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Invitation to WikiProject Portals edit
The Portals WikiProject has been rebooted.
You are invited to join, and participate in the effort to revitalize and improve the Portal system and all the portals in it.
There are sections on the WikiProject page dedicated to tasks (including WikiGnome tasks too), and areas on the talk page for discussing the improvement and automation of the various features of portals.
Many complaints have been lodged in the RfC to delete all portals, pointing out their various problems. They say that many portals are not maintained, or have fallen out of date, are useless, etc. Many of the !votes indicate that the editors who posted them simply don't believe in the potential of portals anymore.
It's time to change all that. Let's give them reasons to believe in portals, by revitalizing them.
The best response to a deletion nomination is to fix the page that was nominated. The further underway the effort is to improve portals by the time the RfC has run its course, the more of the reasons against portals will no longer apply. RfCs typically run 30 days. There are 19 days left in this one. Let's see how many portals we can update and improve before the RfC is closed, and beyond.
A healthy WikiProject dedicated to supporting and maintaining portals may be the strongest argument of all not to delete.
We may even surprise ourselves and exceed all expectations. Who knows what we will be able to accomplish in what may become the biggest Wikicollaboration in years.
Let's do this.
See ya at the WikiProject!
Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 14:07, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
P.S.: Waggers, please stop by the project's talk page and share you thoughts about automation, to help get the threads started. — The Transhumanist 14:07, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
Portals WikiProject update, April 22, 2018 edit
Thank you for joining the Portals WikiProject.
Here's our first project-wide update. I hope you enjoy it...
Reboot edit
The WikiProject reboot has been a success: the new re-envisioned project is up and running, with new members, ongoing discussions about automation, design, and upkeep; maintained task queques; and updates to members, like this, the very first one!
The RfC edit
As you know, there's a proposal to delete all portals. It started out looking pretty dismal for portals, with primarily posts supporting their demise. It turned out that the proposer didn't post a deletion notice on the very pages being nominated for deletion (a requirement for all deletion discussions). Once that was done, a flood of opposition came in and has apparently turned the tide.
RfCs generally run for 30 days. It started April 8th, and so it has about 14 more days to run its course.
The more work we can do during that time on the portals, the stronger the reasons for keeping them will be. And the more prepared we will be for any MfDs that follow the closing of the RfC.
AWB? edit
You may be wondering why we asked for AWB experience in the member-sign-up list.
We are gearing up to do maintenance runs on the entire set of portals, and the more people we have who can use AWB, the better.
But we're not quite ready to start this yet.
To be able to use AWB on the portals, we first need to know what the end result needs to be. Like on the news sections, do we comment out the out-of-date ones, or do we place the code to activate the newsbot on those pages? That would require an assessment of WikiNews and its news generating performance (areas covered, volume in each area), etc.
You can help us figure this out at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals#Discussions about news sections.
Another area we're gearing up for, to do passes with AWB, are upgrades to the intro sections of portals. Many of these have static (copied/pasted) excerpts that go stale over time.
We're trying to figure out how to make self-updating excerpts to replace the existing static excerpts that are on many portals, and once this is done, AWB will be used to place the new code. See the discussion on this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals#Discussions about selective transclusion in intros.
"What can I do?" edit
There are 3 major areas of activity right now:
Update the main portal list at Portal:Contents/Portals edit
There are a few hundred existing portals that are missing from this list.
The list of missing entries, and instructions on what to do, can be found at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet.
We need everybody's help on this. It's a big chore for one persons. But, many hands make light work. Please help chip away at this chore as much as you can. A little each day, form all of us, will get this done pretty quick.
Familiarize yourself with the portal system edit
In addition to browsing the portals in the 2 lists mentioned in the section above, you should take a look at the portal name space itself and what is in it.
That can be done at Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Watchlist.
Join in on the discussions edit
There are discussions on many aspects of the WikiProject's operations, with more to come.
Such as about the purposes and functions of portals, design discussions, and so on.
There's even a automated design discussion over at Village Pump Technical, on selective transclusion.
I hope to see you on the talk page.
What's coming? edit
In addition to the automation efforts mentioned above, we will be looking into how to automate the selection and display of alternating excerpts, and alternating pictures, for the various portal sections.
Watch for these discussions on the Wikiproject's talk page.
Summing up... edit
Get ready, get set, go! — The Transhumanist 22:54, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 26 April 2018 edit
- From the editors: The Signpost's presses roll again
- Signpost: Future directions for The Signpost
- In the media: The rise of Wikipedia as a disinformation mop
- In focus: Admin reports board under criticism
- Special report: ACTRIAL results adopted by landslide
- Community view: It's time we look past Women in Red to counter systemic bias
- Discussion report: The future of portals
- Arbitration report: No new cases, and one motion on administrative misconduct
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Military History
- Traffic report: A quiet place to wrestle with the articles of March
- Technology report: Coming soon: Books-to-PDF, interactive maps, rollback confirmation
- Featured content: Featured content selected by the community
Portals WikiProject heads up, April 27, 2018 edit
We now have 52 members, and more are joining daily.
New and easier way to handle excerpts edit
Attention portal maintainers!
There's a new template to improve existing and new portals, called {{Transclude lead excerpt}}.
It is a lot easier to use than copying and pasting text from articles, as it displays the paragraphs you specify automatically for you.
It makes excerpts so that they are always current and never go stale or fork.
It is more powerful than it looks, because it has the Lua Module:Excerpt supporting it.
Be careful, as it is alpha software. Please notify the WikiProject talkpage of any problems you come across.
To give you a sense of the reaction this template is generating, here is an excerpt of a discussion thread from the WikiProject's talk page:
- This new template is fantastic. I've added it to the intro sections of the portals on Australian cities (eg P:PER) and it works brilliantly. My compliments to its creators. It can probably also be used in other sections of many portals (eg "Selected article" and "Selected biography"), and, for that reason, will probably make the task of maintaining portals a great deal easier. Bahnfrend (talk) 09:02, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
- Thank you for being so brave. Portal:Adelaide/Intro just got a lot simpler! Certes (talk) 10:43, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
- Kudos on a wonderful template. — The Transhumanist 03:27, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
- This is amazing stuff. I'm going to get to work on using it on the selected content at most of these portals very soon. WaggersTALK 13:40, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
- Kudos on a wonderful template. — The Transhumanist 03:27, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
The RfC edit
I wrote a comment in the the April 26 section of the RfC explaining what we are up to. I liked the excerpt above so much, that I went back to my RfC posting, and inserted it.
Please add Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals to your watchlist edit
Wish list edit
What's this? An old oil lamp. It's so dirty, I think I'll polish it...
*poof*
Whoa! Are you a WikiGenie? In that case, I get 3 wishes!
I wish...
- ...that Portal:Contents/Portals becomes up-to-date. (The missing entries are listed on the talk page, with instructions).
- ...the WikiProject to have Article Alerts. ({{WikiProject Portals}} templates have already been placed on all portal talk pages).
- ...that Portal:Cricket becomes a shining example of portal excellence. (It was the main example of a crappy and unmaintained portal at the RfC).
Please make my wishes come true. See you around the portals! — The Transhumanist 08:03, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – May 2018 edit
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2018).
Administrator changes
None
Chochopk • Coffee • Gryffindor • Jimp • Knowledge Seeker • Lankiveil • Peridon • Rjd0060
Guideline and policy news
- The ability to create articles directly in mainspace is now indefinitely restricted to autoconfirmed users.
- A proposal is being discussed which would create a new "event coordinator" right that would allow users to temporarily add the "confirmed" flag to new user accounts and to create many new user accounts without being hindered by a rate limit.
Technical news
- AbuseFilter has received numerous improvements, including an OOUI overhaul, syntax highlighting, ability to search existing filters, and a few new functions. In particular, the search feature can be used to ensure there aren't existing filters for what you need, and the new
equals_to_anyfunction can be used when checking multiple namespaces. One major upcoming change is the ability to see which filters are the slowest. This information is currently only available to those with access to Logstash. - When blocking anonymous users, a cookie will be applied that reloads the block if the user changes their IP. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. This currently only occurs when hard-blocking accounts.
- The block notice shown on mobile will soon be more informative and point users to a help page on how to request an unblock, just as it currently does on desktop.
- There will soon be a calendar widget at Special:Block, making it easier to set expiries for a specific date and time.
- AbuseFilter has received numerous improvements, including an OOUI overhaul, syntax highlighting, ability to search existing filters, and a few new functions. In particular, the search feature can be used to ensure there aren't existing filters for what you need, and the new
Arbitration
- The Arbitration Committee is seeking additional clerks to help with the arbitration process.
Obituaries
- Lankiveil (Craig Franklin) passed away in mid-April. Lankiveil joined Wikipedia on 12 August 2004 and became an administrator on 31 August 2008. During his time with the Wikimedia community, Lankiveil served as an oversighter for the English Wikipedia and as president of Wikimedia Australia.
WikiProject Portals Overview, May 04, 2018 edit
Thank you for being a member of the Portals WikiProject, and thank you for all the work you have all been doing on the portal namespace. To see the activity, check out the watchlist.
This is our 3rd issue, see previous issues at the Newsletter archive.
Top priority: Main list of portals needs updating edit
The top, and one of the most visible parts, of the portal system is Portal:Contents/Portals, which is intended to list all (completed) portals on Wikipedia.
About half of the missing existing portals have been added since this WikiProject's reboot (April 17th). Thank you to RockMagnetist, TriNitrobrick, Polyamorph, PratyushSinha101, Ganesha811, Bermicourt, Javert2113, Noyster, Ɱ, Lepricavark, XOR'easter, and Emir of Wikipedia, for working on this.
We are half-way to completion with this. We need everyone to chip in until it is done. Instructions, and the list of missing entries are at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet.
I hope you'll join me there. ("Many hands make light work").
Thank you.
Membership edit
We're at 66 members, with more joining daily. We even have 6 WikiGnomes!
Special thanks edit
I have awarded Certes with a portals barnstar on his talk page for his work on the new excerpt templates that are revolutionizing the portal system (Template:Transclude lead excerpt & Template:Transclude random excerpt). If you'd like to show your appreciation, please feel free to stop by his talk page and add your signature to the barnstar itself.
Thank you Certes. You are enabling this WikiProject to get the right things done, fast.
By the way, the templates have already gone international. After being told about the templates, Mossab wrote:
Thanks You very much!. Those are fantastic and great templates! I transferred them to Arabic Wikipedia and they do a magic great job. I worked to improve portal anatomy here and i do every thing i can to improve it and i am very sad for the nomination for deletion of portals :(. I am glad to be member on WikiProject Portals and i added my name with pleasure. Kind regards
RFC edit
As you know, the (April 8th) proposal to delete all portals and the portal namespace inspired the reboot of this WikiProject. RfCs typically run for 30 days, which means there are 5 days left including today, before the RfC will be closed. The !votes are predominantly "oppose", but many editors have shared their disappointment with the portal system. We have our work cut out for us in correcting the problems of the portals to address their concerns. Complaints ranged from being out of date and lacking maintenance, to taking up the time of editors that they felt (due to low traffic) would be better spent improving articles.
Anti-WikiProject drama edit
This past week has been somewhat stressful for me, with more than a little conflict...
It culminated with my being reported at the Administrator's Noticeboard "for spamming and canvassing". This is the second time I've been reported there during the RfC; the first one was for posting notices of the deletion discussion (the RfC) at the top of all portal pages.
The accusations were 1) Posting notices of the deletion discussion (the RfC) at the top of all portal pages, 2) Adding an Article alerts section to the Portals WikiProject page, and 3) posting notices (invitations) about this WikiProject on user talk and portal talk pages.
None of which fall under the Wikipedia definitions of spamming or canvassing.
Thank you, Lionelt and Lepricavark, for coming to my rescue. I don't know how the discussion would have turned out if you had not spoken up.
The discussion was closed as "no action necessary".
After that, the person responsible posted their thoughts to my talk page. Here they are, with my response:
Congratulations, it appears your relentless targeted advertising of the RFC, your beating the RFC Supporters with a stick by posting countless times there, your dishonest insistence that Current Events was on the chopping block, and your obstruction of clean up efforts at MfD are paying dividends. Have fun playing with Portal space where no one will read your work. I'm sure someone will eventually clean up the mess when your interest wanes. Cheers. Legacypac
- Thank you. I accept your congratulations on behalf of Wikiproject Portals and the portal-loving community – it was a team effort. In addition, I'd like to clarify some things about your claims above...
- Each page nominated for deletion must have a notice at the top of its page, per the deletion guideline. Not to have one there, would be unfair to those who use such pages, and would constitute a secret deletion tribunal. We don't do things that way on Wikipedia.
- As new facts became available (e.g., a motivated and thriving WikiProject to support the portals, new building blocks, etc.), it was appropriate to post the developments to the RfC, to support informed decision making.
- Proposals are literal, not figurative. The proposal specified "all portals". All means all.
- The fact is, the rebooted WikiProject is cleaning up the mess, rather rapidly. By updating and upgrading the portals, rather than getting rid of them.
- I think I'll be hanging around for awhile, but the project is more than likely to achieve critical mass and may outlive us all, due in part to the development of tools to assist editors in building, upgrading, and maintaining portals that are fully dynamic and self-updating.
- Portals are more fun to work with than ever. Thank you for your role in making this happen. You made us try even harder, and inspired us to pull together as a team. You'll have a warm place in our hearts, forever. The Transhumanist
- Thank you. I accept your congratulations on behalf of Wikiproject Portals and the portal-loving community – it was a team effort. In addition, I'd like to clarify some things about your claims above...
Automatically refreshed excerpts edit
The main advancement we've made so far is applying selective transclusion Transclusion is template technology, showing a page on another page. Selective transclusion shows only part of that page. We use it to show excerpts that always match the source. The two templates we have so far, are Template:Transclude lead excerpt and Template:Transclude random excerpt.
Obsoleting subpages edit
Excerpts are migrating toward the base page of each portal, and where this is done, a subpage is no longer needed.
Template:Transclude lead excerpt will be able to be used to put the intro excerpt directly on the portal page, rather than on an intro subpage, once we adapt a portal design to accommodate this.
Template:Transclude random excerpt is currently being used on 1st-level subpages, and eliminates the need for 2nd-level subpages. (Many portals have 2 levels of subpages).
There are about 1500 portals, but there are around 148,000 subpages in portal space. Further discussions are needed to develop designs and components that do not require them.
It is my hope that the portal of the future will be a single page, or close to it, pulling in excerpts from specified dynamic sources (like category pages), filtered by ratings. This would obviate the need for subpages at all (except for maybe the header and footer subpages, which store a portal's settings). A more likely near-term solution would be subpages with a list maintained by a bot, or editors using semi-automatic tools.
New portals edit
Since the reboot, a new portal has been created:
Please watchlist these pages edit
Some central pages in the portal system. The more eyes on them, the better.
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals
- User:The Transhumanist (there's a fair amount of portal project traffic on my talk page these days)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Portal/List of all portals/Page 1
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Portal/List of all portals/Page 2
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Portal/List of all portals/Page 3
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Portal/List of all portals/Page 4
- Wikipedia:Portal:Portal Example portal. And funny.
- Portal:Contents/Portals
- Portal:Contents/Portals/Culture and the arts
- Portal:Contents/Portals/Geography and places
- Portal:Contents/Portals/Health and fitness
- Portal:Contents/Portals/History and events
- Portal:Contents/Portals/Infobox
- Portal:Contents/Portals/Intro
- Portal:Contents/Portals/Mathematics and logic
- Portal:Contents/Portals/Natural and physical sciences
- Portal:Contents/Portals/People and self
- Portal:Contents/Portals/Philosophy and thinking
- Portal:Contents/Portals/Portal nav footer
- Portal:Contents/Portals/Reference
- Portal:Contents/Portals/Religion and belief systems
- Portal:Contents/Portals/Society and social sciences
- Portal:Contents/Portals/Technology and applied sciences
- Portal:Contents/Portals/Topic
Wrapping up... edit
There's more in the works, like a rating system, further redesigns, etc. Keep an eye on the discussions on the project's talk page. They should start showing up there soon.
Hope to see you there. Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 06:25, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
WikiProject Portals update, 11 May 2018 edit
We've grown to 73 members, and morale is high. Thank you for joining. Here is some news, and some tasks...
The RfC will be closed soon... edit
2018-05-11: preparations are being made to close the RfC. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure#Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/RfC: Ending the system of portals.
When there, be sure to notice the consultation link.
We're trying to get a prototypical single-page portal developed in time to show the RfC closers before they make their final decision. You can help. It's Portal:Humanism. So far, we've applied selective transclusion (automation) to excerpts, and have made the following sections without subpages: intro, selected article, selected biography, categories, related portals, wikiprojects, things to do, and wikimedia. Eight down, 4 to go, plus 2 formatting subpages (not sure we can migrate those). Automating every section, would also be nice.
Main objectives edit
Our main objectives currently, are:
- Replace static excerpts with selective transclusions, so that the excerpts always stay fresh (that is, match the source content). We are now doing this on the portal base page as much as possible, to reduce the number of subpages that are needed. See #2...
- Migrate the functions of subpages to the portal base pages. There are around 150,000 subpages in portal space. We aim to make these obsolete by using templates and other calls from the portal base pages.
- Improve portal design to make portals self-update. Semi-dynamic sections update from a static list, as used in {{Transclude random excerpt}}. Fully-dynamic sections would update from a list maintained elsewhere on Wikipedia, like a category. We haven't found a way to do this yet, other than to create a bot (which we will probably need to do).
Maintenance pass #1: Upgrading the intro section edit
The intro section of many portals transcludes an "Intro" subpage that has an excerpt in it.
We're replacing that with a selective transclusion directly in the intro section, bypassing the subpage. Though, there's a little more to it...
For instructions, see: Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Transclude intro excerpt directly on the portal base page.
Please skip Portal:American Civil War, as that is specifically being maintained by hand.
Maintenance pass #2: Obsoleting the Wikimedia subpages edit
One of the sections on many portals links to sister projects on the subject. This needlessly takes a subpage. The subpage can be made obsolete by using the template {{Wikimedia for portals}} directly on the portal base page.
This has been done for several hundred portals so far.
See Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Obsolete a Wikimedia subpage for instructions.
Maintenance pass #3: calling the category tree from the portal base page edit
Certes figured out how...
{{subst:Text|<category|tree>}}{{subst:PAGENAME}}{{subst:Text|</categorytree>}}
For more information, see the thread Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Rendering PAGENAME inside categorytree tag doesn't work (it does now).
More to come... edit
In the meantime, see ya around the portals! — The Transhumanist 16:02, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
Portals WikiProject update, 15 May 2018 edit
We are at 74 members. If you know anyone who might find this WikiProject interesting, please invite them.
The RfC has ended edit
The RfC was closed May 11th, and a closing statement was posted May 12th which says "There exists a strong consensus against deleting or even deprecating portals at this time."
Ongoing tasks edit
Some major activities that we are in the middle of include:
- Adding the missing existing portals to the main portals list at Portal:Contents/Portals. Instructions are on the talk page. There are about 125 portals left to be processed. (There were 400). Keep up the good work!
- Development discussions on how to migrate the subpages to the base pages. There are around 150,000 subpages in portal space, associated with the various sections on a typical portal. We are trying to obsolete them section type by section type. Currently, we're working on obsoleting the intro subpages and the "selected articles" subpages. Please join in.
Other tasks edit
- The list of portals not ready to be listed on the main list can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#These are not listed yet (scroll down to see them - they are marked
Not ready). They are incomplete. If you want a specific portal to work on, please consider choosing one from that list. - Over the years, some incomplete portals (portals under construction) got added to Portal:Contents/Portals. Therefore, every portal listed there needs to be inspected, and any that are incomplete should be removed from that list and added to the not ready list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#These are not listed yet (scroll down to see it). On Portal:Contents/Portals, I'm already almost done inspecting the portals in the culture section, and so you can skip those. The types of things to look for are empty sections (most will have a redlinked subpage), lack of "selected" sections, portal stubs with just an intro and end sections, and very poor layout (like seriously unbalanced columns).
Portal-building resources edit
During his work on portals, Broter found a quote randomizer. It is {{Random quotation}}.
Trailblazer: approaching the one-page portal edit
Broter has transformed the Portal:Community of Christ so it is comprised of only 3 pages in portal space: the base page, its box-header subpage, and its box-footer subpage. Its other other subpages are now obsolete and are waiting for deletion. Nice job, Broter!
Well, that's all for now. See ya around the portals. — The Transhumanist 06:41, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
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Sally Miller Gearhart's "the future is female" proposal to "voluntarily" reduce population of men to 10% has again disappeared from the article, what kind of censorship is going on? edit
Step by step the statement disappeared from the article altogether. Are such edits considered "constructive"? Would undoing such blatant censorship be considered "non-constructive"? Please, let me know.
PS I'm not that good at "talk" pages, sorry if it's not the right format. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kartu (talk • contribs) 06:08, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
Signpost interview on WikiProject Portals edit
Hello! I would like to ask you a few questions about WikiProject Portals for the WikiProject Report in the upcoming issue of the Signpost. The questions can be found here. Feel free to leave feedback or further information! Zarasophos (talk) 16:11, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
Your interview answers... edit
You might want to make some corrections to your interview answers. Note that the proposer was Galobtter, while the user who caused all the annoyances was Legacypac. — The Transhumanist 10:44, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
- @The Transhumanist: Thanks, will do. I don't want to falsely accuse anyone of anything! WaggersTALK 11:41, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 24 May 2018 edit
- From the editor: Another issue meets the deadline
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Portals
- Discussion report: User rights, infoboxes, and more discussion on portals
- Featured content: Featured content selected by the community
- Arbitration report: Managing difficult topics
- News and notes: Lots of Wikimedia
- Traffic report: We love our superheroes
- Technology report: A trove of contributor and developer goodies
- Recent research: Why people don't contribute to Wikipedia; using Wikipedia to teach statistics, technical writing, and controversial issues
- Humour: Play with your food
- Gallery: Wine not?
- From the archives: The Signpost scoops The Signpost
Portals WikiProject update, 25 May 2018 edit
We have grown to 79 members.
Please provide a warm welcome to our latest additions, Wpgbrown, Cactus.man, JLJ001, and Wumbolo.
A lot is going on, much of it on the WikiProject's talk page, so be sure to go there and join in on any of the many discussions taking place there.
Elsewhere around the portal project, or related to portals, the following is happening...
New news template ready for testing edit
Evad37 has created a new template, with supporting lua module, to handle news in portals...
{{Transclude selected current events}} is ready to be tested in some actual portals. Let Evad37 know if you need help with the search patterns.
Noyster commented that "This is the best portal innovation since sliced bread!"
See the relevant discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals#Alternative to Wikinews.
Thank you, Evad.
Coming soon: Automatic article alerts (but there is a glitch) edit
Our WikiProject is now subscribed to the bot that makes automatic article alerts, but the subpage where they are posted has not been added to our WikiProject page yet because of a weird problem...
Featured portal nominations from two years ago keep popping up on there.
Please check Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals/Article alerts to see if you can figure out how to fix this.
Once that is remedied, it will be posted on our WikiProject page.
Thank you.
Note that, this will only track base pages, because to track the rest, we'd have to create over 140,000 talk pages for the subpages, and that just isn't worthwhile (as we're trying to remove the subpages anyways). Therefore, any alerts for subpages will still need to be posted manually.
New portal, still needs work edit
- Portal:Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, courtesy of Mozart834428196. See also, the discussion.
Drafting a new portals guideline edit
Your input/editing is welcome on the draft-in-progress of a new guideline for portals.
See or work on the draft at User:Cesdeva/sandbox11.
See also the discussion at: Wikipedia talk:Portal guidelines#RfC on new portal guidelines
RfC on new TOC layout for main portal list edit
There is a proposal to change the look of the table of contents at Portal:Contents/Portals.
See: Portal talk:Contents/Portals#RFC on layout update.
Deletion discussion survivors edit
Thank you to those who have participated in portal deletion discussions. There are still some editors out there who despise portals, and this comes across in their argumentation style. Wow. Such negativity. But, there is some good news...
- Portal:Quidditch survived its 2nd deletion nomination
- Portal:Prehistory of Antarctica did the same
Current deletion discussions are posted on our WikiProject page.
Portal space clean up edit
While portal detractors are trying to get rid of portals via MfD, we have deleted many of them via speedy deletion (per {{Db-p1}} or {{Db-p2}}). Essentially, they were bare skeletons, with maybe a little meat on them. The plus here is that speedy deletion is without prejudice to re-creating the portals. They can easily be restarted from scratch without getting approval, or be undeleted by request by someone willing to work on them. We have kept track of these, for when someone wants to rebuild them. They are listed at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet.
We are also removing subpages, the functions of which have been migrated to portal base pages. To see which ones have been removed, look for the redlinks in our watchlist.
There is also an MfD concerning some of these at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Redundant subpages of the Cornwall portal.
For subpages that need to be deleted, you can conveniently place this speedy deletion template at the top of each of them:
{{Db-g6|rationale=of subpage clean up – this subpage's function has been migrated to the portal base page and is no longer needed}}
Then an admin will come along and delete them.
Please help list the unlisted portals! edit
There are still 100 existing portals not yet presented on the main portal list at Portal:Contents/Portals. There were 400, so we've come a long way. Thank you! But we are not done yet...
Please list a couple of them. Every little bit helps. If each member of this project listed one more, it would almost all be done. Many hands make light work.
The list of missings, and instructions, are to be found at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet.
I hope to see you there!
Wrapping up edit
These developments make up just the tip of the iceberg. I'll have more to report in the next update, soon. — The Transhumanist 00:37, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
I just read your interview in the Signpost... edit
Thank you for your kind words. Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 02:23, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
Portals WikiProject update #007, 31 May 2018 edit
We have grown to 89 members.
This is the seventh issue of this newsletter. For previous issues, see our newsletter archive.
Welcome edit
A warm welcome to our nearly one dozen new members...
Our new members include:
- Evad37
- Checkingfax
- Grey Wanderer
- Voceditenore
- TestPAKISTAN
- Godsy
- Greatedits1
- Charlesdrakew
- Ww2censor
- Simon Burchell
- TheGridExe
Be sure to say "hi" and welcome them to the team.
The portal set has shrunk edit
There were 1515 portals, but now we have 1475, because we speedy deleted a bunch of incompleted portals that had been sitting around for ages, that were empty shells or had very little content. Because they were speedied, they can be rebuilt from scratch without acquiring approval from WP:DRV.
Maintenance runs on the portals set have begun edit
This is what we have been gearing up for: upgrading the portals en masse, using AWB.
More than half of the Associated Wikimedia sections have been converted to no longer use a subpage. This chore will probably be completed over the next week or two. Many thanks to the WikiGnome Squad, who have added an Associated Wikimedia section to the many geography-related portals that lacked one. The rest of the subjects await. :)
The next maintenance drive will be on the intro sections. Notices have gone out to the WikiProjects for which one or more portals fall within their subject scope. Once enough time has elapsed for them to respond (1 week), AWB processing of intro sections will begin.
Thank you, you edit
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your part in the RfC. I went back and reread much of it. I believe your enthusiasm played a major part in turning the tide on there. I'm proud of all of you.
Why reread that mess, you ask?
To harvest ideas, and to keep the problems that need to be fixed firmly in mind. But, also to keep in touch. See below...
Thank yous all around edit
I've contacted all of the other opposers of the RfC proposal to delete portals, to thank them for their support, and to assure them that their decision was not made in vain. I updated them on our activities, provided the link to the interviews about this project in the Signpost, pointed out our newsletter archive so they can keep up-to-date with what we are doing, and I invited them all to come and have a look-see at our operations (on our talk page).
Sockpuppet, and reverting his work edit
It so happened that one of our members was a sockpuppet: JLJ001. According to the admin who blocked him, he was a particularly tricky long term abuser. This is a weird situation, since the user was quite helpful. He will be missed.
This has been somewhat disruptive, because admins are doing routine deletions of the pages (portals, templates, etc.) he created, and reversion of his edits (I don't know if they will be reverting all of them). Please bear with them, as they are only doing what is best in the long run.
The following pages have been deleted by the admins so far, that I know of:
- Portal:Plymouth
- Portal:Bedfordshire
- Portal:Suffolk
- Portal:Norfolk
- User:JLJ001/tag
- Template:Non-standard portal flag
- Template:Portal flag
Automation so far, section by section... edit
- Intro – {{Transclude lead excerpt}}
- Selected article – {{Transclude random excerpt}}
- In the news – {{Transclude selected current events}}
- Associated Wikimedia –
{{Wikimedia for portals|species=no|voy=no}} - Categories –
{{#tag:categorytree|{{PAGENAME}}}}
Automatic article alerts is up and running edit
Automatic article alerts are now featured on the project page.
Some super out-of-date entries kept showing up on there, so posting it on the Project page was delayed. Thanks to Evad37 and AfroThundr for providing solutions on this one. Evad37 adjusted the workflow settings per Wikipedia:Article alerts/Subscribing#Choosing workflows, to make sure only the appropriate page types show up. AfroThundr removed the tags from the old entries that caused them to keep showing up in the article alerts.
Other things that could use some automation edit
Noyster pointed out that it would be nice to automate the updating of the portals section at the Community bulletin board.
Another major component of the portal system is the main list of portals, at Portal:Contents/Portals. How would we go about automating the updating of that?
Please post your ideas on the WikiProject's talk page. Thank you.
Deletion discussion survivors edit
Keep in mind that we have already speedy deleted almost all of the nearly empty portals, which can be rebuilt without approval whenever it is convenient to do so. Other portals should be completed if at all possible rather than delete them through MfD (which requires approval from Deletion review to rebuild).
- Portal:Juanes – see the discussion
(Current deletion discussions are posted on our WikiProject page).
Portals needing repair edit
Wrapping up edit
There's still more, but it will have to wait until next issue.
Until then, see ya around the project. — The Transhumanist 12:04, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – June 2018 edit
News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2018).
Administrator changes
- None
- Al Ameer son • AliveFreeHappy • Cenarium • Lupo • MichaelBillington
Guideline and policy news
- Following a successful request for comment, administrators are now able to add and remove editors to the "event coordinator" group. Users in the event coordinator group have the ability to temporarily add the "confirmed" flag to new user accounts and to create many new user accounts without being hindered by a rate limit. Users will no longer need to be in the "account creator" group if they are in the event coordinator group.
- Following an AN discussion, all pages with content related to blockchain and cryptocurrencies, broadly construed, are now under indefinite general sanctions.
Technical news
- IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in June. This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.
- The Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools team will build granular types of blocks in 2018 (e.g. a block from uploading or editing specific pages, categories, or namespaces, as opposed to a full-site block). Feedback on the concept may be left at the talk page.
- There is now a checkbox on Special:ListUsers to let you see only users in temporary user groups.
- It is now easier for blocked mobile users to see why they were blocked.
Arbitration
- A recent technical issue with the Arbitration Committee's spam filter inadvertently caused all messages sent to the committee through Wikipedia (i.e. Special:EmailUser/Arbitration Committee) to be discarded. If you attempted to send an email to the Arbitration Committee via Wikipedia between May 16 and May 31, your message was not received and you are encouraged to resend it. Messages sent outside of these dates or directly to the Arbitration Committee email address were not affected by this issue.
Miscellaneous
- In early May, an unusually high level of failed login attempts was observed. The WMF has stated that this was an "external effort to gain unauthorized access to random accounts". Under Wikipedia policy, administrators are required to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enabling two-factor authentication. A committed identity can be used to verify that you are the true account owner in the event that your account is compromised and/or you are unable to log in.
Portals WikiProject update #008, 7 June 2018 edit
The WikiProject now has 92 participants, including 16 admins.
Welcome edit
A warm welcome to the newest members of the team:
Be sure to say hi.
Congrats edit
Pbsouthwood has just gotten through the grueling RfA process to become a Wikipedia administrator. Be sure to congratulate him.
The reason he went for it was: "For some time I expect to be busy with subpage deletion for Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals as mentioned above. The amount of work is expected to keep me busy for some time. I am primarly a content creator and contributor to policy discussions, but would be willing to consider other admin work on request, providing that I feel that my involvement would be appropriate and not too far outside my comfort zone."
New feature: Picture slideshow edit
-
Sacramento from near the Sacramento River -
Old Town Sacramento, the capital as it looked like in 19th century -
Tower Bridge -
Pocket Sacramento Canal -
Sacramento Memorial Auditorium -
Capitol Mall, seen from the Capitol -
State Capitol Building -
US Bank Tower
Evad37 has figured out a way to let the user flip through pictures without purging the page. Purging is awkward because there is an intermediary confirmation screen that you have to click on "yes". In the new picture slideshow section, all you have to do is click on the > to go to the next picture or < to instantly show the previous feature. The feature also shuffles the pictures when the page is initiated, so that they are shown in a different order each time the user visits the page (or purges it).
It is featured in Portal:Sacramento, California. Check it out to the right.
Keep in mind that the feature is a beta version. Please share your comments on how to refine this feature, at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals#Refining the Picture slideshow.
The one-page portal has been achieved edit
We now have a one-page portal design. It isn't fully automated, nor is it even fully semi-automated, as there are still some manually filled-in areas. But it no longer requires any subpages in portal space, and that is a huge improvement. For example, Portal:Sacramento, California utilizes the one-page design concept. While is employs heavy use of templates, it does not have any subpages of its own.
I commend you for your teamwork edit
This is the most cooperative team I've ever seen. With a strong spirit of working together to get an important job done. Kudos to you.
In conclusion... edit
There's more. A lot more. But it will have to wait until next issue, but you don't have to wait. See what's going on at the WikiProject's talk page. — The Transhumanist 02:13, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot edit
Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.
SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!
If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. -- SuggestBot (talk) 12:42, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
Portals WikiProject update #009, 15 June 2018 edit
Selected animals
-
The horse (Equus ferus caballus) is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, close to Eohippus, into the large, single-toed animal of today. Humans began domesticating horses around 4000 BCE, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BCE. Horses in the subspecies caballus are domesticated, although some domesticated populations live in the wild as feral horses. These feral populations are not true wild horses, which are horses that never have been domesticated and historically linked to the megafauna category of species. There is an extensive, specialized vocabulary used to describe equine-related concepts, covering everything from anatomy to life stages, size, colors, markings, breeds, locomotion, and behavior.
Horses are adapted to run, allowing them to quickly escape predators, and possess an excellent sense of balance and a strong fight-or-flight response. Related to this need to flee from predators in the wild is an unusual trait: horses are able to sleep both standing up and lying down, with younger horses tending to sleep significantly more than adults. Female horses, called mares, carry their young for approximately 11 months and a young horse, called a foal, can stand and run shortly following birth. Most domesticated horses begin training under a saddle or in a harness between the ages of two and four. They reach full adult development by age five, and have an average lifespan of between 25 and 30 years.
Horse breeds are loosely divided into three categories based on general temperament: spirited "hot bloods" with speed and endurance; "cold bloods", such as draft horses and some ponies, suitable for slow, heavy work; and "warmbloods", developed from crosses between hot bloods and cold bloods, often focusing on creating breeds for specific riding purposes, particularly in Europe. There are more than 300 breeds of horse in the world today, developed for many different uses. (Full article...) -
The cat (Felis catus), commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat, is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae. Recent advances in archaeology and genetics have shown that the domestication of the cat occurred in the Near East around 7500 BC. It is commonly kept as a house pet and farm cat, but also ranges freely as a feral cat avoiding human contact. It is valued by humans for companionship and its ability to kill vermin. Its retractable claws are adapted to killing small prey like mice and rats. It has a strong, flexible body, quick reflexes, sharp teeth, and its night vision and sense of smell are well developed. It is a social species, but a solitary hunter and a crepuscular predator. Cat communication includes vocalizations like meowing, purring, trilling, hissing, growling, and grunting as well as cat body language. It can hear sounds too faint or too high in frequency for human ears, such as those made by small mammals. It also secretes and perceives pheromones.
Female domestic cats can have kittens from spring to late autumn in temperate zones and throughout the year in equatorial regions, with litter sizes often ranging from two to five kittens. Domestic cats are bred and shown at events as registered pedigreed cats, a hobby known as cat fancy. Animal population control of cats may be achieved by spaying and neutering, but their proliferation and the abandonment of pets has resulted in large numbers of feral cats worldwide, contributing to the extinction of bird, mammal and reptile species.
the domestic cat was the second most popular pet in the United States, with 95.6 million cats owned and around 42 million households owning at least one cat. In the United Kingdom, 26% of adults have a cat, with an estimated population of 10.9 million pet cats there were an estimated 220 million owned and 480 million stray cats in the world. (Full article...) -
The dog (Canis familiaris or Canis lupus familiaris) is a domesticated descendant of the wolf. Also called the domestic dog, it is derived from extinct gray wolves, and the gray wolf is the dog's closest living relative. The dog was the first species to be domesticated by humans. Experts estimate that hunter-gatherers domesticated dogs more than 15,000 years ago, which was before the development of agriculture. Due to their long association with humans, dogs have expanded to a large number of domestic individuals and gained the ability to thrive on a starch-rich diet that would be inadequate for other canids.
The dog has been selectively bred over millennia for various behaviors, sensory capabilities, and physical attributes. Dog breeds vary widely in shape, size, and color. They perform many roles for humans, such as hunting, herding, pulling loads, protection, assisting police and the military, companionship, therapy, and aiding disabled people. Over the millennia, dogs became uniquely adapted to human behavior, and the human–canine bond has been a topic of frequent study. This influence on human society has given them the sobriquet of "man's best friend". (Full article...) -
House mouse (Mus musculus)
A mouse (<abbr title="
'"`UNIQ--nowiki-0000000E-QINU`"'
">pl.: mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (Mus musculus). Mice are also popular as pets. In some places, certain kinds of field mice are locally common. They are known to invade homes for food and shelter.
Mice are typically distinguished from rats by their size. Generally, when a muroid rodent is discovered, its common name includes the term mouse if it is smaller, or rat if it is larger. The common terms rat and mouse are not taxonomically specific. Typical mice are classified in the genus Mus, but the term mouse is not confined to members of Mus and can also apply to species from other genera such as the deer mouse (Peromyscus).
Domestic mice sold as pets often differ substantially in size from the common house mouse. This is attributable to breeding and different conditions in the wild. The best-known strain of mouse is the white lab mouse. It has more uniform traits that are appropriate to its use in research. (Full article...)
Don't mind that box to the right. We'll be talking about that later, below.
Almost done... edit
With the portals upgrades?
No. :)
What is almost done is the updating of the main list of portals!
There are 23 portals left to be listed.
Kudos to the WikiGnome Squadron, for spearheading this.
Once it is fully updated, we need to keep it up to date. When you complete a portal, remember to add it to Portal:Contents/Portals.
Concerning portal upgrades, we are working on those section-by-section...
Associated Wikimedia section conversion task complete edit
The Associated Wikimedia sections of the entire set of portals have been upgraded. These are now handled on each portal base page (bypassing the previously used corresponding subpages), using the {{Wikimedia for portals}} template rather than reiterated copied/pasted code.
So, to be more accurate on reporting upgrade progress, that's one section down (for the whole set of portals), with (about) nine sections to go. (Skipping curated portals, regarding custom content sections, of course).
Further section conversions (using AWB) edit
Work is underway on converting Portals' introduction sections, and the categories sections.
If you would like to help, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Upgrade introduction sections and Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#AWB task: Convert category sections
Further section conversions (by hand) edit
Work has also started with converting selected picture sections to picture slideshow sections. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Install picture slideshows.
Quality rating system for portals under development edit
Currently, there is no quality rating for portals: in the Portals WikiProject box on each portals' talk page, it just says "Portal". But times are a changin'. Quality assessment is on the way, and you can help. See the discussion.
What's coming: excerpt slideshows edit
Evad37 has figured out a way to apply the picture slideshow feature to displaying article excerpts (now you can check out the provided box above). :) This allows us to bypass page purging to see the next selection, and you can even click through them rather quickly. Currently, the wikicode for doing this for article excerpts is a bit eye-boggling, and so we are looking into simplifying it. A streamlined version may be just around the corner.
Note that this is a prototype, not ready for widespread use. Click on the box in between the lesser than and greater than signs, to see what I mean. It was meant for pictures, and so the thumbnail feature doesn't apply to article prose very well. I've presented it even though it isn't ready, to show the direction portal development is heading. See the discussion.
Wow edit
I'm amazed at how rapidly portals are evolving. And we're still within a single generation of portal technological evolution. Imagine what they might be in 2 or 3 more generations of developments. Pretty soon, portals will be able to shake your hand. :) — The Transhumanist 11:05, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 29 June 2018 edit
- Special report: NPR and AfC – The Marshall Plan: an engagement and a marriage?
- Op-ed: What do admins do?
- News and notes: Money, milestones, and Wikimania
- In the media: Much wikilove from the Mayor of London, less from Paekākāriki or a certain candidate for U.S. Congress
- Discussion report: Deletion, page moves, and an update to the main page
- Featured content: New promotions
- Arbitration report: WWII, UK politics, and a user deCrat'ed
- Traffic report: Endgame
- Technology report: Improvements piled on more improvements
- Gallery: Wiki Loves Africa
- Recent research: How censorship can backfire and conversations can go awry
- Humour: Television plot lines
- Wikipedia essays: This month's pick by The Signpost editors
- From the archives: Wolves nip at Wikipedia's heels: A perspective on the cost of paid editing
Portals WikiProject update #010, 30 June 2018 edit
We've grown to 94 participants.
A warm welcome to dcljr and Kpgjhpjm.
Rating system for portals edit
We are in the process of developing a rating system specifically for portals, as the quality assessment scheme for articles does not apply to portals. It is coming along nicely. Your input would be very helpful. See the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/General#Proposed new quality class assessments.
Better than a barnstar edit
One of our participants got involved with this WikiProject through interest in how the new generation of portals would be handled in WP's MOS (Manual of Style). It didn't take long before he got sucked in deeper. This has given him an opportunity to look around, and so, he has made an assessment of this WikiProject's operations:
I'm quite frankly really impressed and inspired by what's happening here. If you'd asked me a year ago if I thought portals should just be scrapped as a failed, dragged-out experiment, I would have said "yes". This planning and the progress toward making it all practical is exemplary of the wiki spirit, in particular of a happy service-to-readers puppy properly wagging its technological and editorial tail instead of the other way around, and without "drama". It's also one of the few examples I've seen in a long time of a new wikiproject actually doing something useful and fomenting constructive activity (instead of acting as a barrier to participation, and a canvassing/ownership farm for PoV pushers). Kudos all around. — SMcCandlish
Congratulations, everyone. Keep up the great work.
Slideshow development edit
We've run into a glitch with slideshows: they don't work on mobile devices.
Initially, we will need to explore options that allow portals to have slideshows without adversely affecting mobile viewers. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Design#Mobile view support.
Eventually, we may need another way to do slideshows. If we do go this route, and I don't see why we wouldn't, then (user configurable) automatic slideshows also become a possibility.
TemplateStyles RfC passed edit
Once implemented, this will allow editors to create and edit cascading style sheets for use with templates. This will expand what we can do with portals. For more detail, see mw:Extension:TemplateStyles and Wikipedia:TemplateStyles.
Automation effort edit
We've run into an obstacle using Lua-based selective transclusion: Lua is incapable (on Wikipedia) of reading in article names from categories. Because of this, we'll need to seek other approaches for fully automating the Selected article section. We are exploring sources other than categories, and other technologies besides Lua.
Speaking of using other sources, the template {{Transclude list item excerpt}} collects list items from a specified page, or from a section of that page, and transcludes the lead from a randomly selected link from that list. Courtesy of Certes. So, if you use this in a portal, and if the template specifies a page or section serviced by JL-Bot, you've now got yourself an automatically updated section in the portal. JL-Bot provides links to featured content and good articles, by subject.
What is "fully automated"? When you create a portal using a creation template, and the portal works thereafter without editor intervention, the portal is fully automated. That is, the portal is supported by features that fetch new content. If you have to add new article names every so often for it to display new content, then it is only semi-automated.
Currently, the Selected article section is semi-automated, because it requires that an editor supplies the names of the various articles for which excerpts are (automatically) displayed. For examples, look at the wikisource code of Portal:Reptiles, Portal:Ancient Tamil civilization, and Portal:Reference works.
So far, 3 sections are fully automatable: the introduction section, the categories section, and the Associated Wikimedia section.
Where is all this heading? edit
Henry.
Or some other name.
Eventually, the portal department will be a software program. And we won't have to do anything (unless we want to). Not even tell it what portals to create (unless we want to). It will just do it all (plus whatever else we want it to do). And we will of course give it good manners, and a name.
But, that is a few years off.
Until then, building portals is still (partially) up to us. — The Transhumanist 13:34, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – July 2018 edit
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2018).
Administrator changes
- Pbsouthwood • TheSandDoctor
Gogo Dodo- Andrevan • Doug • EVula • KaisaL • Tony Fox • WilyD
Bureaucrat changes
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC about the deletion of drafts closed with a consensus to change the wording of WP:NMFD. Specifically, a draft that has been repeatedly resubmitted and declined at AfC without any substantial improvement may be deleted at MfD if consensus determines that it is unlikely to ever meet the requirements for mainspace and it otherwise meets one of the reasons for deletion outlined in the deletion policy.
- A request for comment closed with a consensus that the {{promising draft}} template cannot be used to indefinitely prevent a WP:G13 speedy deletion nomination.
Technical news
- Starting on July 9, the WMF Security team, Trust & Safety, and the broader technical community will be seeking input on an upcoming change that will restrict editing of site-wide JavaScript and CSS to a new technical administrators user group. Bureaucrats and stewards will be able to grant this right per a community-defined process. The intention is to reduce the number of accounts who can edit frontend code to those who actually need to, which in turn lessens the risk of malicious code being added that compromises the security and privacy of everyone who accesses Wikipedia. For more information, please review the FAQ.
- Syntax highlighting has been graduated from a Beta feature on the English Wikipedia. To enable this feature, click the highlighter icon (
) in your editing toolbar (or under the hamburger menu in the 2017 wikitext editor). This feature can help prevent you from making mistakes when editing complex templates. - IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in July (previously scheduled for June). This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.
Miscellaneous
- Currently around 20% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 17% a year ago. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless if you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
Category:Portals edit
Psst. Waggers. Take a peek at CAT:PORT and see if you can spot the odd man out. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 17:59, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
- @AfroThundr3007730: oops! WaggersTALK 23:02, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
Portals WikiProject update #011, 10 July 2018 edit
We now have 97 participants.
Be sure to welcome our newest members, BrantleyIzMe, Coffeeandcrumbs, and Nolan Perry, with warm regards.
Work is proceeding apace. We have 2 major thrusts right now: converting the intro sections of portals, and building the components of the one-page automated model...
- Converting the intro sections
We need everybody, except those building software components, to work on converting intros. If you have AWB, definitely use that. If not, then work on them manually. Even one a day, or as often as you can muster, will help a lot. There are only about 1,000 of them left to go, so if everyone chips in, it will go pretty quickly. Remember, there are 97 of us!
The intros for most of the portals starting with A through F have already been converted to use the {{Transclude lead excerpt}} template.
The standard wikicode for the automated intro that we want to put into place looks like this:
{{/box-header|Introduction|noedit=yes|}}
{{Transclude lead excerpt | {{PAGENAME}} | paragraphs=1-2 | files=1}}
{{Box-footer|[[{{PAGENAME}}|Read more...]]}}That works for most portals, but not all. For some portals it requires some tweaking, and for others, we may have to use a different or more customized approach. Remember to visually inspect each portal you work on and make sure that it works before moving on to the next one.
Be sure to skip user-maintained portals. They are listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Portals#Specific_portal_maintainers.
- AWB tips
I've started an AWB tips page, for those of you feeling a bit overwhelmed by that power user tool. Feel free to add to it and/or improve it.
- Portal automation
We have some very talented Lua programmers, who are pushing the limits of what we can do in gathering data from Wikipedia's various namespaces and presenting it in portals. Due to their efforts, Lua is powering the selective transclusion core of our emerging automated portal design, in the form of selected article sections that rotate content, and slideshows.
To go beyond Lua's limits, to take full advantage of Mediawiki's API, we are in the midst of adding another programming language to the resources we shall be making use of: JavaScript. The ways that JavaScript can help us edit portals to boost the power of our Lua solutions, are being explored, which will likely make the two languages synergistic if not symbiotic. Research is under way on how we can use JavaScript to make some of the portal semi-automated features fully automatically self-updating, in ways that Lua cannot. Like gathering random members from a category and inserting them into a portal's templates as parameters. Once the parameters are in place, Lua does the rest.
If you would like to get involved with design efforts, or just keep up on them, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Design.
- When should we start building new portals?
Well, not at the present time, because building portals is quite time consuming. The good news is that we are working on a design that will be fully automated, or as close to that as we can get. And the new design is being implemented in the portal department's main portal creation template. This means, that not only will portals update themselves, their creation will be highly automated as well. That's the nature of templates. You put them in place, and they just... work.
What I'm getting at here, is that it would be better to wait to build lots of new portals until after the new design is completed. Because with it, instead of taking hours to create a new portal, it will likely take minutes.
That does not mean we should be idle in the meantime. The main reason most of us are here is because it became apparent that portals were largely unmaintained and had grown out-of-date. This had become so apparent that a proposal was made to delete all the portals and the portal namespace to boot. That makes our main objective in the short term to improve all the existing portals so that the community will want to keep them—forever.
Building lots of new portals comes later. Let's fix up the ones we have first. ;)
And on that note, I bid you adieu. Until next newsletter, see ya 'round the WikiProject. — The Transhumanist 12:33, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
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Portals WikiProject update #012, 15 July 2018 edit
We have 97 participants.
Getting faster edit
Automation makes things go faster, even portal creation. One of the components Certes made was {{Transclude list item excerpt}}. I became curious about its possible applications.
So I worked out a portal design using it, the initial prototypes being Portal:Kyoto (without a "Selected pictures" section), and Portal:Dubai (with a "Selected pictures" section). Then I used Portal:Dubai as the basis for further portals of this type...
- I was able to revamp Portal:Munich from start to finish in less than 22 minutes.
- Portal:Dresden took about 19 minutes.
- Portal:Athens took less than 17 minutes.
- Did Portal:Florence in about 13 minutes.
- Portal:Stockholm also in about 13.
- Portal:Palermo approx. 12 minutes.
Why?
To see, and to show, what may become feasible via automation.
It now looks highly feasible that we could get portal construction time down to a few minutes, or maybe even down to a few seconds.
The singularity is just around the corner. :)
Slideshows edit
When using the {{Random slideshow}} template to display pictures, be sure to use the plural tense in the section title: "Selected pictures". That's because slideshows don't show up on many mobile devices. Instead the whole set of pictures is shown, hence the section title "Selected pictures", as it fits both situations.
In case you are curious, here is a list of the portals so far that have a slideshow:
|
Progress on intro conversions edit
The intros for most of the portals up through the letter "O" have been converted, using this wikicode:
{{/box-header|Introduction|noedit=yes|}}
{{Transclude lead excerpt | {{PAGENAME}} | paragraphs=1-2 | files=1}}
{{Box-footer|[[{{PAGENAME}}|Read more...]]}}Where the pagename didn't match the article title for the subject, the title was typed in.
Most of the portals that do not contain {{/intro}} or {{{{FULLPGENAME}}/Intro}} have not yet been processed.
About a thousand portals use the method of selective transclusion for the intro section. That's about two-thirds. That means we have one-third of the way to go on the intro section conversions.
Much more to come... edit
So much has been happening with portals that I can't keep up with it. (That's good). Which means, more in the upcoming issue. Until then, see ya 'round the project. Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 08:47, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
Portals WikiProject update #013, 18 July 2018 edit
I got overwhelmed IRL (in real life) during the production of issue #12. So, here is a catch-up issue, to help bring you (and me) up to speed on what is happening with portals...
By the way, we still have 97 participants. (Tell all your friends about this WikiProject, and have them join!)
Panoramas! edit
One cool feature of some of the geographical portals is a panoramic picture at the top of the intro section.
Check these out:
- Portal:Kyoto
- Portal:Miami
- Portal:Seattle
- Portal:Houston
- Portal:Tokyo
- Portal:New Orleans
- Portal:Brisbane
- Portal:Calgary
- Portal:Moscow
The Portals WikiGnome squadron is busy adding panoramas to geographical portals that don't yet have one. Feel free to join in on the fun. See task details at Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Add a panorama or skyline to a geographic portal.
Caveat: avoid super-huge pics, as they can cause portal scripts to time-out. Please try to keep picture size down below 2 megabytes. Thank you.
Auto-populated slideshows edit
Speaking of pictures...
We now have two slideshow templates. You may be familiar with {{Random slideshow}}, in which the editor types in (or copies/pastes) a list of pictures he or she wants it to display.
Well, now we have another template, courtesy of Evad37, which accepts one or more page names instead, and displays a random image off of the listed pages. So instead of listing dozens of files by hand, you can include a title or three to be scanned automatically. It even lets you specify particular sections.
The new slideshow template is {{Transclude files as random slideshow}}.
Here's a sample, that grabs images from a single page:
Selected motorcycle or motorcycling pictures
-
Brough Superior SS 100 1925 (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling) -
2015 BMW R1200RT Sport Touring Motorcycle (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling) -
Lucius Copeland 1894 (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling) -
Joey Dunlop on his Honda RC30 ready for the Senior TT (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling) -
Ernesto 'Che' Guevara (left) holding the handlebars of his 500 cc single cylinder Norton motorcycle (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling) -
Honda CB750 inline four, the first to be called a 'superbike', and the archetypal Universal Japanese Motorcycle (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling) -
A 1954 Triumph T110 (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling) -
Logo of the British Motorcyclists Federation (BMF) (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling) -
A 1969 Harley-Davidson chopper, a replica of the 'Captain America' bike from Easy Rider (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling) -
BMW's first motorcycle, the 1923-1925 R32 (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling) -
Honda Super Cub, the archetypal underbone and the world's best-selling motor vehicle (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling) -
FIM Motocross World Championship, taking place at Mallory Park, England (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling)
_(1)_-_The_Art_of_the_Motorcycle_-_Memphis.jpg)
New Template:Box-header colour edit
Speaking of new templates, here's another one!
Also from Evad37, we have a new component for starting section boxes, that is color configurable, and that bypasses the need for box-header subpages altogether. It is {{Box-header colour}}.
For color support, see Web colors.
For the discussion in which this was inspired, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Tasks#Colour combinations for accessibility.
(In case you didn't notice, the slideshow box above uses this new template).
BTW, don't forget to close your box with {{Box-footer}}.
Where are we on the redesign? edit
The answer to this question is quite involved, and would fill this page to overflowing. Therefore, this subject, including a complete update on where we are at and where we are going with portal design, is covered at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Design.
Where are we on portal conversion? edit
An AWB pass to convert intros on the portals has been completed. The pass couldn't convert them all (due to various formatting configurations, etc.).
All but about 170 portals now have introductions selectively transcluded on the base page. Not counting manually maintained portals, that leaves about 70 portals that either need their intros converted, or they need an intro.
Next, we'll be converting the categories sections!
What's the plan, man? edit
The course of action we have been taking goes something like this, with all steps being pursued simultaeneously...
1) Design a one-page automated portal model
2) Convert existing portals to that design (except those being manually maintained)
3) Remove subpages no longer needed
4) Develop further tools to empower editors working on portals
Later, when the tools are up to the task, filling in the gaps in coverage (with new portals) will also become practical.
Are we caught up yet? edit
Probably not.
Who knows what our programmers and editors have dreamed up while I was writing this.
See ya again soon, — The Transhumanist 11:09, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
Portals WikiProject update #014, 27 July 2018 edit
Development of design continues, full speed ahead...
Excerpt slideshows are here! edit
Can you say "paradigm shift"?
Now, in addition to picture slideshows, we have slideshows that can display excerpts. Portals are not just for topic tasting anymore. Now they can be made useful for surveying Wikipedia's coverage of entire subjects. This gives a deeper meaning to their name. Hmmm. "Portals"... Doorways to knowledge.
Portal:Lithuania was redesigned using excerpt slideshows. Check it out.
For those of you who cannot wait to test out these new toys...
We have not one, but three excerpt slideshow components to pick from:
{{Transclude excerpts as random slideshow}}
- For this one, you specify the page names where the excerpts are to be extracted from.
{{Transclude list item excerpts as random slideshow}}
- This one accepts source pages from where the page names are gathered from list items. Then an excerpt from one of those pages is displayed. The selection of what is included in the slide show can be limited to a specific number from the collection (of the page names gathered), and that selection is renewed from scratch each time the page is purged.
- For example, if you specify Template:World Heritage Sites in Spain as a source page, the slideshow will cycle through those sites. Now you don't have to type them in one-by-one. This greatly reduces portal creation time.
{{Transclude linked excerpts as random slideshow}}
- Same as above, but gathers links instead of just linked list items.
Panoramic banners edit
{{Portal image banner}} displays a panoramic picture the width of the page, and adjusts its size, so it stays that way even if the user changes page view size. And it accepts multiple file names, so that the picture displayed randomizes between them each time the page is visited/purged.
Give resizing the page a try:
You can now balance section boxes edit
Before:
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The gharial (Gavialis gangeticus), also known as gavial or fish-eating crocodile, is a crocodilian in the family Gavialidae and among the longest of all living crocodilians. Mature females are 2.6 to 4.5 m (8 ft 6 in to 14 ft 9 in) long, and males 3 to 6 m (9 ft 10 in to 19 ft 8 in). Adult males have a distinct boss at the end of the snout, which resembles an earthenware pot known as a ghara, hence the name "gharial". The gharial is well adapted to catching fish because of its long, narrow snout and 110 sharp, interlocking teeth. (Full article...) -
Amphisbaenia /æmfɪsˈbiːniə/ (called amphisbaenians or worm lizards) is a group of typically legless lizards, comprising over 200 extant species. Amphisbaenians are characterized by their long bodies, the reduction or loss of the limbs, and rudimentary eyes. As many species have a pink body and scales arranged in rings, they have a superficial resemblance to earthworms. While the genus Bipes retains forelimbs, all other genera are limbless. Phylogenetic studies suggest that they are nested within Lacertoidea, closely related to the lizard family Lacertidae. Amphisbaenians are widely distributed, occurring in North America, Europe, Africa, South America, Western Asia and the Caribbean. Most species are less than 6 inches (15 cm) long. (Full article...) -
Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes (/sɜːrˈpɛntiːz/). Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads (cranial kinesis). To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have independently evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs at least twenty-five times via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. These resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, although this rule is not universal (see Amphisbaenia, Dibamidae, and Pygopodidae). (Full article...) -
A caiman (/ˈkeɪmən/; also cayman as a variant spelling from Taíno kaiman[additional citation(s) needed]) is an alligatorid belonging to the subfamily Caimaninae, one of two primary lineages within the Alligatoridae family, the other being alligators. Caimans inhabit Mexico and Central and South America from marshes and swamps to mangrove rivers and lakes. They have scaly skin and live a fairly nocturnal existence. They are relatively small-sized crocodilians with an average maximum weight of 6 to 40 kg (13 to 88 lb) depending on species, with the exception of the black caiman (Melanosuchus niger), which can grow more than 4 m (13 ft) in length and weigh in excess of 1,000 kg (2,200 Ib). The black caiman is the largest caiman species in the world and is found in the slow-moving rivers and lakes that surround the Amazon basin. The smallest species is the Cuvier's dwarf caiman (Paleosuchus palpebrosus), which grows to 1.2 to 1.5 m (3.9 to 4.9 ft) long. There are six different species of caiman found throughout the watery jungle habitats of Central and Southern America. The average length for most of the other caiman species is about 2 to 2.5 m (6.6 to 8.2 ft) long. (Full article...) -
Lizard is the common name used for all squamate reptiles other than snakes (and to a lesser extent amphisbaenians), encompassing over 7,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The grouping is paraphyletic as some lizards are more closely related to snakes than they are to other lizards. Lizards range in size from chameleons and geckos a few centimeters long to the 3-meter-long Komodo dragon. (Full article...) -
Crocodiles (family Crocodylidae) or true crocodiles are large semiaquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia. The term crocodile is sometimes used even more loosely to include all extant members of the order Crocodilia, which includes the alligators and caimans (family Alligatoridae), the gharial and false gharial (family Gavialidae) among other extinct taxa. (Full article...) -
The tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) is a species of reptile endemic to New Zealand. Despite its close resemblance to lizards, it is part of a distinct lineage, the order Rhynchocephalia. The name tuatara is derived from the Māori language and means "peaks on the back". (Full article...) -
Tortoises (/ˈtɔːr.təs.ɪz/) are reptiles of the family Testudinidae of the order Testudines (Latin for "tortoise"). Like other turtles, tortoises have a shell to protect from predation and other threats. The shell in tortoises is generally hard, and like other members of the suborder Cryptodira, they retract their necks and heads directly backward into the shell to protect them. (Full article...) -
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines, characterized by a special shell developed mainly from their ribs. Modern turtles are divided into two major groups, the Pleurodira (side necked turtles) and Cryptodira (hidden necked turtles), which differ in the way the head retracts. There are 360 living and recently extinct species of turtles, including land-dwelling tortoises and freshwater terrapins. They are found on most continents, some islands and, in the case of sea turtles, much of the ocean. Like other amniotes (reptiles, birds, and mammals) they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. (Full article...) -
An alligator, or colloquially gator, is a large reptile in the genus Alligator of the family Alligatoridae of the order Crocodilia. The two extant species are the American alligator (A. mississippiensis) and the Chinese alligator (A. sinensis). Additionally, several extinct species of alligator are known from fossil remains. Alligators first appeared during the late Eocene epoch about 37 million years ago. (Full article...)
_male.jpg)
.jpg)
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A frog is any member of a diverse and largely carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order Anura (ἀνούρα, literally without tail in Ancient Greek). The oldest fossil "proto-frog" Triadobatrachus is known from the Early Triassic of Madagascar, but molecular clock dating suggests their split from other amphibians may extend further back to the Permian, 265 million years ago. Frogs are widely distributed, ranging from the tropics to subarctic regions, but the greatest concentration of species diversity is in tropical rainforest. Frogs account for around 88% of extant amphibian species. They are also one of the five most diverse vertebrate orders. Warty frog species tend to be called toads, but the distinction between frogs and toads is informal, not from taxonomy or evolutionary history.
An adult frog has a stout body, protruding eyes, anteriorly-attached tongue, limbs folded underneath, and no tail (the tail of tailed frogs is an extension of the male cloaca). Frogs have glandular skin, with secretions ranging from distasteful to toxic. Their skin varies in colour from well-camouflaged dappled brown, grey and green to vivid patterns of bright red or yellow and black to show toxicity and ward off predators. Adult frogs live in fresh water and on dry land; some species are adapted for living underground or in trees.
Frogs typically lay their eggs in water. The eggs hatch into aquatic larvae called tadpoles that have tails and internal gills. They have highly specialized rasping mouth parts suitable for herbivorous, omnivorous or planktivorous diets. The life cycle is completed when they metamorphose into adults. A few species deposit eggs on land or bypass the tadpole stage. Adult frogs generally have a carnivorous diet consisting of small invertebrates, but omnivorous species exist and a few feed on plant matter. Frog skin has a rich microbiome which is important to their health. Frogs are extremely efficient at converting what they eat into body mass. They are an important food source for predators and part of the food web dynamics of many of the world's ecosystems. The skin is semi-permeable, making them susceptible to dehydration, so they either live in moist places or have special adaptations to deal with dry habitats. Frogs produce a wide range of vocalizations, particularly in their breeding season, and exhibit many different kinds of complex behaviors to attract mates, to fend off predators and to generally survive. (Full article...) -
Caecilians (/sɪˈsɪliən/; New Latin for 'blind ones') are a group of limbless, vermiform (worm-shaped) or serpentine (snake-shaped) amphibians with small or sometimes nonexistent eyes. They mostly live hidden in soil or in streambeds, and this cryptic lifestyle renders caecilians among the least familiar amphibians. Modern caecilians live in the tropics of South and Central America, Africa, and southern Asia. Caecilians feed on small subterranean creatures such as earthworms. The body is cylindrical and often darkly coloured, and the skull is bullet-shaped and strongly built. Caecilian heads have several unique adaptations, including fused cranial and jaw bones, a two-part system of jaw muscles, and a chemosensory tentacle in front of the eye. The skin is slimy and bears ringlike markings or grooves and may contain scales.
Modern caecilians are a clade, the order Gymnophiona /ˌdʒɪmnəˈfaɪənə/ (or Apoda /ˈæpədə/), one of the three living amphibian groups alongside Anura (frogs) and Urodela (salamanders). Gymnophiona is a crown group, encompassing all modern caecilians and all descendants of their last common ancestor. There are more than 220 living species of caecilian classified in 10 families. Gymnophionomorpha is a recently coined name for the corresponding total group which includes Gymnophiona as well as a few extinct stem-group caecilians (extinct amphibians whose closest living relatives are caecilians but are not descended from any caecilian). Some palaeontologists have used the name Gymnophiona for the total group and the old name Apoda for the crown group'. However, Apoda has other even older uses, including as the name of a genus of Butterfly making its use potentially confusing and best avoided. 'Gymnophiona' derives from the Greek words γυμνος / gymnos (Ancient Greek for 'naked') and οφις / ophis (Ancient Greek for 'snake'), as the caecilians were originally thought to be related to snakes and to lack scales.
The study of caecilian evolution is complicated by their poor fossil record and specialized anatomy. Genetic evidence and some anatomical details (such as pedicellate teeth) support the idea that frogs, salamanders, and caecilians (collectively known as lissamphibians) are each others' closest relatives. Frogs and salamanders show many similarities to dissorophoids, a group of extinct amphibians in the order Temnospondyli. Caecilians are more controversial; many studies extend dissorophoid ancestry to caecilians. Some studies have instead argued that caecilians descend from extinct lepospondyl or stereospondyl amphibians, contradicting evidence for lissamphibian monophyly (common ancestry). Rare fossils of early gymnophionans such as Eocaecilia and Funcusvermis have helped to test the various conflicting hypotheses for the relationships between caecilians and other living and extinct amphibians. ('Full article...) -
Toad is a common name for certain frogs, especially of the family Bufonidae, that are characterized by dry, leathery skin, short legs, and large bumps covering the parotoid glands.
A distinction between frogs and toads is not made in scientific taxonomy, but is common in popular culture (folk taxonomy), in which toads are associated with drier, rougher skin and more terrestrial habitats. (Full article...) -
Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by their lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults. All ten extant salamander families are grouped together under the order Urodela from the group Caudata. Salamander diversity is highest in eastern North America, especially in the Appalachian Mountains; most species are found in the Holarctic realm, with some species present in the Neotropical realm.
Salamanders never have more than four toes on their front legs and five on their rear legs, but some species have fewer digits and others lack hind limbs. Their permeable skin usually makes them reliant on habitats in or near water or other cool, damp places. Some salamander species are fully aquatic throughout their lives, some take to the water intermittently, and others are entirely terrestrial as adults.
This group of amphibians is capable of regenerating lost limbs as well as other damaged parts of their bodies. Researchers hope to reverse engineer the regenerative processes for potential human medical applications, such as brain and spinal cord injury treatment or preventing harmful scarring during heart surgery recovery. The remarkable ability of salamanders to regenerate is not just limited to limbs but extends to vital organs such as the heart, jaw, and parts of the spinal cord, showing their uniqueness compared to different types of vertebrates. This ability is very remarkable for occurring without any type of scarring. This has made salamanders an invaluable model organisms in scientific research aimed at understanding and achieving regenerative processes for medical advancements in human and animal biology. (Full article...)
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.jpg)
After:
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Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines, characterized by a special shell developed mainly from their ribs. Modern turtles are divided into two major groups, the Pleurodira (side necked turtles) and Cryptodira (hidden necked turtles), which differ in the way the head retracts. There are 360 living and recently extinct species of turtles, including land-dwelling tortoises and freshwater terrapins. They are found on most continents, some islands and, in the case of sea turtles, much of the ocean. Like other amniotes (reptiles, birds, and mammals) they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. (Full article...) -
Lizard is the common name used for all squamate reptiles other than snakes (and to a lesser extent amphisbaenians), encompassing over 7,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The grouping is paraphyletic as some lizards are more closely related to snakes than they are to other lizards. Lizards range in size from chameleons and geckos a few centimeters long to the 3-meter-long Komodo dragon. (Full article...) -
The gharial (Gavialis gangeticus), also known as gavial or fish-eating crocodile, is a crocodilian in the family Gavialidae and among the longest of all living crocodilians. Mature females are 2.6 to 4.5 m (8 ft 6 in to 14 ft 9 in) long, and males 3 to 6 m (9 ft 10 in to 19 ft 8 in). Adult males have a distinct boss at the end of the snout, which resembles an earthenware pot known as a ghara, hence the name "gharial". The gharial is well adapted to catching fish because of its long, narrow snout and 110 sharp, interlocking teeth. (Full article...) -
A caiman (/ˈkeɪmən/; also cayman as a variant spelling from Taíno kaiman[additional citation(s) needed]) is an alligatorid belonging to the subfamily Caimaninae, one of two primary lineages within the Alligatoridae family, the other being alligators. Caimans inhabit Mexico and Central and South America from marshes and swamps to mangrove rivers and lakes. They have scaly skin and live a fairly nocturnal existence. They are relatively small-sized crocodilians with an average maximum weight of 6 to 40 kg (13 to 88 lb) depending on species, with the exception of the black caiman (Melanosuchus niger), which can grow more than 4 m (13 ft) in length and weigh in excess of 1,000 kg (2,200 Ib). The black caiman is the largest caiman species in the world and is found in the slow-moving rivers and lakes that surround the Amazon basin. The smallest species is the Cuvier's dwarf caiman (Paleosuchus palpebrosus), which grows to 1.2 to 1.5 m (3.9 to 4.9 ft) long. There are six different species of caiman found throughout the watery jungle habitats of Central and Southern America. The average length for most of the other caiman species is about 2 to 2.5 m (6.6 to 8.2 ft) long. (Full article...) -
Tortoises (/ˈtɔːr.təs.ɪz/) are reptiles of the family Testudinidae of the order Testudines (Latin for "tortoise"). Like other turtles, tortoises have a shell to protect from predation and other threats. The shell in tortoises is generally hard, and like other members of the suborder Cryptodira, they retract their necks and heads directly backward into the shell to protect them. (Full article...) -
Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes (/sɜːrˈpɛntiːz/). Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads (cranial kinesis). To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have independently evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs at least twenty-five times via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. These resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, although this rule is not universal (see Amphisbaenia, Dibamidae, and Pygopodidae). (Full article...) -
Amphisbaenia /æmfɪsˈbiːniə/ (called amphisbaenians or worm lizards) is a group of typically legless lizards, comprising over 200 extant species. Amphisbaenians are characterized by their long bodies, the reduction or loss of the limbs, and rudimentary eyes. As many species have a pink body and scales arranged in rings, they have a superficial resemblance to earthworms. While the genus Bipes retains forelimbs, all other genera are limbless. Phylogenetic studies suggest that they are nested within Lacertoidea, closely related to the lizard family Lacertidae. Amphisbaenians are widely distributed, occurring in North America, Europe, Africa, South America, Western Asia and the Caribbean. Most species are less than 6 inches (15 cm) long. (Full article...) -
Crocodiles (family Crocodylidae) or true crocodiles are large semiaquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia. The term crocodile is sometimes used even more loosely to include all extant members of the order Crocodilia, which includes the alligators and caimans (family Alligatoridae), the gharial and false gharial (family Gavialidae) among other extinct taxa. (Full article...) -
An alligator, or colloquially gator, is a large reptile in the genus Alligator of the family Alligatoridae of the order Crocodilia. The two extant species are the American alligator (A. mississippiensis) and the Chinese alligator (A. sinensis). Additionally, several extinct species of alligator are known from fossil remains. Alligators first appeared during the late Eocene epoch about 37 million years ago. (Full article...) -
The tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) is a species of reptile endemic to New Zealand. Despite its close resemblance to lizards, it is part of a distinct lineage, the order Rhynchocephalia. The name tuatara is derived from the Māori language and means "peaks on the back". (Full article...)
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A frog is any member of a diverse and largely carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order Anura (ἀνούρα, literally without tail in Ancient Greek). The oldest fossil "proto-frog" Triadobatrachus is known from the Early Triassic of Madagascar, but molecular clock dating suggests their split from other amphibians may extend further back to the Permian, 265 million years ago. Frogs are widely distributed, ranging from the tropics to subarctic regions, but the greatest concentration of species diversity is in tropical rainforest. Frogs account for around 88% of extant amphibian species. They are also one of the five most diverse vertebrate orders. Warty frog species tend to be called toads, but the distinction between frogs and toads is informal, not from taxonomy or evolutionary history.
An adult frog has a stout body, protruding eyes, anteriorly-attached tongue, limbs folded underneath, and no tail (the tail of tailed frogs is an extension of the male cloaca). Frogs have glandular skin, with secretions ranging from distasteful to toxic. Their skin varies in colour from well-camouflaged dappled brown, grey and green to vivid patterns of bright red or yellow and black to show toxicity and ward off predators. Adult frogs live in fresh water and on dry land; some species are adapted for living underground or in trees.
Frogs typically lay their eggs in water. The eggs hatch into aquatic larvae called tadpoles that have tails and internal gills. They have highly specialized rasping mouth parts suitable for herbivorous, omnivorous or planktivorous diets. The life cycle is completed when they metamorphose into adults. A few species deposit eggs on land or bypass the tadpole stage. Adult frogs generally have a carnivorous diet consisting of small invertebrates, but omnivorous species exist and a few feed on plant matter. Frog skin has a rich microbiome which is important to their health. Frogs are extremely efficient at converting what they eat into body mass. They are an important food source for predators and part of the food web dynamics of many of the world's ecosystems. The skin is semi-permeable, making them susceptible to dehydration, so they either live in moist places or have special adaptations to deal with dry habitats. Frogs produce a wide range of vocalizations, particularly in their breeding season, and exhibit many different kinds of complex behaviors to attract mates, to fend off predators and to generally survive. (Full article...) -
Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by their lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults. All ten extant salamander families are grouped together under the order Urodela from the group Caudata. Salamander diversity is highest in eastern North America, especially in the Appalachian Mountains; most species are found in the Holarctic realm, with some species present in the Neotropical realm.
Salamanders never have more than four toes on their front legs and five on their rear legs, but some species have fewer digits and others lack hind limbs. Their permeable skin usually makes them reliant on habitats in or near water or other cool, damp places. Some salamander species are fully aquatic throughout their lives, some take to the water intermittently, and others are entirely terrestrial as adults.
This group of amphibians is capable of regenerating lost limbs as well as other damaged parts of their bodies. Researchers hope to reverse engineer the regenerative processes for potential human medical applications, such as brain and spinal cord injury treatment or preventing harmful scarring during heart surgery recovery. The remarkable ability of salamanders to regenerate is not just limited to limbs but extends to vital organs such as the heart, jaw, and parts of the spinal cord, showing their uniqueness compared to different types of vertebrates. This ability is very remarkable for occurring without any type of scarring. This has made salamanders an invaluable model organisms in scientific research aimed at understanding and achieving regenerative processes for medical advancements in human and animal biology. (Full article...) -
Toad is a common name for certain frogs, especially of the family Bufonidae, that are characterized by dry, leathery skin, short legs, and large bumps covering the parotoid glands.
A distinction between frogs and toads is not made in scientific taxonomy, but is common in popular culture (folk taxonomy), in which toads are associated with drier, rougher skin and more terrestrial habitats. (Full article...) -
Caecilians (/sɪˈsɪliən/; New Latin for 'blind ones') are a group of limbless, vermiform (worm-shaped) or serpentine (snake-shaped) amphibians with small or sometimes nonexistent eyes. They mostly live hidden in soil or in streambeds, and this cryptic lifestyle renders caecilians among the least familiar amphibians. Modern caecilians live in the tropics of South and Central America, Africa, and southern Asia. Caecilians feed on small subterranean creatures such as earthworms. The body is cylindrical and often darkly coloured, and the skull is bullet-shaped and strongly built. Caecilian heads have several unique adaptations, including fused cranial and jaw bones, a two-part system of jaw muscles, and a chemosensory tentacle in front of the eye. The skin is slimy and bears ringlike markings or grooves and may contain scales.
Modern caecilians are a clade, the order Gymnophiona /ˌdʒɪmnəˈfaɪənə/ (or Apoda /ˈæpədə/), one of the three living amphibian groups alongside Anura (frogs) and Urodela (salamanders). Gymnophiona is a crown group, encompassing all modern caecilians and all descendants of their last common ancestor. There are more than 220 living species of caecilian classified in 10 families. Gymnophionomorpha is a recently coined name for the corresponding total group which includes Gymnophiona as well as a few extinct stem-group caecilians (extinct amphibians whose closest living relatives are caecilians but are not descended from any caecilian). Some palaeontologists have used the name Gymnophiona for the total group and the old name Apoda for the crown group'. However, Apoda has other even older uses, including as the name of a genus of Butterfly making its use potentially confusing and best avoided. 'Gymnophiona' derives from the Greek words γυμνος / gymnos (Ancient Greek for 'naked') and οφις / ophis (Ancient Greek for 'snake'), as the caecilians were originally thought to be related to snakes and to lack scales.
The study of caecilian evolution is complicated by their poor fossil record and specialized anatomy. Genetic evidence and some anatomical details (such as pedicellate teeth) support the idea that frogs, salamanders, and caecilians (collectively known as lissamphibians) are each others' closest relatives. Frogs and salamanders show many similarities to dissorophoids, a group of extinct amphibians in the order Temnospondyli. Caecilians are more controversial; many studies extend dissorophoid ancestry to caecilians. Some studies have instead argued that caecilians descend from extinct lepospondyl or stereospondyl amphibians, contradicting evidence for lissamphibian monophyly (common ancestry). Rare fossils of early gymnophionans such as Eocaecilia and Funcusvermis have helped to test the various conflicting hypotheses for the relationships between caecilians and other living and extinct amphibians. ('Full article...)
Notice how the box bottoms line up. That readjusts even if you click the slideshow buttons.
The template used for this is {{Flex columns}}.
By the way, when you include more than one box in a column, any left over whitespace in that column is divided between them.
Box-header colour edit
You may have noticed the new {{Box-header colour}} template used above. It lets you pick the color locally (right on the same page). Before, this was handled on a subpage somewhere.
Testing, testing edit
Now that we have lots of toys to play with for making cool portals...
Don't forget, that the majority of views of Wikipedia these days are from mobile devices. We need to make certain that portals display well on those. So, remember to check your work on portals in mobile view mode...
To see a portal in mobile view mode, insert a ".m" into a portal's url, after "en", like this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Reptile
If you discover problems in a portal you can't fix, report them on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Design.
Until next time... edit
Have fun. — The Transhumanist 01:01, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
Portals WikiProject update #015, 31 July 2018 edit
Now that we have lots of toys to play with, it's play time!
Here are some fun activities to use our new toys on...
Fun activity #1: put the improved panorama template to use edit
Would you like to travel around the world? Well, this may be the next best thing...
Here's another fun toy to play with: {{Portal image banner}}
To see what it looks like, check out the panoramas at the tops of the following portals:
- Portal:India
- Portal:Melbourne
- Portal:Perth
- Portal:Monaco
- Portal:South Sudan
- Portal:Thiruvananthapuram
- Portal:Lithuania
- Portal:Brisbane
- Portal:Abu Dhabi
- Portal:Athens
- Portal:Barcelona
- Portal:Calgary
- Portal:Dhaka
- Portal:Dresden
- Portal:Edinburgh
- Portal:Florence
- Portal:Houston
- Portal:Miami
- Portal:Milan
- Portal:Moscow
- Portal:Munich
- Portal:Seattle
- Portal:Stockholm
- Portal:Turin
- Portal:Bermuda
The task: There are many geography portals that lack panoramas. Please add some. Please keep the file size down below 2 megabytes, and keep in mind that you may find quality banners at commons: at less than 200K (.2 megabytes). Good search terms to include with the place name are "banner", "cityscape", "skyline", "panorama", "landscape", etc.
Related task: There are also lots of geography portals that have panoramas used as gaudy banners (with print or icons splattered across them) or that display them in some random location on the page. In many cases, those pages would be improved by displaying the panorama as a clean picture at the top of the intro section, like on the examples above. This works best with banner-like panoramas. Please fix such pages when you come across them, if you believe it would improve the look of the page.
Taller images might be better suited displayed further down the page, or in the "Selected images" section.
Note that {{Portal image banner}} supports multiple images, and displays one at random upon the first visit, and each time the page is purged.
Fun activity #2: install "Selected images" sections edit
That is, image slideshows!
Over 200 have been installed so far. Just 1200 to go. (Be sure not to install them on portals with active maintainers, unless they want you to).
The title "Selected images" reflects the fact that not all images on Wikipedia are pictures, and encompasses maps, graphs, diagrams, sketches, paintings, pictures, and so on.
The toys we have to work with for this are:
{{Random slideshow}}
and
{{Transclude files as random slideshow}}
The task: Using one of the above templates directly on a portal's base page, replace static "Selected picture" sections, with a section like one of these:
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The red lionfish (Pterois volitans) is a venomous coral reef fish from the Indian and western Pacific Oceans. The red lionfish is also found off the east coast of the United States, and was likely first introduced off the Florida coast in the early to mid 1990s. -
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Salmon fry hatching (Salmo salar) - the larva has grown around the remains of the yolk - visible are the arteries spinning around the yolk and little oildrops, also the gut, the spine, the main caudal blood vessel, the bladder and the arcs of the gills.
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A dirt road acted as a fire barrier in South Africa. The effects of the barrier can clearly be seen on the unburnt (left) and burnt (right) sides of the road. (from Wildfire) -
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Global fires during the year 2008 for the months of August (top image) and February (bottom image), as detected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite. (from Wildfire) -
Sediment off the Yucatán Peninsula (from Wildfire) -
Cupressaceae: scale leaves of Lawson's cypress (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana); scale in mm (from Conifer) -
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Old-growth forest in the Opal Creek Wilderness, a wilderness area located in the Willamette National Forest in the U.S. state of Oregon, on the border of Mount Hood National Forest. It has the largest uncut watershed in Oregon. (from Old-growth forest) -
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Wildfire burning in the Kaibab National Forest, Arizona, United States, in 2020. The Mangum Fire burned more than 70,000 acres (280 km2) of forest. (from Wildfire) -
Virgin forest about 2500 m above sea level in Shennongjia Forestry District, Hubei, China (from Old-growth forest) -
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Charred landscape following a crown fire in the North Cascades, United States (from Wildfire) -
Wildfire near Yosemite National Park, United States, in 2013. The Rim Fire burned more than 250,000 acres (1,000 km2) of forest. (from Wildfire) -
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Animation of diaphragmatic breathing with the diaphragm shown in green (from Wildfire) -
Globosa, a cultivar of Pinus sylvestris, a northern European species, in the North American Red Butte Garden (from Conifer) -
Redwood tree in northern California redwood forest: According to the National Park Service, "96 percent of the original old-growth coast redwoods have been logged." (from Old-growth forest) -
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Antarctic beech old-growth in Lamington National Park, Queensland, Australia (from Old-growth forest) -
A prescribed burn in a Pinus nigra stand in Portugal (from Wildfire) -
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Tāne Mahuta, the biggest kauri (Agathis australis) tree alive, in the Waipoua Forest of the Northland Region of New Zealand. (from Conifer) -
A Russian firefighter extinguishing a wildfire (from Wildfire) -
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Old-growth European beech forest in Biogradska Gora National Park, Montenegro (from Old-growth forest) -
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Pinaceae: unopened female cones of subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa) (from Conifer) -
Pinaceae: needle-like leaves and vegetative buds of Coast Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii) (from Conifer) -
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In Abies grandis (grand fir), and many other species with spirally arranged leaves, leaf bases are twisted to flatten their arrangement and maximize light capture. (from Conifer) -
The northern spotted owl primarily inhabits old-growth forests in the northern part of its range (Canada to southern Oregon) and landscapes with a mix of old and younger forest types in the southern part of its range (the Klamath region and California). (from Old-growth forest) -
Fire Propagation Model (from Wildfire) -
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First growth or virgin forest near Mount Rainier, 1914 (from Old-growth forest) -
Avatar Grove near Port Renfrew, British Columbia: Giant Douglas firs (left) and red cedars (right) fill the grove. (from Old-growth forest) -
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Downed wood replenishes topsoil as it decays. (from Old-growth forest) -
Ecological succession after a wildfire in a boreal pine forest next to Hara Bog, Lahemaa National Park, Estonia. The pictures were taken one and two years after the fire. (from Wildfire) -
The narrow conical shape of northern conifers, and their downward-drooping limbs, help them shed snow. (from Conifer) -
Aerial view of deliberate wildfires on the Khun Tan Range, Thailand. These fires are lit by local farmers every year to promote the growth of a certain mushroom. (from Wildfire) -
Fungus Climacocystis borealis on a tree stump in the Białowieża Forest, one of the last largely intact primeval forests in Central Europe (from Old-growth forest) -
A thin transverse section showing the internal structure of conifer wood (from Conifer)
.jpg)
.svg)
.jpeg)
.jpg)
The one on the left uses {{Random slideshow}} (which accepts file names), and the one on the right uses {{Transclude files as random slideshow}} (which accepts source pages from which the filenames are gathered).
The above section formatting is used on many of the pages you will come across, but not all. In those cases, use whatever section formatting matches the rest of the page.
Note that you may come across "Selected picture" sections done with {{Random portal component}} templates. That template call is the entire section. Replace it with a section that matches the other sections on the page, and put the new slideshow inside that.
For example, in Portal:California, this code:
{{Random portal component|max=21|seed=27|header=Selected picture|subpage=Selected picture}}
was replaced with this code:
{{/box-header|Selected images|noedit=yes}}
{{Transclude files as random slideshow
| {{PAGENAME}}
| Culture of {{PAGENAME}}
}}
{{Box-footer}}And the new section blended right in with the formatting of the rest of the page. Note the use of the {{PAGENAME}} magic word. Plain article titles also work. Don't feel limited to one or two page names. But be sure to test each slideshow before installing the next one. (Or if you prefer, in batches - just don't leave them hanging). Report technical problems at the Portal design talk page.
Fun activity #3: upgrade "Selected article" sections edit
These sections, where unmaintained, have gone stale. That's because 1) the excerpts are static, having been manually copied and pasted, and 2) because they lack automatic addition of new entries.
They can be upgraded with:
or
{{Transclude list item excerpt}}
or
All three of these will provide excerpts that won't go stale. The latter two can provide excerpt collections that won't go stale, by providing new entries over time. The key is to select source pages or source sections that are frequently updated, such as root article sections, mainstream lists, or navigation templates.
Where will this put us? edit
When the above tasks are completed for the entire collection of portals (except the ones with specific maintainers), we'll be more than half-way done with the portal system upgrade.
Keep up the great work. — The Transhumanist 19:19, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 July 2018 edit
- From the editor: If only if
- Opinion: Wrestling with Wikipedia reality
- Discussion report: Wikipedias take action against EU copyright proposal, plus new user right proposals
- Featured content: Wikipedia's best content in images and prose
- Arbitration report: Status quo processes retained in two disputes
- Traffic report: Soccer, football, call it what you like – that and summer movies leave room for little else
- Technology report: New bots, new prefs
- Recent research: Different Wikipedias use different images; editing contests more successful than edit-a-thons
- Humour: It's all the same
- Essay: Wikipedia does not need you
Administrators' newsletter – August 2018 edit
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2018).
Administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- After a discussion at Meta, a new user group called "interface administrators" (formerly "technical administrator") has been created. Come the end of August, interface admins will be the only users able to edit site-wide JavaScript and CSS pages like MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Common.css, or edit other user's personal JavaScript and CSS. The intention is to improve security and privacy by reducing the number of accounts which could be used to compromise the site or another user's account through malicious code. The new user group can be assigned and revoked by bureaucrats. Discussion is ongoing to establish details for implementing the group on the English Wikipedia.
- Following a request for comment, the WP:SISTER style guideline now states that in the mainspace, interwiki links to Wikinews should only be made as per the external links guideline. This generally means that within the body of an article, you should not link to Wikinews about a particular event that is only a part of the larger topic. Wikinews links in "external links" sections can be used where helpful, but not automatically if an equivalent article from a reliable news outlet could be linked in the same manner.
Technical news
- The WMF Anti-Harassment Tools team is seeking input on the second set of wireframes for the Special:Block redesign that will introduce partial blocks. The new functionality will allow you to block a user from editing a specific set of pages, pages in a category, a namespace, and for specific actions such as moving pages and uploading files.