User talk:Chouette254

Welcome all! if you've got a question, don't hesitate to ask BrantleyIzMe (talk) 15:03, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

July 2018
Hello. Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia.

I noticed your recent edit to Followers (album) does not have an edit summary.&#32;Please be sure to provide a summary of every edit you make, even if you write only the briefest of summaries. The summaries are very helpful to people browsing an article's history.

Edit summary content is visible in:


 * User contributions
 * Recent changes
 * Watchlists
 * Revision differences
 * IRC channels
 * Related changes
 * New pages list
 * Article editing history

Please use the edit summary to explain your reasoning for the edit, or a summary of what the edit changes. You can give yourself a reminder to add an edit summary by setting. Thanks! Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:12, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Gotcha! Thanks 😊 BrantleyIzMe (talk) 10:33, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Welcome to the Portals WikiProject
Hey,

Welcome to the team.

Let's jump right in, shall we?...

Do you use Windows? If so, have you registered to use WP:AWB yet?

If you use another operating system, then there's WP:JWB, which requires registration in the same place.

Our biggest tasks entail editing almost every portal, and the more people we have who can use AWB (or JWB), the better. So, please acquire those as soon as you can.

If you don't qualify for those yet, don't worry, there is still more than plenty for you to work on. We are revitalizing the entire portal namespace, which has around 1500 portals and over 140,000 pages. We have our work cut out for us. ;)

Make yourself at home, come join us at the WikiProject's talk pages, and I look forward to your reply below as well. Feel free to ask questions and make suggestions.

Cheers,  &mdash; The Transhumanist   02:45, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

P.S.: ''Please ping me in your reply. Thank you.''

Let's get you up to speed...
Whew, where to start...

...first there was darkness, and then there was light!

The Portals WikiProject fell dormant, and the portals, unmaintained, deteriorated and fell out-of-date. As darkness descended, the end drew near, in the form of an RfC, proposing that all portals, and the portal namespace itself, be deleted.

All hope appeared lost, when an amazing thing happened. Hundreds of editors came to the rescue and turned the debate around.

Portals were saved, and the Portals WikiProject rebooted.

And here we are.

The reboot took place April 17th, 2018, and the WikiProject has since grown to 95 members. Their goal: to revitalize portals by revamping the entire portals system.

Toward that end, we are engaged in 3 major efforts:

1) Designing a one-page automated portal model, that minimizes required maintenance by being self-updating.

2) Converting the existing portals (except those that are actively manually maintained) to that design.

3) While there are only around 1500 portals, they have over 140,000 subpages between them, which we are rendering obsolete as we convert portals to the one-page design. Once obsoleted, they are speedy deleted (using Twinkle d-batch), thus cleaning up the namespace.

So far, 3 standard sections have been automated, and, while work proceeds on the others, the conversion of portals is in progress. Meanwhile, a few thousand subpages have been deleted already.

But, we have a long ways to go.

Thank you for volunteering!

For a more detailed summary of the work we've done so far, see the WikiProject's newsletter archive.

Design efforts are discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Design.

For the tasks we are working on currently, see WikiProject_Portals.

Task-related discussion takes place at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Tasks.

Task requests are also posted from time to time on participant's talk pages. You may be receiving some soon.

Enjoy, and remember...

...have fun! &mdash; The Transhumanist  05:32, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Task request
Click here to set the mood for what is to follow

Here's your first assignment, should you choose to accept it...

Look over the portals. They are listed at Portal:Contents/Portals.

Visit lots of them.

Take your time. Several days at least. More is fine. You can treat this as an ongoing task, too, if you'd like.

At some point (and again from time to time, if you'd like), tell me, what you like about portals most. And what else you wish they could do, and how else you wish they were better.

No wish is too small, and no wish is too grand. Let your mind flow.

I look forward to your observations and ideas.

This message will self-destruct in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

Have fun. &mdash; The Transhumanist  06:42, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Cool thanks! I'll be going through the portals from time to time BrantleyIzMe (talk) 15:04, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #011, 10 July 2018
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:

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 WikiProject_Portals.


 * 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&mdash;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. &mdash; The Transhumanist  12:29, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

A cookie for you!
Thanks 😊BrantleyIzMe (talk) 17:33, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #012, 15 July 2018
We have 97 participants.

Getting faster
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
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:


 * Algae
 * Amphibians
 * Anatomy
 * Ancient Tamil civilization
 * Athens
 * Bangladesh.
 * Berkshire
 * Birds
 * Buckinghamshire
 * Cenozoic
 * Dresden
 * Dubai
 * East Sussex
 * Fish
 * Florence
 * Florida


 * Genocide
 * Gilgit-Baltistan
 * H. P. Lovecraft
 * Hampshire
 * Human body
 * Humanism
 * Isle of Wight
 * Kent
 * London transport
 * Mammals
 * Milan
 * Munich
 * Oxfordshire
 * Palermo
 * Prague
 * Reference works
 * Reptiles


 * Sacramento
 * Saint Petersburg
 * Salem
 * Scottish Islands
 * South East England
 * Stockholm
 * Surrey
 * Sydney
 * Tamil People
 * Telephones (empty – please add some pictures)
 * Turin
 * Underwater diving
 * Vienna
 * West Sussex

Progress on intro conversions
The intros for most of the portals up through the letter "O" have been converted, using this wikicode:

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  or   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...
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,   &mdash; The Transhumanist   08:44, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #013, 18 July 2018
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!
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 WikiProject Portals.

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. I like Portal:Seattle. Amazing stuff thanks BrantleyIzMe (talk) 14:50, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Auto-populated slideshows
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:

New Template:Box-header colour
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.

(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.

Amazing! BrantleyIzMe (talk) 12:30, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Where are we on the redesign?
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?
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?
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?
Probably not.

Who knows what our programmers and editors have dreamed up while I was writing this.

See ya again soon,   &mdash; The Transhumanist   11:05, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #014, 27 July 2018
Development of design continues, full speed ahead...

Excerpt slideshows are here!
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
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:

Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.

You can now balance section boxes
Before:

After:

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
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
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...
Have fun. &mdash; The Transhumanist  00:56, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #015, 31 July 2018
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
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 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
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:

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:

was replaced with this code:

And the new section blended right in with the formatting of the rest of the page. Note the use of the  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
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:

Transclude random excerpt

or

Transclude list item excerpt

or

Transclude linked excerpt

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?
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. &mdash; The Transhumanist  19:08, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chandan Shetty (2nd nomination)
I found some references. Please see my comments at Articles for deletion/Chandan Shetty (2nd nomination) Eastmain (talk • contribs) 18:38, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Future portal tool
Discussions are underway on the design of a portal tool (user script) that will hopefully have features for modifying portals at the click of a menu item, to make editing them easier. It might do things like change the color for you, add to a selection, add a new section, move a section, and so on.

If you'd like to be involved and suggest features for the tool, please join us at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Design.

Progress report: upgrade of portals
As new portal components are built by our Lua gurus, those components are being used to upgrade portals. Each component automates a section of a portal in a particular way.

The sections that are mostly upgraded so far are the Intro, and the Associated Wikimedia section. The sections currently undergoing upgrade are: Selected image, Categories, and the Intro.

The Intro? Isn't that done already?

Yes, and no.

The upgrade of the excerpt in intros is mostly complete (there are about 70 non-standard portals that still need it).

Now we are doing another upgrade of intros in the form of adding a panoramic picture at the top of the intro, on portals for which such a picture is available on. Dozens of panoramas have been added so far, and they are really starting to affect the look of portals &mdash; the portals that have them look really good.

Regions are the most likely subjects to have panoramas, but a surprising number of other subjects have banner-shaped pictures too. Some examples of non-geographic portals that they have been added to are:
 * Portal:Underwater diving
 * Portal:Sharks
 * Portal:Reptiles
 * Portal:Meat
 * Portal:Cheese
 * Portal:Cereals
 * Portal:Tea
 * Portal:Milk
 * Portal:Wheat
 * Portal:Rice
 * Portal:Clothing

Speaking of pictures, several hundred Selected image sections have been upgraded to include image slideshows.

Progress report: design
The push for automation continues, with new components under continuous testing in the field. As problems are spotted, they are reported to our programmers, who have done a fantastic job of keeping up with bug reports and fixing the relevant Lua modules fast. I am highly impressed.

Construction time on new portals is now down to as little as a minute or less. Though not in general. If you are lucky enough to spot portals that fit the profile of the new tools (their strengths), then a portal can be complete almost as soon as it is created, with the added time it takes to find and add a panorama. Source page titles are not generally standardized, and so it source pages in many cases must be entered manually. Where source page titles follow a standard naming convention, portal creation for those subjects goes quickly.

So, we still have some hurdles, but the outlook on portals is very good. New features, and many improvements to features are on the horizon. I'll be sure to report them when they become available.

What will the portal of the future look like? That is up to you!

See you on the project's talk pages.

Sincerely,   &mdash; The Transhumanist   20:59, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #017, 22 Aug 2018
This issue is about portal creation...

Creating new portals
Myself and others have been testing and experimenting with the new components in upgrading existing portals and in building new portals. They have now been applied in hundreds of portals.

The templates are ready for general use for portal creation.

They are still a bit buggy, but the only way we are going to work the rest of the bugs out is by using them and reporting the bugs as we come across them.

I look forward to seeing what new portals you create!

Be sure to report bugs at WT:WPPORTD.

The main portal creation template is box portal skeleton.

Portal creation tips
After starting a portal using box portal skeleton...
 * 1) Placing a panorama (banner picture) at the top of the intro section is a nice touch, and really makes a portal look good. box portal skeleton doesn't automatically insert panoramas. So, you will need to do that by hand. They can be found at . For some examples, check out Portal:Sharks, Portal:Cheese, and Portal:Florence
 * 2) The search term provided in the Did you know? and In the news sections is very basic and rarely matches anything. It is best to replace that term with multiple search arguments, if possible (separate each argument with a pipe character). For example, in Portal:Capital punishment, see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Portal:Capital_punishment&diff=855255361&oldid=855137403 Searches in templates use Lua search notation.
 * 3) Check the In the news and Did you know? sections for mismatches. That is, sometimes entries come up that shouldn't be displayed. If there are any, refine the search strings further, so they don't return such results.
 * 4) Finish each portal you've created before creating a new one. We don't want unfinished portals sitting around.

Need a laugh?
Check out the Did you know? section on Portal:Determinism. &mdash; The Transhumanist  02:21, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Bug hunt!
As you know, portals are now supported by a number of new templates, which are in turn supported by some new Lua modules.

Those templates and modules are being put to the test, in the new portals that have been created since this WikiProject rebooted, plus a number of existing portals that have been revamped.

The new portals, and revamped ones, can be found at Category:Single-page portals.

Please browse the new portals at your leisure, and report any and all problems that you spot. Post bug and other portal problem reports at WT:WPPORTD. Please report bugs, quirks, awkward aspects, or anything weird or off that you notice. Compliments and suggestions are also welcome. :)

When you report a bug, please indicate the portal's name, the section that the problem appeared in, and the name of the article appearing (first) in the section with the problem. Most problems will likely be encountered in the ''Selected general articles" section, due to quirks in a displayed article's wikicode that the lua modules don't handle yet. Your help in spotting those is of utmost value. Thank you.

Don't delete portal subpages just yet
For portals that have been converted to the single-page design, we are not deleting their subpages at this time, because we are working on ways to harvest the data from those pages. For example, the Selected picture subpages include filenames and captions that would be valuable for the image slideshows. Please don't delete portal subpages, for now. They'll be slated for d-batch speedy deletion after harvesting. Thank you.

Development notes
We are currently testing a feature added to Transclude files as random slideshow that allows it to accept both sourcepages and filenames. Courtesy of Evad37. This will pave the way for harvesting files and their captions from portal subpages, for use in image slideshows.

We need your help
The bulk of the work is being done by a handful of editors. But we can't do it all. We need help with spotting bugs, refining the search parameters in new/revamped portals (in the "Did you know..." and "In the news" sections), adding images to slideshows for a broader selection (they default to showing the images on the root article page but are capable of showing so much more), adding panoramic pictures at the top of the intro section of region portals (cities, counties, states, provinces, countries, continents, and other regions), to name but a few task types.

It is rewarding to be a part of the growing portal phenomenon. And you get to see its expansion and refinement up close.

Feel free to join in on the fun. ;)

Thank you,   &mdash; The Transhumanist   06:37, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Portals progress report
Don't blink. You might miss something.

As of a few days ago, portals had doubled in about a month and a half.

Also, there were 98 incompleted portals in Category:Portals under construction. Now there are just 43.

The WikiProject page has been thoroughly revised
The goals, plans, and task sections have all been updated.

Orphaned portals need a home...
Many new portals are still orphans, and need links pointing to them:


 * 1) A portal link at the bottom of corresponding navigation footer template. E.g., Template:Machines for Portal:Machines. See examples of a portals link at the bottom of Template:Robotics and Template:Forestry.
 * 2) A Portal box in the See also section of the corresponding root article for each portal. If there is no See also section, create one and place the portal template in that. (Rather than placing them in an external links section -- they're not external links).
 * 3) A Portal template placed at the top of the category page corresponding to each portal.

All new and revamped portals can be found at Category:Single-page portals.

Portal:Contents/Portals
This is the main list of portals.

Nearly 2,000 of the new portals need to be listed here.

They can be found at Portal talk:Contents/Portals. Instructions are included there.

Customized Portal Rating system is now in place
Portals now have a new rating system of their own designed specifically to support portal evaluation! We were trying to use the standard assessment system for articles, but that doesn't fit portals very well.

Many thanks to Evad37, Waggers, AfroThundr3007730, SMcCandlish, Tom, BrendonTheWizard, and Pbsouthwood for their work and input on this.

The new system can be found at the top of all portal talk pages, in the WikiProject portals box. Those with "???" ratings need to be assessed, which makes up most of the older portals.

Most of the new portals were started out with an initial "Low" level of importance when their talk pages were created. Those deserving higher importance should be promoted as you come across them.

Improving the new portals
The starting point for new portals included minimal parameters and content, in the form of default values in the template(s) used for their creation.

Embellishing embedded search strings
So, for the search strings in the "Did you know..." and "In the news" sections, this was the magic word, which represents the portal's name. Unfortunately, the resulting term is alway capitalized, which limits its effectiveness as a search string for anything but proper nouns. Results for those two sections can be improved, by replacing the "PAGENAME" magic word with multiple search strings, and search strings that begin with lower case letters. There is no inherent limit as to how many search parameters may be included. Lua search notation is used. The more general the subject, the more subtopic search terms you may want to include. For example, on Portal:Avengers (comics),  turned up nothing. But, when more parameters were added, as in the wikicode below...

... that returned several results in the portal's DYK section.

Be sure you make the improvements to both the DYK section and the "In the news" section, as they both require the search strings.

Expanding the slideshow contents
The default starting selection for the image slideshow in most new portals is whatever images happen to be in the corresponding root article (via the PAGENAME magic word). You can improve image slideshows by adding more sourcepages and filenames as parameters in the "Selected images" section of portals.

See Template:Transclude files as random slideshow/doc for instructions.

More exciting things are to come...
Portals used to take about 6 hours or more to create. Now, for subjects that have particular navigation support, we've got that down to about one minute each, with even more content displayed than ever. True, that means the new portals pick you, rather than the other way around. Creating a specific portal that doesn't happen to have the requisite navigation support is still pretty time consuming. But, we are working on extending our reach beyond the low-hanging fruit.

And efforts are ongoing to keep shaving time off of the creation process. Eventually, we may get it down to seconds each.

In addition to improving automation, we're always looking for new features and improvements that we can add to portals, and there is plenty of potential to expand on the standard design so that new portals are even better right out of the starting gate. Additional designs are also possible.

On the horizon, there are many more portals waiting to be created. And we can expect to see at least a few more section types emerge. I never expected slideshows, for example, especially not for excerpts. Who knows where innovation will take us next?

Keep up the great work everyone.

Sincerely,   &mdash; The Transhumanist   07:03, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #020, 12 Oct 2018
Whew, a lot has been happening.

A bit of defending of the portals has been needed. But, most activity recently has been directed upon maintenance and development of existing portals.

The majority of portals now use the new design, about 2400 of them, leaving around 1200 portals that still employ the old style.

Newest portals

 * Aceh
 * Aegean Sea
 * Arthur Wellesley
 * Azores
 * Bashkortostan
 * Birmingham
 * Black Sea
 * Canary Islands
 * Carpathian Mountains
 * Caucasus
 * Columbia River
 * Davao City
 * Dnieper
 * Easter Island
 * Exploration
 * Galápagos Islands
 * Glasgow
 * Great Wall of China
 * Guangdong
 * Kaliningrad Oblast
 * Kanpur
 * Kigali
 * Kuril Islands
 * Kuwait City
 * Leeds
 * Lhasa
 * Loire Valley
 * Lucknow
 * Lviv
 * Map projections
 * Marseille
 * Midwestern United States
 * Missouri River
 * Multan
 * Mysore
 * Niger River
 * Northeast India
 * Odessa
 * Orchestras
 * Panama Canal
 * Peshawar
 * Polynesia
 * Poznań
 * Pretoria
 * Rat Pack
 * Sammy Davis Jr.
 * Shandong
 * South China Sea
 * Southern United States
 * Suez Canal
 * Svalbard
 * Tatarstan
 * Tigris River
 * Visakhapatnam
 * Volga River
 * Western Ghats
 * Western United States
 * Yellowstone National Park
 * Yosemite National Park

Please inspect these portals, and report problems or suggest improvements at WT:WPPORTD. Thank you.

MfDs
Since the last issue of this newsletter, Nineteen portals were nominated for deletion. All posted by the same person.

Two portals were deleted.

One resolved as "no consensus".

Sixteen resolved as "keep".

Links to the archived discussions are provided below:


 * 1) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Air France
 * 2) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Alexander Korda
 * 3) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:August Derleth
 * 4) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Average White Band
 * 5) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Bee-eaters
 * 6) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Ben E. King
 * 7) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Benny Goodman
 * 8) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Bill Bryson
 * 9) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Billy Idol
 * 10) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Billy Ocean
 * 11) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Bob Hope
 * 12) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Bobbie Rosenfeld Award
 * 13) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Body piercing
 * 14) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Canton, Michigan
 * 15) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Compostela Group of Universities
 * 16) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Diplo
 * 17) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Diversity of fish
 * 18) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Pebble Beach
 * 19) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Peter, Paul and Mary

Many thanks to those who participated in the discussions.

To watch for future MfD's, keep in mind that the Portals WikiProject is supported by automatic alerts. You can see them at: WikiProject Portals

Creation criteria
There was also some discussion of creation criteria for portals. The result was that one of the participants in the discussion reverted the portal guidelines to the old version, which has the minimum number of articles for a portal included in there: "about 20 articles", a guideline that was in place since 2009.

Many of the portals that existed prior to April 2018 do not have that many (being limited to however many subpages the portal creator created), and therefore, these portals need to be upgraded to the new design (which automatically provides many articles for display). Using the new design, exceeding 20 articles for display is very easy.

Linking to the new portals
Efforts have been underway to place links to new portals (all 2200 of them created since April).


 * 1) Link (portal button) from corresponding category pages. ✅
 * 2) Link from See also section on corresponding root articles. ✅
 * 3) Link from bottom of corresponding templates. ✅
 * 4) Link for each portal on Portal:Contents/Portals. ✅

Your help is needed. It is easy to access the page mentioned in #1, #2, & #3 from the portals themselves.

AWBers could do these tasks even faster (that's how the category pages were done), except #4...

Item #4 above pretty much has to be done by hand. (If you can find a way to speed that up, I would be very impressed). The links needing placement can be found at Portal talk:Contents/Portals. Instructions are included there.

The conversion effort: news sections
There are still around 1200 old-style portals that have only undergone partial conversion to the new design concepts, still relying on subpages with copied/pasted excerpts that have been going stale for years, out of date (manually posted) news entries, etc.

The section currently being tackled on these is news. You can help by deleting any news section on the old-style portals that has news entries that are years old (that is the dead giveaway to a manual news section). Be sure not to delete the news sections of portals that have up-to-date news, or active maintainers. For maintainers, look at the portal's categories, and/or check the participants list at WP:WPPORT.

Eventually, conditional news sections (that appear only when news items are available for display) will be added using AWB to all portals without a news section.

News items (and even the news sections themselves) are automatically generated for portals that were created using the Basic portal start page. On those portals, there is a hidden comment at the top of the page (that you can see in the edit window), that says this:

Design development
Presently, we are in the process of implementing the new design features, creating new portals with them, and installing them in existing portals.

But, what about development of new new design features?

We have a wish department.

Post your wishes at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Design, and they might come true. Many have already, and for many of those, this is where they were posted.

Cascade effect
A resource that has been elusive so far will be obtained eventually: categories. That is, the ability to pull category member links to populate a page.

Rather than populate portals directly with such links, it may be more beneficial to the encyclopedia to utilize them in navigation footers, because portals already have the ability to generate themselves based on those.

So, this would create a cascade effect: auto-gathering entries from categories, would enable the construction of new navigation footers, that would in turn support the development of new portals.

The cascade effect would also be felt by existing portals, as existing navigation footers could be expanded using the category harvesting methods, which would in turn expand the coverage of portals that access those navigation footers.

You can help by providing leads about any potential category harvesting methods. Please report anything you know about harvesting categories at WT:WPPORTD. Thank you.

Looking into the future: the quantum portal?
One idea that has been floating around is the concept of a pageless portal. That is, a portal that isn't stored anywhere, instead being generated when you click on a menu item or button.

Many of the new portals were generated by a single click, and then saved via a second click.

Therefore, it seems likely that the portals of the future will employ the one-click concept.

Because of the need for customization by users, this concept would need to be augmented with a way to integrate user contributions. This could be done in at least two ways: posting an existing portal, autogenerating one from scratch if such does not yet exist, or have a special data page for user contributions that is folded into the auto-generated portal.

How soon? That is up to you. All that is needed are persons to implement it.

Until next time...
Keep up the good work on portals. They are improving daily. Thank you. &mdash; The Transhumanist  04:16, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #021, 24 Oct 2018
Portals have passed the 4,000 mark.

More new portals...
Here's a list of portals created since the last issue


 * Abbott and Costello
 * Acura
 * Adventure travel
 * AFL
 * African cuisine
 * Agatha Christie
 * AHL
 * Aikido
 * Albert Gleizes
 * Albrecht Dürer
 * Alkaloids
 * American Express
 * American Hockey League
 * Analgesics
 * Ancient Olympic Games
 * Andrea Mantegna
 * Antiarrhythmic agents
 * Anticonvulsants
 * Antidepressants
 * Antipsychotics
 * Apollo program
 * Apostles
 * Aquariums
 * Arab Spring
 * Architecture of England
 * Architecture of Greece
 * Architecture of India
 * Architecture of Portugal
 * Arthur Conan Doyle
 * Asterix
 * Austin Powers
 * Australian Football League
 * Ayn Rand
 * Back to the Future
 * Barbecue
 * Bartending
 * BBC Television
 * BDSM
 * Beef
 * Berkshire Hathaway
 * Beverly Hills Cop
 * Blackjack
 * Blizzard Entertainment
 * BMW
 * Bodybuilding
 * Bosnian War
 * Boston College
 * Buick
 * Bullfighting
 * Butter
 * Cadillac
 * Cakes
 * California State University
 * Cannabinoids
 * Cannes Film Festival
 * Capoeira
 * Caravaggio
 * Care Bears
 * Carnivorous plants
 * Caspar David Friedrich
 * CBS
 * CBS Sports
 * Chatham Islands
 * Cheese dishes
 * Chevrolet
 * Chinese Civil War
 * Chinese martial arts
 * Chrysler
 * Citigroup
 * Coagulation
 * Coca-Cola
 * Cocktails
 * Coldplay
 * Compass direction
 * Concrete
 * Condiments
 * Confidence tricks
 * Connective tissues
 * Corticosteroids
 * Cranial nerves
 * CSI: Miami
 * Cue sports
 * Daft Punk
 * Dance Dance Revolution
 * Dante Gabriel Rossetti
 * David Cronenberg
 * David Lynch
 * David Mamet
 * Desserts
 * Developmental biology
 * Devo
 * Diabetes
 * Dietary supplements
 * Disneyland
 * Doctor Dolittle
 * Doughnuts
 * Dow Chemical Company
 * DreamWorks Animation
 * Drexel University
 * Édouard Manet
 * Electromagnetic spectrum
 * Elizabeth II
 * Energy drinks
 * English law
 * Enzymes
 * Fallacies
 * Fandom
 * Fast food
 * Female reproductive system
 * Fiat
 * FIFA World Cup
 * Filmmaking
 * Flatbreads
 * Florida Keys
 * Food preservation
 * Food science
 * Football in France
 * Football in Greece
 * Football in Iran
 * Football in Italy
 * Football in Japan
 * Football in Mexico
 * Football in Portugal
 * Football in South Africa
 * Football in Spain
 * Football in Sweden
 * Ford Motor Company
 * Francisco Goya
 * Frans Hals
 * Fred Frith
 * Freight cars
 * Fuel cells
 * Furry fandom
 * Garden tools
 * Gene expression
 * General Dynamics
 * General Electric
 * General Hospital
 * General Motors
 * Ghost in the Shell
 * Gilligan's Island
 * Giovanni Bellini
 * GMC
 * Golden Raspberry Awards
 * Gothic architecture
 * Grand Theft Auto
 * Hallucinogens
 * Ham
 * Hand tools
 * Hapkido
 * Health care
 * Henri Matisse
 * Hieronymus Bosch
 * High-speed rail
 * Hindu festivals
 * History of Oklahoma
 * Holden
 * Honda
 * Hormones
 * Hosiery
 * Human impact on the environment
 * Human-powered transport
 * Hyundai
 * IBM
 * Ice cream
 * Industries
 * Infiniti
 * Instant foods
 * Intel
 * Internet access
 * Islamic art
 * Islands of Cape Verde
 * Isuzu
 * Ivy League
 * J. M. W. Turner
 * Jacob van Ruisdael
 * Jacques-Louis David
 * Jaguar Cars
 * Japanese martial arts
 * Jet Propulsion Laboratory
 * Johannes Vermeer
 * John Grisham
 * John Singer Sargent
 * Johnson & Johnson
 * Joints
 * Joss Whedon
 * Judo
 * Juice
 * Ken Burns
 * Kenneth Branagh
 * Kia
 * Kid Rock
 * Korean diaspora
 * Korean martial arts
 * Kurt Vonnegut
 * Lancaster University
 * Land Rover
 * Las Vegas Strip
 * Lincoln Motor Company
 * Linear algebra
 * Living Dead
 * Lobbying in the United States
 * Local anesthetics
 * Lymphatic system
 * M. C. Escher
 * Macross
 * Mad Max
 * Male reproductive system
 * Mandy Moore
 * Mazda
 * Mega Man
 * Mercedes-Benz
 * Mexican cuisine
 * Microorganisms
 * Missiles
 * Model organisms
 * Modern architecture
 * Muscle tissue
 * Newport
 * Nicolas Poussin
 * Nobel Prize
 * Norman Rockwell
 * Nucleic acids
 * Nuremberg trials
 * Organs
 * Packaging
 * Paralympic Games
 * Pasta
 * Patterns in nature
 * Paul Gauguin
 * Pearl Jam
 * Pens
 * Phenethylamines
 * Philippine cuisine
 * Phylogenetics
 * Pie
 * Pierre-Auguste Renoir
 * Pies
 * Pieter de Hooch
 * Pigs
 * Pizza
 * Playboy
 * Poker
 * Pope Benedict XVI
 * Pope John Paul II
 * Population
 * Population genetics
 * Porgy and Bess
 * Positivism
 * Power Rangers
 * Power tools
 * Procter & Gamble
 * Propaganda
 * Prostitution in Canada
 * Prostitution in India
 * Prostitution in Japan
 * Psalms
 * Qigong
 * Radiohead
 * Railway electrification
 * Ramones
 * Real estate developments
 * Redwall
 * Religious persecution
 * Renault
 * René Magritte
 * Republics of the Soviet Union
 * Resident Evil
 * Respiration
 * Respiratory physiology
 * Richard Brooks
 * Ridley Scott
 * Robert Altman
 * Robert Zemeckis
 * Robotech
 * Rodents
 * Roller coasters
 * Romanian cuisine
 * Rooms
 * Rowing
 * Roy Lichtenstein
 * Rubik's Cube
 * Rugby World Cup
 * Running
 * Saab Automobile
 * Sails
 * Samuel Beckett
 * Sandro Botticelli
 * Sausages
 * Scale modeling
 * Scale models
 * Scandinavian folklore
 * Sewing
 * Sex Pistols
 * Sexual fetishism
 * Sexual revolution
 * Shrek
 * Skyscrapers
 * Soft drinks
 * Soy
 * Stick-fighting
 * Super Bowl
 * Surfing
 * Table tennis
 * Tarot
 * Tells
 * Tetris
 * The Coca-Cola Company
 * Titian
 * Urinary system
 * Vale of Glamorgan
 * Veganism
 * Volvo
 * War on Terror
 * Waste
 * Wastewater
 * Water polo
 * Web search engines
 * Whisky
 * William Blake
 * William Hogarth
 * Winslow Homer
 * Portal:World Series
 * Xenophon
 * Yogurts
 * Zoophilia

Please inspect these portals, report problems or suggest improvements at WT:WPPORTD, or develop them further (see below). Thank you.

What's next?
There is still lots to do...

There are many subject gaps that need to be filled. This can be done by creating new portals, or by adding Selected article sections to existing portals. To create a new portal, simply place   on an empty portal page, and click "Preview". If the portal is complete, click "Save". After you try it, come share your experience and excitement at WT:WPPORTD.

Each new portal is just a starting point. Each portal of the new design can be further developed by:
 * refining the search parameters to improve the results displayed in the Did you know and In the news sections.
 * adding more specific Selected articles sections, like Selected biographies.
 * inserting a Recognized content section.
 * adding more pictures to the image slideshow.
 * placing a panoramic picture at the top of the intro section (especially for geographic portals).

Besides the new portals, there are still about 1200 portals of the old design that need to be converted to the new design.

Many portals need to be de-orphaned, by placing links to them (in the See also section of the corresponding root articles, at the bottom of the corresponding navigation footer templates, and on the corresponding category pages).

Many of the new portals still need to be listed at Portal:Contents/Portals.

Bugs keep popping up in portals. These need to be tracked down and reported at WT:WPPORTD.

Tools are needed to make developing and maintaining portals quicker and easier.

Dreaming up new features and capabilities. Innovation needs to continue, to design the portal of tomorrow, and the portal development-maintenance-system of the future. Automation!

So, if you find yourself with a little (or a lot) of free time, pick an area (or more) above and...

...dive in! &mdash; The Transhumanist  07:05, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Welcome AmericanAir88
Give a hearty welcome to AmericanAir88, who has adopted working on portals as one of his main purposes on Wikipedia. So far, he has created the following portals:


 * Portal:Blueberries
 * Portal:Olives
 * Portal:Bananas
 * Portal:Bone fractures
 * Portal:Carbohydrates
 * Portal:Cherries
 * Portal:Coconuts
 * Portal:Hartford Whalers
 * Portal:Integumentary system
 * Portal:Exercise
 * Portal:Fatty acids

Way to go!

Where's Evad?
Evad disappeared from Wikipedia on October 18.

He has been, and will continue to be, sorely missed.

Hopefully, he is okay, on a Caribbean cruise or something.

The conversion continues
Portals of the old design, are slowly but surely being converted to the new single-page design.

One factor that has slowed things down is that for many sections, the section header call and section contents call are integrated into a template and buried in a lua module, locking them in on each portal. They have been that way for years.

This means that these sections can't be directly edited like the other sections on the same portal. So, search/replaces affect all the sections except those. So, upgrading headers on these portals, for example, misses the integrated sections and inadvertently results in 2 different header colors.

Before we can continue with the upgrade of these portals, the headers and section contents calls need to be restored to each portal, so that those can be edited in concert with the other sections on the portal, and worked on independently of each other.

This is underway, with a solution implemented on about 1/4 of the affected portals so far. Around 300 of them. The remaining 900 should be done within a couple weeks or so.

Going wide...
We now have banner-shaped pictures included in the introduction sections of 180 portals. The rarity of such pictures has made it difficult to find suitably narrow images for display across the tops of portals.

We have a solution for this, courtesy of FR30799386...

Most pictures are not banner-shaped. But, you can still use them as banners. Here's how:

Using both  and   produces this:

Project's status
There are now 4,140 portals, with more being created almost daily. Prior to this project's reboot, portals were created at about the rate of 80 per year. Since April of this year, we've created about 2,600 new portals, or 32.5 years' worth at the old rate.

Of those new portals, about 3/4 of them need links leading to them. Almost all of them are linked to from the category system, but they still need links in article see also sections, at the bottom of navigation templates, and on the main portals list at Portal:Contents/Portals.

Of the 1500 portals created before the reboot, about 300 have been completely converted to the new design so far. About 1100 more have been partially converted, with intros, image slideshows, and associated wikimedia sections getting the most attention.

Discussion has resumed on the portal guidelines.

Until next issue...
See ya round the portal system! &mdash; The Transhumanist  11:40, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject Portals update #023, 25 Nov 2018
There are now 4,180 portals.

Will we break 5,000 by the end of the year?

I know we can. But, that is up to you!

( New portals are created with  or   )

Happy Holidays
Happy Holidays text.png Hello everyone! Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice (if it's occurring in your area of the world), and thanks for your work in maintaining, improving, and expanding portals. Cheers,  &mdash; The Transhumanist   06:51, 26 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message

Jingling along
The following portals have been created since the last issue:


 * 1) Advanced Micro Devices
 * 2) Aqua Teen Hunger Force
 * 3) Aquatic ecosystems
 * 4) Blackberries
 * 5) Blade
 * 6) Blake and Mortimer
 * 7) Climate
 * 8) Democratic Party
 * 9) Dua Lipa
 * 10) Eels
 * 11) Eggs
 * 12) Emmy Awards
 * 13) Fallout
 * 14) Flutes and whistles
 * 15) Geophysics
 * 16) Ghost
 * 17) Hartford Whalers
 * 18) HBO
 * 19) Hot sauces
 * 20) International System of Units
 * 21) Jawaharlal Nehru
 * 22) Kendrick Lamar
 * 23) KFC
 * 24) Kingdom of England
 * 25) M.I.A.
 * 26) Marvel Comics
 * 27) Marvel Entertainment
 * 28) Minerals
 * 29) Mixed martial arts
 * 30) Money
 * 31) MTV
 * 32) Museums
 * 33) National Hockey League
 * 34) Natural resources
 * 35) Nature
 * 36) NBC
 * 37) Nehru–Gandhi family
 * 38) Orthoptera
 * 39) PATH
 * 40) Pears
 * 41) Physiology
 * 42) Ponds
 * 43) Pope Francis
 * 44) Potatoes
 * 45) Presidents of the United States
 * 46) Republican Party
 * 47) Salad dressings
 * 48) Santiago
 * 49) Six Flags
 * 50) Stan Lee
 * 51) Starbucks
 * 52) Stem cells
 * 53) Systems of measurement
 * 54) SZA
 * 55) The West Wing
 * 56) Tintin
 * 57) Tomato sauces
 * 58) Tove Lo
 * 59) Viticulture
 * 60) Waffles
 * 61) Wendy's
 * 62) White House
 * 63) Will Smith
 * 64) Winemaking

Keep 'em coming!

By the way, the above list was generated using this Petscan query. It can be easily modified by changing the date. The data page (under the Output tab) also has options for receiving the data in CSV or tabbed format, which some operating systems automatically load into a spreadsheet program for ease of use, such as copying and pasting the desired column (like page names).

In closing
We'll keep it short this issue.

Expect a flood next time. Or the one after that.

Cheerio,  &mdash; The Transhumanist   07:04, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject Portals update #024, 26 Dec 2018
Last issue, I mentioned there would be a flood, and so, here it is...

Portals status
We now have 4,620 portals.

And the race to pass 5,000 by year's end is on...

Can we make it?

The New Year, and the 5,001st portal, await.

( New portals are created with  or   )

Evad is back!
After disappearing in mid-thread, Evad37 has returned from a longer than expected wikibreak.

Be sure to welcome him back.

Improved cropping is coming to Portal image banner
User:FR30799386 is working on making Portal image banner even better by enabling it to chop the top off an image as well as the bottom.

Many pictures aren't suitable for banners because they are too tall. Therefor, User:FR30799386 added cropping to this template, so that an editor could specify part of a picture to be used rather than the whole thing.

Upgrade of flagship portals is underway
Work has begun on upgrading Wikipedia's flagship portals (those listed at the top of the Main page).

So far, Portal:Geography, Portal:History, and Portal:Technology have been revamped. Of course, you are welcome to improve them further.

Work continues on the other five. Feel free to join in on the fun.

Spotting missing portals that are redirects
In place of many missing portals, there is a redirect that leads to "the next best topic", such as a parent topic.

Most of these were created before we had the tools to easily create portals (they used to take 6 hours or more to create, because it was all done manually). Rather than leave a portal link red, some editors thought it was best that those titles led somewhere.

The subjects that have sufficient coverage should have their own portals rather than a redirect to some other subject.

Unfortunately, being blue like all other live links, redirects are harder to spot than redlinks.

To spot redirects easily, you can make them all appear green.

What's new in portal space?

 * 1) Portal:17th century
 * 2) Portal:18th century
 * 3) Portal:Absinthe
 * 4) Portal:Abuse
 * 5) Portal:Academic degrees
 * 6) Portal:Acari
 * 7) Portal:Acipenseriformes
 * 8) Portal:Actas
 * 9) Portal:Actinopterygii
 * 10) Portal:Activision
 * 11) Portal:Aerobatics
 * 12) Portal:Aeroflot
 * 13) Portal:Aesop
 * 14) Portal:Afrosoricida
 * 15) Portal:Aichi
 * 16) Portal:Airlines
 * 17) Portal:Air traffic control
 * 18) Portal:Akon
 * 19) Portal:Alan Turing
 * 20) Portal:Alfred Nobel
 * 21) Portal:Alice Paul
 * 22) Portal:Allahabad
 * 23) Portal:Allgemeine-SS
 * 24) Portal:Allium
 * 25) Portal:Aluminium
 * 26) Portal:Alvarezsauroidea
 * 27) Portal:Alveolata
 * 28) Portal:Amazon
 * 29) Portal:Amino acids
 * 30) Portal:Ancient Greek philosophy
 * 31) Portal:Andalusia
 * 32) Portal:Andes
 * 33) Portal:Animax
 * 34) Portal:Antennas
 * 35) Portal:Anthrax (American band)
 * 36) Portal:Antibiotics
 * 37) Portal:Antidotes
 * 38) Portal:Antifungals
 * 39) Portal:Antimony
 * 40) Portal:Antivirus software
 * 41) Portal:Aquifers
 * 42) Portal:Arachnids
 * 43) Portal:Armadillos
 * 44) Portal:Armour
 * 45) Portal:Art movements
 * 46) Portal:Arvicolinae
 * 47) Portal:Asanas
 * 48) Portal:Association of Southeast Asian Nations
 * 49) Portal:AstraZeneca
 * 50) Portal:Asturias
 * 51) Portal:Asus
 * 52) Portal:Atoms
 * 53) Portal:Automation
 * 54) Portal:Aylesbury
 * 55) Portal:Aztecs
 * 56) Portal:Bags
 * 57) Portal:Banks
 * 58) Portal:Basalt
 * 59) Portal:Batgirl
 * 60) Portal:Bats
 * 61) Portal:Bay Area Rapid Transit
 * 62) Portal:Beijing Subway
 * 63) Portal:Belo Horizonte
 * 64) Portal:Ben Affleck
 * 65) Portal:Binondo
 * 66) Portal:Biodiversity of Colombia
 * 67) Portal:Biomes
 * 68) Portal:Blue Origin
 * 69) Portal:Board games
 * 70) Portal:Boca Raton, Florida
 * 71) Portal:Bruno Mars
 * 72) Portal:Budapest Metro
 * 73) Portal:Buffalo, New York
 * 74) Portal:Bullying
 * 75) Portal:Busan Metro
 * 76) Portal:Buteoninae
 * 77) Portal:C++
 * 78) Portal:Cairo Metro
 * 79) Portal:Canadian art
 * 80) Portal:Character encoding
 * 81) Portal:Character encodings
 * 82) Portal:Charity
 * 83) Portal:Chemical engineering
 * 84) Portal:Chemical synthesis
 * 85) Portal:Chickenpox
 * 86) Portal:Chili peppers
 * 87) Portal:Chongqing Rail Transit
 * 88) Portal:Climate
 * 89) Portal:Communication
 * 90) Portal:Community of Madrid
 * 91) Portal:Computer files
 * 92) Portal:Concurrent computing
 * 93) Portal:Conservation biology
 * 94) Portal:Containers
 * 95) Portal:Contract bridge
 * 96) Portal:Convicts in Australia
 * 97) Portal:Copenhagen Metro
 * 98) Portal:Crochet
 * 99) Portal:Cucurbita
 * 100) Portal:Culture of Albania
 * 101) Portal:Culture of Argentina
 * 102) Portal:Culture of Armenia
 * 103) Portal:Culture of Assam
 * 104) Portal:Culture of Australia
 * 105) Portal:Culture of Austria
 * 106) Portal:Culture of Azerbaijan
 * 107) Portal:Culture of Bahrain
 * 108) Portal:Culture of Bangladesh
 * 109) Portal:Culture of Belarus
 * 110) Portal:Culture of Belgium
 * 111) Portal:Culture of Belize
 * 112) Portal:Culture of Bengal
 * 113) Portal:Culture of Cornwall
 * 114) Portal:Culture of Djibouti
 * 115) Portal:Culture of England
 * 116) Portal:Culture of Kerala
 * 117) Portal:Culture of Somalia
 * 118) Portal:Culture of West Bengal
 * 119) Portal:Curitiba
 * 120) Portal:Databases
 * 121) Portal:Data mining
 * 122) Portal:Data storage
 * 123) Portal:Deforestation and desertification
 * 124) Portal:Delta Air Lines
 * 125) Portal:Demi Lovato
 * 126) Portal:Demography
 * 127) Portal:Desalination
 * 128) Portal:Development of the human body
 * 129) Portal:Disease
 * 130) Portal:Disney Princess
 * 131) Portal:Dmitri Mendeleev
 * 132) Portal:Dublin
 * 133) Portal:DVD
 * 134) Portal:Eating
 * 135) Portal:Electronic components
 * 136) Portal:Elizabeth Cady Stanton
 * 137) Portal:Elizabeth I of England
 * 138) Portal:Ellie Goulding
 * 139) Portal:Embedded systems
 * 140) Portal:Embroidery
 * 141) Portal:Emmeline Pankhurst
 * 142) Portal:Emmy Awards
 * 143) Portal:Enugu
 * 144) Portal:Euro
 * 145) Portal:Eurostar
 * 146) Portal:Even-toed ungulates
 * 147) Portal:Executables
 * 148) Portal:Experimental aircraft
 * 149) Portal:Falkland Islands
 * 150) Portal:Fibers
 * 151) Portal:File sharing
 * 152) Portal:File systems
 * 153) Portal:Frankfurt
 * 154) Portal:Gaels
 * 155) Portal:Galicia (Spain)
 * 156) Portal:Gardens
 * 157) Portal:Gemstones
 * 158) Portal:Geotechnical engineering
 * 159) Portal:Geothermal power
 * 160) Portal:Glass
 * 161) Portal:Glass production
 * 162) Portal:GLONASS
 * 163) Portal:Guangzhou Metro
 * 164) Portal:Habitats
 * 165) Portal:Hall of Fame for Great Americans
 * 166) Portal:Helicopters
 * 167) Portal:Helmets
 * 168) Portal:Helsinki
 * 169) Portal:Hilary Duff
 * 170) Portal:Hiroshima
 * 171) Portal:History of computing
 * 172) Portal:Honey bees
 * 173) Portal:Honolulu County, Hawaii
 * 174) Portal:Hubble Space Telescope
 * 175) Portal:Hummingbirds
 * 176) Portal:HVAC
 * 177) Portal:Hymenoptera
 * 178) Portal:Intermodal containers
 * 179) Portal:International Council for Science
 * 180) Portal:International Space Station
 * 181) Portal:Interstate Highway System
 * 182) Portal:IOS
 * 183) Portal:IPv6
 * 184) Portal:Ithaca, New York
 * 185) Portal:James Webb Space Telescope
 * 186) Portal:Jammu and Kashmir
 * 187) Portal:JavaScript
 * 188) Portal:Jay-Z
 * 189) Portal:John Major
 * 190) Portal:Kabul
 * 191) Portal:KFC
 * 192) Portal:Khuzestan Province
 * 193) Portal:Launch vehicles
 * 194) Portal:Laundry
 * 195) Portal:Lenovo
 * 196) Portal:Leo Tolstoy
 * 197) Portal:Library classification systems
 * 198) Portal:Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II
 * 199) Portal:Longevity
 * 200) Portal:Los Angeles International Airport
 * 201) Portal:Love
 * 202) Portal:Lyra (constellation)
 * 203) Portal:MacOS
 * 204) Portal:Macroeconomics
 * 205) Portal:Madrid
 * 206) Portal:Mail
 * 207) Portal:Malaria
 * 208) Portal:Malware
 * 209) Portal:Manhattan Project
 * 210) Portal:Mao Zedong
 * 211) Portal:Marrakesh
 * 212) Portal:Mathematics and art
 * 213) Portal:Mattel
 * 214) Portal:Mayotte
 * 215) Portal:Media culture
 * 216) Portal:Media manipulation
 * 217) Portal:Medications
 * 218) Portal:Men
 * 219) Portal:Metalworking
 * 220) Portal:Metropolitan Transportation Authority
 * 221) Portal:Michael Faraday
 * 222) Portal:Microeconomics
 * 223) Portal:Milan Metro
 * 224) Portal:Military aircraft
 * 225) Portal:Military deception
 * 226) Portal:Mixed reality
 * 227) Portal:Modern history
 * 228) Portal:Mood disorders
 * 229) Portal:Morpeth, Northumberland
 * 230) Portal:Moscow Metro
 * 231) Portal:MPEG
 * 232) Portal:MTR
 * 233) Portal:Multihulls
 * 234) Portal:Museums
 * 235) Portal:Music of Scotland
 * 236) Portal:NASA
 * 237) Portal:National anthems
 * 238) Portal:Natural language processing
 * 239) Portal:Neoplasms
 * 240) Portal:New Delhi
 * 241) Portal:Northern Cyprus
 * 242) Portal:Nuclear weapons
 * 243) Portal:Nuts
 * 244) Portal:Odd-toed ungulates
 * 245) Portal:Ores
 * 246) Portal:Organ transplantation
 * 247) Portal:Orthoptera
 * 248) Portal:Oslo
 * 249) Portal:Palmyra
 * 250) Portal:Pan-Africanism
 * 251) Portal:Panasonic
 * 252) Portal:Parrots
 * 253) Portal:Parties
 * 254) Portal:Peanuts
 * 255) Portal:Peanuts (comic strip)
 * 256) Portal:Perl
 * 257) Portal:Permaculture
 * 258) Portal:Pesticides
 * 259) Portal:Physical fitness
 * 260) Portal:Physiology
 * 261) Portal:Plant nutrition
 * 262) Portal:Porcelain
 * 263) Portal:Ports and harbors
 * 264) Portal:Pre-Columbian era
 * 265) Portal:Prehistoric Scotland
 * 266) Portal:Private transport
 * 267) Portal:Programming languages
 * 268) Portal:Programming paradigms
 * 269) Portal:Prostitution
 * 270) Portal:Protests
 * 271) Portal:Psychological manipulation
 * 272) Portal:P. T. Barnum
 * 273) Portal:Public housing in the United Kingdom
 * 274) Portal:Public transport in Helsinki
 * 275) Portal:Public transport in Istanbul
 * 276) Portal:Pueblos
 * 277) Portal:Pune
 * 278) Portal:Quilting
 * 279) Portal:Racing
 * 280) Portal:Radiation
 * 281) Portal:RAID
 * 282) Portal:Rail transport in Argentina
 * 283) Portal:Rail transport in Finland
 * 284) Portal:Rail transport in Germany
 * 285) Portal:Rail transport in Israel
 * 286) Portal:Rail transport in Malaysia
 * 287) Portal:Rail transport in Norway
 * 288) Portal:Rail transport in Singapore
 * 289) Portal:Rail transport in Spain
 * 290) Portal:Rail transport in Sri Lanka
 * 291) Portal:Rail transport in Thailand
 * 292) Portal:Rail transport in the United Arab Emirates
 * 293) Portal:Realism (arts)
 * 294) Portal:Recycling
 * 295) Portal:Religion in China
 * 296) Portal:Religion in Egypt
 * 297) Portal:Religion in Iran
 * 298) Portal:Religion in Israel
 * 299) Portal:Religion in Mexico
 * 300) Portal:Religion in Mozambique
 * 301) Portal:Religion in Myanmar
 * 302) Portal:Religion in Norway
 * 303) Portal:Religion in Pakistan
 * 304) Portal:Religion in Poland
 * 305) Portal:Religion in Portugal
 * 306) Portal:Religion in Romania
 * 307) Portal:Religion in Scotland
 * 308) Portal:Religion in South Africa
 * 309) Portal:Religion in Sweden
 * 310) Portal:Religion in Thailand
 * 311) Portal:Religion in Turkey
 * 312) Portal:Religion in Zimbabwe
 * 313) Portal:Republic of Artsakh
 * 314) Portal:Revolutions
 * 315) Portal:Reykjavík
 * 316) Portal:Rhythm
 * 317) Portal:Rocket engines
 * 318) Portal:Rodenticides
 * 319) Portal:Roofs
 * 320) Portal:Roscosmos
 * 321) Portal:Roses
 * 322) Portal:Rowing
 * 323) Portal:RuPaul
 * 324) Portal:Saint Helena
 * 325) Portal:Sales
 * 326) Portal:San Juan, Puerto Rico
 * 327) Portal:San Marino
 * 328) Portal:São Paulo
 * 329) Portal:Scottish art
 * 330) Portal:Scottish clans
 * 331) Portal:Sex work
 * 332) Portal:Shinkansen
 * 333) Portal:Shipbuilding
 * 334) Portal:Silk
 * 335) Portal:Simple living
 * 336) Portal:SkyTrain (Vancouver)
 * 337) Portal:South Ossetia
 * 338) Portal:Space Shuttles
 * 339) Portal:SpaceX
 * 340) Portal:Spike Lee
 * 341) Portal:SQL
 * 342) Portal:Starbucks
 * 343) Portal:Statue of Liberty
 * 344) Portal:Stem cells
 * 345) Portal:Stonehenge
 * 346) Portal:Street newspapers
 * 347) Portal:Stuttgart
 * 348) Portal:Submarines
 * 349) Portal:Suffragettes
 * 350) Portal:Susan B. Anthony
 * 351) Portal:Systems
 * 352) Portal:Tallinn
 * 353) Portal:Tashkent
 * 354) Portal:Telephony
 * 355) Portal:Tents
 * 356) Portal:Tigers
 * 357) Portal:Tobacco
 * 358) Portal:Tomatoes
 * 359) Portal:Toronto Transit Commission
 * 360) Portal:Tortoises
 * 361) Portal:Transnistria
 * 362) Portal:Transport in Afghanistan
 * 363) Portal:Transport in Barcelona
 * 364) Portal:Transport in Belgium
 * 365) Portal:Transport in Bristol
 * 366) Portal:Transport in Bucharest
 * 367) Portal:Transport in Buckinghamshire
 * 368) Portal:Transport in Cardiff
 * 369) Portal:Transport in Chennai
 * 370) Portal:Transport in China
 * 371) Portal:Transport in Edinburgh
 * 372) Portal:Transport in Glasgow
 * 373) Portal:Transport in Guyana
 * 374) Portal:Transport in Hong Kong
 * 375) Portal:Transport in India
 * 376) Portal:Transport in Ireland
 * 377) Portal:Transport in Israel
 * 378) Portal:Transport in Kiev
 * 379) Portal:Transport in London
 * 380) Portal:Transport in Somerset
 * 381) Portal:Transport in Tamil Nadu
 * 382) Portal:Transport in Tiruchirappalli
 * 383) Portal:Transport in Vietnam
 * 384) Portal:Transport in Warsaw
 * 385) Portal:Tuberculosis
 * 386) Portal:Twitter
 * 387) Portal:Umayyad Caliphate
 * 388) Portal:United States Armed Forces
 * 389) Portal:United States Congress
 * 390) Portal:USB
 * 391) Portal:Valencian Community
 * 392) Portal:Vijayawada
 * 393) Portal:Voting
 * 394) Portal:Washington Metro
 * 395) Portal:Waterfalls
 * 396) Portal:Weapons
 * 397) Portal:Weaving
 * 398) Portal:Web browsers
 * 399) Portal:Websites
 * 400) Portal:Wendy's
 * 401) Portal:Women's prisons in the United States
 * 402) Portal:Woodworking
 * 403) Portal:World Chess Championships
 * 404) Portal:Yangtze

Keep 'em coming!
And I'll see you next issue.

Sincerely,  &mdash; The Transhumanist   08:05, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

We can now crop the tops of pics to make banners
Before, we could only cut off the bottom of pics.

User:FR30799386 has pulled it off, and made the upgrade to Portal image banner...

So, this:

Becomes this:

Here's the code for the above banner:

To see it employed in a portal, check out Portal:Niagara Falls.

About that end of the year goal...
We were racing against time to create 5,000 portals by the end of the year (just for the heck of it).

We made it. We've passed the 5,000 portals mark, with time to spare!

And the 5,000th portal is Portal:Major League Baseball, by Happypillsjr.

Congratulations!

What's next?
The 10,000th portal mark. But...

...there is plenty else to do in addition to building new portals:


 * 1) The new portals need to be linked to from the encyclopedia.
 * 2) On those portals about subjects that are not typically capitalized, the search parameters need to be refined/expanded, to maximize the chances of Did you know and In the news items being found and displayed.
 * 3) A Recognized content section needs to be added to each portal that has a corresponding WikiProject.
 * 4) Addition of a category on those portals that lack a subject category.
 * 5) Implement the portal category system, adding the appropriate categories to each portal.
 * 6) Upgrade, and complete (as per the tasks enumerated above), the old-style portals that are not regularly maintained, which have not been converted yet (about 1,100 of them).
 * 7) Find and fix the remaining bugs in the underlying lua modules.
 * 8) Build portal tools (scripts) to assist in the creation, development, and maintenance of portals.
 * 9) Build a script to help build navbox footer templates, via the harvesting of categories, amongst other methods.
 * 10) Update the portal building instructions.
 * 11) Update the portal guideline.
 * 12) Refine the programming of the portals to reduce their load time.
 * 13) Design and develop the next generation of portals and portal components.

And whatever else you can dream up.

But most of all, have a...



Happy New Year! , thank you for your contributions to the Portals Project, and have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year.

Sincerely,  &mdash; The Transhumanist   11:40, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Update to scripts by AlexTheWhovian/Alex 21
Hello! This is a generic message created and copied to all editors using scripts that I have created. As I have recently changed my username from "User:AlexTheWhovian" to "User:Alex 21", any scripts that I have created that are listed at your common.js page may, at the moment, no longer be working. To fix this, simply update all occurrences of "User:AlexTheWhovian" to "User:Alex 21"; see here for an example. All the best! -- / Alex /21  11:02, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

WikiProject Portals update #026, 20 Jan 2019
Well, here's the first issue of the new year. Enjoy...

New participants
A hearty welcome to new arrivals to the portals department:
 * Emoteplump
 * Pakieditor
 * CASSIOPEIA
 * Venomous Sniper
 * DannyS712

Harvesting categories tool prototype
DannyS712 has created a user script prototype, User:DannyS712/Cat links, that can pull members from a category, a functionality we've been after since the project's revamp last Spring. Now, it's a matter of applying this technique to scripts that will place the items where needed, such as with a section starter script and/or portal builder script.

New portals since last issue

 * 1) Academic publishing
 * 2) Accounting
 * 3) Adam and Eve
 * 4) African Great Lakes
 * 5) Al Green
 * 6) Alternative views
 * 7) America's Next Top Model
 * 8) Andaman and Nicobar Islands
 * 9) Angles
 * 10) Applied mathematics
 * 11) Arabic
 * 12) Areas of mathematics
 * 13) Atlanta metropolitan area
 * 14) Atlantic Ocean
 * 15) Big Bash League
 * 16) Bijelo Dugme
 * 17) Bill Cosby
 * 18) Boats
 * 19) Bombardier Aerospace
 * 20) Bruce Willis
 * 21) Canadian law
 * 22) Cannons
 * 23) Caribbean American
 * 24) Chinese American
 * 25) Chinese Canadians
 * 26) Chinese gardens
 * 27) Chris Brown
 * 28) City
 * 29) Common law
 * 30) Criminal law
 * 31) Czechoslovakia
 * 32) Data
 * 33) Data warehouses
 * 34) DC Comics
 * 35) Deities
 * 36) DeKalb County
 * 37) Destiny's Child
 * 38) Differential equations
 * 39) Discrete geometry
 * 40) East Asia
 * 41) Economy of China
 * 42) Economy of India
 * 43) Economy of Malaysia
 * 44) Economy of the United Kingdom
 * 45) Ellen DeGeneres
 * 46) Email clients
 * 47) E
 * 48) Equations
 * 49) European Americans
 * 50) Filipino Americans
 * 51) Football in Algeria
 * 52) Fox Corporation
 * 53) Fractions and ratios
 * 54) Functional analysis
 * 55) Game theory
 * 56) Girlguiding
 * 57) Gloucestershire
 * 58) Grazhdanskaya Oborona
 * 59) Greek diaspora
 * 60) Habsburg Monarchy
 * 61) Hilbert's problems
 * 62) Hoodoo Gurus
 * 63) Hyundai Motor Company
 * 64) Iggy Azalea
 * 65) Indian Ocean
 * 66) Infinity
 * 67) Information theory
 * 68) Integrals
 * 69) Irish diaspora
 * 70) Irrational numbers
 * 71) Italian diaspora
 * 72) Japanese diaspora
 * 73) J. Cole
 * 74) Jennifer Lopez
 * 75) Jessica Lange
 * 76) John Fogerty
 * 77) Kehlani
 * 78) Kiev
 * 79) K. Michelle
 * 80) Knot theory
 * 81) Kool & the Gang
 * 82) Lakes in China
 * 83) Lake Van
 * 84) Leonardo DiCaprio
 * 85) Limerick
 * 86) Literary composition
 * 87) Long Island Rail Road
 * 88) Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
 * 89) Lukas Graham
 * 90) Mathematical optimization
 * 91) Matt Damon
 * 92) Merchant ships
 * 93) Metallic means
 * 94) Metro-North Railroad
 * 95) Microsoft Windows
 * 96) Military of India
 * 97) Miss America
 * 98) Modulation
 * 99) Moon landing
 * 100) Mozilla
 * 101) Music of Ireland
 * 102) Narratives
 * 103) Nashville
 * 104) Nassau County
 * 105) Norfolk
 * 106) Nottinghamshire
 * 107) One Life to Live
 * 108) Overseas Chinese
 * 109) Percentages
 * 110) Probability distributions
 * 111) Public Broadcasting Service
 * 112) Quezon City
 * 113) Raven-Symoné
 * 114) R. Kelly
 * 115) Rodeo
 * 116) RuneScape
 * 117) Sarah Silverman
 * 118) Saturn rockets
 * 119) Science and technology
 * 120) Sesame Street
 * 121) Seth MacFarlane
 * 122) Ships
 * 123) Shipwrecks
 * 124) Shropshire
 * 125) Spaceports
 * 126) Space suits
 * 127) Spanish diaspora
 * 128) Steam locomotives
 * 129) Suffolk
 * 130) Suzuki
 * 131) Tanks
 * 132) Tensors
 * 133) The CW
 * 134) Thomas Aquinas
 * 135) T.I.
 * 136) TISM
 * 137) Tom Cruise
 * 138) Toni Braxton
 * 139) Toyota
 * 140) Transportation in the Philippines
 * 141) True Blood
 * 142) Violin
 * 143) Virgin Group
 * 144) Vladimir Putin
 * 145) Volkswagen
 * 146) Volume
 * 147) Warner Bros.
 * 148) Warships
 * 149) Warwickshire
 * 150) Washington D.C.
 * 151) [[Portal:Watercraft|
 * 152) Web syndication
 * 153) Wikis
 * 154) Witchcraft
 * 155) Women's sports
 * 156) World of Warcraft

What else is going on
There have been some discussions at Wikipedia talk:Portal guidelines.

DreamyJazz is working on a bot to place links to portals on root articles, category pages, and navigation footer templates.

Portal bugs are getting dealt with soon after they are reported.

Lots of wikignome activity (using Hotcat, etc.).

Keep up the good work. &mdash; The Transhumanist  08:33, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Portal styles
For a visually intensive portal, see Portal:Hummingbirds.

If you find any other portals that stand out, please send me the links so I can include them in the next issue. Thank you.

Conversion continues
There are about 1100 portals left in the old style, with subpages and static excerpts. As those are very labor intensive to maintain (because their maintenance is manual), all those except the ones with active maintainers (about 100) are slated for upgrade = approximately 1000. We started with 1500, and so over a quarter of them have been processed so far. That's good, but at this rate, conversion will take another 3 years. So, some automation (AWB?) is in order. We just need to keep at it, and push down on the gas pedal a bit harder.

You can find the old-style portals with an insource search of "box portal skeleton".

Flagship portals: the portals on the Main Page
Speaking of upgrades...

The following portals are listed in the header at the top of Wikipedia's Main Page, and get far more traffic than all other portals:


 * 1) Portal:Arts
 * 2) Portal:Biography
 * 3) Portal:Geography
 * 4) Portal:History
 * 5) Portal:Mathematics
 * 6) Portal:Science
 * 7) Portal:Society
 * 8) Portal:Technology

Of those, all but one have been revamped to an automated self-updating single-page design.

The remaining one, Portal:Mathematics has manual maintainers, and has been partially upgraded.

As these are our flagship fleet, they need to be kept in top-notch condition.

Check 'em out, and improve them if you can.

And be sure they are on your watchlist.

New portals since last issue

 * Accomack County
 * Adair County
 * Adair County
 * Adams County
 * Adidas
 * Airbus
 * Americas
 * Bangladesh Armed Forces
 * Bedfordshire
 * Bicycles
 * Boeing
 * Chester County
 * Conspiracy theories
 * Corals
 * County Durham
 * Culture of the United States
 * DC Universe
 * Dragons
 * Economy of Pakistan
 * Electricity
 * Ethnic groups
 * European Union law
 * Fatimid Caliphate
 * Flanders
 * Frederick County
 * Fujian
 * German language
 * Global issues
 * Greek mathematics
 * Grisons
 * Guangxi
 * Hebei
 * Henan
 * Herefordshire
 * History of North America
 * Hollywood
 * Hubei
 * Hunan
 * Hybrid
 * Inner Mongolia
 * Jet engines
 * Jiangsu
 * Johor
 * Johor Bahru
 * Julius Caesar
 * Kuala Lumpur
 * Lake Constance
 * Lee Kuan Yew
 * Lufthansa
 * Lunar eclipses
 * Magnetism
 * Menstrual cycle
 * Mustelids
 * Mutations
 * New York University
 * Nord-du-Québec
 * North Africa
 * PepsiCo
 * Pitcairn Islands
 * Podcasting
 * Quantum electrodynamics
 * Quantum mechanics
 * Rawalpindi
 * Réunion
 * Roads in Pakistan
 * Rockefeller Center
 * Sichuan
 * St. Gallen
 * State University of New York
 * Temperature
 * Tsunamis
 * Veterinary medicine
 * Vorarlberg
 * Walgreens
 * Walmart
 * Weasels
 * Xinjiang
 * Yunnan

Keep 'em coming!

Deorphanizing the new portals
As you know, thousands of the new portals are orphans, that is, having no links to them from article space. For all practical purposes, that means they are not part of the encyclopedia yet, and readers will be unlikely to find them.

What is needed are links to these portals from the See also sections of the corresponding root articles.

Dreamy Jazz to the rescue...

Dreamy Jazz has created a bot to place the corresponding category link to the end of each portal (if it is missing), and place a link to each portal in the See also section of the corresponding root articles.

That bot, named User:Dreamy Jazz Bot, is currently in its trial period performing the above described edits!

To take a look at the edits it has made so far, see Special:Contributions/Dreamy_Jazz_Bot.

It shouldn't be long before the bot is processing the entire set of new portals.

Good news indeed.

Way to go, Dreamy Jazz!

And, that's a wrap
That's all I have to report this time around.

No doubt there will be more to tell soon.

Until then,   &mdash; The Transhumanist   13:09, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

WikiProject Portals update #028, 04 Feb 2019
Here's a quicky status report:


 * Old-style portals:   1,018
 * Single-page portals: 4,367
 * Total portals:       5,385

But of course, there has been more going on than just that...

Dreamy Jazz Bot is up and running!
Dreamy Jazz Bot has been approved and is now up and running.

What it does is places missing links to orphaned portals. It places a link in the See also section of the corresponding root article, and it puts one at the top of the corresponding category page.

We have thousands of new portals that have yet to be added to the encyclopedia proper, just waiting to go live.

When they do go live, over the coming days or weeks, due to Dreamy Jazz Bot, it will be like an explosion of new portals on the scene. We should expect an increase in awareness and interest in the portals project. Perhaps even new participants.

Get ready...

Get set...

Go!

Another sockpuppet infiltrator has been discovered
User:Emoteplump, a recent contributor to the portals project, was discovered to be a sockpuppet account of an indefinitely blocked user.

When that happens, admins endeavor to eradicate everything the editor contributed. This aftermath has left a wake of destruction throughout the portals department, again.

The following portals which have been speedy deleted, are in the process of being re-created. Please feel free to help to turn these blue again:


 * Portal:Adidas
 * Portal:AFC Asian Cup
 * Portal:Airbus
 * Portal:Anhui
 * Portal:Bicycles
 * Portal:Blue Cheese
 * Portal:Boeing
 * Portal:British Airways
 * Portal:Carcinogen
 * Portal:ComfortDelGro
 * Portal:Construction
 * Portal:Corals
 * Portal:Cross-Strait relations
 * Portal:Derry
 * Portal:Duke University
 * Portal:Electricity
 * Portal:Ethnic groups
 * Portal:Extraterrestrial life
 * Portal:Flanders
 * Portal:Fujian
 * Portal:Gansu
 * Portal:German language
 * Portal:Gordon Ramsay
 * Portal:Government of Australia
 * Portal:Government of Canada
 * Portal:Government of Hong Kong
 * Portal:Government of Indonesia
 * Portal:Government of Ireland
 * Portal:Government of Japan
 * Portal:Government of Malaysia
 * Portal:Government of Russia
 * Portal:Government of Singapore
 * Portal:Government of Spain
 * Portal:Government of Thailand
 * Portal:Government of the United Kingdom
 * Portal:Government of Ukraine
 * Portal:Grapes
 * Portal:Guangxi
 * Portal:Guizhou
 * Portal:Hasbro
 * Portal:Hebei
 * Portal:Heilongjiang
 * Portal:Henan
 * Portal:Hillary Clinton
 * Portal:History of art
 * Portal:History of North America
 * Portal:History of Thailand
 * Portal:Hollywood
 * Portal:Hubei
 * Portal:Hunan
 * Portal:Hybrid (biology)
 * Portal:Hydrogen
 * Portal:Imperial College London
 * Portal:Inner Mongolia
 * Portal:Japan Airlines
 * Portal:Jet engines
 * Portal:Jet Engines
 * Portal:Jiangsu
 * Portal:Jiangxi
 * Portal:Jilin
 * Portal:Johor Bahru
 * Portal:Julius Caesar
 * Portal:JYP Entertainment
 * Portal:Kedah
 * Portal:Kelantan
 * Portal:Kuala Lumpur
 * Portal:Labuan
 * Portal:Lee Kuan Yew
 * Portal:Liaoning
 * Portal:Lufthansa
 * Portal:Magnetism
 * Portal:McLaren
 * Portal:Menstrual cycle
 * Portal:Monash University
 * Portal:Mutations
 * Portal:Nanyang Technological University
 * Portal:National University of Singapore
 * Portal:Negeri Sembilan
 * Portal:Nestlé
 * Portal:Nike, Inc.
 * Portal:Ningxia
 * Portal:Nissan
 * Portal:North Africa
 * Portal:North Pole
 * Portal:Pahang
 * Portal:Penang
 * Portal:PepsiCo
 * Portal:Perak
 * Portal:Perlis
 * Portal:Qinghai
 * Portal:Quantum electrodynamics
 * Portal:Quantum mechanics
 * Portal:S.H.I.E.L.D.
 * Portal:Selangor
 * Portal:Shanxi
 * Portal:Sichuan
 * Portal:SM Entertainment
 * Portal:South Pole
 * Portal:Subway (restaurant)
 * Portal:Temperature
 * Portal:Terengganu
 * Portal:Uber
 * Portal:Veterinary medicine
 * Portal:Volvo Buses
 * Portal:Walgreens
 * Portal:Walmart
 * Portal:Xinjiang
 * Portal:Yahoo!
 * Portal:Yale University
 * Portal:YG Entertainment
 * Portal:Yunnan
 * Portal:Zhejiang

And the corresponding talk pages:


 * Portal talk:Adidas
 * Portal talk:Airbus
 * Portal talk:Bicycles
 * Portal talk:Boeing
 * Portal talk:Carcinogen
 * Portal talk:Corals
 * Portal talk:Duke University
 * Portal talk:Electricity
 * Portal talk:Ethnic groups
 * Portal talk:Flanders
 * Portal talk:Fujian
 * Portal talk:German language
 * Portal talk:Girls' Generation
 * Portal talk:Government of Australia
 * Portal talk:Government of Canada
 * Portal talk:Government of Hong Kong
 * Portal talk:Government of Indonesia
 * Portal talk:Government of Ireland
 * Portal talk:Government of Japan
 * Portal talk:Government of Malaysia
 * Portal talk:Government of Russia
 * Portal talk:Government of Singapore
 * Portal talk:Government of Spain
 * Portal talk:Government of Thailand
 * Portal talk:Government of the United Kingdom
 * Portal talk:Government of Ukraine
 * Portal talk:Grapes
 * Portal talk:Guangxi
 * Portal talk:Hebei
 * Portal talk:Henan
 * Portal talk:Hillary Clinton
 * Portal talk:History of art
 * Portal talk:Hollywood
 * Portal talk:Hubei
 * Portal talk:Hunan
 * Portal talk:Hybrid (biology)
 * Portal talk:Imperial College London
 * Portal talk:Inner Mongolia
 * Portal talk:Jet engines
 * Portal talk:Jet Engines
 * Portal talk:Jiangsu
 * Portal talk:Johor Bahru
 * Portal talk:Julius Caesar
 * Portal talk:JYP Entertainment
 * Portal talk:Kuala Lumpur
 * Portal talk:Lee Kuan Yew
 * Portal talk:Lufthansa
 * Portal talk:Magnetism
 * Portal talk:Menstrual cycle
 * Portal talk:Monash University
 * Portal talk:Mutations
 * Portal talk:Nanyang Technological University
 * Portal talk:National University of Singapore
 * Portal talk:Nike, Inc.
 * Portal talk:North Africa
 * Portal talk:PepsiCo
 * Portal talk:Quantum electrodynamics
 * Portal talk:Quantum mechanics
 * Portal talk:Sichuan
 * Portal talk:SM Entertainment
 * Portal talk:Subway (restaurant)
 * Portal talk:Temperature
 * Portal talk:Veterinary medicine
 * Portal talk:Walgreens
 * Portal talk:Walmart
 * Portal talk:Xinjiang
 * Portal talk:Yale University
 * Portal talk:YG Entertainment
 * Portal talk:Yunnan

New portals since the last issue

 * Portal:American_Horror_Story
 * Portal:Bad_Religion
 * Portal:Bicycles
 * Portal:British_Airways
 * Portal:Campania
 * Portal:Ciara
 * Portal:Derry
 * Portal:Extraterrestrial_life
 * Portal:Fujian
 * Portal:Guangxi
 * Portal:Imperial_College_London
 * Portal:Islamic_Golden_Age
 * Portal:Ivy_Queen
 * Portal:Japan_Airlines
 * Portal:Japanese_language
 * Portal:Kate_Ceberano
 * Portal:Labuan
 * Portal:LL_Cool_J
 * Portal:New_York_City_Police_Department
 * Portal:Penang
 * Portal:PepsiCo
 * Portal:Perak
 * Portal:Perlis
 * Portal:Politics_of_Ukraine
 * Portal:Quantum_mechanics
 * Portal:Salads
 * Portal:Selangor
 * Portal:Shaquille_O'Neal
 * Portal:South_Pole
 * Portal:Supermarket
 * Portal:Temperature
 * Portal:Terengganu
 * Portal:The_Fairly_OddParents
 * Portal:The_Incredibles
 * Portal:Vassar_College
 * Portal:Voivod_(band)
 * Portal:Yu-Gi-Oh!

Keep up the great work
Until next time,   &mdash; The Transhumanist   08:58, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

WikiProject Portals update #029, 13 Feb 2019
Where we are at:
 * Single-page portals: 4,704
 * Total portals:       5,705

The Ref desks survived the proposal to shut them down
You might be familiar with the Ref desks, by their link on every new portal. They are a place you can go to ask volunteers almost any knowledge-related question, and have been a feature of Wikipedia since August of 2005 (or perhaps earlier). They were linked to from portals in an effort to improve their visibility, and to provide a bridge from the encyclopedia proper to project space (the Wikipedia community).

Well, somebody proposed that we get rid of them, and the community decided that that was not going to happen. Thank you for defending the Ref desks!

Here's a link to the dramatic discussion:

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

The cleanup after sockpuppet Emoteplump continues...
The wake of disruption left by Emoteplump and the admins who reverted many (but not all) of his/her edits is still undergoing cleanup. We could use all the help we can get on this task...

Almost all of the speedy deleted portals have been rebuilt from scratch.

For the portals he/she restarted (many of which were done mistakenly, overwriting restarts and further development that had already been done), and/or tagged as the maintainer, see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Emoteplump&oldid=881568794#Additional_Portals_under_my_watch

10,000 portals, here we come...
We're at 5,705 portals and counting.

New portals since issue #28

 * 1) Portal:Abitibi-Témiscamingue
 * 2) Portal:Ahold Delhaize
 * 3) Portal:AKB48
 * 4) Portal:Åland Islands
 * 5) Portal:Alaska Airlines
 * 6) Portal:Albanian Civil War
 * 7) Portal:Albertsons
 * 8) Portal:Alevism
 * 9) Portal:All in the Family
 * 10) Portal:Alternative metal
 * 11) Portal:Ambient music
 * 12) Portal:Ancient Near East mythology
 * 13) Portal:Ancient Roman religion
 * 14) Portal:Andrew Cuomo
 * 15) Portal:Anti-consumerism
 * 16) Portal:Antimatter
 * 17) Portal:Arameans
 * 18) Portal:Arianism
 * 19) Portal:Australian Crawl
 * 20) Portal:Bali
 * 21) Portal:Banten
 * 22) Portal:Bengkulu
 * 23) Portal:Black Lives Matter
 * 24) Portal:Bluegrass music
 * 25) Portal:Bonnie Tyler
 * 26) Portal:Breakbeat
 * 27) Portal:Calypso music
 * 28) Portal:Cambridgeshire
 * 29) Portal:Camila Cabello
 * 30) Portal:Capcom
 * 31) Portal:Capsicum
 * 32) Portal:Celtic music
 * 33) Portal:Central American music
 * 34) Portal:Central Java
 * 35) Portal:Central Kalimantan
 * 36) Portal:Central Sulawesi
 * 37) Portal:Chanel
 * 38) Portal:Cinema of Australia
 * 39) Portal:Cognitive psychology
 * 40) Portal:Communication studies
 * 41) Portal:Conservatism in the United States
 * 42) Portal:Cortina d'Ampezzo
 * 43) Portal:Cross-Strait relations
 * 44) Portal:Cryptozoology
 * 45) Portal:Danish folk music
 * 46) Portal:Disco
 * 47) Portal:Dyslexia
 * 48) Portal:East Java
 * 49) Portal:East Kalimantan
 * 50) Portal:East Nusa Tenggara
 * 51) Portal:Easy listening
 * 52) Portal:Ed Sheeran
 * 53) Portal:Ehime
 * 54) Portal:Electricity
 * 55) Portal:Electronica
 * 56) Portal:Electronic rock
 * 57) Portal:English folk music
 * 58) Portal:Environmental technology
 * 59) Portal:Experimental music
 * 60) Portal:Extreme metal
 * 61) Portal:Fall Out Boy
 * 62) Portal:Finnish Defence Forces
 * 63) Portal:Finnish folk music
 * 64) Portal:Football in Croatia
 * 65) Portal:Football in Jordan
 * 66) Portal:Funk
 * 67) Portal:Gamelan
 * 68) Portal:General Mills
 * 69) Portal:Germanic languages
 * 70) Portal:German language
 * 71) Portal:Government of Canada
 * 72) Portal:Government of Hong Kong
 * 73) Portal:Government of Indonesia
 * 74) Portal:Government of Ireland
 * 75) Portal:Government of Malaysia
 * 76) Portal:Government of Russia
 * 77) Portal:Government of Singapore
 * 78) Portal:Government of Spain
 * 79) Portal:Government of Thailand
 * 80) Portal:Grapes
 * 81) Portal:Green Party of the United States
 * 82) Portal:Grinspoon
 * 83) Portal:Gwen Stefani
 * 84) Portal:Hardcore punk
 * 85) Portal:Hardcore techno
 * 86) Portal:Haskell (programming language)
 * 87) Portal:History of art
 * 88) Portal:History of North America
 * 89) Portal:History of Thailand
 * 90) Portal:Hollywood
 * 91) Portal:Hotels
 * 92) Portal:House music
 * 93) Portal:Hungarian folk music
 * 94) Portal:Hunters & Collectors
 * 95) Portal:Hydrogen
 * 96) Portal:Icelandic folk music
 * 97) Portal:Indigenous music of North America
 * 98) Portal:Insomniac Games
 * 99) Portal:International field hockey
 * 100) Portal:International trade
 * 101) Portal:Iranian music
 * 102) Portal:Islamophobia
 * 103) Portal:Jambi
 * 104) Portal:Jet engines
 * 105) Portal:Jordin Sparks
 * 106) Portal:Julius Caesar
 * 107) Portal:Kannur
 * 108) Portal:Kansas City Spurs
 * 109) Portal:Kelly Rowland
 * 110) Portal:Kirby
 * 111) Portal:Kraft Heinz
 * 112) Portal:Krasnoyarsk Krai
 * 113) Portal:Kroger
 * 114) Portal:Kuala Lumpur
 * 115) Portal:Lampung
 * 116) Portal:Larry Kramer
 * 117) Portal:LeBron James
 * 118) Portal:Lehigh Valley
 * 119) Portal:Leicestershire
 * 120) Portal:Liège
 * 121) Portal:Liguria
 * 122) Portal:Los Angeles Aztecs
 * 123) Portal:Los Angeles Wolves
 * 124) Portal:Macedonian language
 * 125) Portal:Magnetism
 * 126) Portal:Maithripala Sirisena
 * 127) Portal:Maluku (province)
 * 128) Portal:Mangoes
 * 129) Portal:Marco Pierre White
 * 130) Portal:McLaren
 * 131) Portal:Menstrual cycle
 * 132) Portal:Metalcore
 * 133) Portal:Miami FC
 * 134) Portal:Microblogging
 * 135) Portal:Microtonal music
 * 136) Portal:Midnight Oil
 * 137) Portal:Minnesota Kicks
 * 138) Portal:Mission: Impossible
 * 139) Portal:Modernism (music)
 * 140) Portal:Moheener Ghoraguli
 * 141) Portal:Mondelez International
 * 142) Portal:Music genres
 * 143) Portal:Music of Bangladesh
 * 144) Portal:Music of India
 * 145) Portal:Music of Italy
 * 146) Portal:Music of Japan
 * 147) Portal:Music of Korea
 * 148) Portal:Music of Latin America
 * 149) Portal:Music of Micronesia
 * 150) Portal:Music of North Africa
 * 151) Portal:Music of Pakistan
 * 152) Portal:Music of Serbia
 * 153) Portal:Music of the Philippines
 * 154) Portal:Music of the United States
 * 155) Portal:Mutations
 * 156) Portal:National Rugby League
 * 157) Portal:Neoclassicism (music)
 * 158) Portal:Netball
 * 159) Portal:New York City Fire Department
 * 160) Portal:Nick Jr.
 * 161) Portal:Nobility
 * 162) Portal:Nordic countries
 * 163) Portal:North Africa
 * 164) Portal:North Kalimantan
 * 165) Portal:North Maluku
 * 166) Portal:North Pole
 * 167) Portal:North Queensland
 * 168) Portal:North Sulawesi
 * 169) Portal:North Sumatra
 * 170) Portal:Norwegian folk music
 * 171) Portal:Papua (province)
 * 172) Portal:Peaches
 * 173) Portal:Politics of Abkhazia
 * 174) Portal:Politics of Afghanistan
 * 175) Portal:Politics of Albania
 * 176) Portal:Politics of Algeria
 * 177) Portal:Politics of Andorra
 * 178) Portal:Politics of Angola
 * 179) Portal:Politics of Antigua and Barbuda
 * 180) Portal:Politics of Argentina
 * 181) Portal:Politics of Artsakh
 * 182) Portal:Politics of Bahrain
 * 183) Portal:Politics of Bangladesh
 * 184) Portal:Politics of Bavaria
 * 185) Portal:Politics of Belarus
 * 186) Portal:Politics of Belgium
 * 187) Portal:Politics of Belize
 * 188) Portal:Politics of Benin
 * 189) Portal:Politics of Bhutan
 * 190) Portal:Politics of Bosnia and Herzegovina
 * 191) Portal:Politics of Botswana
 * 192) Portal:Politics of Brazil
 * 193) Portal:Politics of Brunei
 * 194) Portal:Politics of Bulgaria
 * 195) Portal:Politics of Burkina Faso
 * 196) Portal:Politics of Burundi
 * 197) Portal:Politics of Cambodia
 * 198) Portal:Politics of Cameroon
 * 199) Portal:Politics of China
 * 200) Portal:Politics of São Tomé and Príncipe
 * 201) Portal:Politics of South Sudan
 * 202) Portal:Politics of Sudan
 * 203) Portal:Politics of Tanzania
 * 204) Portal:Politics of the Republic of the Congo
 * 205) Portal:Politics of Togo
 * 206) Portal:Politics of Tunisia
 * 207) Portal:Politics of Uganda
 * 208) Portal:Pop rock
 * 209) Portal:Rap rock
 * 210) Portal:Ras Al Khaimah
 * 211) Portal:Riau
 * 212) Portal:Riau Islands
 * 213) Portal:Ricky Martin
 * 214) Portal:Royal Canadian Air Force
 * 215) Portal:Rutland
 * 216) Portal:Saxophones
 * 217) Portal:Semiotics
 * 218) Portal:Ska
 * 219) Portal:Soca music
 * 220) Portal:Soul music
 * 221) Portal:Sound sculptures
 * 222) Portal:Southeast Sulawesi
 * 223) Portal:South Kalimantan
 * 224) Portal:South Sulawesi
 * 225) Portal:South Sumatra
 * 226) Portal:Space: 1999
 * 227) Portal:Special Region of Yogyakarta
 * 228) Portal:Swedish folk music
 * 229) Portal:Tamil language
 * 230) Portal:Techno
 * 231) Portal:Terry Brooks
 * 232) Portal:The Living End
 * 233) Portal:Thrissur
 * 234) Portal:Trance music
 * 235) Portal:Tyrant flycatchers
 * 236) Portal:Veterinary medicine
 * 237) Portal:Wayanad
 * 238) Portal:Welsh folk music
 * 239) Portal:West Champaran district
 * 240) Portal:Western dress codes
 * 241) Portal:West Flanders
 * 242) Portal:West Java
 * 243) Portal:West Kalimantan
 * 244) Portal:West Nusa Tenggara
 * 245) Portal:West Papua (province)
 * 246) Portal:West Sulawesi
 * 247) Portal:West Sumatra
 * 248) Portal:Wildlife of India
 * 249) Portal:Wildlife of Nepal
 * 250) Portal:Windows 10
 * 251) Portal:Winter War
 * 252) Portal:Woodpeckers
 * 253) Portal:Worcestershire
 * 254) Portal:World economy
 * 255) Portal:World Ocean
 * 256) Portal:World Rally Championship
 * 257) Portal:World views
 * 258) Portal:XTC
 * 259) Portal:Yahoo!
 * 260) Portal:Yoruba people
 * 261) Portal:You Am I
 * 262) Portal:Young Wizards
 * 263) Portal:Yugoslavs

Prior to 2018, for the previous 14 years, portal creation was at about 80 portals per year on average. We did over 3 times that in just the past 9 days. At this rate, we'll hit the 10,000 portal mark in 5 months. But, I'm sure we can do it sooner than that.

What's next for portal pages?
There are 5 drives for portal development:
 * 1) Create new portals
 * 2) Expand existing portals, such as with new sections like Recognized content
 * 3) Convert or restart old-style portals into automated single-page portals
 * 4) Link to new portals from the encyclopedia
 * 5) Pageless portals

Let's take a closer look at these...

1: Creating new portals
Portal creation, for subjects that happen to have the necessary support structures already in place, is down to about a minute per portal. The creation part, which is automated, takes about 10 seconds. The other 50 seconds is taken up by manual activities, such as finding candidate subjects, inspecting generated portals, and selecting the portal creation template to be used according to the resources available. Tools are under development to automate these activities as much as possible, to pare portal creation time down even more. Ten seconds each is the goal.

Eventually, we are going to run out of navigation templates to base portals off of. Though there are still thousands to go. But, when they do run out, we'll need an easy way to create more. A nav footer creation script.

Meanwhile, other resources are being explored and developed, such as categories, and methods to harvest the links they contain.

2: Expanding existing portals
The portal collection is growing, not only by the addition of new portals, but by further developing the ones we already have, by...
 * Improving and/or adding search parameters to better power the Did you know and In the news sections.
 * Adding more selected content sections, like Selected biographies.
 * Adding and maintaining Recognized content sections, via JL-Bot.
 * Adding pictures to the image slideshow.
 * Adding panoramic pics.
 * Categorizing portals.

More features will be added as we dream them up and design them. So, don't be shy, make a wish.

3: Converting old portals
By far the hardest and most time-consuming task we have been working on is updating the old portals, the very reason we revamped this WikiProject in the first place.

There are two approaches here:
 * A) Restart a portal from scratch, using our automated tools. For basic no-frills portals, that works find. But, for more elaborate portals, as that tends to lose content and features, the following approach is being tried...
 * B) Upgrade a portal section by section, so little to nothing is lost in the process.

4: Linking to new portals
Or "portal deorphanization"...

Dreamy Jazz Bot is purring along.

And a tool in the form of a script is under development for linking to portals at the time they are created, or shortly thereafter.

5...
See below...

New WikiProject for the post-saved-portal phase of operations...
Saved portals, are portals with a saved page.

What is the next stage in the evolutionary progression?

Quantum portals.

What are quantum portals?

Portals that come into existence when you click on the portal button, and which disappear when you leave the page.

Or, as Pbsouthwood put it:

...portals that exist only as a probability function (algorithm) until you collapse the wave form by observing through the portal button (run the script), and disappear again after use...

Introducing...

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

Keep on keepin' on
...'til next time,   &mdash; The Transhumanist   10:17, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

WikiProject Portals update #030, 17 Mar 2019
Previous issue:
 * Single-page portals: 4,704
 * Total portals:      5,705

This issue:
 * Single-page portals: 4,562
 * Total portals:      5,578

The collection of portals has shrunk
All Portals closed at WP:MfD during 2019

Grouped Nominations total 127 Portals:
 * 1) Miscellany for deletion/US County Portals Deleted 64 portals
 * 2) Miscellany for deletion/Districts of India Portals Deleted 30 Portals
 * 3) Miscellany for deletion/Portals for Portland, Oregon neighborhoods Deleted 23 Portals
 * 4) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Allen Park, Michigan Deleted 6 Portals
 * 5) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Cryptocurrency Deleted 2 Portals
 * 6) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:North Pole Deleted 2 Portals

Individual Nominations:
 * 1) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Circles Deleted
 * 2) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Fruits Deleted
 * 3) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:E (mathematical constant) Deleted
 * 4) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Burger King Deleted
 * 5) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Cotingas Deleted
 * 6) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Prostitution in Canada Deleted
 * 7) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Agoura Hills, California Deleted
 * 8) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Urinary system Deleted
 * 9) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:You Am I Deleted
 * 10) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Cannabis (2nd nomination) Reverted to non-Automated version
 * 11) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Intermodal containers Deleted
 * 12) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Adventure travel Deleted
 * 13) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Adam Ant Deleted
 * 14) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Benito Juárez, Mexico City Deleted
 * 15) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Spaghetti Deleted
 * 16) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Wikiatlas Deleted
 * 17) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Greek alphabet Deleted
 * 18) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Deleted
 * 19) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Accounting Deleted G7
 * 20) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Lents, Portland, Oregon Deleted P2
 * 21) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Ankaran Deleted
 * 22) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Jiu-jitsu Deleted G8
 * 23) Portal:University of Nebraska Speedy Deleted P1/A10 exactly the same as Portal:University of Nebraska–Lincoln also created by the TTH

Related WikiProject:
 * 1) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals Demoted

(Attribution: Copied from Administrators' noticeboard)

WikiProject Quantum portals
This was a spin-off from WikiProject Portals, for the purpose of developing zero-page portals (portals generated on-the-screen at the push of a button, with no stored pages).

It has been merged back into WikiProject Portals. In the MfD the vote was "demote". See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals.

Hiatus on mass creation of Portals
At WP:VPR, mass creation of Portals using semi-automated tools has been put on hold until clearer community consensus is established.

See Village pump (proposals).

The Transhumanist banned from creating new portals for 3 months
See Administrators' noticeboard.

Until next issue...
Keep on keepin' on. &mdash; The Transhumanist  03:00, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Back to the drawing board
Implementation of the new portal design has been culled back almost completely, and the cull is still ongoing. The cull has also affected portals that existed before the development of the automated design.

Some of the reasons for the purge are:
 * Portals receive insufficient traffic, making it a waste of editor resources to maintain them, especially for narrow-scope or "micro" portals
 * The default bpsp portals are redundant with the corresponding articles, being based primarily on the corresponding navigation footer displayed on each of those articles, and therefore not worth separate pages to do so
 * They were mass created

Most of the deletions have been made without prejudice to recreation of curated portals, so that approval does not need to be sought at Deletion Review in those cases.

In addition to new portals being deleted, most of the portals that were converted to an automated design have been reverted.

Which puts us back to portals with manually selected content, that need to be maintained by hand, for the most part, for the time being, and back facing some of the same problems we had when we were at this crossroads before:
 * Manually maintained portals are not scalable (they are labor intensive, and there aren't very many editors available to maintain them)
 * The builders/maintainers tend to eventually abandon them
 * Untended handcrafted portals go stale and fall into disrepair over time

These and other concepts require further discussion. See you at WT:POG.

However, after the purge/reversion is completed, some of the single-page portals might be left, due to having acceptable characteristics (their design varied some). If so, then those could possibly be used as a model to convert and/or build more, after the discussions on portal creation and design guidelines have reached a community consensus on what is and is not acceptable for a portal.

See you at WT:POG.

Curation
A major theme in the deletion discussions was the need for portals to be curated, that is, each one having a dedicated maintainer.

There are currently around 100 curated portals. Based on the predominant reasoning at MfD, it seems likely that all the other portals may be subject to deletion.

See you at WT:POG.

Traffic
An observation and argument that arose again and again during the WP:ENDPORTALS RfC and the ongoing deletion drive of bpsp default portals, was that portals simply do not get much traffic. Typically, they get a tiny fraction of what the corresponding like-titled articles get.

And while this isn't generally considered a good rationale for creation or deletion of articles, portals are not articles, and portal critics insist that traffic is a key factor in the utility of portals.

The implication is that portals won't be seen much, so wouldn't it be better to develop pages that are?

And since such development isn't limited to editing, almost anything is possible. If we can't bring readers to portals, we could bring portal features, or even better features, to the readers (i.e., to articles)...

Quantum portals?
An approach that has received some brainstorming is "quantum portals", meaning portals generated on-the-fly and presented directly on the view screen without any saved portal pages. This could be done by script or as a MediaWiki program feature, but would initially be done by script. The main benefits of this is that it would be opt-in (only those who wanted it would install it), and the resultant generated pages wouldn't be saved, so that there wouldn't be anything to maintain except the script itself.

Non-portal integrated components
Another approach would be to focus on implementing specific features independently, and provide them somewhere highly visible in a non-portal presentation context (that is, on a page that wasn't a portal that has lots of traffic, i.e., articles). Such as inserted directly into an article's HTML, as a pop-up there, or as a temporary page. There are scripts that use these approaches (providing unrelated features), and so these approaches have been proven to be feasible.

What kind of features could this be done with?

The various components of the automated portal design are transcluded excerpts, news, did you know, image slideshows, excerpt slideshows, and so on.

Some of the features, such as navigation footers and links to sister projects are already included on article pages. And some already have interface counterparts (such as image slideshows). Some of the rest may be able to be integrated directly via script, but may need further development before they are perfected. Fortunately, scripts are used on an opt-in basis, and therefore wouldn't affect readers-in-general and editors-at-large during the development process (except for those who wanted to be beta testers and installed the scripts).

The development of such scripts falls under the scope of the Javascript-WikiProject/Userscript-department, and will likely be listed on User scripts/List when completed enough for beta-testing. Be sure to watchlist that page.

Where would that leave curated portals?
Being curated. At least for the time being.

New encyclopedia program features will likely eventually render most portals obsolete. For example, the pop-up feature of MediaWiki provides much the same functionality as excerpts in portals already, and there is also a slideshow feature to view all the images on the current page (just click on any image, and that activates the slideshow). Future features could also overlap portal features, until there is nothing that portals provide that isn't provided elsewhere or as part of Wikipedia's interface.

But, that may be a ways off. Perhaps months or years. It depends on how rapidly programmers develop them.

Keep on keepin' on
The features of Wikipedia and its articles will continue to evolve, even if Portals go by the wayside. Most, if not all of portals' functionality, or functions very similar, will likely be made available in some form or other.

And who knows what else?

No worries.

Until next issue... &mdash; The Transhumanist  00:15, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Section heading capitalization
Please see Manual_of_Style, specifically: Section headings should follow all of the guidance for article titles (above), and should be presented in sentence case (Funding of UNESCO projects), not title case (Funding of UNESCO Projects). OhNo itsJamie Talk 13:11, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Join the Months of African Cinema Global Contest!
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The Months of African Cinema Contest Continues in November!
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Welcome to the Months of African Cinema Global Contest!
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Proposed deletion of Quo (software)


The article Quo (software) has been proposed for deletion&#32;because of the following concern: "The topic has not received any significant coverage in independent, reliable sources."

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Vexations (talk) 19:06, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Nomination of Quo (software) for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Quo (software) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Quo (software) until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Vexations (talk) 15:56, 7 December 2021 (UTC)