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Last issue, I mentioned there would be a flood, and so, here it is...
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}}
)
After disappearing in mid-thread, Evad37 has returned from a longer than expected wikibreak.
Be sure to welcome him back.
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.
Work has begun on upgrading Wikipedia's flagship portals (those listed at the top of the Main page).
So far, Portal:Geography, Portal:History, and Portal:Technology have been revamped. Of course, you are welcome to improve them further.
Work continues on the other five. Feel free to join in on the fun.
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.
To spot redirects easily, you can make them all appear green.
And I'll see you next issue.
Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 08:07, 26 December 2018 (UTC)
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:
Becomes this:
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}}
To see it employed in a portal, check out Portal:Niagara Falls.
We were racing against time to create 5,000 portals by the end of the year (just for the heck of it).
We made it. We've passed the 5,000 portals mark, with time to spare!
And the 5,000th portal is Portal:Major League Baseball, by Happypillsjr.
Congratulations!
The 10,000th portal mark. But...
...there is plenty else to do in addition to building new portals:
And whatever else you can dream up.
But most of all, have a...
WikiWikiWayne, thank you for your contributions to the Portals Project, and have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year.
Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 11:53, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
Well, here's the first issue of the new year. Enjoy...
A hearty welcome to new arrivals to the portals department:
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.
There have been some discussions at Wikipedia talk:Portal guidelines.
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 08:12, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
February 2019, Volume 5, Issue 2, Numbers 107-111
February events:
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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.
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".
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:
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.
Keep 'em coming!
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!
That's all I have to report this time around.
No doubt there will be more to tell soon.
Until then, — The Transhumanist 13:10, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
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)
Guild of Copy Editors 2018 Annual Report
Our
2018 Annual Report is now ready for review.
Highlights:
– Your project coordinators:
Miniapolis,
Baffle gab1978,
Jonesey95,
Reidgreg and
Tdslk.
To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from
our mailing list.
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MediaWiki message delivery (
talk)
21:30, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
Here's a quicky status report:
But of course, there has been more going on than just that...
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!
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:
And the corresponding talk pages:
Until next time, — The Transhumanist 08:59, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
Where we are at:
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 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/?title=User:Emoteplump&oldid=881568794#Additional_Portals_under_my_watch
We're at 5,705 portals and counting.
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.
There are 5 drives for portal development:
Let's take a closer look at these...
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.
The portal collection is growing, not only by the addition of new portals, but by further developing the ones we already have, by...
More features will be added as we dream them up and design them. So, don't be shy, make a wish.
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:
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.
See below...
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).
...'til next time, — The Transhumanist 10:18, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
March 2019, Volume 5, Issue 3, Numbers 107, 108, 112, 113
Please join us for these virtual events:
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Books & Bytes
Issue 32, January – February 2019
French version of Books & Bytes is now available on meta!
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team -- MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 03:29, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
Hello
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.
Trizek (WMF), 08:37, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
The previous message about the talk pages consultation has a broken link.
The correct link has been misinterpreted by the MassMessage tool. Please use the following link: Wikipedia:Talk pages consultation 2019.
Sorry for the inconvenience, Trizek (WMF), 08:48, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
Previous issue:
This issue:
All Portals closed at WP:MfD during 2019
Grouped Nominations total 127 Portals:
Individual Nominations:
Related WikiProject:
(Attribution: Copied from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Portal MfD Results)
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.
At WP:VPR, mass creation of Portals using semi-automated tools has been put on hold until clearer community consensus is established.
See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Hiatus on mass creation of Portals.
See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Proposal 1: Interim Topic-Ban on New Portals.
Keep on keepin' on. — The Transhumanist 03:37, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
Guild of Copy Editors March 2019 Newsletter
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.
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MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 02:12, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
April 2019, Volume 5, Issue 4, Numbers 107, 108, 114, 115, 116, 117
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-- Rosiestep ( talk) 18:12, 27 March 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging