: I've been watching with interest as the Birds Portal undergoes its metamorphosis. You "portal folks" are doing a nice job! One question though; why have you cut the lead article (from "Bird") down from the full four paragraphs to two? I see that your automatic template allows for all four paragraphs to be shown... MeegsC (talk) 09:20, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
@MeegsC: It was formatting bias on my part. I've now expanded it to 4 paragraphs, and have replaced the selected picture section with a picture slideshow. The initial slide selection includes all the bird-related featured pictures, but this can be expanded as desired. — The Transhumanist 10:22, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
Looks great! Thanks. MeegsC (talk) 13:07, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
One comment — if I press the advance button (the right arrow) for the slideshow, there's a massive amount of "flickering" between pictures. The section below the slideshow appears briefly and this is replaced by the picture, over and over and over. Is there any way to keep that from happening? Have a dedicated "box size" or something? MeegsC (talk) 21:04, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
Edits working on the Wikimedia section (removing the purge link code)[edit]
The portals that still have the purge link in their box headers, now all have the purge link for the Wikimedia section, as you removed this via AWB. For examples see [10], [11] and [12]. Did you mean to do this (as the link seems out of place on a section that is static)? Wpgbrowntalk | contribs 21:25, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
@Wpgbrown: I can't see any purge links in any section on any portal. The 3 examples you gave me present Wikimedia boxes with no edit link, and no purge link (for those sections). The only purge links I see are the ones below the intro section, and the ones at the bottom of the page. However, we are working toward replacing the box-header subpages, and this should be accomplished in the next month or three. It is complicated by the fact that boxheader subpage calls are included in {{Random portal component}}, but that template will likely be replaced in most portals. For any that keep it, that also have purge in their box-header subpage, the purge link bypass can be added back into those portals. We'll be doing a lot of AWB passes on the set of portals over the coming weeks, and so the set will be transforming pretty fast. — The Transhumanist 07:51, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
@The Transhumanist: I had fixed those portals by adding the purge parameter (|Purge=<i></i>) back into the wikimedia section (example of a portal that has not been fixed (as of now): Portal:Yukon. Dreamy Jazztalk | contribs 22:20, 4 July 2018 (UTC) (I recently renamed my user account)
This monthly newsletter showcases the Wikipedia Education Program. It focuses on sharing: your ideas, stories, success and challenges. You can see past editions here. You can also volunteer to help publish the newsletter. Join the team! Finally, don't forget to subscribe!
One of our participants got involved with this WikiProject through interest in how the new generation of portals would be handled in WP's MOS (Manual of Style). It didn't take long before he got sucked in deeper. This has given him an opportunity to look around, and so, he has made an assessment of this WikiProject's operations:
I'm quite frankly really impressed and inspired by what's happening here. If you'd asked me a year ago if I thought portals should just be scrapped as a failed, dragged-out experiment, I would have said "yes". This planning and the progress toward making it all practical is exemplary of the wiki spirit, in particular of a happy service-to-readers puppy properly wagging its technological and editorial tail instead of the other way around, and without "drama". It's also one of the few examples I've seen in a long time of a new wikiproject actually doing something useful and fomenting constructive activity (instead of acting as a barrier to participation, and a canvassing/ownership farm for PoV pushers). Kudos all around. — SMcCandlish
Congratulations, everyone. Keep up the great work.
Eventually, we may need another way to do slideshows. If we do go this route, and I don't see why we wouldn't, then (user configurable) automatic slideshows also become a possibility.
Once implemented, this will allow editors to create and edit cascading style sheets for use with templates. This will expand what we can do with portals. For more detail, see mw:Extension:TemplateStyles and Wikipedia:TemplateStyles.
We've run into an obstacle using Lua-based selective transclusion: Lua is incapable (on Wikipedia) of reading in article names from categories. Because of this, we'll need to seek other approaches for fully automating the Selected article section. We are exploring sources other than categories, and other technologies besides Lua.
Speaking of using other sources, the template {{Transclude list item excerpt}} collects list items from a specified page, or from a section of that page, and transcludes the lead from a randomly selected link from that list. Courtesy of Certes. So, if you use this in a portal, and if the template specifies a page or section serviced by JL-Bot, you've now got yourself an automatically updated section in the portal. JL-Bot provides links to featured content and good articles, by subject.
What is "fully automated"? When you create a portal using a creation template, and the portal works thereafter without editor intervention, the portal is fully automated. That is, the portal is supported by features that fetch new content. If you have to add new article names every so often for it to display new content, then it is only semi-automated.
Currently, the Selected article section is semi-automated, because it requires that an editor supplies the names of the various articles for which excerpts are (automatically) displayed. For examples, look at the wikisource code of Portal:Reptiles, Portal:Ancient Tamil civilization, and Portal:Reference works.
So far, 3 sections are fully automatable: the introduction section, the categories section, and the Associated Wikimedia section.
Eventually, the portal department will be a software program. And we won't have to do anything (unless we want to). Not even tell it what portals to create (unless we want to). It will just do it all (plus whatever else we want it to do). And we will of course give it good manners, and a name.
But, that is a few years off.
Until then, building portals is still (partially) up to us. — The Transhumanist 13:34, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
Hey, TH. Is it on the up and up to use AWB to send mass messages to talk pages? Having fun! Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 00:57, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
@Checkingfax: Sure, for on-topic and in-scope messages. For example, you opted in to receive project updates when you added your name at Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Project participants. ;) During the RfC on portals, I sent hundreds of invites to join the Portals WikiProject – one to each of those who supported portals in the RfC. I've posted thousands of notices to portal talk pages and WikiProject talk pages (those that have a corresponding portal page), about portal resources and the Portals WikiProject. I sent a thank you message to all those who supported portals in the RfC. And so on. — The Transhumanist 18:15, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
Hello Transhumanist, I am in the process of reviving the wikiproject Buddhism bit by bit. There is a link on the form page of the project that advises people to add their articles on Buddhist topics to the subpage Wikipedia:WikiProject Buddhism/Articles. I wonder if this is still necessary, and whether it cannot be automated somehow.--Farang Rak Tham(Talk) 17:35, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
The Portal Barnstar is awarded to Wikipedians who have made significant contributions to topic portals. Thanks for the great work you have been doing in the WikiProject. Dreamy Jazztalk | contribs 22:15, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
You are welcome, formerly Wpgbrown. Nice new name. ;) — The Transhumanist 10:26, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Languages of North Korea. Since you had some involvement with the Languages of North Korea redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Thryduulf (talk) 13:56, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
Work is proceeding apace. We have 2 major thrusts right now: converting the intro sections of portals, and building the components of the one-page automated model...
Converting the intro sections
We need everybody, except those building software components, to work on converting intros. If you have AWB, definitely use that. If not, then work on them manually. Even one a day, or as often as you can muster, will help a lot. There are only about 1,000 of them left to go, so if everyone chips in, it will go pretty quickly. Remember, there are 97 of us!
The intros for most of the portals starting with A through F have already been converted to use the {{Transclude lead excerpt}} template.
The standard wikicode for the automated intro that we want to put into place looks like this:
That works for most portals, but not all. For some portals it requires some tweaking, and for others, we may have to use a different or more customized approach. Remember to visually inspect each portal you work on and make sure that it works before moving on to the next one.
I've started an AWB tips page, for those of you feeling a bit overwhelmed by that power user tool. Feel free to add to it and/or improve it.
Portal automation
We have some very talented Lua programmers, who are pushing the limits of what we can do in gathering data from Wikipedia's various namespaces and presenting it in portals. Due to their efforts, Lua is powering the selective transclusion core of our emerging automated portal design, in the form of selected article sections that rotate content, and slideshows.
To go beyond Lua's limits, to take full advantage of Mediawiki's API, we are in the midst of adding another programming language to the resources we shall be making use of: JavaScript. The ways that JavaScript can help us edit portals to boost the power of our Lua solutions, are being explored, which will likely make the two languages synergistic if not symbiotic. Research is under way on how we can use JavaScript to make some of the portal semi-automated features fully automatically self-updating, in ways that Lua cannot. Like gathering random members from a category and inserting them into a portal's templates as parameters. Once the parameters are in place, Lua does the rest.
Well, not at the present time, because building portals is quite time consuming. The good news is that we are working on a design that will be fully automated, or as close to that as we can get. And the new design is being implemented in the portal department's main portal creation template. This means, that not only will portals update themselves, their creation will be highly automated as well. That's the nature of templates. You put them in place, and they just... work.
What I'm getting at here, is that it would be better to wait to build lots of new portals until after the new design is completed. Because with it, instead of taking hours to create a new portal, it will likely take minutes.
That does not mean we should be idle in the meantime. The main reason most of us are here is because it became apparent that portals were largely unmaintained and had grown out-of-date. This had become so apparent that a proposal was made to delete all the portals and the portal namespace to boot. That makes our main objective in the short term to improve all the existing portals so that the community will want to keep them—forever.
Building lots of new portals comes later. Let's fix up the ones we have first. ;)
And on that note, I bid you adieu. Until next newsletter, see ya 'round the WikiProject. — The Transhumanist 12:32, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
Automation makes things go faster, even portal creation. One of the components Certes made was {{Transclude list item excerpt}}. I became curious about its possible applications.
So I worked out a portal design using it, the initial prototypes being Portal:Kyoto (without a "Selected pictures" section), and Portal:Dubai (with a "Selected pictures" section). Then I used Portal:Dubai as the basis for further portals of this type...
I was able to revamp Portal:Munich from start to finish in less than 22 minutes.
When using the {{Random slideshow}} template to display pictures, be sure to use the plural tense in the section title: "Selected pictures". That's because slideshows don't show up on many mobile devices. Instead the whole set of pictures is shown, hence the section title "Selected pictures", as it fits both situations.
In case you are curious, here is a list of the portals so far that have a slideshow:
Where the pagename didn't match the article title for the subject, the title was typed in.
Most of the portals that do not contain {{/intro}} or {{{{FULLPGENAME}}/Intro}} have not yet been processed.
About a thousand portals use the method of selective transclusion for the intro section. That's about two-thirds. That means we have one-third of the way to go on the intro section conversions.
So much has been happening with portals that I can't keep up with it. (That's good). Which means, more in the upcoming issue. Until then, see ya 'round the project. Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 08:47, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
Heads up: several portals you've made with {{box portal skeleton}} have a redundant {{portal description}} and {{portal maintenance status}} (they are a part of the skeleton already). I've fixed two of them linked in your WikiGnome notice, but there may be several more. I've also updated the box skeleton to actually subst: the date parameter in the maintenance status, so the ones created before my edit will actually need those substituted. I may do an AWB run to find those later (maybe a regex search for {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDATE}}). — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 02:54, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
@AfroThundr3007730: I see you found and removed some of them. I found and removed another (at Portal:Dubai). There were a handful of city portals I converted. I think I've checked them all. They're good to go. Thanks for the heads up and assist. — The Transhumanist 05:21, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Hello The Transhumanist :-) thank you so much for your ongoing Works. Due to the last Progress Report I noted Works at Portal:Dresden. I checked this and found that Wikidata was not existing in that case. I fixed it with this entry at Wikidata. Pls add a check for Wikidata in overhauling-checks for Portals. As a tool for international overview you can f.ex. use this tool with Statistics. Once again: I just drop this at yours to let you decedide where to place this suggestion for best usage. Cheers --Tom (talk) 06:44, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
I got overwhelmed IRL (in real life) during the production of issue #12. So, here is a catch-up issue, to help bring you (and me) up to speed on what is happening with portals...
By the way, we still have 97 participants. (Tell all your friends about this WikiProject, and have them join!)
We now have two slideshow templates. You may be familiar with {{Random slideshow}}, in which the editor types in (or copies/pastes) a list of pictures he or she wants it to display.
Well, now we have another template, courtesy of Evad37, which accepts one or more page names instead, and displays a random image off of the listed pages. So instead of listing dozens of files by hand, you can include a title or three to be scanned automatically. It even lets you specify particular sections.
Also from Evad37, we have a new component for starting section boxes, that is color configurable, and that bypasses the need for box-header subpages altogether. It is {{Box-header colour}}.
The answer to this question is quite involved, and would fill this page to overflowing. Therefore, this subject, including a complete update on where we are at and where we are going with portal design, is covered at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Design.
An AWB pass to convert intros on the portals has been completed. The pass couldn't convert them all (due to various formatting configurations, etc.).
All but about 170 portals now have introductions selectively transcluded on the base page. Not counting manually maintained portals, that leaves about 70 portals that either need their intros converted, or they need an intro.
Next, we'll be converting the categories sections!
Hey, how do you submit a new portal image so that it links to the actual portal rather than that ugly blue icon visible on newly created portals? Thanks. Senegambianamestudy (talk) 15:58, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
In the future, the best place to request a change to protected portal-related pages is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Tasks. Make sure your message heading includes "Admin help needed". And you don't need to use a requests template there. Just explain what you need in a regular message. — The Transhumanist 07:10, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Note that we can still transclude text and insert images manually, but Kusma had issues with the text as well, favoring the portal's customized text. I agree with him, that it is better than the text from the root article's lead.
The purpose of the "upgrade" is two-fold: 1) to keep the excerpt from going stale (by always showing the lastest version of the text from the root article, which in most cases receives more attention); and 2) to remove subpages.
We can still achieve #2 here, by merging the contents of the subpage to the base page. Done — The Transhumanist 22:43, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
I'd like to make an infobox for music series. Similar to the infobox for television shows, but this one for music series. It would have the year it spanned from, the genre(s), the artist, producers, and so on. Please could you give me some help?
Here's how I would go about it (read this whole list before starting):
Install SearchSuite.js. It is a search results formatter. It makes looking up page names much more convenient.
Then do this search: intitle:"album series".
In the sidebar tools menu, click SR details (turn off).
Some of the pages listed will have infoboxes. Choose one that you like, and copy and paste it in to the article you want it in.
Then, immediately, edit its content to fit the subject. If you can't work on it immediately, copy it into your sandbox instead. (The link for it is at the top of the page, right next to "Preferences".
Let me know if you run into any problems. I hope these tips help. Good luck. Sincererly, — The Transhumanist 19:25, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Well, thank you for recommending the idea, but what I meant is create a new Wikipedia infobox. Similar to the one we have for a television series. --Mozart834428196 (talk) 12:32, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
Chiming in: what precisely is a music series, and what in {{infobox musical composition}} would not work? (We try to rather have fewer infobox templates than more.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:38, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
The release date span, for example "1791-1820", the musical artist, the genre(s), etc. In a sense, most of the things we have on the album infobox, kind of mixed together with the TV series infobox. --Mozart834428196 (talk) 10:25, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
@Mozart834428196 and Gerda Arendt: It sounds like all you need to do is copy an infobox into your sandbox, and edit it. What are you having problems with? Also, why don't you use {{infobox musical composition}} instead of creating a new infobox design? Why is a new one needed? — The Transhumanist 18:37, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
I tried making a new infobox, it didn't work. Also, I'm talking about a series, not a composition. --Mozart834428196 (talk) 21:31, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
What should a Portal talk page look like? My hometown portal is:
{{WikiProject Portals|importance= |quality= }}
{{Portal talk}}
{{WikiProject Philadelphia}}
{{WikiProject Pennsylvania}}
{{WikiProject New Jersey}}<!--Suburban NJ counties-->
{{WikiProject United States|class=|importance=|DE=yes|DE-importance=}}<!--New Castle County, DE-->
{{WikiProject Maryland}}<!--Cecil County, Maryland-->
{| width="30%" align=right
|
{{Portal:Philadelphia/box-header|''Portal collaborators''|Portal:Philadelphia/Collaborators|}}
{{Portal:Philadelphia/Collaborators}}
{{Box-footer|}}
|}
Please tell me what this page should be.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 20:07, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
@Dthomsen8: It's a page for discussing the development and maintenance of Portal:Philadelphia. The top of the page was a bit cluttered. I've added {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}. Let me know if that helps. You could also use an archive page. See Portal talk:United States and other portal talk pages for further ideas on talk page support features.
To see the latest developments for geographic portals applied, check out Portal:Lithuania. — The Transhumanist 22:32, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
Weird: I've lost my contents list on my talk page since your last portal update[edit]
Hi there. There's absolutely no criticism implied, but since your last portal update message I've been missing the contents list on my Talk page. By selective deletion, I've finally narrowed the cause down to the template text {{Box-header colour}}, but for the life of me I can't see what precisely is the cause as I can't see any No Contents command being invoked anywhere. And even weirder, I've just inserted the 'offending' code here, page previewed, and it hasn't affected your talk page at all. So I've no idea what additional script or conflict has caused the issue on my page and no other, but thought you and Evad37 might like to be aware of this.
Now, in addition to picture slideshows, we have slideshows that can display excerpts. Portals are not just for topic tasting anymore. Now they can be made useful for surveying Wikipedia's coverage of entire subjects. This gives a deeper meaning to their name. Hmmm. "Portals"... Doorways to knowledge.
Portal:Lithuania was redesigned using excerpt slideshows. Check it out.
For those of you who cannot wait to test out these new toys...
We have not one, but three excerpt slideshow components to pick from:
This one accepts source pages from where the page names are gathered from list items. Then an excerpt from one of those pages is displayed. The selection of what is included in the slide show can be limited to a specific number from the collection (of the page names gathered), and that selection is renewed from scratch each time the page is purged.
For example, if you specify Template:World Heritage Sites in Spain as a source page, the slideshow will cycle through those sites. Now you don't have to type them in one-by-one. This greatly reduces portal creation time.
{{Portal image banner}} displays a panoramic picture the width of the page, and adjusts its size, so it stays that way even if the user changes page view size. And it accepts multiple file names, so that the picture displayed randomizes between them each time the page is visited/purged.
The gharial (Gavialis gangeticus), also known as the gavial, and fish-eating crocodile is a crocodilian in the familyGavialidae, and is native to the northern part of the Indian subcontinent. The global wild gharial population is estimated at fewer than 235 individuals, which are threatened by loss of riverine habitat, depletion of fish resources, and entanglement in fishing nets. As the population has declined drastically since the 1930s, the gharial is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. It once inhabited all the major river systems of the Indian subcontinent, from the Indus River in the west to the Irrawaddy River in the east. Its distribution is now limited to only 2% of its historical range. It inhabit foremost flowing rivers with high sand banks that it uses for basking and building nests. Adults mate in the cold season. The young hatch before the onset of the monsoon. Read more...
Turtles are diapsids of the orderTestudines (or Chelonii) characterized by a special bony or cartilaginousshell developed from their ribs and acting as a shield. "Turtle" may refer to the order as a whole (American English) or to fresh-water and sea-dwelling testudines (British English). The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known members of this group date from 220 million years ago, making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than snakes or crocodilians. Of the 356 known species alive today, some are highly endangered. Read more...
Amphisbaenia (called amphisbaenians or worm lizards) is a group of usually legless squamates, comprising over 180 extant species. Amphisbaenians are characterized by their long bodies, the reduction or loss of the limbs, and rudimentary eyes. As many species have a pink body and scales arranged in rings, they have a superficial resemblance to earthworms. While the genus Bipes retains forelimbs, all other genera are limbless. Although superficially similar to the snakes and Dibamidae, recent phylogenetic studies suggest that they are most closely related to the Lacertidae. Amphisbaenians are widely distributed, occurring in North America, Europe, Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. Most species are less than 6 inches (150 mm) long. Read more...
Lizards are a widespread group of squamatereptiles, with over 6,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The group is paraphyletic as it excludes the snakes and Amphisbaenia; some lizards are more closely related to these two excluded groups than they are to other lizards. Lizards range in size from chameleons and geckos a few centimeters long to the 3 meter long Komodo dragon. Read more...
Snakes are elongated, legless, carnivorousreptiles of the suborderSerpentes. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniotevertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads with their highly mobile jaws. To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs about twenty five times independently via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. Legless lizards resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, although this rule is not universal (see Amphisbaenia, Dibamidae, and Pygopodidae). Read more...
Crocodiles (subfamily Crocodylinae) or true crocodiles are large aquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia. Crocodylinae, all of whose members are considered true crocodiles, is classified as a biological subfamily. A broader sense of the term crocodile, Crocodylidae that includes Tomistoma, is not used in this article. The term crocodile here applies to only the species within the subfamily of Crocodylinae. The term is sometimes used even more loosely to include all extant members of the orderCrocodilia, which includes the alligators and caimans (family Alligatoridae), the gharial and false gharial (family Gavialidae), and all other living and fossil Crocodylomorpha. Read more...
Tortoises (/ˈtɔːr.təs.ɪz/) are a family, Testudinidae, under the order Testudines and suborder Cryptodira. There are fourteen extant families of the order Testudines, an order of reptile commonly known as turtles, tortoises, and terrapins. The suborder Cryptodira (Greek: hidden neck) is a suborder of Testudines that includes most living tortoises and turtles. Cryptodira differ from Pluerodia (side-neck turtles) in that they lower their necks and pull the heads straight back into the shells, instead of folding their necks sideways along the body under the shells' marginals. The testudines are some of the most ancient reptiles alive. Tortoises are shielded from predators by a shell. The top part of the shell is the carapace, the underside is the plastron, and the two are connected by the bridge. Read more...
Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by a lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults. All present-day salamander families are grouped together under the order Urodela. Salamander diversity is most abundant in the Northern Hemisphere and most species are found in the Holarcticecozone, with some species present in the Neotropical zone.
Salamanders rarely have more than four toes on their front legs and five on their rear legs, but some species have fewer digits and others lack hind limbs. Their permeable skin usually makes them reliant on habitats in or near water or other cool, damp places. Some salamander species are fully aquatic throughout their lives, some take to the water intermittently, and others are entirely terrestrial as adults. They are capable of regenerating lost limbs, as well as other damaged parts of their bodies. Researchers hope to reverse engineer the remarkable regenerative processes for potential human medical applications, such as brain and spinal cord injury treatment or preventing harmful scarring during heart surgery recovery. Members of the familySalamandridae are mostly known as newts and lack the costal grooves along the sides of their bodies typical of other groups. The skin of some species contains the powerful poison tetrodotoxin; these salamanders tend to be slow-moving and have bright warning coloration to advertise their toxicity. Salamanders typically lay eggs in water and have aquatic larvae, but great variation occurs in their lifecycles. Some species in harsh environments reproduce while still in the larval state. Read more...
Caecilians (/sɪˈsɪliən/; New Latin for "blind ones") are a group of limbless, serpentine amphibians. They mostly live hidden in the ground and in stream substrates, making them the least familiar order of amphibians. All modern caecilians and their closest fossil relatives are grouped as a clade, Apoda, within the larger group Gymnophiona, which also includes more primitive extinct caecilian-like amphibians. Caecilians are mostly distributed in the tropics of South and Central America, Africa, and southern Asia. Their diet consists of earthworms and small subterranean creatures. Read more...
Toad is a common name for certain frogs, especially of the family Bufonidae, that are characterized by dry, leathery skin, short legs, and large bumps covering the parotoid glands.
A distinction between frogs and toads is not made in scientific taxonomy, but is common in popular culture (folk taxonomy), in which toads are associated with drier skin and more terrestrial habitats. Read more...
Various types of frogs.
A frog is any member of a diverse and largely carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the orderAnura (Ancient Greekἀν-, without + οὐρά, tail). The oldest fossil "proto-frog" appeared in the early Triassic of Madagascar, but molecular clock dating suggests their origins may extend further back to the Permian, 265 million years ago. Frogs are widely distributed, ranging from the tropics to subarctic regions, but the greatest concentration of species diversity is in tropical rainforests. There are approximately 4,800 recorded species, accounting for over 85% of extant amphibian species. They are also one of the five most diverse vertebrate orders. Warty frog species tend to be called toads, but the distinction between frogs and toads is informal, not from taxonomy or evolutionary history.
An adult frog has a stout body, protruding eyes, cleft tongue, limbs folded underneath, and no tail. Frogs have glandular skin, with secretions ranging from distasteful to toxic. Their skins varies in colour from well-camouflaged dappled brown, grey and green to vivid patterns of bright red or yellow and black to show toxicity and ward off predators. Adult frogs live in fresh water and on dry land; some species are adapted for living underground or in trees.
Frogs typically lay their eggs in water. The eggs hatch into aquatic larvae called tadpoles that have tails and internal gills. They have highly specialized rasping mouth parts suitable for herbivorous, omnivorous or planktivorous diets. The life cycle is completed when they metamorphose into adults. A few species deposit eggs on land or bypass the tadpole stage. Adult frogs generally have a carnivorous diet consisting of small invertebrates, but omnivorous species exist and a few feed on fruit. Frogs are extremely efficient at converting what they eat into body mass. They are an important food source for predators and part of the food web dynamics of many of the world's ecosystems. The skin is semi-permeable, making them susceptible to dehydration, so they either live in moist places or have special adaptations to deal with dry habitats. Frogs produce a wide range of vocalizations, particularly in their breeding season, and exhibit many different kinds of complex behaviours to attract mates, to fend off predators and to generally survive. Read more...
Turtles are diapsids of the orderTestudines (or Chelonii) characterized by a special bony or cartilaginousshell developed from their ribs and acting as a shield. "Turtle" may refer to the order as a whole (American English) or to fresh-water and sea-dwelling testudines (British English). The order Testudines includes both extant (living) and extinct species. The earliest known members of this group date from 220 million years ago, making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than snakes or crocodilians. Of the 356 known species alive today, some are highly endangered. Read more...
Lizards are a widespread group of squamatereptiles, with over 6,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The group is paraphyletic as it excludes the snakes and Amphisbaenia; some lizards are more closely related to these two excluded groups than they are to other lizards. Lizards range in size from chameleons and geckos a few centimeters long to the 3 meter long Komodo dragon. Read more...
Snakes are elongated, legless, carnivorousreptiles of the suborderSerpentes. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniotevertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads with their highly mobile jaws. To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs about twenty five times independently via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. Legless lizards resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, although this rule is not universal (see Amphisbaenia, Dibamidae, and Pygopodidae). Read more...
Male gharial
The gharial (Gavialis gangeticus), also known as the gavial, and fish-eating crocodile is a crocodilian in the familyGavialidae, and is native to the northern part of the Indian subcontinent. The global wild gharial population is estimated at fewer than 235 individuals, which are threatened by loss of riverine habitat, depletion of fish resources, and entanglement in fishing nets. As the population has declined drastically since the 1930s, the gharial is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. It once inhabited all the major river systems of the Indian subcontinent, from the Indus River in the west to the Irrawaddy River in the east. Its distribution is now limited to only 2% of its historical range. It inhabit foremost flowing rivers with high sand banks that it uses for basking and building nests. Adults mate in the cold season. The young hatch before the onset of the monsoon. Read more...
Crocodiles (subfamily Crocodylinae) or true crocodiles are large aquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia. Crocodylinae, all of whose members are considered true crocodiles, is classified as a biological subfamily. A broader sense of the term crocodile, Crocodylidae that includes Tomistoma, is not used in this article. The term crocodile here applies to only the species within the subfamily of Crocodylinae. The term is sometimes used even more loosely to include all extant members of the orderCrocodilia, which includes the alligators and caimans (family Alligatoridae), the gharial and false gharial (family Gavialidae), and all other living and fossil Crocodylomorpha. Read more...
Amphisbaenia (called amphisbaenians or worm lizards) is a group of usually legless squamates, comprising over 180 extant species. Amphisbaenians are characterized by their long bodies, the reduction or loss of the limbs, and rudimentary eyes. As many species have a pink body and scales arranged in rings, they have a superficial resemblance to earthworms. While the genus Bipes retains forelimbs, all other genera are limbless. Although superficially similar to the snakes and Dibamidae, recent phylogenetic studies suggest that they are most closely related to the Lacertidae. Amphisbaenians are widely distributed, occurring in North America, Europe, Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. Most species are less than 6 inches (150 mm) long. Read more...
Tortoises (/ˈtɔːr.təs.ɪz/) are a family, Testudinidae, under the order Testudines and suborder Cryptodira. There are fourteen extant families of the order Testudines, an order of reptile commonly known as turtles, tortoises, and terrapins. The suborder Cryptodira (Greek: hidden neck) is a suborder of Testudines that includes most living tortoises and turtles. Cryptodira differ from Pluerodia (side-neck turtles) in that they lower their necks and pull the heads straight back into the shells, instead of folding their necks sideways along the body under the shells' marginals. The testudines are some of the most ancient reptiles alive. Tortoises are shielded from predators by a shell. The top part of the shell is the carapace, the underside is the plastron, and the two are connected by the bridge. Read more...
Caecilians (/sɪˈsɪliən/; New Latin for "blind ones") are a group of limbless, serpentine amphibians. They mostly live hidden in the ground and in stream substrates, making them the least familiar order of amphibians. All modern caecilians and their closest fossil relatives are grouped as a clade, Apoda, within the larger group Gymnophiona, which also includes more primitive extinct caecilian-like amphibians. Caecilians are mostly distributed in the tropics of South and Central America, Africa, and southern Asia. Their diet consists of earthworms and small subterranean creatures. Read more...
Various types of frogs.
A frog is any member of a diverse and largely carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the orderAnura (Ancient Greekἀν-, without + οὐρά, tail). The oldest fossil "proto-frog" appeared in the early Triassic of Madagascar, but molecular clock dating suggests their origins may extend further back to the Permian, 265 million years ago. Frogs are widely distributed, ranging from the tropics to subarctic regions, but the greatest concentration of species diversity is in tropical rainforests. There are approximately 4,800 recorded species, accounting for over 85% of extant amphibian species. They are also one of the five most diverse vertebrate orders. Warty frog species tend to be called toads, but the distinction between frogs and toads is informal, not from taxonomy or evolutionary history.
An adult frog has a stout body, protruding eyes, cleft tongue, limbs folded underneath, and no tail. Frogs have glandular skin, with secretions ranging from distasteful to toxic. Their skins varies in colour from well-camouflaged dappled brown, grey and green to vivid patterns of bright red or yellow and black to show toxicity and ward off predators. Adult frogs live in fresh water and on dry land; some species are adapted for living underground or in trees.
Frogs typically lay their eggs in water. The eggs hatch into aquatic larvae called tadpoles that have tails and internal gills. They have highly specialized rasping mouth parts suitable for herbivorous, omnivorous or planktivorous diets. The life cycle is completed when they metamorphose into adults. A few species deposit eggs on land or bypass the tadpole stage. Adult frogs generally have a carnivorous diet consisting of small invertebrates, but omnivorous species exist and a few feed on fruit. Frogs are extremely efficient at converting what they eat into body mass. They are an important food source for predators and part of the food web dynamics of many of the world's ecosystems. The skin is semi-permeable, making them susceptible to dehydration, so they either live in moist places or have special adaptations to deal with dry habitats. Frogs produce a wide range of vocalizations, particularly in their breeding season, and exhibit many different kinds of complex behaviours to attract mates, to fend off predators and to generally survive. Read more...
Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by a lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults. All present-day salamander families are grouped together under the order Urodela. Salamander diversity is most abundant in the Northern Hemisphere and most species are found in the Holarcticecozone, with some species present in the Neotropical zone.
Salamanders rarely have more than four toes on their front legs and five on their rear legs, but some species have fewer digits and others lack hind limbs. Their permeable skin usually makes them reliant on habitats in or near water or other cool, damp places. Some salamander species are fully aquatic throughout their lives, some take to the water intermittently, and others are entirely terrestrial as adults. They are capable of regenerating lost limbs, as well as other damaged parts of their bodies. Researchers hope to reverse engineer the remarkable regenerative processes for potential human medical applications, such as brain and spinal cord injury treatment or preventing harmful scarring during heart surgery recovery. Members of the familySalamandridae are mostly known as newts and lack the costal grooves along the sides of their bodies typical of other groups. The skin of some species contains the powerful poison tetrodotoxin; these salamanders tend to be slow-moving and have bright warning coloration to advertise their toxicity. Salamanders typically lay eggs in water and have aquatic larvae, but great variation occurs in their lifecycles. Some species in harsh environments reproduce while still in the larval state. Read more...
Toad is a common name for certain frogs, especially of the family Bufonidae, that are characterized by dry, leathery skin, short legs, and large bumps covering the parotoid glands.
A distinction between frogs and toads is not made in scientific taxonomy, but is common in popular culture (folk taxonomy), in which toads are associated with drier skin and more terrestrial habitats. Read more...
Notice how the box bottoms line up. That readjusts even if you click the slideshow buttons.
You may have noticed the new {{Box-header colour}} template used above. It lets you pick the color locally (right on the same page). Before, this was handled on a subpage somewhere.
Now that we have lots of toys to play with for making cool portals...
Don't forget, that the majority of views of Wikipedia these days are from mobile devices. We need to make certain that portals display well on those. So, remember to check your work on portals in mobile view mode...
To see a portal in mobile view mode, insert a ".m" into a portal's url, after "en", like this:
Hello and thanks again for User:The Transhumanist/SearchSuite.js which I find very useful. May I suggest another switch, to turn off the suppression of non-matching entries? For example, I'm currently searching for linksto:"Adventure" intitle:"film" (because many of those articles should link to Adventure film instead), but I need to comment out SearchSuite in my common.js to see any results. Thanks, Certes (talk) 09:38, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
Good idea. I will work on it as time allows. — The Transhumanist 22:37, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
Aha! The problem is that intitle: wasn't the first thing in my search. Line 147 of SearchSuite.js sets intitle to linksto:"Adventure" film, and line 151 doesn't find that string in any article titles. An extra .* in line 145 might fix it, as in RegExp('.*intitle:"(.+?)".*','i'), but I've not tested that change. Certes (talk) 23:41, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
Portals tasks requests: presented in the newsletter below...[edit]
The task: There are many geography portals that lack panoramas. Please add some. Please keep the file size down below 2 megabytes, and keep in mind that you may find quality banners at commons: at less than 200K (.2 megabytes). Good search terms to include with the place name are "banner", "cityscape", "skyline", "panorama", "landscape", etc.
Related task: There are also lots of geography portals that have panoramas used as gaudy banners (with print or icons splattered across them) or that display them in some random location on the page. In many cases, those pages would be improved by displaying the panorama as a clean picture at the top of the intro section, like on the examples above. This works best with banner-like panoramas. Please fix such pages when you come across them, if you believe it would improve the look of the page.
Taller images might be better suited displayed further down the page, or in the "Selected images" section.
Note that {{Portal image banner}} supports multiple images, and displays one at random upon the first visit, and each time the page is purged.
Fun activity #2: install "Selected images" sections[edit]
That is, image slideshows!
Over 200 have been installed so far. Just 1200 to go. (Be sure not to install them on portals with active maintainers, unless they want you to).
The title "Selected images" reflects the fact that not all images on Wikipedia are pictures, and encompasses maps, graphs, diagrams, sketches, paintings, pictures, and so on.
The task: Using one of the above templates directly on a portal's base page, replace static "Selected picture" sections, with a section like one of these:
Selected images
The red lionfish (Pterois volitans) is a venomous coral reef fish from the Indian and western Pacific Oceans. The red lionfish is also found off the east coast of the United States, and was likely first introduced off the Florida coast in the early to mid 1990s.
Salmon fry hatching (Salmo salar) - the larva has grown around the remains of the yolk - visible are the arteries spinning around the yolk and little oildrops, also the gut, the spine, the main caudal blood vessel, the bladder and the arcs of the gills.
A discus (Symphysodon discus) is guarding its eggs. As for most cichlids, brood care is highly developed with both the parents caring for the young. Additionally, adult discus produce a secretion through their skin, off which the larvae live during their first few days.
Koi are ornamental domesticated varieties of the common carpCyprinus carpio, originated from China and widely spread in Japan. They are very closely related to goldfish. The word "koi" comes from Japanese meaning "carp".
The narrow conical shape of northern conifers, and their downward-drooping limbs, help them shed snow.
The northern spotted owl primarily inhabits old-growth forests in the northern part of its range (Canada to southern Oregon) and landscapes with a mix of old and younger forest types in the southern part of its range (Klamath region and California).
Pinaceae: unopened female cones of subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa)
1985 Smokey Bear poster with part of his admonition, "Only you can prevent forest fires".
Redwood tree in northern California redwood forest: According to the National Park Service, "96 percent of the original old-growth coast redwoods have been logged."
A dirt road acted as a fire barrier in South Africa. The effects of the barrier can clearly be seen on the unburnt (left) and burnt (right) sides of the road.
In Abies grandis (grand fir), and many other species with spirally arranged leaves, leaf bases are twisted to flatten their arrangement and maximize light capture.
Wildfire fighters cutting down a tree using a chainsaw
Charred landscape following a crown fire in the North Cascades, U.S.A.
Lightning-sparked wildfires are frequent occurrences during the dry summer season in Nevada.
Aerial view of deliberate wildfires on the Khun Tan Range, Thailand. These fires are lit by local farmers every year in order to promote the growth of a certain mushroom
National map of groundwater and soil moisture in the United States of America. It shows the very low soil moisture associated with the 2011 fire season in Texas.
A surface fire in the western desert of Utah, U.S.A.
The one on the left uses {{Random slideshow}} (which accepts file names), and the one on the right uses {{Transclude files as random slideshow}} (which accepts source pages from which the filenames are gathered).
The above section formatting is used on many of the pages you will come across, but not all. In those cases, use whatever section formatting matches the rest of the page.
Note that you may come across "Selected picture" sections done with {{Random portal component}} templates. That template call is the entire section. Replace it with a section that matches the other sections on the page, and put the new slideshow inside that.
{{/box-header|Selected images|noedit=yes}}
{{Transclude files as random slideshow
| {{PAGENAME}}
| Culture of {{PAGENAME}}
}}
{{Box-footer}}
And the new section blended right in with the formatting of the rest of the page. Note the use of the {{PAGENAME}} magic word. Plain article titles also work. Don't feel limited to one or two page names. But be sure to test each slideshow before installing the next one. (Or if you prefer, in batches - just don't leave them hanging). Report technical problems at the Portal design talk page.
Fun activity #3: upgrade "Selected article" sections[edit]
These sections, where unmaintained, have gone stale. That's because 1) the excerpts are static, having been manually copied and pasted, and 2) because they lack automatic addition of new entries.
All three of these will provide excerpts that won't go stale. The latter two can provide excerpt collections that won't go stale, by providing new entries over time. The key is to select source pages or source sections that are frequently updated, such as root article sections, mainstream lists, or navigation templates.
When the above tasks are completed for the entire collection of portals (except the ones with specific maintainers), we'll be more than half-way done with the portal system upgrade.
Keep up the great work. — The Transhumanist 19:18, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
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Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. Hhkohh (talk) 13:52, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
Hi Transhumanist: Is there a reason why the {{Birds tasks}} template is now locked, so that members of the WP:BIRDS can no longer update it? The information there is now woefully out of date. All of the articles listed in the "Stubs" section are no longer stubs, for example, and Bonaparte's gull was copyedited years ago! Could this section reference the actual categories of the project's cleanup listing? If not, then we need to be able to update it problems are addressed. MeegsC (talk) 15:25, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
@MeegsC and Primefac: Let's take a look at the template's log entries, and see what's up. Clicking on View source, we discover there's a notice on there "The reason for protection can be found in the protection log", and it provides a link. Following that link and looking at the protection log, we see this: 08:29, 23 February 2018 Primefac (talk | contribs) changed protection level for Template:Birds tasks [Edit=Require template editor access] (indefinite) [Move=Require template editor access] (indefinite) (high-risk template with 4000+ transclusions). So, you have a number of options:
Start a discussion on the template's talk page about its protection level
I think #3 is your best option. I've pinged Primefac, for their input. — The Transhumanist 22:43, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
Actually, for this, any one except #3 are good options (no need to get TE just to edit one template). I've dropped it down to EC protection. I've also linked the template in the first line of the thread for convenience.
As for the original concern that was brought up here, the template hasn't been edited since 2015, so I'm not overly surprised it's out of date! Primefac (talk) 22:53, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks @Primefac:. It will certainly be helpful that anyone in the project can update the work list — though, as you say, it doesn't appear that (m)any of us are actually using it. I'm guessing the project's "cleanup listing" is taking priority these days... MeegsC (talk) 08:00, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Discussions are underway on the design of a portal tool (user script) that will hopefully have features for modifying portals at the click of a menu item, to make editing them easier. It might do things like change the color for you, add to a selection, add a new section, move a section, and so on.
As new portal components are built by our Lua gurus, those components are being used to upgrade portals. Each component automates a section of a portal in a particular way.
The sections that are mostly upgraded so far are the Intro, and the Associated Wikimedia section.
The sections currently undergoing upgrade are: Selected image, Categories, and the Intro.
The Intro? Isn't that done already?
Yes, and no.
The upgrade of the excerpt in intros is mostly complete (there are about 70 non-standard portals that still need it).
Now we are doing another upgrade of intros in the form of adding a panoramic picture at the top of the intro, on portals for which such a picture is available on Commons:. Dozens of panoramas have been added so far, and they are really starting to affect the look of portals — the portals that have them look really good.
Regions are the most likely subjects to have panoramas, but a surprising number of other subjects have banner-shaped pictures too. Some examples of non-geographic portals that they have been added to are:
The push for automation continues, with new components under continuous testing in the field. As problems are spotted, they are reported to our programmers, who have done a fantastic job of keeping up with bug reports and fixing the relevant Lua modules fast. I am highly impressed.
Construction time on new portals is now down to as little as a minute or less. Though not in general. If you are lucky enough to spot portals that fit the profile of the new tools (their strengths), then a portal can be complete almost as soon as it is created, with the added time it takes to find and add a panorama. Source page titles are not generally standardized, and so it source pages in many cases must be entered manually. Where source page titles follow a standard naming convention, portal creation for those subjects goes quickly.
So, we still have some hurdles, but the outlook on portals is very good. New features, and many improvements to features are on the horizon. I'll be sure to report them when they become available.
What will the portal of the future look like? That is up to you!
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect History of District (Austria). Since you had some involvement with the History of District (Austria) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Damvile (talk) 00:54, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
Myself and others have been testing and experimenting with the new components in upgrading existing portals and in building new portals. They have now been applied in hundreds of portals.
The templates are ready for general use for portal creation.
They are still a bit buggy, but the only way we are going to work the rest of the bugs out is by using them and reporting the bugs as we come across them.
I look forward to seeing what new portals you create!
Placing a panorama (banner picture) at the top of the intro section is a nice touch, and really makes a portal look good. {{box portal skeleton}} doesn't automatically insert panoramas. So, you will need to do that by hand. They can be found at Commons:. For some examples, check out Portal:Sharks, Portal:Cheese, and Portal:Florence
Check the In the news and Did you know? sections for mismatches. That is, sometimes entries come up that shouldn't be displayed. If there are any, refine the search strings further, so they don't return such results.
Finish each portal you've created before creating a new one. We don't want unfinished portals sitting around.
I've diverted most of the "awkward" links from Portal:Java to Portal:Java (programming language), and switched the P:JAVAP redirect. I've also put in an edit request for Module:Portal/images/j, to fix the image. That just leaves about 200 articles with boilerplate {{Portal|Java}} (such as Applet#See also) to do later. That tidy-up will be much easier if it's completed before we create a new portal on a different topic at the same name. I've left the P:JAVA redirect as is, ready for use by the island. All the best, Certes (talk) 00:58, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
I've now fixed the boilerplate links. A few archives and inactive WP: pages still link to Portal:Java, but if you agree that leaving them unchanged is the lesser of the two evils then you're probably ready to go. Certes (talk) 10:13, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
Portal:Java displays "{{#tag:gallery|File:Blank.png|". Previewing a null edit shows Warning: This page calls Template:Transclude list item excerpts as random slideshow which causes a template loop (an infinite recursive call). Certes (talk) 10:50, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
@Certes: We've been getting this same type of error since before the portal link was added to the template. So that's probably not it (this can be tested by removing the link temporarily).
I removed the portal link from the template, and then ctrl-clicked on the portal links above 15 times, then purged each tab to get a different entry. Some of the entries came up with that error. So, it's not the portal link on {{Java (software platform)}} causing it.
Do these clues help you track it down? — The Transhumanist 19:40, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
I don't see anything obvious. Evad37 wrote the template and may be more helpful. Certes (talk) 19:42, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
I'm not seeing any problems at the moment, even with purging plenty of times or doing a preview with the limit removed. So maybe it was the portal link, but there was some cache somewhere that didn't get updated straight away. - Evad37[talk] 02:28, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
A permanent general fix will probably need to be made in the lua module that gathers the links from the sourcepage, in the form of ignoring portal links. — The Transhumanist 07:12, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) This edit [13] should fix the problem by making sure excerpts are only taken from mainspace articles - Evad37[talk] 07:17, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
@Evad37: That seems to have fixed the problem. Even without the limit. Excellent. Looks good. — The Transhumanist 07:25, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Could you put more parameter names in when creating new portals please. It makes it a lot easier to add parameters for broken, notes etc if the names are already there. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood)(talk): 10:15, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: I don't know what you mean. Can you be more specific, and provide some examples? And what is the name of the template to which you are referring? — The Transhumanist 11:32, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: No problem, but in the documentation it is |note= rather than |notes=. Added them to {{Box portal skeleton}} and {{Quick portal}}. Will also hit the new portals with AWB, when I can find the time. — The Transhumanist 04:37, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
And that (notes => note) illustrates why it helps for it to be there already... Fewer options to get it wrong for the reviewer.
I looked through the parameter list again, and there do not seem to be any others from the current list that would be useful for the new style portal, assuming that you do not make any that are incomplete, as opposed to broken due to template bugs, which are not defects of the portal itself. A person who is not familiar with the presentation of the template bugs would reasonably tag the portal as broken or incomplete when one of the bugs shows up. On the other hand, I thought Portal:Capital punishment was incomplete when the truncation bug manifested, so maybe incomplete would be useful. What do you think? · · · Peter (Southwood)(talk): 06:22, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: Anything tagged warrants being looked at for one reason or another. Being aware of truncation bugs, we would know that when a complete portal gets marked incomplete, it is probably due to that type of bug. But the template I've been using, and all the portals I've created, don't require an "incomplete" parameter, because they are all complete. We could watch for notes on the talk page, like the one you posted for Portal:Capital punishment.
By the way, the parameters you requested have now been added in to the new portals of the new design. Done — The Transhumanist 06:52, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
Yes they are currently complete, and when the standard changes, I expect they will be made complete in an AWB run, but when a person unfamiliar with the truncation bug sees it in action, the first impression is likely to be that the portal is incomplete - it happened to me. It is then a question of whether we provide what they will consider the obvious parameter or not. We can leave it and see if anyone else requests it. Do we need to report multiple occurrences of the same bug, or is once enough for troubleshooting?· · · Peter (Southwood)(talk): 11:25, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: Different bugs have been causing the truncation effect, so, report them all. And ping Evad37 when you do. ;) — The Transhumanist 11:41, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
FWIW, |notes= is an alias to |note=. I figured that would be a common misspelling. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 19:02, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
@AfroThundr3007730: Nice. Then we don't have to go around and change it. What a relief. Thank you for the heads up. — The Transhumanist 20:47, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
I figured that was the case because the |notes= showed up. · · · Peter (Southwood)(talk): 03:34, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
Good to see others of the view we have as to the need to know more. Im a research person here just of this week and your views relate to my work here. take care.
Follow-up for your geographic portal creation spree[edit]
So I noticed several hundred new geographic portals populating our rating categories. Someone's been busy. I hate to pile on to that mountain of work, but those should also be categorized somewhere under Category:Portals (most likely Portals by country > United States portals > United States portals by city). There's a whole taxonomy for these that needs to be populated (this extends to the non-geographic portals too). Looks like another major task for the WikiProject. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 18:42, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
As an aside, Portal:Virginia Beach doesn't seem to have a Category:Virginia Beach - probably because it's at Category:Virginia Beach, Virginia. In this case, renaming the portal would suffice, but I'm thinking: should we make the category section collapsible like the DYK section if the category doesn't exist, or should it populate an error category? — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 18:51, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
@AfroThundr3007730: In that particular case, the portal was misnamed (following the template title, which was misnamed). Now it matches the article and the category. I also renamed the navigation template to match. Thank you for the heads up.
Concerning a conditional category tree section that only appears when there is a category, my inclination is no, because a redlink indicates an error or problem that needs to be fixed. Either the portal needs to be renamed, the redlink may need to be replaced, or the category needs to be created. Whichever of those 3 applies, should be done. That way, we fix the encyclopedia, rather than leaving it as a chore for someone else to do, and we improve the portal at the same time (bringing it closer to completion). By the way, can you think of any other circumstances that would result in a red category link? — The Transhumanist 21:11, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
Those are the only reasons for a red category that I can think of, assuming the topic is notable enough to warrant a category. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 04:19, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
If the topic is not notable enough to warrant a category, is it notable enough to warrant a portal? Do we have any examples of a topic notable enough to warrant a portal, but not enough to warrant a category? · · · Peter (Southwood)(talk): 03:53, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: In most cases, it's a missing category. If a topic is notable enough to warrant an article, then that covers it for notability in regards to all the navigation systems (outlines, indexes, portals, navboxes, sidebar navs, books, categories, etc.) Then it becomes a question of whether or not the scope of the topic is large enough for navigation aids to be of aid. For example, if there was an article on someone's shoe, because it was a really famous shoe, I doubt there would be any subtopics for it, unless there was also an article on its shoe lace. The shoe probably doesn't have enough subtopics to support an outline, or a portal, or any of the rest. If a topic has a navbox, then it probably warrants also having a portal, a category, etc. — The Transhumanist 22:45, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
That is my point. If there are enough articles for a portal, there are enough for a category for that portal. The names may differ slightly, but should be similar. A related question is whether the portal name should follow the category name or vice versa. Probably depends on which comes first, but if both exist and do not have the same name, should one be renamed to match the other? · · · Peter (Southwood)(talk): 03:43, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
@AfroThundr3007730: After thinking about this more, if there is way to identify portals with disappeared category trees, then not having them display with a redlink would be a good thing. Making them conditional, just like the news, DYK, and "Get involved" sections, is easy. But how do we have portals, where the condition to display isn't met, alert us? — The Transhumanist 23:48, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
Most likely by leveraging an #ifexist condition to add the page to a tracking category when the link would be red.
{{#ifexist:Category:{{PAGENAME}}|{{#tag:categorytree|{{PAGENAME}}}}|[[Category:Portals with missing category trees]]}}
Or something to that effect. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 00:08, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
What do you mean by a "disappeared category tree"? · · · Peter (Southwood)(talk): 03:53, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: The category tree section currently shows up, even if there is no category, in which case it displays a redlink. Afrothundr suggested that we make the category tree section conditional, only appearing when the category exists. I referred to that section not appearing as "disappeared". A missing category tree section on a standard new portal means the same thing to us as a redlink, and so we don't really need the redlink showing, if there is a way to detect category tree sections that are not visible. Afrothundr pointed out how we could do this with conditional category tags. Brilliant. — The Transhumanist 21:52, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
As a side note, I'm assuming the reason {{Box portal skeleton}} is using a manual category tree (instead of {{Category tree}} and friends) is to remove the unwanted formatting for direct placement inside a {{box-header}}? Weren't we working on a template to strip styles from any template that's passed to it? Not that there's any problem with the manual method, of course. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 00:13, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
Providing the raw code is simpler. It skips the extra step of using another template to strip out formatting. Fewer keystrokes too. Besides, anything handled by a template is by definition, automatic. :) — The Transhumanist 22:21, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
By the way, {{Plain navboxes}} is for stripping formatting from navboxes, and is a huge success. It has been tested out on hundreds of portals and makes the topics section look clean, like the inserted template is actually a part of the portal (rather than just stuck in there). I don't know it if will work on any other kind of template. — The Transhumanist 22:21, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
Hello The Transhumanist, many thanks for updating this Portal. There are two points from my side. In the last weeks I updated the News.:Portal:Ancient Egypt/News. This is now totally lost. Is there any change to incorporate that into the new portal? I have no idea how to do it. There was also a link for having a look at the changes made in the relevant titles. I found that very useful and wonder whether it can go back into the new design. best wishes -- Udimu (talk) 10:18, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
@Udimu, Evad37, and Pbsouthwood: You are welcome, and I'm happy to help. Per your request, I've replaced the conditional (magically appearing) news section with a static news box that contains both the auto-searched news, and the manual entries from the subpage you mentioned (merged, via cut & paste). The problem has been that when news items were added to portals by hand, whomever posted many of them forgot about them and didn't return to remove them when they were no longer current. We are still cleaning up news items from as far back as 2009. As for the static box, when there is no generated news and no manually posted news, you are left with an empty "In the news" box. Please don't let it go empty. ;)
By the way, the portal no longer transcludes subpages, so please post future news items directly on the portal base page, and return to remove them when they are no longer current. Thank you. Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 23:49, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
I was pinged. I came, I saw. Is there something you wanted me to do? · · · Peter (Southwood)(talk): 05:11, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: Is there a better way to do that type of section? — The Transhumanist 04:32, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
@Udimu: You also mentioned "There was a long for having a look..." I think you might have left out a word. A long what? If you meant "log", to what log were you referring? I look forward to your reply. — The Transhumanist 23:49, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
sorry, I made a typo and did not check, what I have written. Can you perhaps incorporate this link: CHANGES? It shows the last changes made in Ancient Egypt articles. I find that very useful, for spotting spam and other (bad or good) new edits. Best wishes and many thanks again. -- Udimu (talk) 06:22, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
@Udimu: I can't find it anywhere on the old portal. To what are you referring? — The Transhumanist 21:42, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
it was not really part of the old portal. I added it some weeks ago, before you made the big change. Look at this version Portal August 2018 -- Udimu (talk) 04:55, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
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New tool in the box for anything using lists[edit]
{{Annotated link}} is up and running thanks to Evad37, and the portal templates for transcluding from lists have been upgraded to be compatible. This should allow outline and index lists to be automatically populated with annotations using the associated short descriptions, and remain up to date. A step forward for portals, short descriptions and lists in one go. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood)(talk): 12:28, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
That's a step in the right direction! It's good to have this in place, ready for when short descriptions are in general use. And if an editor is going to annotate a list, he can use this and annotate the articles instead, with short descriptions, and kill 2 birds with one stone. Well done. — The Transhumanist 22:35, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
By the way, is there a way to automatically generate short descriptions for articles? — The Transhumanist 21:02, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
Some short descriptions have been autogenerated from infoboxes. They are usually acceptable, but seldom as good as when manually generated by someone who has some comprehension of the topic. Some articles provide an adequate short description in the first sentence, some need careful reading of the whole lead, or even the whole article, others are so poorly written that it may not be possible to generate an accurate short description from anything written in the whole article, so not very amenable to automtic generation by a simple algorithm. The Wikidata descriptions also range from very good to very bad, with no obvious predictor. I have done thousands. Some are drag and drop in a few seconds, others one gives up after several minutes of bafflement. · · · Peter (Southwood)(talk): 05:24, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
What is the maximum? How many of these can be included on a list page? — The Transhumanist 21:02, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
No idea. I expect to find out by experiment. In our favour is that indexes and outlines don't usually have major usage of complicated templates like some of our portal excerpt slideshows. · · · Peter (Southwood)(talk): 05:24, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
I just wanted to let you know that Portal:Cheltenham is extremely malformed as it mixes content related to Cheltenham in England and Cheltenham Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. I don't know which Cheltenham the portal is intended to represent but the portal needs to be focused on one of them as right now it focuses on two unrelated towns in different countries. Dough4872 02:55, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
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).
A {{Portal}} template placed at the top of the category page corresponding to each portal.
Customized Portal Rating system is now in place[edit]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
I've made that your link in the participants list, so that the newsletter doesn't inadvertently go to your regular talk page. — The Transhumanist 21:42, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
The "all" prefix is generally used for {{DMC}}, so I wanted to keep that convention. I'm moving the others with JWB already. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 03:44, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
@AfroThundr3007730: The categories were specifically named that way (with "All"), so they wouldn't be divided into subcategories. Thoughts? — The Transhumanist 05:04, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure that one name or the other would really lend itself to the enforcement of a no-subdivision rule, but to me at least, "all" implies there are other subsets, for which "all" would be the superset. If there are no other subcategories (dated or otherwise), "all" becomes superfluous, as anything that matches the categorization criteria would be in that main category anyway. If we needed to subcategorize, there would then be a reason to have an "all" to hold all members of all subcategories, assuming the subcategory member pages aren't also a member of the parent anyway, which would obviate the need for an "all" category.
As an example Category:Articles with dead external links is one scenario where I would see the need for an "all" category to list all of the members from the dated subcategories, or another hypothetical category with subcategories for each geographic region could have an "all" category. This is all mostly just stylistic nitpicking, as I don't believe there are hard guidelines on this bit. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 08:09, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
@AfroThundr300730: Well, as long as they can all be listed in there. Subcategories are fine, as long as the entries aren't removed from the parent. I'll be using these cats to process all the portals of those types. — The Transhumanist 08:16, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
Portal:Pebble Beach, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Pebble Beach and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Pebble Beach during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 06:13, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
Portal:Air France, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Air France and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Air France during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 20:12, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
Portal:Body piercing, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Body piercing and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Body piercing during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 20:21, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
Portal:Alexander Korda, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Alexander Korda and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Alexander Korda during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 21:16, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
Portal:August Derleth, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:August Derleth and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:August Derleth during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 22:07, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
Portal:Billy Ocean, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Billy Ocean and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Billy Ocean during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 23:36, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
Portal:Billy Idol, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Billy Idol and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Billy Idol during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 00:14, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
Portal:Benny Goodman, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Benny Goodman and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Benny Goodman during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 00:17, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
Portal:Bee-eaters, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Bee-eaters and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Bee-eaters during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 00:23, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
Portal:Ben E. King, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Ben E. King and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Ben E. King during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 00:33, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
Portal:Bob Hope, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Bob Hope and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Bob Hope during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 00:37, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
Portal:Diversity of fish, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Diversity of fish and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Diversity of fish during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 01:39, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
Portal:Diplo, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Diplo and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Diplo during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 01:44, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
Portal:Bill Bryson, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Bill Bryson and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Bill Bryson during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 04:41, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
Portal:Canton, Michigan, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Canton, Michigan and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Canton, Michigan during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 05:02, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
Hi there. I'm reaching out because you made significant chances to the Portal, and I'm trying to wrap my head around some of them. Here are my two questions:
Why did you delete the icons next to FAs, GAs, GANs, and DYKs?
Is there a way we can get the Good Article nominees section back?
I usually kept an eye on the GANs in case other editors were not available to fix the concerns that might arise from a review. Cheers, MX (✉ • ✎) 18:14, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
@MX: I was reducing overhead (server load). I've reinstated the features you desire; the icons should appear the next time JL-Bot checks the page. Note that there doesn't appear to be any good article nominations at this time (see Wikipedia:WikiProject New Mexico/Recognized content), but as soon as there are, JL-Bot will add them during its subsequent update of the page. — The Transhumanist 20:24, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. Happy editing, MX (✉ • ✎) 20:33, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
Hi. The icons never appeared. Can this be amended? Thanks, 23:02, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
I moved the portal you added to Milwaukee Bucks to the "External links" section. I suppose it's not well coordinated with {{portal-inline}}, but {{portal}} says to not create a new section just to place a portal on the page. It looks like you are using AWB. Not sure if you can automate these changes. Regards.—Bagumba (talk) 08:33, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
@Bagumba: It is a list item, rather than a margin button, and wouldn't fit in with the list items in the external links section. Thanks for the inquiry. — The Transhumanist 08:38, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Sure, but a list of exactly one portal item is not all too elegant.—Bagumba (talk) 08:44, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
@Bagumba: I'll go back through 'em and see if I can populate those further, with links to related topics. Thanks for the heads up. — The Transhumanist 08:52, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
@Magnolia677: Because it was available, and because it's a new style of portal. — The Transhumanist 10:13, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Ah, I see the discussion. It looks cool with the little icon and may get more traffic to the portals. My concern is that it hasn't been well publicized, and seems to contradict the instructions on the portal pages. You may want to mention something at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities/US Guideline. Cheers, and thanks for your hard work on this. Magnolia677 (talk) 10:26, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Would it be possible for you to have a look at the "Selected sports article" column, please? Thank you, —Cote d'Azur (talk) 06:20, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
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Category:Yo-Yo Ma, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 22:16, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
Category:Jack Nicholson, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 22:23, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
Category:Sidney Poitier, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 22:27, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
There was also some discussion of creation criteria for portals. The result was that one of the participants in the discussion reverted the portal guidelines to the old version, which has the minimum number of articles for a portal included in there: "about 20 articles", a guideline that was in place since 2009.
Many of the portals that existed prior to April 2018 do not have that many (being limited to however many subpages the portal creator created), and therefore, these portals need to be upgraded to the new design (which automatically provides many articles for display). Using the new design, exceeding 20 articles for display is very easy.
Your help is needed. It is easy to access the page mentioned in #1, #2, & #3 from the portals themselves.
AWBers could do these tasks even faster (that's how the category pages were done), except #4...
Item #4 above pretty much has to be done by hand. (If you can find a way to speed that up, I would be very impressed). The links needing placement can be found at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet. Instructions are included there.
There are still around 1200 old-style portals that have only undergone partial conversion to the new design concepts, still relying on subpages with copied/pasted excerpts that have been going stale for years, out of date (manually posted) news entries, etc.
The section currently being tackled on these is news. You can help by deleting any news section on the old-style portals that has news entries that are years old (that is the dead giveaway to a manual news section). Be sure not to delete the news sections of portals that have up-to-date news, or active maintainers. For maintainers, look at the portal's categories, and/or check the participants list at WP:WPPORT.
Eventually, conditional news sections (that appear only when news items are available for display) will be added using AWB to all portals without a news section.
News items (and even the news sections themselves) are automatically generated for portals that were created using the Basic portal start page. On those portals, there is a hidden comment at the top of the page (that you can see in the edit window), that says this:
<!-- This portal was created using subst:Basic portal start page -->
A resource that has been elusive so far will be obtained eventually: categories. That is, the ability to pull category member links to populate a page.
Rather than populate portals directly with such links, it may be more beneficial to the encyclopedia to utilize them in navigation footers, because portals already have the ability to generate themselves based on those.
So, this would create a cascade effect: auto-gathering entries from categories, would enable the construction of new navigation footers, that would in turn support the development of new portals.
The cascade effect would also be felt by existing portals, as existing navigation footers could be expanded using the category harvesting methods, which would in turn expand the coverage of portals that access those navigation footers.
You can help by providing leads about any potential category harvesting methods. Please report anything you know about harvesting categories at WT:WPPORTD. Thank you.
Looking into the future: the quantum portal?[edit]
One idea that has been floating around is the concept of a pageless portal. That is, a portal that isn't stored anywhere, instead being generated when you click on a menu item or button.
Many of the new portals were generated by a single click, and then saved via a second click.
Therefore, it seems likely that the portals of the future will employ the one-click concept.
Because of the need for customization by users, this concept would need to be augmented with a way to integrate user contributions. This could be done in at least two ways: posting an existing portal, autogenerating one from scratch if such does not yet exist, or have a special data page for user contributions that is folded into the auto-generated portal.
How soon? That is up to you. All that is needed are persons to implement it.
Hello The Transhumanist: Thanks for all of your contributions to improve Wikipedia, and have a happy and enjoyable Halloween! – North America1000 16:21, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
Send Halloween cheer by adding {{subst:Happy Halloween}} to user talk pages with a friendly message.
I created Portal:Pies, but after tinkering with it, I cannot get any Selected general articles to list in the port. What am I doing incorrectly? Could you fix it? North America1000 18:18, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
Also having problems with Portal:Adventure travel that I created. Cannot get any images to appear as a slideshow, so I have temporarily removed the section (diff). I checked out the various portal template pages, but can't fix. What am I missing? North America1000 20:23, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
Just a short note to let you know that I split off the section Notable tells, which you expanded recently, to a separate article: List of tells to keep the article on the concept of tell itself a little more focused. Best, --Zoeperkoe (talk) 11:11, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
Greetings The Transhumanist - In addition to doing article assessments, I've been contributing input for daily WP 1.0 bot assessment processing. There are on-going issues with the bot stalling, repeating WP deadlocks, not creating daily log files. Details are Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index#Conflicting project tags.
Do you know of a Category expert to help solve at least this one issue? Thanks for your advice. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 00:22, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
User:Oleg Alexandrov has created a bot that harvests categories for entries in the math article lists. If he doesn't know how to fix the problem, he may know who can. — The Transhumanist 00:32, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
Hi Transhumanist. Quick question about the "did you know" listings on the Portal:Birds page. Where are they coming from? All but one of them have nothing to do with birds, other than the fact that some permutation of "bird" appears somewhere in their title. Birdsill Holly? The novel Birdsong? Early Birds of Aviation?! Really??! How about some real bird articles?! I'm happy to populate this with actual bird-related "did you know" teasers if you'll tell me where to do so. MeegsC (talk) 20:21, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
@MeegsC: Thank you for the heads up. Keep in mind that the portal operates the DYK and ITN sections by search patterns: to improve the results, we just need to improve the search parameters (using lua search query format). There is much we can do to improve the results presented. Watch my posts there to see an example of how its done. ;) By the way, "%s" indicates a space. — The Transhumanist 00:23, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
P.S.: I've changed the search parameter, and have added a bunch more search parameters. The results are returning more bird-related blurbs now. The new search terms even found a news item! — The Transhumanist 00:23, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
There are many subject gaps that need to be filled. This can be done by creating new portals, or by adding Selected article sections to existing portals. To create a new portal, simply place {{subst:Basic portal start page}} on an empty portal page, and click "Preview". If the portal is complete, click "Save". After you try it, come share your experience and excitement at WT:WPPORTD.
Each new portal is just a starting point. Each portal of the new design can be further developed by:
refining the search parameters to improve the results displayed in the Did you know and In the news sections.
adding more specific Selected articles sections, like Selected biographies.
inserting a Recognized content section.
adding more pictures to the image slideshow.
placing a panoramic picture at the top of the intro section (especially for geographic portals).
Besides the new portals, there are still about 1200 portals of the old design that need to be converted to the new design.
Many portals need to be de-orphaned, by placing links to them (in the See also section of the corresponding root articles, at the bottom of the corresponding navigation footer templates, and on the corresponding category pages).
Bugs keep popping up in portals. These need to be tracked down and reported at WT:WPPORTD.
Tools are needed to make developing and maintaining portals quicker and easier.
Dreaming up new features and capabilities. Innovation needs to continue, to design the portal of tomorrow, and the portal development-maintenance-system of the future. Automation!
So, if you find yourself with a little (or a lot) of free time, pick an area (or more) above and...
Hello, The Transhumanist. You have new messages at Northamerica1000's talk page. Message added 15:45, 25 October 2018 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Hello, The Transhumanist. You have new messages at Northamerica1000's talk page. Message added 21:18, 25 October 2018 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Important query on my talk page regarding Portal image banner heights. North America1000 21:18, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
Hello, The Transhumanist. You have new messages at Northamerica1000's talk page. Message added 06:06, 27 October 2018 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Not needed now, but maybe someday: portal bar to list food ports. North America1000 06:06, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Hello, The Transhumanist. You have new messages at Northamerica1000's talk page. Message added 11:51, 28 October 2018 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Regarding an idea to automate related portal links templates... North America1000 11:51, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
For your excellent work on Portals. Everyday the portal project improves. Your dedication and willingness to get people involved really pays off. Cannot wait to continue working with you and the Portal team. Thank you for your work. AmericanAir88(talk) 00:30, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Hello, The Transhumanist. You have new messages at AmericanAir88's talk page. Message added 04:47, 31 October 2018 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Then the proper response is to fix the portal or the transcluding template / module or don't do the transclusion. The proper solution is not to sprinkle little 'fixes' here and there around article space; that kind of fragile 'fix' only masks the problem. Does the template / module author know about this particular problem?
I agree. I placed those to find what is causing the bugs, to enable the programmers to fix them. We've fixed many Portal bugs so far and will keep fixing them as we find them. I'm still trying to track down the bugs in Portal:Organs (anatomy). — The Transhumanist 11:08, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Every article in the template is being listed in the general articles of Portal:Halloween. Hopefully there's a fix for this! North America1000 19:14, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Noticed another template you renamed and did not also move the /doc subpage. Please be sure when you move a template title to also check for documentation ("Template:(name)/doc"), a template sandbox ("Template:(name)/sandbox") and a testcases page ("Template:(name)/testcases"). Those subpages must also be moved along with the main template page. Thank you!Paine Ellsworthput'r there 10:35, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
@Paine Ellsworth: Thank you for the heads up. I hadn't thought of that. Will do. — The Transhumanist 10:39, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi TTH, I do not know how to add a new box section into Portal:Contents for Human activities. This needs to be done for all the subpages: Overview, Outlines, Lists, Portals, Glossaries, Categories, and Indices. If there is any documentation, I have not found it. Can you help? Cheers · · · Peter (Southwood)(talk): 08:27, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
There is no documentation, probably because, in this case, it would make things even more complicated. Simply copy all the Portal:Contents navigation pages of one of the other main classifications, such as History and events, and modify them for Human activities (though "Human activity" is shorter, which may be a consideration for the menu bar). Start with History on the navigation menu, and drill down from there. But, before you do, consider the titles of the classifications, and how they were structured...
Note, that the naming of the classifications uses a pairing structure. Each title includes two subjects. The first is a singular noun that (usually) encompasses the entire subject. Geography, History, Philosophy, Society, Technology, etc. Analogous to those would be "Human activity", which encompasses all human activities as a whole. We never documented the naming structure, because we didn't expect any more classifications to be added—we thought we covered the entire breadth of human knowledge. And we did - human activity entirely overlaps with the other classifications. But, the more the merrier. ;) In the end, it turns out that there is more than one way to organize things. Who knew? :)
The second part of each title is another subject, usually the most major subtopic (or, the most major one we could think of and agree upon). People → self, Culture → arts, Health → fitness, Geography → places, History → events, etc. So, a possible corresponding structure for the new classification might be "Human activity and _____". But, what would go in the blank? What is the most major human activity?
We kind of screwed up and got "Religion and belief systems" backwards (religion is a belief system, not the other way around), because we were trying to get it and all the other main classifications added to the Main page, and we didn't think the Main page workgroup would go for "Belief systems", as it is 13 characters long (including the space). But, it turned out they wouldn't accept more than 8 out of the 12 classifications at that time anyways. Not even Health. :( Plus, devout editors resisted "Religion" being relegated to a subtopic of "Belief system", as the adherents to religion far outnumber those of other types of belief system.
We messed up even worse with "Mathematics and logic", as logic isn't math, rather, both of those are formal sciences. But the mathematics department wouldn't relinquish their hold on the classification (nor their spot on the Main page). They wouldn't go for "Formal science and mathematics". Instead, we paired math with the next most major formal science (logic). Notice how "Formal sciences" is awkwardly placed at the top of the contents in that classification. I wonder how many readers wonder why the classification isn't named after it. (Sigh). Politics.
Oh well.
"Science" as a main classification was also an afterthought, as the contents department wasn't formed until a few years after the encyclopedia was established. So, there were already ad hoc classifications in place, which we were forced by their very existence to work with. Such as "Religion", which actually falls under "Culture", which in turn falls under "Society". Another consequence of the makeshift system was that science got split up into 4 of the main classifications, which raised the big question: "Where do we list "Science"? This issue still hasn't been worked out fully.
So, our rather quirky classification system may never get the serious attention of scholars that the Library of Congress or Dewey Decimal systems get. But, at least we try. :)
I hope you enjoyed the history lesson, and find it enlightening if not useful. Good luck in your endeavor. Cheerio, — The Transhumanist 11:05, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
It should be possible to put every topic in Wikipedia into one of the box sections, or the system fails. Where would you put underwater diving? · · · Peter (Southwood)(talk): 16:35, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: Good question. It definitely fits within the realm of human activity, but needs more company there, as that section is sparsely populated. It also falls under recreation, and is an area of technology, which is used for work as an applied science. — The Transhumanist 22:49, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
Not all diving is recreational, it is also a significant support industry, and a way to get to work for science. Some diving requires very little technology, and diving itself is not a technology. The diving subportals are easier, Diving equipment is technology, Sport diving is sport, Diving medicine is health, Science of underwater diving is science, Underwater divers is biography. Underwater work is what? For that matter where do occupations fit in? Crime? Gardening? Politics? Warfare? Education? · · · Peter (Southwood)(talk): 15:07, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Surely professionals have produced workable systems that could be used. We have invented a square wheel here and it will not roll well. Though possibly the analogy of the horse designed by a committee works better. · · · Peter (Southwood)(talk): 15:20, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: Another option is to leave it in Human activities, and put sub-portals in the other classifications. — The Transhumanist 15:27, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
That was my intention, but the more I think about it the less sure I get that users will find what they are looking for. The system is more a network than a tree.· · · Peter (Southwood)(talk): 15:54, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: The directories of the nav systems (Portal:Contents pages and top-level category pages), are in place mostly for those who do not know what they are looking for, to allow them to explore to see what's there. When you know what you are looking for, that's what search engines are for. The main benefit of portals, rather than the catalog of them, in my humble opinion, is that they augment the root article of the corresponding root article. So, any article that has a like-named portal attached to it is more useful than one that lacks portal support. That's where most of the traffic to portals will come from, I'd wager, enabling those who wish to drill down deeper into a subject. — The Transhumanist 03:02, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Hello The Transhumanist, first of all thank you for all the great efforts from you and the whole portal project to improve project portals. With your latest update, there has been a minor problem though with Template:Germany topics in the Germany portal. Several of the template's structural elements (row headers, rows) are using colors to distinguish these elements and add visual structure to the whole template. But these element definitions get overriden by the new layout. I could probably fix this part myself, but don't want to override any new conventions or improvements by the portal project. Could you have a look and advise please, how to handle this situation in the most consistent manner? The topics template is readable of course but it looks a bit awkward with that coloring scheme. GermanJoe (talk) 13:17, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
@GermanJoe: I'm going to that page now to see if I can handle the issue. Thank you for the heads up. — The Transhumanist 13:39, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for the temporary fix/rollback, The Transhumanist. Just fyi, I have copied the essential parts of this minor issue to the portal talkpage to document the actual status and avoid misunderstandings from other editors. GermanJoe (talk) 21:06, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Give a hearty welcome to AmericanAir88, who has adopted working on portals as one of his main purposes on Wikipedia. So far, he has created the following portals:
Portals of the old design, are slowly but surely being converted to the new single-page design.
One factor that has slowed things down is that for many sections, the section header call and section contents call are integrated into a template and buried in a lua module, locking them in on each portal. They have been that way for years.
This means that these sections can't be directly edited like the other sections on the same portal. So, search/replaces affect all the sections except those. So, upgrading headers on these portals, for example, misses the integrated sections and inadvertently results in 2 different header colors.
Before we can continue with the upgrade of these portals, the headers and section contents calls need to be restored to each portal, so that those can be edited in concert with the other sections on the portal, and worked on independently of each other.
This is underway, with a solution implemented on about 1/4 of the affected portals so far. Around 300 of them. The remaining 900 should be done within a couple weeks or so.
We now have banner-shaped pictures included in the introduction sections of 180 portals. The rarity of such pictures has made it difficult to find suitably narrow images for display across the tops of portals.
We have a solution for this, courtesy of FR30799386...
Most pictures are not banner-shaped. But, you can still use them as banners. Here's how:
There are now 4,140 portals, with more being created almost daily. Prior to this project's reboot, portals were created at about the rate of 80 per year. Since April of this year, we've created about 2,600 new portals, or 32.5 years' worth at the old rate.
Of those new portals, about 3/4 of them need links leading to them. Almost all of them are linked to from the category system, but they still need links in article see also sections, at the bottom of navigation templates, and on the main portals list at Portal:Contents/Portals.
Of the 1500 portals created before the reboot, about 300 have been completely converted to the new design so far. About 1100 more have been partially converted, with intros, image slideshows, and associated wikimedia sections getting the most attention.
I have a question regarding Portal:Germany, which I raised on its talk, but no answer. Trying here, as you are the portal person: why can't I edit that portal any more, directly I mean. I know how to do it, but I imagine a reader who sees a spelling mistake and wants to fix it. I have no time to check if it is only that portal. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:42, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
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@Auric: Nice catch. I've tagged the duplicate for speedy deletion, to pave the way for the original portal to be moved to that title so that it matches the name of the article. Keep up the good work. — The Transhumanist 20:51, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Thank you very much. Did you automate the process?Guilherme Burn (talk) 11:14, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
@Guilherme Burn: You are welcome. Regarding your question... To what process are you referring? — The Transhumanist 11:18, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
The process to convert to a single page.Guilherme Burn (talk) 11:21, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
Not the whole process. Not yet. What we do have is {{subst:Basic portal start page}}, which fills in most everything, except no categories at the end -- so I leave the categories in. To save keystrokes, we have the {{subst:bpsp}} redirect. This template replaces the whole portal, and therefore doesn't fit every situation.
I've also been using WP:AWB to convert portals, but that takes multiple passes, but can handle more configurations. Right now, I'm working on replacing instances of {{Random portal component}} with sections that can be worked on more easily (for further conversion).
If you are interested in power tools for working on portals, see the discussions at User talk:AmericanAir88. I'm in the process of introducing him to faster methods to work on portals.
If you have any further questions, feel free to ask. — The Transhumanist 11:44, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
I have saw you editing pearl jam's page consistently in these days so i expect that you know about them and thats why i have a request for you. Considering Pearl jam's stature when talking about rock music and their influence it is pretty much well known that pearl jam have now flourished as one of the greatest rock bands of all time. I have some references too to prove thr case like corey taylor's verdict about pearl jam and etc. But there is no such claim about them on their page. I know its a pretty subjective content but when you look at other rock bands like The beatles, Pink floyd, Nirvana they all have this sort of contents on their page. So abstaining a single page from this type of content would make peoples overlook them and also it is a bit biasness too. So i was looking for the right man to look out the case and add this content on their page. If you don't know much about the bands history(which is unlikely to be) then you can simply add the discussion on their talk page asking the question.
Best regards
2405:204:A02A:147A:0:0:1D2B:E0B1 (talk) 16:43, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. wumbolo^^^ 15:30, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
@Certes: For future reference, how did you find these? — The Transhumanist 06:43, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
I did a WP search on Portal: namespace for hastemplate:"Transclude lead excerpt" insource:/ransclude lead excerpt/ (the latter to make the relevant text appear in the output snippet; no T as it may be lower case) then ran a perl script off-wiki on the output to resolve PAGENAME to the portal title and report duplicates. There were 37 pairs but 36 were acceptable uses such as Tea quoted in both Portal:Tea and Portal:Drink. Certes (talk) 12:26, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
Are you the relevant person about {{Women's Classical Committee|class=start|importance=low}} template, which has some problems, or someone else? If someone else, tell me.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 13:35, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
Many users like to create user subpages to store various bits of information such as welcome templates or other information. For example, if you are drafting a new page that is not ready to "go live", or proposing major changes in redrafting an existing page, a user subpage may be very useful.
To create a subpage simply visit your User page and then append the name of the subpage in your browser's URL bar. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CoolDude would become http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CoolDude/MySubpageName. When you press the ↵ Enter key you will be prompted to create the new subpage.
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