Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals/Newsletter archive
The newsletters are posted below, in reverse chronological order, with the latest edition at the top. — The Transhumanist 09:18, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #031, 01 May 2019
Back to the drawing board
Implementation of the new portal design has been culled back almost completely, and the cull is still ongoing. The cull has also affected portals that existed before the development of the automated design.
Some of the reasons for the purge are:
- Portals receive insufficient traffic, making it a waste of editor resources to maintain them, especially for narrow-scope or "micro" portals
- The default {{bpsp}} portals are redundant with the corresponding articles, being based primarily on the corresponding navigation footer displayed on each of those articles, and therefore not worth separate pages to do so
- They were mass created
Most of the deletions have been made without prejudice to recreation of curated portals, so that approval does not need to be sought at Deletion Review in those cases.
In addition to new portals being deleted, most of the portals that were converted to an automated design have been reverted.
Which puts us back to portals with manually selected content, that need to be maintained by hand, for the most part, for the time being, and back facing some of the same problems we had when we were at this crossroads before:
- Manually maintained portals are not scalable (they are labor intensive, and there aren't very many editors available to maintain them)
- The builders/maintainers tend to eventually abandon them
- Untended handcrafted portals go stale and fall into disrepair over time
These and other concepts require further discussion. See you at
However, after the purge/reversion is completed, some of the single-page portals might be left, due to having acceptable characteristics (their design varied some). If so, then those could possibly be used as a model to convert and/or build more, after the discussions on portal creation and design guidelines have reached a community consensus on what is and is not acceptable for a portal.
See you at
Curation
A major theme in the deletion discussions was the need for portals to be curated, that is, each one having a dedicated maintainer.
There are currently around 100 curated portals. Based on the predominant reasoning at MfD, it seems likely that all the other portals may be subject to deletion.
See you at
Traffic
An observation and argument that arose again and again during the
And while this isn't generally considered a good rationale for creation or deletion of articles, portals are not articles, and portal critics insist that traffic is a key factor in the utility of portals.
The implication is that portals won't be seen much, so wouldn't it be better to develop pages that are?
And since such development isn't limited to editing, almost anything is possible. If we can't bring readers to portals, we could bring portal features, or even better features, to the readers (i.e., to articles)...
Some potential future directions of development
Quantum portals?
An approach that has received some brainstorming is "quantum portals", meaning portals generated on-the-fly and presented directly on the view screen without any saved portal pages. This could be done by script or as a MediaWiki program feature, but would initially be done by script. The main benefits of this is that it would be opt-in (only those who wanted it would install it), and the resultant generated pages wouldn't be saved, so that there wouldn't be anything to maintain except the script itself.
Non-portal integrated components
Another approach would be to focus on implementing specific features independently, and provide them somewhere highly visible in a non-portal presentation context (that is, on a page that wasn't a portal that has lots of traffic, i.e., articles). Such as inserted directly into an article's HTML, as a pop-up there, or as a temporary page. There are scripts that use these approaches (providing unrelated features), and so these approaches have been proven to be feasible.
What kind of features could this be done with?
The various components of the automated portal design are transcluded excerpts, news, did you know, image slideshows, excerpt slideshows, and so on.
Some of the features, such as navigation footers and links to sister projects are already included on article pages. And some already have interface counterparts (such as image slideshows). Some of the rest may be able to be integrated directly via script, but may need further development before they are perfected. Fortunately, scripts are used on an opt-in basis, and therefore wouldn't affect readers-in-general and editors-at-large during the development process (except for those who wanted to be beta testers and installed the scripts).
The development of such scripts falls under the scope of the Javascript-WikiProject/Userscript-department, and will likely be listed on Wikipedia:User scripts/List when completed enough for beta-testing. Be sure to watchlist that page.
Where would that leave curated portals?
Being curated. At least for the time being.
New encyclopedia program features will likely eventually render most portals obsolete. For example, the pop-up feature of MediaWiki provides much the same functionality as excerpts in portals already, and there is also a slideshow feature to view all the images on the current page (just click on any image, and that activates the slideshow). Future features could also overlap portal features, until there is nothing that portals provide that isn't provided elsewhere or as part of Wikipedia's interface.
But, that may be a ways off. Perhaps months or years. It depends on how rapidly programmers develop them.
Keep on keepin' on
The features of Wikipedia and its articles will continue to evolve, even if Portals go by the wayside. Most, if not all of portals' functionality, or functions very similar, will likely be made available in some form or other.
And who knows what else?
No worries.
Until next issue... — The Transhumanist 01:47, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #030, 17 Mar 2019
Previous issue:
- Single-page portals: 4,704
- Total portals: 5,705
This issue:
- Single-page portals: 4,562
- Total portals: 5,578
The collection of portals has shrunk
All Portals closed at
Grouped Nominations total 127 Portals:
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/US County Portals Deleted 64 portals
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Districts of India Portals Deleted 30 Portals
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portals for Portland, Oregon neighborhoods Deleted 23 Portals
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Allen Park, Michigan Deleted 6 Portals
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Cryptocurrency Deleted 2 Portals
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:North Pole Deleted 2 Portals
Individual Nominations:
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Circles Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Fruits Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:E (mathematical constant) Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Burger King Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Cotingas Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Prostitution in Canada Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Agoura Hills, California Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Urinary system Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:You Am I Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Cannabis (2nd nomination) Reverted to non-Automated version
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Intermodal containers Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Adventure travel Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Adam Ant Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Benito Juárez, Mexico City Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Spaghetti Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Wikiatlas Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Greek alphabet Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Accounting Deleted G7
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Lents, Portland, Oregon Deleted P2
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Ankaran Deleted
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Jiu-jitsu Deleted G8
- Portal:University of Nebraska Speedy Deleted P1/A10 exactly the same as Portal:University of Nebraska–Lincoln also created by the TTH
Related WikiProject:
(Attribution: Copied from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Portal MfD Results)
WikiProject Quantum portals
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).
It has been merged back into WikiProject Portals. In the MfD the vote was "demote". See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals.
Hiatus on mass creation of Portals
At
See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 157#Hiatus on mass creation of Portals.
The Transhumanist banned from creating new portals for 3 months
See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Proposal 1: Interim Topic-Ban on New Portals.
Until next issue...
Keep on keepin' on. — The Transhumanist 10:33, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #029, 13 Feb 2019
Where we are at:
- Single-page portals: 4,704
- Total portals: 5,705
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!
Here's a link to the dramatic discussion:
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.
For the portals he/she restarted (many of which were done mistakenly, overwriting restarts and further development that had already been done), and/or tagged as the maintainer, see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Emoteplump&oldid=881568794#Additional_Portals_under_my_watch
10,000 portals, here we come...
We're at 5,705 portals and counting.
New portals since issue #28
- Portal:Abitibi-Témiscamingue
- Portal:Ahold Delhaize
- Portal:AKB48
- Portal:Åland Islands
- Portal:Alaska Airlines
- Portal:Albanian Civil War
- Portal:Albertsons
- Portal:Alevism
- Portal:All in the Family
- Portal:Alternative metal
- Portal:Ambient music
- Portal:Ancient Near East mythology
- Portal:Ancient Roman religion
- Portal:Andrew Cuomo
- Portal:Anti-consumerism
- Portal:Antimatter
- Portal:Arameans
- Portal:Arianism
- Portal:Australian Crawl
- Portal:Bali
- Portal:Banten
- Portal:Bengkulu
- Portal:Black Lives Matter
- Portal:Bluegrass music
- Portal:Bonnie Tyler
- Portal:Breakbeat
- Portal:Calypso music
- Portal:Cambridgeshire
- Portal:Camila Cabello
- Portal:Capcom
- Portal:Capsicum
- Portal:Celtic music
- Portal:Central American music
- Portal:Central Java
- Portal:Central Kalimantan
- Portal:Central Sulawesi
- Portal:Chanel
- Portal:Cinema of Australia
- Portal:Cognitive psychology
- Portal:Communication studies
- Portal:Conservatism in the United States
- Portal:Cortina d'Ampezzo
- Portal:Cross-Strait relations
- Portal:Cryptozoology
- Portal:Danish folk music
- Portal:Disco
- Portal:Dyslexia
- Portal:East Java
- Portal:East Kalimantan
- Portal:East Nusa Tenggara
- Portal:Easy listening
- Portal:Ed Sheeran
- Portal:Ehime
- Portal:Electricity
- Portal:Electronica
- Portal:Electronic rock
- Portal:English folk music
- Portal:Environmental technology
- Portal:Experimental music
- Portal:Extreme metal
- Portal:Fall Out Boy
- Portal:Finnish Defence Forces
- Portal:Finnish folk music
- Portal:Football in Croatia
- Portal:Football in Jordan
- Portal:Funk
- Portal:Gamelan
- Portal:General Mills
- Portal:Germanic languages
- Portal:German language
- Portal:Government of Canada
- Portal:Government of Hong Kong
- Portal:Government of Indonesia
- Portal:Government of Ireland
- Portal:Government of Malaysia
- Portal:Government of Russia
- Portal:Government of Singapore
- Portal:Government of Spain
- Portal:Government of Thailand
- Portal:Grapes
- Portal:Green Party of the United States
- Portal:Grinspoon
- Portal:Gwen Stefani
- Portal:Hardcore punk
- Portal:Hardcore techno
- Portal:Haskell (programming language)
- Portal:History of art
- Portal:History of North America
- Portal:History of Thailand
- Portal:Hollywood
- Portal:Hotels
- Portal:House music
- Portal:Hungarian folk music
- Portal:Hunters & Collectors
- Portal:Hydrogen
- Portal:Icelandic folk music
- Portal:Indigenous music of North America
- Portal:Insomniac Games
- Portal:International field hockey
- Portal:International trade
- Portal:Iranian music
- Portal:Islamophobia
- Portal:Jambi
- Portal:Jet engines
- Portal:Jordin Sparks
- Portal:Julius Caesar
- Portal:Kannur
- Portal:Kansas City Spurs
- Portal:Kelly Rowland
- Portal:Kirby
- Portal:Kraft Heinz
- Portal:Krasnoyarsk Krai
- Portal:Kroger
- Portal:Kuala Lumpur
- Portal:Lampung
- Portal:Larry Kramer
- Portal:LeBron James
- Portal:Lehigh Valley
- Portal:Leicestershire
- Portal:Liège
- Portal:Liguria
- Portal:Los Angeles Aztecs
- Portal:Los Angeles Wolves
- Portal:Macedonian language
- Portal:Magnetism
- Portal:Maithripala Sirisena
- Portal:Maluku (province)
- Portal:Mangoes
- Portal:Marco Pierre White
- Portal:McLaren
- Portal:Menstrual cycle
- Portal:Metalcore
- Portal:Miami FC
- Portal:Microblogging
- Portal:Microtonal music
- Portal:Midnight Oil
- Portal:Minnesota Kicks
- Portal:Mission: Impossible
- Portal:Modernism (music)
- Portal:Moheener Ghoraguli
- Portal:Mondelez International
- Portal:Music genres
- Portal:Music of Bangladesh
- Portal:Music of India
- Portal:Music of Italy
- Portal:Music of Japan
- Portal:Music of Korea
- Portal:Music of Latin America
- Portal:Music of Micronesia
- Portal:Music of North Africa
- Portal:Music of Pakistan
- Portal:Music of Serbia
- Portal:Music of the Philippines
- Portal:Music of the United States
- Portal:Mutations
- Portal:National Rugby League
- Portal:Neoclassicism (music)
- Portal:Netball
- Portal:New York City Fire Department
- Portal:Nick Jr.
- Portal:Nobility
- Portal:Nordic countries
- Portal:North Africa
- Portal:North Kalimantan
- Portal:North Maluku
- Portal:North Pole
- Portal:North Queensland
- Portal:North Sulawesi
- Portal:North Sumatra
- Portal:Norwegian folk music
- Portal:Papua (province)
- Portal:Peaches
- Portal:Politics of Abkhazia
- Portal:Politics of Afghanistan
- Portal:Politics of Albania
- Portal:Politics of Algeria
- Portal:Politics of Andorra
- Portal:Politics of Angola
- Portal:Politics of Antigua and Barbuda
- Portal:Politics of Argentina
- Portal:Politics of Artsakh
- Portal:Politics of Bahrain
- Portal:Politics of Bangladesh
- Portal:Politics of Bavaria
- Portal:Politics of Belarus
- Portal:Politics of Belgium
- Portal:Politics of Belize
- Portal:Politics of Benin
- Portal:Politics of Bhutan
- Portal:Politics of Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Portal:Politics of Botswana
- Portal:Politics of Brazil
- Portal:Politics of Brunei
- Portal:Politics of Bulgaria
- Portal:Politics of Burkina Faso
- Portal:Politics of Burundi
- Portal:Politics of Cambodia
- Portal:Politics of Cameroon
- Portal:Politics of China
- Portal:Politics of São Tomé and Príncipe
- Portal:Politics of South Sudan
- Portal:Politics of Sudan
- Portal:Politics of Tanzania
- Portal:Politics of the Republic of the Congo
- Portal:Politics of Togo
- Portal:Politics of Tunisia
- Portal:Politics of Uganda
- Portal:Pop rock
- Portal:Rap rock
- Portal:Ras Al Khaimah
- Portal:Riau
- Portal:Riau Islands
- Portal:Ricky Martin
- Portal:Royal Canadian Air Force
- Portal:Rutland
- Portal:Saxophones
- Portal:Semiotics
- Portal:Ska
- Portal:Soca music
- Portal:Soul music
- Portal:Sound sculptures
- Portal:Southeast Sulawesi
- Portal:South Kalimantan
- Portal:South Sulawesi
- Portal:South Sumatra
- Portal:Space: 1999
- Portal:Special Region of Yogyakarta
- Portal:Swedish folk music
- Portal:Tamil language
- Portal:Techno
- Portal:Terry Brooks
- Portal:The Living End
- Portal:Thrissur
- Portal:Trance music
- Portal:Tyrant flycatchers
- Portal:Veterinary medicine
- Portal:Wayanad
- Portal:Welsh folk music
- Portal:West Champaran district
- Portal:Western dress codes
- Portal:West Flanders
- Portal:West Java
- Portal:West Kalimantan
- Portal:West Nusa Tenggara
- Portal:West Papua (province)
- Portal:West Sulawesi
- Portal:West Sumatra
- Portal:Wildlife of India
- Portal:Wildlife of Nepal
- Portal:Windows 10
- Portal:Winter War
- Portal:Woodpeckers
- Portal:Worcestershire
- Portal:World economy
- Portal:World Ocean
- Portal:World Rally Championship
- Portal:World views
- Portal:XTC
- Portal:Yahoo!
- Portal:Yoruba people
- Portal:You Am I
- Portal:Young Wizards
- Portal:Yugoslavs
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,
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.
4: Linking to new portals
Or "portal deorphanization"...
Dreamy Jazz Bot is purring along.
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...
Keep on keepin' on
...'til next time, — The Transhumanist 08:23, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #028, 04 Feb 2019
Here's a quicky status report:
- Old-style portals: 1,018
- Single-page portals: 4,367
- Total portals: 5,385
But of course, there has been more going on than just that...
Dreamy Jazz Bot is up and running!
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:
- Portal:Adidas
- Portal:AFC Asian Cup
- Portal:Airbus
- Portal:Anhui
- Portal:Bicycles
- Portal:Blue Cheese
- Portal:Boeing
- Portal:British Airways
- Portal:Carcinogen
- Portal:ComfortDelGro
- Portal:Construction
- Portal:Corals
- Portal:Cross-Strait relations
- Portal:Derry
- Portal:Duke University
- Portal:Electricity
- Portal:Ethnic groups
- Portal:Extraterrestrial life
- Portal:Flanders
- Portal:Fujian
- Portal:Gansu
- Portal:German language
- Portal:Gordon Ramsay
- Portal:Government of Australia
- Portal:Government of Canada
- Portal:Government of Hong Kong
- Portal:Government of Indonesia
- Portal:Government of Ireland
- Portal:Government of Japan
- Portal:Government of Malaysia
- Portal:Government of Russia
- Portal:Government of Singapore
- Portal:Government of Spain
- Portal:Government of Thailand
- Portal:Government of the United Kingdom
- Portal:Government of Ukraine
- Portal:Grapes
- Portal:Guangxi
- Portal:Guizhou
- Portal:Hasbro
- Portal:Hebei
- Portal:Heilongjiang
- Portal:Henan
- Portal:Hillary Clinton
- Portal:History of art
- Portal:History of North America
- Portal:History of Thailand
- Portal:Hollywood
- Portal:Hubei
- Portal:Hunan
- Portal:Hybrid (biology)
- Portal:Hydrogen
- Portal:Imperial College London
- Portal:Inner Mongolia
- Portal:Japan Airlines
- Portal:Jet engines
- Portal:Jet Engines
- Portal:Jiangsu
- Portal:Jiangxi
- Portal:Jilin
- Portal:Johor Bahru
- Portal:Julius Caesar
- Portal:JYP Entertainment
- Portal:Kedah
- Portal:Kelantan
- Portal:Kuala Lumpur
- Portal:Labuan
- Portal:Lee Kuan Yew
- Portal:Liaoning
- Portal:Lufthansa
- Portal:Magnetism
- Portal:McLaren
- Portal:Menstrual cycle
- Portal:Monash University
- Portal:Mutations
- Portal:Nanyang Technological University
- Portal:National University of Singapore
- Portal:Negeri Sembilan
- Portal:Nestlé
- Portal:Nike, Inc.
- Portal:Ningxia
- Portal:Nissan
- Portal:North Africa
- Portal:North Pole
- Portal:Pahang
- Portal:Penang
- Portal:PepsiCo
- Portal:Perak
- Portal:Perlis
- Portal:Qinghai
- Portal:Quantum electrodynamics
- Portal:Quantum mechanics
- Portal:S.H.I.E.L.D.
- Portal:Selangor
- Portal:Shanxi
- Portal:Sichuan
- Portal:SM Entertainment
- Portal:South Pole
- Portal:Subway (restaurant)
- Portal:Temperature
- Portal:Terengganu
- Portal:Uber
- Portal:Veterinary medicine
- Portal:Volvo Buses
- Portal:Walgreens
- Portal:Walmart
- Portal:Xinjiang
- Portal:Yahoo!
- Portal:Yale University
- Portal:YG Entertainment
- Portal:Yunnan
- Portal:Zhejiang
And the corresponding talk pages:
- Portal talk:Adidas
- Portal talk:Airbus
- Portal talk:Bicycles
- Portal talk:Boeing
- Portal talk:Carcinogen
- Portal talk:Corals
- Portal talk:Duke University
- Portal talk:Electricity
- Portal talk:Ethnic groups
- Portal talk:Flanders
- Portal talk:Fujian
- Portal talk:German language
- Portal talk:Girls' Generation
- Portal talk:Government of Australia
- Portal talk:Government of Canada
- Portal talk:Government of Hong Kong
- Portal talk:Government of Indonesia
- Portal talk:Government of Ireland
- Portal talk:Government of Japan
- Portal talk:Government of Malaysia
- Portal talk:Government of Russia
- Portal talk:Government of Singapore
- Portal talk:Government of Spain
- Portal talk:Government of Thailand
- Portal talk:Government of the United Kingdom
- Portal talk:Government of Ukraine
- Portal talk:Grapes
- Portal talk:Guangxi
- Portal talk:Hebei
- Portal talk:Henan
- Portal talk:Hillary Clinton
- Portal talk:History of art
- Portal talk:Hollywood
- Portal talk:Hubei
- Portal talk:Hunan
- Portal talk:Hybrid (biology)
- Portal talk:Imperial College London
- Portal talk:Inner Mongolia
- Portal talk:Jet engines
- Portal talk:Jet Engines
- Portal talk:Jiangsu
- Portal talk:Johor Bahru
- Portal talk:Julius Caesar
- Portal talk:JYP Entertainment
- Portal talk:Kuala Lumpur
- Portal talk:Lee Kuan Yew
- Portal talk:Lufthansa
- Portal talk:Magnetism
- Portal talk:Menstrual cycle
- Portal talk:Monash University
- Portal talk:Mutations
- Portal talk:Nanyang Technological University
- Portal talk:National University of Singapore
- Portal talk:Nike, Inc.
- Portal talk:North Africa
- Portal talk:PepsiCo
- Portal talk:Quantum electrodynamics
- Portal talk:Quantum mechanics
- Portal talk:Sichuan
- Portal talk:SM Entertainment
- Portal talk:Subway (restaurant)
- Portal talk:Temperature
- Portal talk:Veterinary medicine
- Portal talk:Walgreens
- Portal talk:Walmart
- Portal talk:Xinjiang
- Portal talk:Yale University
- Portal talk:YG Entertainment
- Portal talk:Yunnan
New portals since the last issue
- Portal:American_Horror_Story
- Portal:Bad_Religion
- Portal:Bicycles
- Portal:British_Airways
- Portal:Campania
- Portal:Ciara
- Portal:Derry
- Portal:Extraterrestrial_life
- Portal:Fujian
- Portal:Guangxi
- Portal:Imperial_College_London
- Portal:Islamic_Golden_Age
- Portal:Ivy_Queen
- Portal:Japan_Airlines
- Portal:Japanese_language
- Portal:Kate_Ceberano
- Portal:Labuan
- Portal:LL_Cool_J
- Portal:New_York_City_Police_Department
- Portal:Penang
- Portal:PepsiCo
- Portal:Perak
- Portal:Perlis
- Portal:Politics_of_Ukraine
- Portal:Quantum_mechanics
- Portal:Salads
- Portal:Selangor
- Portal:Shaquille_O'Neal
- Portal:South_Pole
- Portal:Supermarket
- Portal:Temperature
- Portal:Terengganu
- Portal:The_Fairly_OddParents
- Portal:The_Incredibles
- Portal:Vassar_College
- Portal:Voivod_(band)
- Portal:Yu-Gi-Oh!
Keep up the great work
Until next time, — The Transhumanist 09:23, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #027, 28 Jan 2019
Portal styles
For a visually intensive portal, see Portal:Hummingbirds.
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.
You can find the old-style portals with an
Flagship portals: the portals on the Main Page
Speaking of upgrades...
The following portals are listed in the header at the top of Wikipedia's Main Page, and get far more traffic than all other portals:
- Portal:Arts
- Portal:Biography
- Portal:Geography
- Portal:History
- Portal:Mathematics
- Portal:Science
- Portal:Society
- Portal:Technology
Of those, all but one have been revamped to an automated self-updating single-page design.
The remaining one, Portal:Mathematics has manual maintainers, and has been partially upgraded.
As these are our flagship fleet, they need to be kept in top-notch condition.
Check 'em out, and improve them if you can.
And be sure they are on your watchlist.
New portals since last issue
- Accomack County
- Adair County
- Adair County
- Adams County
- Adidas
- Airbus
- Americas
- Bangladesh Armed Forces
- Bedfordshire
- Bicycles
- Boeing
- Chester County
- Conspiracy theories
- Corals
- County Durham
- Culture of the United States
- DC Universe
- Dragons
- Economy of Pakistan
- Electricity
- Ethnic groups
- European Union law
- Fatimid Caliphate
- Flanders
- Frederick County
- Fujian
- German language
- Global issues
- Greek mathematics
- Grisons
- Guangxi
- Hebei
- Henan
- Herefordshire
- History of North America
- Hollywood
- Hubei
- Hunan
- Hybrid
- Inner Mongolia
- Jet engines
- Jiangsu
- Johor
- Johor Bahru
- Julius Caesar
- Kuala Lumpur
- Lake Constance
- Lee Kuan Yew
- Lufthansa
- Lunar eclipses
- Magnetism
- Menstrual cycle
- Mustelids
- Mutations
- New York University
- Nord-du-Québec
- North Africa
- PepsiCo
- Pitcairn Islands
- Podcasting
- Quantum electrodynamics
- Quantum mechanics
- Rawalpindi
- Réunion
- Roads in Pakistan
- Rockefeller Center
- Sichuan
- St. Gallen
- State University of New York
- Temperature
- Tsunamis
- Veterinary medicine
- Vorarlberg
- Walgreens
- Walmart
- Weasels
- Xinjiang
- Yunnan
Keep 'em coming!
Deorphanizing the new portals
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!
To take a look at the edits it has made so far, see Special:Contributions/Dreamy_Jazz_Bot.
It shouldn't be long before the bot is processing the entire set of new portals.
Good news indeed.
Way to go, Dreamy Jazz!
And, that's a wrap
That's all I have to report this time around.
No doubt there will be more to tell soon.
Until then, — The Transhumanist 13:26, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #026, 20 Jan 2019
Well, here's the first issue of the new year. Enjoy...
New participants
A hearty welcome to new arrivals to the portals department:
- Emoteplump
- Pakieditor
- CASSIOPEIA
- Venomous Sniper
- DannyS712
Harvesting categories tool prototype
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.
New portals since last issue
- Academic publishing
- Accounting
- Adam and Eve
- African Great Lakes
- Al Green
- Alternative views
- America's Next Top Model
- Andaman and Nicobar Islands
- Angles
- Applied mathematics
- Arabic
- Areas of mathematics
- Atlanta metropolitan area
- Atlantic Ocean
- Big Bash League
- Bijelo Dugme
- Bill Cosby
- Boats
- Bombardier Aerospace
- Bruce Willis
- Canadian law
- Cannons
- Caribbean American
- Chinese American
- Chinese Canadians
- Chinese gardens
- Chris Brown
- City
- Common law
- Criminal law
- Czechoslovakia
- Data
- Data warehouses
- DC Comics
- Deities
- DeKalb County
- Destiny's Child
- Differential equations
- Discrete geometry
- East Asia
- Economy of China
- Economy of India
- Economy of Malaysia
- Economy of the United Kingdom
- Ellen DeGeneres
- Email clients
- E
- Equations
- European Americans
- Filipino Americans
- Football in Algeria
- Fox Corporation
- Fractions and ratios
- Functional analysis
- Game theory
- Girlguiding
- Gloucestershire
- Grazhdanskaya Oborona
- Greek diaspora
- Habsburg Monarchy
- Hilbert's problems
- Hoodoo Gurus
- Hyundai Motor Company
- Iggy Azalea
- Indian Ocean
- Infinity
- Information theory
- Integrals
- Irish diaspora
- Irrational numbers
- Italian diaspora
- Japanese diaspora
- J. Cole
- Jennifer Lopez
- Jessica Lange
- John Fogerty
- Kehlani
- Kiev
- K. Michelle
- Knot theory
- Kool & the Gang
- Lakes in China
- Lake Van
- Leonardo DiCaprio
- Limerick
- Literary composition
- Long Island Rail Road
- Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
- Lukas Graham
- Mathematical optimization
- Matt Damon
- Merchant ships
- Metallic means
- Metro-North Railroad
- Microsoft Windows
- Military of India
- Miss America
- Modulation
- Moon landing
- Mozilla
- Music of Ireland
- Narratives
- Nashville
- Nassau County
- Norfolk
- Nottinghamshire
- One Life to Live
- Overseas Chinese
- Percentages
- Probability distributions
- Public Broadcasting Service
- Quezon City
- Raven-Symoné
- R. Kelly
- Rodeo
- RuneScape
- Sarah Silverman
- Saturn rockets
- Science and technology
- Sesame Street
- Seth MacFarlane
- Ships
- Shipwrecks
- Shropshire
- Spaceports
- Space suits
- Spanish diaspora
- Steam locomotives
- Suffolk
- Suzuki
- Tanks
- Tensors
- The CW
- Thomas Aquinas
- T.I.
- TISM
- Tom Cruise
- Toni Braxton
- Toyota
- Transportation in the Philippines
- True Blood
- Violin
- Virgin Group
- Vladimir Putin
- Volkswagen
- Volume
- Warner Bros.
- Warships
- Warwickshire
- Washington D.C.
- Watercraft
- Web syndication
- Wikis
- Witchcraft
- Women's sports
- World of Warcraft
What else is going on
There have been some discussions at
DreamyJazz is working on a bot to place links to portals on root articles, category pages, and navigation footer templates.
Portal bugs are getting dealt with soon after they are reported.
Lots of wikignome activity (using Hotcat, etc.).
Keep up the good work. — The Transhumanist 07:35, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #025, 30 Dec 2018
We can now crop the tops of pics to make banners
Before, we could only cut off the bottom of pics.
User:FR30799386 has pulled it off, and made the upgrade to {{Portal image banner}}...
So, this: