User talk:Certes/Archive 3

Dashes between names
Certes, for much of the last year I've been changing hyphens to en dashes between names of different people or places (or streets or such) in historic houses, farms, districts, etc. I've recented completed a pass through all the categories for the western states (Texas through North Dakota and all west of there), and Virginia (which took a while), but now when I look at Category:Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Arkansas I see a hundred more, and the eastern states generally have a lot more than the western ones. Could this be another job for a bot? Every now and then I find by chasing refs that the hyphenated name is actually one person, not two; I think this is about a 1% effect, best corrected after the fact while doing post-move cleanup edits, which are another big time sink but deserve individual careful looks, I think. Can you help, e.g. by compiling a list? These edits have not attracted any pushback, and have some thanks and cooperation from a few editors. Dicklyon (talk) 07:28, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * That's a hard one because hyphens are correctly used in so many phrases like African-American which look like names. Searches like this for Arkansas may help. The letter nonsense at the end is to avoid the phrase "National-Historic-Register" which occurs in hundreds of URLs but it may also miss some real cases such as Doe-Histon House.  It's a shame that Wikipedia searching lacks negative lookahead such as (?!Historic) meaning "don't match if Historic occurs here".  Good luck! Certes (talk) 12:24, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I was thinking to just search titles within the NRHP state categories. Or titles with end with "House", "Farm", "Historic District" or such.  If we can over-generate a list of titles, I can prune it by hand. Dicklyon (talk) 18:59, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * We can limit the search to wikilinks thus. That gives a much smaller list (23 for Arkansas) but will be less complete.  Just repeat that for each relevant state if it's what you need. Certes (talk) 19:47, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * How do you search in titles instead of insource? Dicklyon (talk) 01:28, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Use intitle: but it does a "clever" search, which can sometimes be less helpful than doing exactly what you tell it to. Certes (talk) 01:35, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, it seems to be more clever than I am, as I can't get it do anything useful. Dicklyon (talk) 22:37, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I've created a list in User:Certes/House that may be useful. It came from the database query at query/23061.  There are lots of false positives in there, such as Abdol-Hossein Farmanfarma who (as you may have guessed) was a prince and not a farm. Certes (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Perfect! I'll work on pruning that list.  That quarry is a cool tool! I suppose I'll have to learn to speak SQL now.  Dicklyon (talk) 03:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I expanded the list with some queries of my own and pruned it some: User:Dicklyon/Houses. More to be done.  Thanks for helping. Dicklyon (talk) 06:21, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

I started a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_National_Register_of_Historic_Places to see if others have input on this. Dicklyon (talk) 21:19, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Speedy deletion contested: Bodycount (Video Game)
Hello Certes. I am just letting you know that I contested the speedy deletion of Bodycount (Video Game), a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: Perfectly viable redirect. Thank you. Winged Blades Godric 03:48, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Re-targeted:) Winged Blades Godric 03:51, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for improving the target. Redirects are cheap; if someone finds this one useful then I'm happy to leave it in place. Certes (talk) 10:01, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Templates and DAB pages
I suspect that we share some of the same frustrations. See e.g. Wikipedia talk:Notice board for Pakistan-related topics. Narky Blert (talk) 01:32, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics
I'm not holding my breath; but if there is a positive response, I will feed the rest of those pages in there over time. Narky Blert (talk) 03:47, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Template:RCDB
I hadn't had the misfortune until today to come across RCDB, which you mentioned recently at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links; when I found a pile of bad links to DAB pages (including the one you noted to Kumba): 21, 26, 4570, 87, 94 and 96. I can't work out what on earth the template is doing, none of those numbers is immediately obvious anywhere in the articles. It looks like a consequence of one of those #ifexist tests. Is it time to escalate the issue at Template talk:RCDB, where the discussion seems to be going nowhere? Narky Blert (talk) 21:41, 18 January 2018 (UTC)


 * The numbers come from Wikidata. They are serial numbers in the rcdb.com database.  The way the template "works" (I use the term loosely) is to take the number from Wikidata and uses #ifexist: to look for a Wikipedia page of that name.  For example, RCDB assigns Colossus a number of 26, so the template looks for 26.  I am tempted to rewrite the template, but I haven't really been able to turn the discussion into a specification, and the Wikidata interface lacks a couple of features that would make the job much easier. Certes (talk) 21:54, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Disambiguating Coniston
Please don't change  to , as you did. All that you need do is add a second parameter, England as in which produces Coniston. Same with Mansfield: compare with. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:24, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Good catch. I used Dabsolver for that edit and it looks as if it's expanding the template  and presenting the text to me as  .  I saw the raw link without the template and edited it to produce a better raw link.  I've copied the version of Island Road railway station as it was before I edited it into User:Certes/sandbox and you can see the effect here.  If you agree with what I'm seeing then we should probably ping the tool maintainer. Certes (talk) 21:36, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Can you configure dabsolver to not subst templates? I've never used it, and having looked at User:Dispenser/Dab solver, I don't want to. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:10, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I've raised the issue at User talk:Dispenser and fixed my own relevant edits from the last six months. I doubt there are many outstanding from before then.  I'll see if I can spot any affected contributions from other editors, though I can't think of a way to check methodically. Certes (talk) 23:21, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:50, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks on redirect pages
Thanks for fixing my mess-ups on the disambiguation redirect pages. It's taken me a while to distinguish the difference between incomplete disambiguation and ambiguous term - I'm getting there. I'll look back through some of my earlier edits and see if I can fix some of the mistakes myself. Leschnei (talk) 13:09, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Lots of editors have been mixing up these two templates, including me. A recent discussion decided to keep them both and I started some bulk edits, but I've stopped as they may not have consensus. Certes (talk) 13:51, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Stafford to Manchester RDT
Many thanks for tidying up that RDT.

Xenophon Philosopher (talk) 21:19, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Curtiss Model H
I noticed you de-linked the flying boat's name America as having a different meaning - just wondered what meaning you ascribed as an alternative that could be linked? Regards80.229.34.113 (talk) 16:55, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The caption in Curtiss Model H had a wikilink to, which redirects to the article United States. However, "America" here is being used in a different sense: the name of a particular flying boat. It would be more appropriate to link to an article about that craft but I don't think Wikipedia has one of those, so I unlinked the word. Certes (talk) 17:03, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Many thanks80.229.34.113 (talk) 14:07, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Template:Infobox cycling race
I've found another template which creates spurious links from Wikidata items, perhaps through an #ifexist test – see Template talk:Infobox cycling race. Is this another case where one of your fixes would work? Yrs, Narky Blert (talk) 16:48, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I think the behaviour is in Module:Cycling race. In function WPlink, around line 4000 (search for detect if there is a different local article with the same name), the logic is
 * if the wikidata item (i.e. Mr. Vega) has a Wikipedia page linked to it (it doesn't)
 * show a link to that page
 * else -- detect if there is a different local article with the same name
 * do "mw.title.new(Label)" (Lua's equivalent of #ifexist:)
 * if there is a different local article with the same name (there isn't) then show plain text (we do), else show a redlink (we don't - it would link to dab)
 * So the #ifexist-a-like is there to cause plain text to appear in this case rather than a link to dab.
 * Where should we go from here? Certes (talk) 19:24, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * In all honesty, I have no idea where to go next. These what-could-possibly-go-wrong templates, especially those which call on Wikidata, are confounded nuisances. Line 4000, FFS!!! I speak as a onetime C/ASM coder who has no inclination at all to learn and to try to untangle crappy Wiki template code. (The last time I checked it, my 1990-ish routine which paged VGA mode 13h still worked. Display e.g. a Mandelbrot set on page 1 in graphics memory, calculate the update on page 2, then flip them. Debugged, documented, a few hundred lines of code; not several thousand.) Yrs, Narky Blert (talk) 23:14, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

I have a cunning plan. Behold User:Certes/sandbox. It checks the expiry date of edit protection on various pages, a date about which I care not one jot. As a side effect, this check leaks the information as to whether the page exists. Special:WhatLinksHere for any of those pages shows no link from my sandbox. I propose a new template, rather like Exists, but without the side effect of transcluding the checked page.

I feel that I'm fighting the system here when I should be working with it, but does this sound like a runner? Certes (talk) 01:09, 14 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Your guess is better than mine. However, I like the look of your idea. I've always been a fan of subroutines for common pieces of code. I imagine that yours could be slotted into those complex templates which make #ifexist-type tests.


 * I commend to you the motto of Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia, Sri Lanka. Narky Blert (talk) 12:01, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

DreamCatcher Interactive
Thank you for fixing the links for the games by DreamCatcher Interactive. Genuinely appreciate it, it took two days to re-format the table and provide their official lineup of games. Iftekharahmed96 (talk) 10:03, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. Thanks for adding the content. Certes (talk) 12:35, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * No worries, the format beforehand was just awkward and didn't have the complete discography. I'll be re-formatting The Adventure Company and NovaLogic too. Iftekharahmed96 (talk) 17:45, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Templates with #ifexist tests
I may have found another one: Template:Infobox Observatory. See Panzano Observatory. As I write, it still links to DAB page Panzano, perhaps through the "Location" field, even though a few hours ago I edited the Wikidata thing counter-intuitively-named page to link to Castelfranco Emilia. (d:Panzano Observatory (Q22047646) may be the page title, but it calls up an empty page. It took me four goes to find how to format a link that would work.) I added a ill link in maintext to it:Panzano (Castelfranco Emilia), but of course that helpful-to-readers-and-other-editors solution doesn't seem to be available in Wikidata.

I throw my hands up on this one. The #ifexist test linking to the DAB page may be from somewhere else altogether, and I've failed to find it.

Template:Infobox Observatory seems to generate placenames in this order in the infobox: province, village, country. Sheesh. Narky Blert (talk) 22:05, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I saved a null edit on Panzano Observatory, at which point it stopped claiming to link to Panzano. I suspect that your change put the observatory article into the purge queue but it had yet to reach the front. Template:Infobox observatory has lots of #invoke calls to complex Lua modules that I've not investigated, but they no longer seem to be causing a problem in this case since your Wikidata edit. Certes (talk) 23:14, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, again, for your help. Your null edit seems to have done the job.
 * These cute links to Wikidata (which I do not trust at all) are a pestilential nuisance. It took me 15-20 minutes to work out what was causing this problem, and to almost but not quite solve it. Narky Blert (talk) 00:09, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid there's more Wikidata coming: see Short description, and its talk page. Certes (talk) 00:19, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia talk:Short description ;-) Narky Blert (talk) 02:40, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * An FYI. I tried your null edit trick on another article immediately after editing its Wikidata page. The result was instantaneous. Narky Blert (talk) 17:20, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Bharat Bhushan Bhalla vs Bharat Bhushan (academic)
I request to not to redirect Bharat Bhushan to Bharat Bhushan Bhalla. There are other important, well-known, Bharat Bhushan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Bhushan_(academic), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Bhushan_(yogi) ). It is unfair that only a certain person gets his/her name redirect from a common name. I request you to give a reader a choice. And change the Bharat Bhushan Bhalla to Bharat Bhushan (actor).Devgurera (talk) 23:47, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree that Bharat Bhushan (actor) would be a much better title than Bharat Bhushan Bhalla. I moved the dab page quickly as a way to sort out the 178 wikilinks intended for the actor that were left pointing at a disambiguation page.  Per WP:BRD, I think the best next step is to raise a RM for moving Bharat Bhushan (disambiguation) to Bharat Bhushan, so others can help us form a consensus as to whether there's a primary topic here. Certes (talk) 00:01, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * True. But Bharat Bhushan (academic) and Bharat Bhushan (yogi) are also a Bharat Bhushan. So, the earlier arrangement was a preferred one because when a person goes to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Bhushan, it should not redirect to the Bharat Bhushan Bhalla. It should give then reader a choice which of the three to choose. Moreover, if you go by a proper name. The bharat bhushan (academic) should get the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Bhushan page, because that is full professional name. The actor's name is Bharat Bhushan Bhalla and the other guy is Guru Bharat Bhushan.184.57.55.86 (talk) 00:34, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The actor seems to be known mainly as Bharat Bhushan, so per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:AT that article's title should be Bharat Bhushan if he's the primary topic and Bharat Bhushan (actor) if not. Let's have a RM to get more opinions as to whether there's a primary topic here. Certes (talk) 00:56, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Hey
So what is up with me being in trouble? I have never vandalised an article. In fact I have never made an edit.85.255.235.9 (talk) 18:42, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. Although you haven't edited, someone using the same IP address has been making unhelpful changes over the last few months.  This could be someone who shares your connection, or a completely unrelated person who happened to be allocated the same number that you got later.  You're not in any trouble, and you are very welcome to improve the encyclopedia or just continue reading it.  If you do decide to contribute regularly, creating an account has advantages and you can [ create a named account here].  All the best, Certes (talk) 19:02, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

a heads-up
I raised a concern, related to a recent edit you made, at Talk:Cabinet_of_Cape_Verde. Geo Swan (talk) 22:27, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the notice. My edit simply removed a link to a disambiguation page, but I agree with you that it's better left as a redlink.  Thanks for improving it.
 * I'll comment on the article talk page on the separate issue of whether to use a template. Certes (talk) 22:37, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Hajime Ishii
Hi Certes, I'm bringing this to you because you recently edited Hajime Ishii and I know that you frequently fix DAB issues. Hajime Ishii (disambiguation) currently redirects to Hajime Ishii, and nothing links to Hajime Ishii (disambiguation). It has a template though it doesn't link to a disambiguation page. What is the appropriate thing to do here - remove the template and forget about it, or delete Hajime Ishii (disambiguation) altogether? I'm still learning the ins-&-outs of disambiguation and trying to figure out if there is any reason to hang onto the (disambiguation) page. Leschnei (talk) 15:52, 11 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the notification. I'll G7 Hajime Ishii (disambiguation).   DisamAssist created it for me this morning because Hajime Ishii was a disambiguation page at the time, it's since been replaced by a redirect to the politician.  I can see a few similar cases to fix. Certes (talk) 15:58, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Leschnei (talk) 16:01, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Invitation to WikiProject Portals
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,   &mdash; The Transhumanist   10:19, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Carceri
Thanks for cleaning up the links to the Carceri dab page! --Macrakis (talk) 14:01, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Polarity (physics)
I did some delinking. I will continue another day, tell me if you finish the job, if not I may continue later in the week. --MaoGo (talk) 16:39, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I've replaced the "article" by a redirect and changed the remaining links.  Many were about the polarity of light or sound waves so I've diverted them to Polarization (waves), which I'll add to Polarity. Certes (talk) 16:57, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Transclude lead - Lymington
Hi, please could you take a quick look at Portal:Hampshire/Selected article/15. The infobox is being transcluded and I'm not sure why! TIA, WaggersTALK  12:27, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I fixed Lymington. Its infobox contained a citation template with a missing }}, so the module misunderstood the }} at the end of the infobox to be the end of the citation and was unable to detect where the infobox ended. Certes (talk) 14:13, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah, that makes sense. Thanks Wa</b><b style="color:#86D">g</b><b style="color:#75C">ge</b><b style="color:#83C">r</b><b  style="color:#728">s</b><small  style="color:#080">TALK  14:43, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * To solve a different problem, I've refactored the relevant module code. It should now handle any other pages which resemble the old version of Lymington. Certes (talk) 13:15, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject heads up, April 27, 2018
We now have 52 members, and more are joining daily.

New and easier way to handle excerpts
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.  just got a lot simpler! Certes (talk) 10:43, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Kudos on a wonderful template.   &mdash; 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. <b style="color:#98F">W</b><b style="color:#97E">a</b><b style="color:#86D">g</b><b style="color:#75C">ge</b><b style="color:#83C">r</b><b  style="color:#728">s</b><small  style="color:#080">TALK  13:40, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

The RfC
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.

Wish list
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...
 * 1) ...that Portal:Contents/Portals becomes up-to-date.   (The missing entries are listed on the talk page, with instructions).
 * 2) ...the WikiProject to have Article Alerts.   (WikiProject Portals templates have already been placed on all portal talk pages).
 * 3) ...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! &mdash; The Transhumanist  08:01, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

User box
I hope you don't mind but I added your Template:User Anti-Vandalism to my page, if you want it removed just say so and I will remove it ASAP A 10 fireplane (talk) 13:39, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I display that box on my user page but I didn't contribute to making it. I'm sure you'll be very welcome to use it. Welcome aboard! Certes (talk) 13:43, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Category:ParserFunction errors
I'm cleaning out Category:ParserFunction errors but am baffled regarding why User:Certes/JWB-settings.js is in that hidden error category. I don't use JavaScript but I would have thought that for that category to appear, the .js content must be parsed as wikitext? Weird? I'm also puzzled about why viewing the source shows several "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page" such as Template:Age. It doesn't matter, but any thoughts? I might ask at WP:VPT. Johnuniq (talk) 04:06, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The page was saving the state of a JWB exercise that I needed to pause and resume a while ago. It's no longer needed and I've blanked the page.  It included patterns such as  .  Here, JWB would replace $2 by a valid year extracted from the article, but of course $2 is not itself a valid year which gives a parser error. Certes (talk) 13:51, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, wikitext is weirder than I thought. Johnuniq (talk) 01:21, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, and keep up the great work

 * Congratulations, Certes! A well-earned barnstar! RockMagnetist(talk) 14:33, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Excellent job, Certes!  Arman  ( Talk ) 04:30, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject Portals Overview, May 04, 2018
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

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.

I hope you'll join me there. ("Many hands make light work").

Thank you.


 * Membership

We're at 66 members, with more joining daily. We even have 6 WikiGnomes!


 * Special thanks

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

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

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


 * Automatically refreshed excerpts

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

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

Since the reboot, a new portal has been created:
 * Portal:Limited recognition


 * Please watchlist these pages

Some central pages in the portal system. The more eyes on them, the better.


 * WikiProject Portals
 * User:The Transhumanist (there's a fair amount of portal project traffic on my talk page these days)
 * WikiProject Portal/List of all portals/Page 1
 * WikiProject Portal/List of all portals/Page 2
 * WikiProject Portal/List of all portals/Page 3
 * 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...

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,    &mdash; The Transhumanist   06:21, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Portal newsletter
Thank you for taking the time to compile this summary (and for the glowing references to the new templates!) I found it very interesting but I'm aware that some editors seem sensitive about spam. I'm wondering whether it might be better next time just to send everyone a summary paragraph with a link to the full newsletter. Or even just ask them to add that page to their watchlists, so they'll get alerted whenever a new edition appears. Thanks again, Certes (talk) 10:16, 4 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Dear Certes, you are most welcome, and thank you for your concern. It is definitely not spam, as it is sent on an opt-in basis, and members who have opted in can opt-out anytime they like. On the WikiProject page, in the section where members sign-up, is the following message:
 * "If you'd like to receive task requests and project-related updates on your talk page, please add your name below. Also, please indicate if you are a user of AWB or JWB, and if you know Lua. Follow your name with an asterisk if you do not wish to receive project-wide updates. Those marked with 2 asterisks have not been confirmed as wishing updates."
 * Only one member indicated they didn't want the updates. The 2 asterisks signifies those who were on the list before the reboot, and who I've been unable to contact.
 * I've sent out 3 updates so far, with zero complaints, and for each issue I've been receiving several thank yous on the notice system (there's one for this issue already). For those who would rather not receive updates, we have a newsletter section on the WikiProject page where each issue gets posted, though usually a couple of days or so after the main run.
 * I hope I've addressed your concerns about spam. Sincerely,    &mdash; The Transhumanist   12:06, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Yet another problem template?
Jamaica–Far Rockaway line links to the DAB page Yes. So far as I can tell, the link is from the "transfers" field in Template:Infobox bus line; all other occurrences of "yes" are part of "inline=yes" or "deadurl=yes". I tried nowiki'ing the "yes" in the template, but that made no difference. Any ideas? Yrs, Narky Blert (talk) 09:45, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Fixed in Jamaica–Far Rockaway line RDT. The link came not from the transfers= parameter but from the (perfectly correct) inline=yes parameter, and is similar to the Manhattan Transfer problem.  Certes (talk) 10:51, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
 * TY!. "It's impossible to make anything truly foolproof, because fools are so ingenious." Yrs, Narky Blert (talk) 10:53, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Non-free images in Template:Transclude lead excerpt/testcases
Hi Certes. It appears you are testing somethings in Template:Transclude lead excerpt/testcases that is causing some non-free content (specifically File:KKS Lech Poznań.png and File:Manchester United FC crest.svg) to be displayed on the page in violation of WP:NFCC. Since I'm not familiar with the syntax of the template page, please tweak it accordingly so that these two files are no longer being displayed. If you really need images as part of your test perhaps you can find some similar in size or whatever on Commons to use instead. Thanks in advance. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:45, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Module:Excerpt has now been updated to weed out more non-free content. Those test cases need to refer to articles which contain non-free images, because their whole point is to test that the module behaves differently for free and non-free content. Certes (talk) 12:57, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
 * If that's the case then you might want to ask on WT:NFC to see if you can get it exempt per WP:NFEXMP because otherwise it will keep getting flagged as NFCC#9 violations since non-free content is not allowed in the template namespace. -- Marchjuly (talk) 14:11, 13 May 2018 (UTC)frame:preprocess
 * No non-free images appear on /testcases. It is deliberately typical of the way Module:Excerpt is being used in portals: it considers the descriptions of the candidate images and displays only the free ones.  To do this, it has to read an editor's description of the image (not the image itself).  The MediaWiki software records this access as a transclusion, but unfortunately fails to distinguish between displaying an image and reading its description.  I can understand why someone would treat a list of pages which transclude an image's page as a shortlist of possible copyright infringements, but in this case the page seems to be compliant: it merely makes use of the image's description which an editor has provided under the usual free licence. If anyone wishes to add such pages to a whitelist to avoid further investigations then that seems like a sensible idea to me. Certes (talk) 14:32, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
 * While I kinda understand what you're saying, I don't think non-free images being transcluded onto other pages such as test pages is generally considered an exception to NFCC#9. I will start a thread at WT:NFC to see what others think. -- Marchjuly (talk) 14:58, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. In case any stalkers are interested, discussion continues at WT:NFC. Certes (talk) 15:53, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject Portals update, 11 May 2018
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...
2018-05-11: preparations are being made to close the RfC. See Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure.

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
Our main objectives currently, are:


 * 1) 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...
 * 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.
 * 3) 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
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: WikiProject Portals.

Please skip Portal:American Civil War, as that is specifically being maintained by hand.

Maintenance pass #2: Obsoleting the Wikimedia subpages
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 WikiProject Portals for instructions.

Maintenance pass #3: calling the category tree from the portal base page
Certes figured out how...

}}

For more information, see the thread WikiProject Portals (it does now).

More to come...
In the meantime, see ya around the portals! &mdash; The Transhumanist  15:18, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update, 15 May 2018
(I forgot to post this here immediately after general delivery. Will do better next time.  &mdash; The Transhumanist   08:27, 18 May 2018 (UTC))

Whoa, I missed one...
There's an article about the Portals WikiProject in the new issue of Signpost:

Wikipedia Signpost/2018-05-24/WikiProject report

Enjoy.

P.S.: We now have 80 members. Evad37 just joined! &mdash; The Transhumanist  01:36, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiGnome task...
See WikiProject Portals

Even a single edit will help.

Thank you,  &mdash; The Transhumanist   21:26, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

User talk:TonyBallioni/Archive 20 (eom)
Thanks for the heads-up. It seems unfortunate that such decisions are made by assessing the editor rather than the edits. Certes (talk) 00:39, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
 * We also seem to have lost, though any resulting deletions will damage only Portal:Pakistan. Certes (talk) 00:46, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you
For this. That account has left a disruptive little trail. Good luck tracking all the edits--I even thought of asking for admin help at ANI. Cheers, 2601:188:180:11F0:25DE:7B4A:164F:567F (talk) 01:19, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Transclude list item excerpt
Dear Certes,

What links does Transclude linked excerpt choose from?
 * Does it include links on a page that are from other templates (nav footers, etc.)?

Can you make a function that only includes list item links, not including links in any annotations or other prose?

For example:


 * Does not include this hatnote link


 * Includes this link – but not this link.


 * 1) Includes this link – but not this link.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, and not this link, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Only links that are list items, from the article itself and not from any transcluded templates (such as nav footers, sidebars, etc.).

That way, lists could be used effectively instead of categories (which lua can't access).

Is this something you could do?

I look forward to your reply. &mdash; The Transhumanist  03:44, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

P.S.: ''Please ping me in your reply. Thank you.''
 * I expect Transclude linked excerpt to be used mainly with lists such as that from User:JL-Bot/Project content, probably with a |section= parameter so that one JL-Bot run can produce a page which feeds several templates. We can certainly limit it to list items.  Do you know of any real-world cases where this would be useful?  (I'm not questioning that it is useful; I ask because there are usually more complications to deal with than one example can show.)  We could have a new template but I can see this needing to be tweaked with a few variants, so perhaps adding |listonly=yes to the existing template would be more flexible.  For example,
 * Do we include the first link, even if it's not at the start of the list item?
 * links in sublists: keep or exclude?

— Certes (talk) 09:27, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

I forgot about the see also section. Those links won't help, especially in list of biologists. As for the rest of the page, the annotations are clean, but there's no guarantee that future editors won't add links to them.

Here are some more test cases:
 * Outline of forestry – though the annotations were stripped of extraneous links unrelated to the subject, more creep in over time (tropics, parasites, etc.). This outline has red links. So, the template/module/function will need to ignore those.
 * Outline of cell biology – similar
 * List of sharks – the entries are followed by the discoverers' names, which are linked. If this list was used as the basis of a "Selected shark species" section, José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage would eventually show up as a type of shark. By the way, there are a lot of redirects on this list. Would the template/module/function resolve those (that is, follow the redirects)?
 * List of dams and reservoirs – has some hatnotes and a see also section the links of which shouldn't be included.
 * List of mountain ranges – has some links in the lead, in the see also section, and there are lots of country links in annotations. Mountain ranges on the moon would also be a problem, if what you wanted were mountain ranges on Earth.

I hope these test cases help. &mdash; The Transhumanist  11:00, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, those test cases help. I'll think about a specification which works for those examples.  List of biologists would almost work with  Transclude linked excerpt if it could take multiple |section=A|section=B flags (it can't) but that would be clumsy and wouldn't handle multiple links such as Carl Bergmann.  See also should probably be a standard exclusion.  This looks different enough to justify a separate template as you suggested, though it will still use Module:Excerpt. Certes (talk) 13:14, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

I've created Transclude list item excerpt with moderate success. From Outline of forestry it chose lists of forests, whose lead reads (in its entirety) "This article lists lists of forests." From List of dams and reservoirs it chose Mare aux Vacoas, a stub. Because there are no sections, it displays the whole article, including the stub template. This also qualifies the testcases page for honorary membership of Category:Lakes of Mauritius. On the bright side, the module seems able to distinguish sharks from marine biologists, and the |section= parameter correctly limits mountains to those found on Earth. Certes (talk) 16:45, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Took about an hour
Did an experiment...

Just now got done creating Portal:Algae (topic chosen nearly at random).

Unfortunately, it took just over an hour.

We've got to reduce this. I'd be happy with 5 minutes.

It was gathering the pics that took the bulk of the time.

Thoughts? &mdash; The Transhumanist  09:35, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

P.S.: Now, on to answering your post above. -TT


 * That looks good, despite a few clunky ¨obviously automated" bits (you have 1 pictures). Perhaps we should omit empty boxes such as "quality content" rather than advertising that there isn't any.  As for the time, an hour isn't unreasonable for a page of this complexity as long as there are several editors sharing the work.  JL-Bot has a |content-featured-pictures option but I doubt that there will be many for the more obscure portals; is there such a thing as a "good picture"? Certes (talk) 09:44, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Actually, there were six pictures. I didn't notice they weren't rotating, until you pointed that out. There were a couple trailing pipes that jammed it up. I removed them, and it seems to work fine now.
 * Quality content is only empty until the JL-Bot processes that section. I think it runs once daily. So, Quality content will always start out empty.
 * The reality of portals is that typically there won't be several editors to share the work of a single portal. Rather, it will be several dozen portals per editor, if we're lucky. That's why there was an RfC, and that's why we need tools to leverage the editors. :)
 * There's no "good picture" feature, but there is a "former featured picture" feature. See Portal talk:Baseball for how they are displayed.
 * See User:JL-Bot/Project content for the list of parameters.
 * Note that most subjects aren't eligible for a quality content section. The main limitation of JL-Bot and the User:JL-Bot/Project content template is that they only cover portals that have a corresponding Template:WikiProject template. There are only about 600 of these templates left that don't already have a corresponding portal, and the list is an eclectic/strange assortment. So, once we get up to speed, most new portals won't have a Quality content section, unless we come up with some other way to generate it besides JL-Bot (which specifically relies on WikiProject names).
 * Thoughts?  &mdash; The Transhumanist   11:40, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
 * P.S.: I put a "Recognized content" section on all the talk pages of portals that have a subject WikiProject banner posted. So the content can be inspected before installing JL-Bot posting of any of it on the adjacent portal page.


 * After reading JL-Bot's documentation a couple more times, it looks like JL-Bot can generate featured and good article lists for subjects not affiliated with a WikiProject, as it can key off of subject-based categories.  &mdash; The Transhumanist   12:34, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
 * AWB/JWB should be able to go through selected (how?) Portal talk: pages and add/modify the "Recognized content" section to invoke JL-Bot using the WikiProject(s) named on that page. That would need some manual intervention: Portal talk:Tunisia is in WP:WikiProject Africa, so if we do this naively then the Tunisia portal will get polluted with well-written but irrelevant articles about Kenya.  However, I would suggest a separate /Recognized content subpage rather than using the portal's main talk page.  We don't want Talk popping up on everyone's watchlist whenever the bot runs.  A more radical idea is for JL-Bot to run on a subpage of the WikiProject, though that would require amending our template to read and pick randomly from the union of lists on multiple pages.  Certes (talk) 13:26, 9 June 2018 (UTC)


 * The template for activating/controlling JL-BOT is parameter-driven. When I used AWB to place several hundred instances of this template, I had AWB match the WikiProject template to the subject of the current page via the magic %%title%% word. Using that approach, the hypothetical Tunisia fiasco wouldn't happen. Check the parameter used in the template at Portal talk:Tunisia.
 * It's too early to tell where the recognized content lists will be generated, but quite likely on the portals themselves in a Quality content section. The recognized content sections on portal talk pages are intended to be temporary &mdash; they are a (testing) prelude to installing each such section on the respective portal pages. You would want to see bot edits to the portals on watchlists, to be sure the bot was still functional and operating correctly. (Remember, that watchlists can be configured to ignore bot edits, and so it shouldn't be an issue for those who don't wish to see them).   &mdash; The Transhumanist   04:25, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Having a template that uses Lua to access a page section that has the needed bot-maintained list data is a 2-stage process. It would be better to have a bot populate the templates with parameters directly. One less step.
 * Eventually, the WikiProject should create and maintain its own JavaScript bots, so that 1) the code is publicly available, and 2) the code is maximally accessible (to the largest pool of programmers). Also it should have multiple maintainers/programmers in case any of them retire or disappear from Wikipedia. If the operator of JL-Bot just stopped logging in one day, what would happen?  &mdash; The Transhumanist   04:25, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I want to continue watching bot edits, as I fix disambiguation errors using lists which bots update. But then I'm unlikely to have many portals on my watchlist; I'm just trying to think of others.
 * Bots/Requests for approval/JL-Bot 5 says the source code is available on request. Perhaps we should squirrel it away somewhere and obtain permission to continue using it if JL stopped doing so, or if we just need an extra run for portals.  I know Perl, though that shouldn't be necessary. Certes (talk) 09:59, 10 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Eventually, there may be 10,000 or more portals. Probably sooner than we think. Every time we add a subpage, it adds one to the multiplier of the pages that need to be maintained. Even if the maintainers are bots, that's a 6-second to 10-second delay for each page (set by bot policy). Just another factor to keep in mind.


 * We should definitely get the source code. What is your experience with Perl?


 * What other computer languages do you know?  &mdash; The Transhumanist   18:23, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I used to be a professional coder and Perl was my main language for ten years. I should be able to pick it up again with ease, though Perl does have a reputation for being unreadable!  I also have long experience of SQL, which is useful for Quarry, though I'm still getting to grips with the idiosyncrasies of the MySQL variant.  Other than that, I've probably come across most mainstream languages at some point, and of course I'm rapidly learning Lua.  However, I'll be offline for much of July, so this is not the best time for me to take on a major project. Certes (talk) 20:20, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Still an hour
Tried another one: Portal:Reference works  &mdash; The Transhumanist   20:13, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
 * That looks like an hour well spent. If people take a dozen portals each then I don't think 12 hours' effort is unreasonable for a one-off setup.  As for new portals, there will be a few important gaps to fill and, if someone cares deeply about a less mainstream topic, let's point them at the tools and let them get on with it.  However, I'm not sure that it would be productive for the current team to expand the number of portals massively.  There are only so many page views to go around, and portal number 10,000 might not get many of them.  Certes (talk) 20:28, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I noticed some glitches during the creation of this portal:
 * The lead didn't fill, because there is no article for "Reference works". I then had to type in "Reference work".
 * There was no category to copy and paste for "Selected type of reference work", with the general category including specific works mixed in, and many types missing because they have their own category. I found a rudimentary list of types on the Portal:Contents/Overviews page.
 * I plugged the list of types into the DYK section, and amongst its results it returned entries on birds (red-breasted woodpecker, etc.) and the Atlas rocket. Took me awhile to narrow down the list to exclude those.
 * Some other areas that required copy/pasted data were Picture slideshow, Topics, and Related portals. For the biography section, I keyed in the names.
 * So, there is a ways to go before portal creation is automated. But once it is, 10,000 would be surpassed relatively quickly.
 * I agree with you, that at the current cost in time and effort, most new portals are not worth creating. We should focus the team on updating and upgrading the portals we already have, and on building tools.
 * I believe that page traffic should not enter into the equation on portal creation. Rather, where a topic sits in the hierarchical structure, and how many subtopics it has, should determine priority. That is, it makes little sense to create a Portal:Geometry before we have a Portal:Mathematics; or a Portal:Euclidean geometry before we have Portal:Geometry (assuming there are enough articles to support having Portal:Euclidean geometry in the first place). If Knowledge is considered the prime (zeroth) tier, and Wikipedia's main topic classifications used in its Portal:Contents subpages are first tier, that means there are plenty of portals missing from the second tier. No sense in skipping those to create third- and fourth-tier portals.
 * But, until portal creation reaches the singular digits in minutes, rather than hours, I wouldn't recommend portal creation at all, while we still have existing portals that need upgrading. ;) The main justification presented for the deletion of Portals at the RfC was that the existing portals are out of date and poorly maintained. Therefore, solving that problem is our main imperative. So far, we've barely made a dent. Though the tools are looking mighty impressive. Going from 10+ hours to an hour for portal building is a decrease by an order of magnitude. That's fantastic. Let's see if we can do that again. :)  &mdash; The Transhumanist   02:44, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Merodach disambiguation
Hi. Sorry about the delay in responding.

There seem to be literature references to both kings ie Merodach-Baladan I and II so afaik the links are ok.

This is not a direct area of expertise for me so please correct if you see an error. Thanks.Xoool (talk) 10:05, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for checking. In that case, I'll leave things alone. Certes (talk) 10:13, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

AWB task requests, from the Portals WikiProject
1) Replace the intro box sections on portals with an upgrade. See details at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Tasks.

2) Replace categories box sections on portals with an upgrade. See details at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Tasks.

Enjoy. &mdash; The Transhumanist  08:09, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

WikiGnome task requests, from the Portals WikiProject
Here are some incremental tasks for you to consider. Do one, or many, as time allows. Every little bit helps...

Task #1
We're getting close to having the main portals list up-to-date, but we aren't quite there yet. There are about 75 portals not yet listed there.

Therefore the first task, of course, is to add as many of these as you can. They can be found at Portal talk:Contents/Portals. Instructions are there.

Task #2
The second task on this wish list is to convert one selected picture section to a picture slideshow section. The template to use for this is Random slideshow. Here are some examples of portals with a picture slideshow section: Portal:Bangladesh, Portal:Sacramento, California, Portal:Algae, and Portal:Reference works.

Note that selected picture sections display pictures from subpages (one subpage per pic), and that each picture would need to be listed in the Random slideshow template.

Tip: Some portals have only a single picture covered in the selected picture section. Replacing their selected picture sections with a slideshow would be easiest. Eight or more pictures make a decent slide show. Search for pictures at Wikimedia Commons.

Have fun! Sincerely,  &mdash; The Transhumanist   09:52, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

WikiGnome task request, from WikiProject Portals
Hi.

Portal:Tamil civilization could sure use a picture slideshow. See instructions at WikiProject Portals.

Please add as many pictures as you have time for. Even adding a single picture helps.

Thank you. Cheers,  &mdash; The Transhumanist   00:04, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Portal category
Hello C. Today a couple portal categories showed up in Category:Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates. When you get a chance if you could do the necessaries that would be most appreciated. I note your template about being away so I know it may be awhile before you get to them so no worries about when. Best regards and I hope your time away from the 'pedia is enjoyable. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 21:36, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The category only has Portal:The Big Bang Theory/Intro, and Portal:The Big Bang Theory which transcludes it. Neither of those pages uses a module that I've contributed to.  I think the problem is that /Intro transcludes the whole of The Big Bang Theory article when it should just calling a template that inserts an episode count.  I would normally just fix that but haven't, as I can't find such a template.  If you spot other portals in the category, please send me a link as they may have left the category by the time I look again.  Thanks, Certes (talk) 22:01, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for taking a look. Maybe has a suggestion. Also thanks for mentioning adding a link to the portal as I would probably just link to the category as I did above. Cheers. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 23:47, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I've fixed the Big Bang pages (ironically by using a module I did write). Module:Excerpt removes templates which precede the lead and templates called Pp-*, so in theory it shouldn't populate protection categories.  However, if someone creates an alias called Template:Sneaky redirect, and puts it in the middle of the lead of an article that may be selected from a random list for transclusion in a portal, then the problem you describe will occur intermittently. Certes (talk) 00:33, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Good deal C. I'm glad you were able to track things down. Have a pleasant Sunday. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 01:37, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

WikiGnome task requests from the Portals WikiProject
Here are some relatively minor tasks that are fairly repetitive, just the way you like '7em...

Add missing completed portals to Portal:Contents/Portals
Here are some new portals:
 * Portal:Saint Petersburg
 * Portal:Athens
 * Portal:Dresden
 * Portal:Florence
 * Portal:Kyoto
 * Portal:Palermo
 * Portal:Stockholm
 * Portal:Turin

Add panoramas
Here's a fun one, that really brightens up a page...

Add a panoramic pic to the top of geographic portals, such as cities, states, provinces, countries, regions, and continents.

Do one, here or there, as you feel like it. Do as many as you like. Every little bit helps.

Please do not add pics over 2 megabytes in size, as they can cause the portal scripts to time out, causing empty sections, or sections with error messages. Watch out, because some of those pictures are huge, like 12 megabytes or more. Less than one megabyte is best, if you can manage it.

Pictures can be found at. Search strings that work well with the city name to find these are "skyline" or "panorama".

Geographic portals are listed in the Geography section of Portal:Contents/Portals. City portals are shown in parentheses.

Here is an example of the main template used to place panoramic pics:

Which looks like this:

Here are some examples of city portals with panoramas or panoramic skylines in their intro sections:


 * Portal:Munich
 * Portal:Prague
 * Portal:Vienna

Have fun. &mdash; The Transhumanist  02:17, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Wikimania?
Not away at Wikimania by any chance? Cheers, &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 15:52, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
 * No, nothing cerebral, just a holiday. I'll be back next week. Certes (talk) 19:01, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
 * How was your time off? Did you have fun, or was it mostly relaxation? In any case, glad to have you back. ;)  &mdash; The Transhumanist   23:26, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
 * A bit of both; a few weeks away with different groups of old friends that all came up in the same month. Certes (talk) 00:15, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Nice. Didn't you move recently? How did that go?  &mdash; The Transhumanist   18:15, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
 * No, I'm still in the same home. Certes (talk) 20:58, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

American!!!
I'll destroy British into Scottish!!!

American!!!
It's also comes in the United States? I hate blocking?!