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Last issue, I mentioned there would be a flood, and so, here it is...
Portals status
We now have 4,620 portals.
And the race to pass 5,000 by year's end is on...
Can we make it?
The New Year, and the 5,001st portal, await.
( New portals are created with {{subst:Basic portal start page}} or
{{subst:bpsp}} )
Evad is back!
After disappearing in mid-thread, Evad37 has returned from a longer than expected wikibreak.
Be sure to welcome him back.
Improved cropping is coming to Portal image banner
User:FR30799386 is working on making {{Portal image banner}} even better by enabling it to chop the top off an image as well as the bottom.
Many pictures aren't suitable for banners because they are too tall. Therefor, User:FR30799386 added cropping to this template, so that an editor could specify part of a picture to be used rather than the whole thing.
Upgrade of flagship portals is underway
Work has begun on upgrading Wikipedia's flagship portals (those listed at the top of the
Work continues on the other five. Feel free to join in on the fun.
Spotting missing portals that are redirects
In place of many missing portals, there is a redirect that leads to "the next best topic", such as a parent topic.
Most of these were created before we had the tools to easily create portals (they used to take 6 hours or more to create, because it was all done manually). Rather than leave a portal link red, some editors thought it was best that those titles led somewhere.
The subjects that have sufficient coverage should have their own portals rather than a redirect to some other subject.
Unfortunately, being blue like all other live links, redirects are harder to spot than redlinks.
User:FR30799386 has pulled it off, and made the upgrade to {{Portal image banner}}...
So, this:
Niagara falls
, from the Canadian side
Becomes this:
Niagara falls
, from the Canadian side
Here's the code for the above banner:
{{Portal image banner|File:American Falls from Canadian side in winter.jpg | [[Niagara falls]], from the Canadian side |maxheight=175px |overflow=Hidden|croptop=10}}
...there is plenty else to do in addition to building new portals:
The new portals need to be linked to from the encyclopedia.
On those portals about subjects that are not typically capitalized, the search parameters need to be refined/expanded, to maximize the chances of Did you know and In the news items being found and displayed.
A Recognized content section needs to be added to each portal that has a corresponding WikiProject.
Addition of a category on those portals that lack a subject category.
Implement the portal category system, adding the appropriate categories to each portal.
Upgrade, and complete (as per the tasks enumerated above), the old-style portals that are not regularly maintained, which have not been converted yet (about 1,100 of them).
Find and fix the remaining bugs in the underlying lua modules.
Build portal tools (scripts) to assist in the creation, development, and maintenance of portals.
Build a script to help build navbox footer templates, via the harvesting of categories, amongst other methods.
Update the portal building instructions.
Update the portal guideline.
Refine the programming of the portals to reduce their load time.
Design and develop the next generation of portals and portal components.
There will be pizza, cake, and refreshments; both newcomers and experienced Wikimedians are welcome! We will have a beginner track with tutorials, and an advanced track with presentations, lightning talks, and tips and tricks. Admission is free, and you do NOT have to be a Stanford University student to attend.
DannyS712 has created a user script prototype, User:DannyS712/Cat links, that can pull members from a category, a functionality we've been after since the project's revamp last Spring. Now, it's a matter of applying this technique to scripts that will place the items where needed, such as in a section starter script and/or portal builder script.
If you find any other portals that stand out, please send me the links so I can include them in the next issue. Thank you.
Conversion continues
There are about 1100 portals left in the old style, with subpages and static excerpts. As those are very labor intensive to maintain (because their maintenance is manual), all those except the ones with active maintainers (about 100) are slated for upgrade = approximately 1000. We started with 1500, and so over a quarter of them have been processed so far. That's good, but at this rate, conversion will take another 3 years. So, some automation (AWB?) is in order. We just need to keep at it, and push down on the gas pedal a bit harder.
As you know, thousands of the new portals are orphans, that is, having no links to them from article space. For all practical purposes, that means they are not part of the encyclopedia yet, and readers will be unlikely to find them.
What is needed are links to these portals from the See also sections of the corresponding root articles.
Dreamy Jazz to the rescue...
Dreamy Jazz has created a bot to place the corresponding category link to the end of each portal (if it is missing), and place a link to each portal in the See also section of the corresponding root articles.
That bot, named User:Dreamy Jazz Bot, is currently in its trial period performing the above described edits!
Hello, I just came across this category, and I'm afraid it just doesn't make sense as named, given that the vast majority of all murders are committed by adults. It makes sense in the context of the sub-cat for school shootings, but not more broadly. If there is a valid rationale for this category, it needs to be renamed. If not, it should be deleted. So I thought I'd give you a heads up before proceeding. Regards, Anomalous+0 (talk) 12:00, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
Dreamy Jazz Bot has been approved and is now up and running.
What it does is places missing links to orphaned portals. It places a link in the See also section of the corresponding root article, and it puts one at the top of the corresponding category page.
We have thousands of new portals that have yet to be added to the encyclopedia proper, just waiting to go live.
When they do go live, over the coming days or weeks, due to Dreamy Jazz Bot, it will be like an explosion of new portals on the scene. We should expect an increase in awareness and interest in the portals project. Perhaps even new participants.
Get ready...
Get set...
Go!
Another sockpuppet infiltrator has been discovered
User:Emoteplump, a recent contributor to the portals project, was discovered to be a sockpuppet account of an indefinitely blocked user.
When that happens, admins endeavor to eradicate everything the editor contributed. This aftermath has left a wake of destruction throughout the portals department, again.
The following portals which have been speedy deleted, are in the process of being re-created. Please feel free to help to turn these blue again:
The Ref desks survived the proposal to shut them down
You might be familiar with the Ref desks, by their link on every new portal. They are a place you can go to ask volunteers almost any knowledge-related question, and have been a feature of Wikipedia since August of 2005 (or perhaps earlier). They were linked to from portals in an effort to improve their visibility, and to provide a bridge from the encyclopedia proper to project space (the Wikipedia community).
Well, somebody proposed that we get rid of them, and the community decided that that was not going to happen. Thank you for defending the Ref desks!
The cleanup after sockpuppet Emoteplump continues...
The wake of disruption left by Emoteplump and the admins who reverted many (but not all) of his/her edits is still undergoing cleanup. We could use all the help we can get on this task...
Almost all of the speedy deleted portals have been rebuilt from scratch.
Prior to 2018, for the previous 14 years, portal creation was at about 80 portals per year on average. We did over 3 times that in just the past 9 days. At this rate, we'll hit the 10,000 portal mark in 5 months. But, I'm sure we can do it sooner than that.
What's next for portal pages?
There are 5 drives for portal development:
Create new portals
Expand existing portals, such as with new sections like Recognized content
Convert or restart old-style portals into automated single-page portals
Link to new portals from the encyclopedia
Pageless portals
Let's take a closer look at these...
1: Creating new portals
Portal creation, for subjects that happen to have the necessary support structures already in place, is down to about a minute per portal. The creation part, which is automated, takes about 10 seconds. The other 50 seconds is taken up by manual activities, such as finding candidate subjects, inspecting generated portals, and selecting the portal creation template to be used according to the resources available. Tools are under development to automate these activities as much as possible, to pare portal creation time down even more. Ten seconds each is the goal.
Eventually, we are going to run out of navigation templates to base portals off of. Though there are still thousands to go. But, when they do run out, we'll need an easy way to create more. A nav footer creation script.
Meanwhile, other resources are being explored and developed, such as categories, and methods to harvest the links they contain.
2: Expanding existing portals
The portal collection is growing, not only by the addition of new portals, but by further developing the ones we already have, by...
Improving and/or adding search parameters to better power the Did you know and In the news sections.
Adding more selected content sections, like Selected biographies.
Adding and maintaining Recognized content sections, via JL-Bot.
Adding pictures to the image slideshow.
Adding panoramic pics.
Categorizing portals.
More features will be added as we dream them up and design them. So, don't be shy,
make a wish
.
3: Converting old portals
By far the hardest and most time-consuming task we have been working on is updating the old portals, the very reason we revamped this WikiProject in the first place.
There are two approaches here:
A) Restart a portal from scratch, using our automated tools. For basic no-frills portals, that works find. But, for more elaborate portals, as that tends to lose content and features, the following approach is being tried...
B) Upgrade a portal section by section, so little to nothing is lost in the process.
And a tool in the form of a script is under development for linking to portals at the time they are created, or shortly thereafter.
5...
See below...
New WikiProject for the post-saved-portal phase of operations...
Saved portals, are portals with a saved page.
What is the next stage in the evolutionary progression?
Quantum portals.
What are quantum portals?
Portals that come into existence when you click on the portal button, and which disappear when you leave the page.
Or, as Pbsouthwood put it:
...portals that exist only as a probability function (algorithm) until you collapse the wave form by observing through the portal button (run the script), and disappear again after use...
Introducing...
Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals
(see it's talk page).
Keep on keepin' on
...'til next time, — The Transhumanist 10:18, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
Our team at the Wikimedia Foundation is working on a project to improve the ease-of-use and productivity of wiki talk pages. As a Teahouse host, I can imagine you’ve run into challenges explaining talk pages to first-time participants.
We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis – to ask questions, to resolve differences, to organize projects and to make decisions. Communication is essential for the depth and quality of our content, and the health of our communities. We're currently leading a global consultation on how to improve talk pages, and we're looking for people that can report on their experiences using (or helping other people to use) wiki talk pages. We'd like to invite you to participate in the consultation, and invite new users to join too.
We thank you in advance for your participation and your help.
This was a spin-off from WikiProject Portals, for the purpose of developing zero-page portals (portals generated on-the-screen at the push of a button, with no stored pages).
Hello and welcome to the March newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since December 2018. All being well, we're planning to issue these quarterly in 2019, balancing the need to communicate widely with the avoidance of filling up talk pages. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below.
January Drive: Thanks to everyone for the splendid work in January's Backlog Elimination Drive. We removed copyedit tags from all of the articles tagged in our original target months of June, July and August 2018, and by 24 January we ran out of articles. After adding September, we finished the month with 8 target articles remaining and 842 left in the backlog. GOCE copyeditors also completed 48 requests for copyedit in January. Of the 31 people who signed up for this drive, 24 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.
Blitz: Thanks to everyone who participated in the February Blitz. Of the 15 people who signed up, 13 copyedited at least one article. Participants claimed 32 copyedits, including 15 requests. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.
Progress report: As of 23:39, 18 March 2019 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have completed 108 requests since 1 January and the backlog stands at 851 articles.
March Drive: The month-long March drive is now underway; the target months are October and November 2018. Awards will be given to everyone who copyedits at least one article from the backlog. Sign up here!
Election reminder: It may only be March but don't forget our mid-year Election of Coordinators opens for nominations on 1 June. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here.
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Miniapolis, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Reidgreg and Tdslk.
To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.