( New portals are created with {{subst:Basic portal start page}} or
{{subst:bpsp}} )
Happy Holidays
Hello everyone! Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice (if it's occurring in your area of the world), and thanks for your work in maintaining, improving, and expanding
portals. Cheers, — The Transhumanist 06:51, 26 November 2018 (UTC)reply
By the way, the above list was generated using
this Petscan query. It can be easily modified by changing the date. The data page (under the Output tab) also has options for receiving the data in CSV or tabbed format, which some operating systems automatically load into a spreadsheet program for ease of use, such as copying and pasting the desired column (like page names).
Mars 2020 is a
NASA mission that includes the rover Perseverance, the now-retired small robotic helicopter Ingenuity, and associated delivery systems, as part of the
Mars Exploration Program. Mars 2020 was launched on an
Atlas V rocket at 11:50:01
UTC on July 30, 2020, and landed in the Martian crater
Jezero on February 18, 2021, with confirmation received at 20:55 UTC. On March 5, 2021, NASA named the landing site
Octavia E. Butler Landing. As of 12 June 2024, Perseverance has been on
Mars for 1178
sols (1210
total days; 3 years, 115 days). Ingenuity operated on
Mars for 1042
sols (1071
total days; 2 years, 341 days) before sustaining serious damage to its rotor blades, possibly all four, causing NASA to retire the craft on January 25, 2024.
Perseverance is investigating an
astrobiologically relevant ancient environment on Mars for its
surface geological processes and history, and assessing its past
habitability, the possibility of past
life on Mars, and the potential for preservation of
biosignatures within accessible geological materials. It will
cache sample containers along its route for retrieval by a potential future
Mars sample-return mission. The Mars 2020 mission was announced by NASA in December 2012 at the fall meeting of the
American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Perseverance's design is derived from the rover Curiosity, and it uses many components already fabricated and tested in addition to new scientific instruments and a
core drill. The rover also employs nineteen cameras and two microphones, allowing for the audio recording of the Martian environment. On April 30, 2021, Perseverance became the first spacecraft to hear and record another spacecraft, the Ingenuity helicopter, on another planet. (Full article...)
The program selects missions from multiple proposals and gives them some money to begin development. After early development they are analyzed to see if they are cost-effective and scientifically valuable during Key Decision Point-C. If they pass Key Decision Point-C then they move into full development. The missions must weigh less than 180
kg. So far only the first two missions have launched, and the remaining missions have struggled to stay within budget and find missions to launch with, and have been removed from multiple launches. Lunar Trailblazer and EsCAPADE are expected to launch in 2024. (Full article...)
Anders's color image had been preceded by a crude black-and-white 1966
raster image taken by the
Lunar Orbiter 1 robotic probe, the first American spacecraft to orbit the Moon. (Full article...)
Operationally, the station is divided into two sections: the
Russian Orbital Segment (ROS) assembled by Roscosmos, and the
US Orbital Segment, assembled by NASA, JAXA, ESA and CSA. A striking feature of the ISS is the
Integrated Truss Structure, which connects the large
solar panels and
radiators to the pressurized modules. The pressurized modules are specialized for research, habitation, storage, spacecraft control, and
airlock functions. Visiting spacecraft dock at the station via its eight
docking and berthing ports. The ISS maintains an orbit with an average altitude of 400 kilometres (250 mi) and circles the Earth in roughly 93 minutes, completing 15.5 orbits per day. (Full article...)
Mission objectives include observing the
climate of Mars, investigating
geologic forces, providing
reconnaissance of future landing sites, and relaying data from surface missions back to Earth. To support these objectives, the MRO carries different scientific instruments, including three cameras, two
spectrometers and a
subsurface radar. As of July 29, 2023, the MRO has returned over 450
terabits of data, helped choose safe landing sites for NASA's Mars
landers, discovered pure water ice in new craters and
further evidence that water once flowed on the surface on Mars. (Full article...)
The spacecraft are owned and operated by the vendor, and crew transportation is provided to NASA as a commercial service. Each mission sends up to four astronauts to the ISS. Operational flights occur approximately once every six months for missions that last for approximately six months. A spacecraft remains docked to the ISS during its mission, and missions usually overlap by at least a few days. Between the retirement of the
Space Shuttle in 2011 and the first operational CCP mission in 2020, NASA relied on the
Soyuz program to transport its astronauts to the ISS. (Full article...)
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), originally known as the Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP and Explorer 80), was a
NASA spacecraft operating from 2001 to 2010 which measured temperature differences across the sky in the
cosmic microwave background (CMB) – the radiant heat remaining from the
Big Bang. Headed by Professor
Charles L. Bennett of
Johns Hopkins University, the mission was developed in a joint partnership between the NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center and
Princeton University. The WMAP spacecraft was launched on 30 June 2001 from
Florida. The WMAP mission succeeded the
COBE space mission and was the second medium-class (MIDEX) spacecraft in the NASA
Explorer program. In 2003, MAP was renamed WMAP in honor of cosmologist
David Todd Wilkinson (1935–2002), who had been a member of the mission's science team. After nine years of operations, WMAP was switched off in 2010, following the launch of the more advanced
Planck spacecraft by
European Space Agency (ESA) in 2009.
WMAP's measurements played a key role in establishing the current Standard Model of Cosmology: the
Lambda-CDM model. The WMAP data are very well fit by a universe that is dominated by
dark energy in the form of a
cosmological constant. Other cosmological data are also consistent, and together tightly constrain the Model. In the Lambda-CDM model of the universe, the
age of the universe is 13.772±0.059 billion years. The WMAP mission's determination of the age of the universe is to better than 1% precision. The current expansion rate of the universe is (see
Hubble constant) 69.32±0.80 km·s−1·Mpc−1. The content of the universe currently consists of 4.628%±0.093% ordinary
baryonic matter; 24.02%+0.88% −0.87%cold dark matter (CDM) that neither emits nor absorbs light; and 71.35%+0.95% −0.96% of
dark energy in the form of a cosmological constant that
accelerates the
expansion of the universe. Less than 1% of the current content of the universe is in neutrinos, but WMAP's measurements have found, for the first time in 2008, that the data prefer the existence of a
cosmic neutrino background with an effective number of neutrino species of 3.26±0.35. The contents point to a Euclidean
flat geometry, with curvature () of −0.0027+0.0039 −0.0038. The WMAP measurements also support the
cosmic inflation paradigm in several ways, including the flatness measurement. (Full article...)
Image 11
The Gemini astronauts were sixteen pilots who flew in
Project Gemini,
NASA's second
human spaceflight program, between projects
Mercury and
Apollo. Carrying two
astronauts at a time, a senior command pilot and a junior pilot, the Gemini spacecraft was used for ten crewed missions. Four of the sixteen astronauts flew twice.
Gemini was the second phase in the
United States space program's larger goal of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" before the end of the 1960s, as proposed by president
John F. Kennedy. As an intermediary step, Gemini afforded its astronauts the opportunity to gain critical spaceflight experience, performing tasks required in the later Apollo program which fulfilled this objective. Such tasks included
rendezvous or station-keeping with other craft,
docking, habitation in space over the course of several days, and flying spacecraft with more than one crew member. Importantly, most individuals who flew as Gemini astronauts returned to space as key personnel in the Apollo program, bringing with them their first-hand experience of the operations carried out during Gemini. Among the Gemini astronauts, six later walked on the Moon, another five flew to the Moon without landing, and two participated in
Low Earth orbit Apollo missions. Gus Grissom and Ed White were killed in the
Apollo 1 disaster, and former Mercury astronaut
Gordon Cooper did not perform any further spaceflights. (Full article...)
Lunar plaques are stainless steel
commemorative plaques measuring 9 by 7+5⁄8 inches (22.9 by 19.4 cm) attached to the ladders on the descent stages of the United States
Apollo Lunar Modules flown on lunar landing missions Apollo 11 through Apollo 17, to be left permanently on the lunar surface. The plaques were originally suggested and designed by NASA's head of technical services
Jack Kinzler, who oversaw their production.
All of the plaques bear facsimiles of the participating astronauts' signatures. For this reason, an extra plaque had to be made for
Apollo 13 due to the late replacement of one crew member. The first (
Apollo 11) and last (
Apollo 17) plaques bear a facsimile of the signature of
Richard Nixon,
President of the United States during the landings, along with references to the start and completion of "man's first explorations of the Moon" and expressions of peace "for all mankind". (Full article...)
The Explorers program is a
NASA exploration program that provides flight opportunities for physics,
geophysics,
heliophysics, and
astrophysics investigations from space. Launched in 1958,
Explorer 1 was the first spacecraft of the United States to achieve orbit. Over 90 space missions have been launched since. Starting with
Explorer 6, it has been operated by NASA, with regular collaboration with a variety of other institutions, including many international partners.
Opportunity is a robotic
rover that was active on the planet
Mars from 2004 to 2018. Launched on July 7, 2003, Opportunity landed on Mars'
Meridiani Planum on January 25, 2004, at 05:05
Ground UTC (about 13:15
Mars local time), three weeks after its twin Spirit (MER-A), also part of
NASA's
Mars Exploration Rover Mission, touched down on the other side of the planet. While Spirit became immobile in 2009 and ceased communications in 2010, Opportunity exceeded its planned 90
sol (Martian days) duration of activity by 14 years 46 days (in Earth time). Opportunity continued to move, gather scientific observations, and report back to Earth until 2018. What follows is a summary of events during its continuing mission.
Opportunity started in Eagle crater in 2004, literally landing inside on the crater basin, then it travelled outward making its way to Endurance crater. After this it went to Victoria crater, all the way making many panoramas, measurements, studying rocks and smaller craters, even what are thought to be meteorites. It then traveled to Endeavour crater, where it has been making its way south along the Western rim. On June 10, 2018, contact was lost when a global dust storm blotted out the Sun, thus depriving the rover of enough power for operations and communication with Earth. In September 2018, after the storm subsided, NASA began making various efforts to contact and listen to the rover if it endured the storm. NASA officials declared that the Opportunity mission was complete on February 13, 2019, after it failed to wake from over 1,000 repeated signals sent since August 2018. (Full article...)
In the two-year primary mission, TESS was expected to detect about 1,250 transiting exoplanets orbiting the targeted stars, and an additional 13,000 orbiting stars not targeted but observed. After the end of the primary mission around 4 July 2020, scientists continued to search its data for more planets, while the
extended missions acquires additional data. , TESS had identified 7,203 candidate exoplanets, of which 450 had been confirmed. (Full article...)
With the advent of
robotic and
human spaceflight a new era of
American history had presented itself. Keeping with the tradition of honoring the country's history on U.S. postage stamps, the
U.S. Post Office began commemorating the various events with its commemorative postage stamp issues. The first U.S. Postage issue to depict a U.S.
space vehicle was issued in 1948, the
Fort Bliss issue. The first issue to commemorate a space project by name was the
ECHO Icommunications satellite commemorative issue of 1960. Next was the
Project Mercury issue of 1962. As U.S.
space exploration progressed a variety of other commemorative issues followed, many of which bear accurate depictions of satellites,
space capsules,
Apollo Lunar Modules,
space suits, and other items of interest.
The
history of space exploration is a nationally popular topic, as evidenced by record numbers of First-Day covers for postage stamps with space themes. The Project Mercury issue of 1962 had more than three million
'First Day of Issue' cancellations, while the average number of First-Day cancels for other
commemorative issues at that time was around half a million. In 1969, the Apollo VIII issue received 900,000 First-Day cancels while others received less than half this amount. As the advent of U.S. space exploration grew, so did the topic of space exploration on stamps. (Full article...)
Image 21
The timeline of the Galileo spacecraft spans its launch in 1989 to the conclusion of its mission when it dove into and destroyed itself in the atmosphere of
Jupiter in 2003. (Full article...)
Artist's interpretation of the GRAIL tandem spacecraft above the lunar surface.
The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) was an American lunar science mission in NASA's
Discovery Program which used high-quality
gravitational field mapping of the
Moon to determine its interior structure. The two small spacecraft GRAIL A (Ebb) and GRAIL B (Flow) were launched on 10 September 2011 aboard a single launch vehicle: the most-powerful configuration of a
Delta II, the 7920H-10. GRAIL A separated from the rocket about nine minutes after launch, GRAIL B followed about eight minutes later. They arrived at their orbits around the Moon 25 hours apart. The first probe entered orbit on 31 December 2011 and the second followed on 1 January 2012. The two spacecraft impacted the Lunar surface on December 17, 2012. (Full article...)
Image 24
The Constellation program (abbreviated CxP) was a
crewed spaceflight program developed by
NASA, the
space agency of the
United States, from 2005 to 2009. The major goals of the program were "completion of the
International Space Station" and a "return to the
Moon no later than 2020" with a crewed flight to the planet
Mars as the ultimate goal. The program's
logo reflected the three stages of the program: the Earth (ISS), the Moon, and finally Mars—while the Mars goal also found expression in the name given to the program's booster rockets:
Ares (the Greek equivalent of the Roman god
Mars). The technological aims of the program included the regaining of significant
astronaut experience beyond
low Earth orbit and the development of technologies necessary to enable sustained human presence on other planetary bodies.
Constellation began in response to the goals laid out in the
Vision for Space Exploration under NASA Administrator
Sean O'Keefe and President
George W. Bush. O'Keefe's successor,
Michael D. Griffin, ordered a complete review, termed the
Exploration Systems Architecture Study, which reshaped how NASA would pursue the goals laid out in the Vision for Space Exploration, and its findings were formalized by the
NASA Authorization Act of 2005. The Act directed NASA to "develop a sustained human presence on the Moon, including a robust precursor program to promote exploration, science, commerce and US preeminence in space, and as a stepping stone to future exploration of Mars and other destinations." Work began on this revised Constellation Program, to send astronauts first to the
International Space Station, then to the
Moon, and then to
Mars and beyond. (Full article...)
Ames was founded to conduct wind-tunnel research on the aerodynamics of propeller-driven aircraft; however, its role has expanded to encompass spaceflight and information technology. Ames plays a role in many NASA missions. It provides leadership in
astrobiology; small satellites; robotic lunar exploration; the search for habitable planets;
supercomputing; intelligent/adaptive systems; advanced thermal protection; planetary science; and airborne astronomy. Ames also develops tools for a safer, more efficient national airspace. The center's current director is Eugene Tu. (Full article...)
The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major
NASA space research laboratory located approximately 6.5 miles (10.5 km) northeast of Washington, D.C. in
Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC employs about 10,000 civil servants and contractors. Named for American rocket propulsion pioneer
Robert H. Goddard, it is one of ten major NASA field centers. GSFC is partially within the former
Goddardcensus-designated place; it has a
Greenbelt mailing address.
GSFC is the largest combined organization of scientists and engineers in the United States dedicated to increasing knowledge of the
Earth, the
Solar System, and the
Universe via observations from space. GSFC is a major US laboratory for developing and operating uncrewed scientific spacecraft. GSFC conducts scientific investigation, development, manufacturing and operation of space systems, and development of related technologies. Goddard scientists can develop and support a mission, and Goddard engineers and technicians can design and build the spacecraft for that mission. Goddard scientist
John C. Mather shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on
COBE. (Full article...)
SSFL was used mainly for the development and testing of
liquid-propellant rocket engines for the
United States space program from 1949 to 2006,
nuclear reactors from 1953 to 1980 and the operation of a U.S. government-sponsored liquid metals research center from 1966 to 1998. Throughout the years, about ten low-power nuclear reactors operated at SSFL, (including the
Sodium Reactor Experiment, the first reactor in the United States to generate electrical power for a commercial grid, and the first commercial power plant in the world to experience a partial
core meltdown) in addition to several "critical facilities" that helped develop nuclear science and applications. At least four of the ten nuclear reactors had accidents during their operation. The reactors located on the grounds of SSFL were considered experimental, and therefore had no
containment structures. (Full article...)
Image 7
The Central Instrumentation Facility (CIF) was a building in the
Kennedy Space Center industrial area that functioned as the core of instrumentation and data processing operations during the
Apollo program and the early years of the
Space Shuttle program. It centralized the handling of the center's data including offices, laboratories and test stations; and housed general instrumentation activities serving more than one
launch complex. The CIF also included the Central Timing Facility, where a precision clock drove countdown clocks and other timing devices at KSC that required a high degree of accuracy.
The CIF also housed computers and other electronic equipment for reduction of
telemetry data, analysis, and transmission to other NASA centers. The three-story structure of approximately 134,335 sq ft (12,480.1 m2) just west of the
KSC Headquarters Building was one of the most distinctive buildings in the KSC Industrial Area with its rooftop array of various
antennas. (Full article...)
Image 8
In the 1980s, the airport was chosen as a launch site for
NASA's
high-altitude balloon program (see
Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility). NASA spent about $100,000 to construct large insulated walls and air conditioning inside the one remaining wartime hangar so payloads could use the place in a controlled environment. Three bays with tall sliding doors that opened into the main hangar area provided a workable area for scientists and their payloads with large steel A-frames used to suspend the payloads. Other NASA buildings were constructed at the airport.
Currently two operational balloon launch campaigns are conducted at the airport each year. These occur in the May–June and September–October timeframe surrounding the two stratospheric turnaround events. The NASA Ft. Sumner facility has grown in capability over the years and now includes a machine shop and still utilizes the old World War II hangar as a work area, storage area for support vehicles, and a hangar for
NSBF aircraft during balloon flight operations. (Full article...)
The ARES Directorate recently added a Wordpress Blog that will allow social media Twitter updates to new research and Laboratory discoveries. Posts will also be made by the Expedition Earth and Beyond Education Program that will be adding their classroom connection events to the NASA ARES YouTube page. (Full article...)
Research at the GISS emphasizes a broad study of
global change, the natural and anthropogenic changes in our environment that affect the habitability of our planet. These effects may occur on greatly differing time scales, from one-time forcings such as volcanic explosions, to seasonal/annual effects such as
El Niño, and on up to the millennia of ice ages. (Full article...)
The NASA Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC) is an aeronautical research center operated by
NASA. Its primary campus is located inside
Edwards Air Force Base in California and is considered NASA's premier site for aeronautical research. AFRC operates some of the most advanced aircraft in the world and is known for many aviation firsts, including supporting the first crewed
airplane to exceed the
speed of sound in level flight (
Bell X-1), highest speed by a crewed, powered aircraft (
North American X-15), the first pure digital
fly-by-wire aircraft (F-8 DFBW), and many others. AFRC operates a second site next to
Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, known as Building 703, once the former
Rockwell International/
North American Aviation production facility. There, AFRC houses and operates several of NASA's Science Mission Directorate aircraft including
SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy), a DC-8 Flying Laboratory, a Gulfstream C-20A UAVSAR and ER-2 High Altitude Platform. As of 2023, Bradley Flick is the center's director.
Established as the
National Advisory Committee for AeronauticsMuroc Flight Test Unit (1946), the center was subsequently known as the NACA High-Speed Flight Research Station (1949), the NACA High-Speed Flight Station (1954), the NASA High-Speed Flight Station (1958) and the NASA Flight Research Center (1959). On 26 March 1976, the center was renamed the NASA Ames-Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) after
Hugh L. Dryden, a prominent
aeronautical engineer who died in office as NASA's deputy administrator in 1965 and Joseph Sweetman Ames, who was an eminent physicist, and served as president of Johns Hopkins University. The facility took its current name on 1 March 2014, honoring
Neil Armstrong, a former test pilot at the center and the first human being to walk on the Moon. (Full article...)
Image 15
The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in 2010
Headquartered at the nearby
Patrick Space Force Base, the station is the primary launch site for the Space Force's
Eastern Range with three
launch pads currently active (Space Launch Complexes
37B,
40, and
41). The facility is south-southeast of
NASA's
Kennedy Space Center on adjacent
Merritt Island, with the two linked by bridges and causeways. The Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Skid Strip provides a 10,000-foot (3,000 m) runway close to the launch complexes for military airlift aircraft delivering heavy and outsized payloads to the Cape. (Full article...)
There have been over 16,000 launches from the rocket testing range at Wallops since its founding in 1945 in the quest for information on the flight characteristics of airplanes, launch vehicles, and spacecraft, and to increase the knowledge of the Earth's upper atmosphere and the environment of
outer space. The launch vehicles vary in size and power from the small
Super Loki meteorological rockets to orbital-class vehicles. (Full article...)
The center contains the Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC), also known as the International Space Station Payload Operations Center. This facility supports ISS launch, payload, and experiment activities at the
Kennedy Space Center. The HOSC also monitors rocket launches from
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station when a Marshall Center payload is on board. (Full article...)
Image 24
Insignia for the Deep Space Network's 50th anniversary celebrations (1963–2013)
Note that |SPAN=yes|EDIT=yes|TOC=yes are needed only when posting to non-portal pages, like talk pages. — The Transhumanist 19:40, 27 November 2018 (UTC)reply
With
this edit you removed a load of links and critical information and now there are just 3 big images and loads of empty space. I think it looks dreadful and sparse. If that's you best effort it's hardly worth having.
ww2censor (
talk) 22:49, 3 December 2018 (UTC)reply
Thank you for creating this portal! You filled a blatant gap. Nice catch.
I've renamed it from
Portal:Demographics, added topics to the topics section (I copy/pasted them from
Category:Demography while displaying them with the userscript
User:The Transhumanist/ViewAsOutline-Category.js, and filled in or changed some parameters so that the various sections auto-generated. I also added another cattree to the subcats section, and moved that section down to the one-column area because it became so big.
I hope you like the changes, and that you find these techniques useful in your own portal work.
Keep up the great work, and keep the new portals coming!
Portal tip #4: refining the internal search parameters
Each portal has a search built-in that powers its Did you know and In the news sections.
Unfortunatey, the default search term isn't that great. It's the magic word {{PAGENAME}}. That just generates the subject of the portal, which is always capitalized, and in many cases, pluralized. That works great for terms that are usually capitalized, like person and place names, but not for the rest.
So, it helps to add to or replace the default search parameter with other search terms. You can put in as many as you like, separated by pipes (|).
By the way "%s" means space in Lua search notation.
And you can specify groups with "[]" square brackets. "[Aa]" means big A or little a, and apple with either would look like this: [Aa]pple
For more info on Lua search parameters, see [[]].
Some examples of portals with improved Did you know and In the news search parameters include:
Portal titles generally match the corresponding category. See
Category:Roses.
When renaming a navbox template, be sure to also update its name= in its wikicode (near the top of the page in the wiki editor). That controls the view and edit links displayed on the template itself.
You are doing a great job pushing the project forward into new content territory.
Refining a portal's internal search parameters can make a big difference
Each portal has a conditional Did you know, and a conditional In the news, section that only show up when there are results to display. Unfortunately, the default search parameter is {{PAGENAME}}, which is always interpreted as the portal title capitalized.
By changing the search parameters in this edit, the Did you know section is activated and displays 5 results. Makes quite a difference, because the lua program wasn't searching for the title with a small "s", or for its singular. Now it searches for both of those.
For subjects that are not usually capitalized or pluralized, changing the search parameters is needed in order for those 2 sections to show anything.
Keep up the good work, and keep those new portals coming! — The Transhumanist 08:08, 13 December 2018 (UTC)reply
A barnstar for you!
The Original Barnstar
Nice article you wrote (I'm a new page patroller reviewing it)
DannyS712 (
talk) 06:57, 15 December 2018 (UTC)reply
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
Main page).
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.
{{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.
I see you are a member of the Wikipedia project for journalism. I was a journalist for 25 years so it's a topic that interests me. Anyway, I have a conflict of interest with respect to the article about the journalist
Jonathan Swan as a paid consultant to his current publisher,
Axios. I think the article can be massively improved and I've made a series of proposed changes here:
Talk:Jonathan_Swan#Request_Edits. If you could take a look, it would be much appreciated. I don't make edits directly on the article because of the
WP: COI policy. Thanks! Ed
BC1278 (
talk) 19:16, 1 January 2019 (UTC)BC1278reply
Ways to improve Donald Heflin
Hello, Gazamp,
Thanks for creating
Donald Heflin! I edit here too, under the username
Rosguill and it's nice to meet you :-)
I wanted to let you know that
I have tagged
the page as having some issues to fix, as a part of our
page curation process and note that:-
The article could use citations to additional reliable sources that are independent of the US government
The tags can be removed by you or another editor once the issues they mention are addressed. If you have questions, leave a comment here and prepend it with {{Re|Rosguill}}. And, don't forget to sign your reply with ~~~~ . For broader editing help, please visit the
Teahouse.
Delivered via the
Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.
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.
You can find the old-style portals with an insource search of "box portal skeleton".
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!
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...