User talk:Charlesdrakew/Archives/2019/March

This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

AC service to BOD

Latest comment: 5 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Why do you keep removing Air Canada service to BOD when it is in fact a legit route that will commence in summer 2019?

Alexcaban (talk) 20:03, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Per WP:NOTDIR and WP:NOTTRAVEL wikipedia is not a travel guide. Per WP:CRYSTAL it is not certain to happen. Plans change all the time. Per WP:PROMO Wikipedia should not be used to publicise commercial services. If Wikipedia policy is new to you read it and get used to it.Charles (talk) 20:34, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Whatever man, When the plane touches down in June, I'll just added it back.

Thanks

Latest comment: 5 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Thank you for the ANI referral concerning our uncivil colleague.SovalValtos (talk) 10:24, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

I had not anticipated the number of editors with complaints against them, and I am pleased to help.Charles (talk) 22:26, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Other stuff exists

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Regarding the UKIP address, what do you mean by Other stuff exists?

If you look at these articles, you'll see it is standard practice to put the full address for the Headquarters field for political parties:

[1] [2] [3]

Thanks

It is a standard Wikipedian response to editors wanting to add something to a page because it is on other pages and often used in deletion discussions. Stop and consider that it should probably be removed from all the other pages.Charles (talk) 18:48, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #029, 13 Feb 2019

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

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:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Indefinitely_semiprotecting_the_refdesk#Proposal_II:_Shut_down_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.

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

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.

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...

Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals (see it's talk page).

Keep on keepin' on

...'til next time, — The Transhumanist 10:18, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Possible adoption?

Latest comment: 5 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

G'day Charlesdrakew, Buckshot06 and I, with help from another editor, have been trying to guide J-Man11 who is a new editor, but we are finding it quite a frustrating process. J-Man11 has been blocked once and as you'll see from their talk page, there are a range of issues that continue to crop up, adding a lot of material/creating articles without proper sourcing, and sources failing verification etc. I'm wondering if you would consider adopting J-Man11 to try to guide them into becoming a productive Wikipedian. Any assistance you could offer would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:47, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

I'd like to endorse Peacemaker67's request, and we'd very much appreciate it if you would consider taking this on. Kind regards Buckshot06 (talk) 03:50, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for thinking of me. I am not sure I have the time or energy to take this on right now, but I will look at the editors contributions to see what is going on. If so many others have failed to get anywhere it may not help. I do not have any special knowledge of the army to understand what is needed.Charles (talk) 11:05, 17 February 2019 (UTC)