User talk:Northamerica1000/Archive 82

G13 Eligibility Notice
The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly. Thanks, HasteurBot (talk) 03:00, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Draft:Gooty Fort
 * Draft:Judge Alexander Latty
 * Draft:Kaveh Alizadeh

Invitation to WikiProject Portals
The Portals WikiProject has been rebooted.

You are invited to join, and participate in the effort to revitalize and improve the Portal system and all the portals in it.

There are sections on the WikiProject page dedicated to tasks (including WikiGnome tasks too), and areas on the talk page for discussing the improvement and automation of the various features of portals.

Many complaints have been lodged in the RfC to delete all portals, pointing out their various problems. They say that many portals are not maintained, or have fallen out of date, are useless, etc. Many of the !votes indicate that the editors who posted them simply don't believe in the potential of portals anymore.

It's time to change all that. Let's give them reasons to believe in portals, by revitalizing them.

The best response to a deletion nomination is to fix the page that was nominated. The further underway the effort is to improve portals by the time the RfC has run its course, the more of the reasons against portals will no longer apply. RfCs typically run 30 days. There are 19 days left in this one. Let's see how many portals we can update and improve before the RfC is closed, and beyond.

A healthy WikiProject dedicated to supporting and maintaining portals may be the strongest argument of all not to delete.

We may even surprise ourselves and exceed all expectations. Who knows what we will be able to accomplish in what may become the biggest Wikicollaboration in years.

Let's do this.

See ya at the WikiProject!

Sincerely,   &mdash; The Transhumanist   10:23, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the invitation; I joined the project. North America1000 21:56, 21 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Just a heads up, so we're on the same page... I processed the pre-existing members list as follows: I removed inactive/hardly active user accounts from it, then I archived it, and next I sent an invitation to everyone on it so that the participant list for the reboot will include those who still have an active interest in the project.   &mdash; The Transhumanist   23:21, 21 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I think you made some errors. For example, you removed Teblick from the participants section, but this user is active. North America1000 23:23, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Same for Hiding. North America1000 23:25, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Same for Ddstretch. North America1000 23:26, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Same for Eruditescholar North America1000 23:30, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Nb. The above are just examples. More instances of active users being removed from the project as members may have occurred. North America1000 23:39, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The problem is, I don't think it's fair to remove active users from the members list. It serves to disenfranchise editors that may want to continue to be members, but are simply working on other matters, or may not want to work on the portal improvements. IMO, it would be more functional to create an "Inactive members" page/section for users that have not edited in six months. North America1000 23:27, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * A few had almost no edits in the past 3 months, and none to portals. I have no problem with your adding names back in, and agree with your suggestion regarding inactivity.
 * Thanks for your edits on the WikiProject revamp. Looks better already. One thing that might be a little confusing is that we now have members and non-members. Or partial membership and full membership. For example, I considered myself a full member when I signed up, and by their description lines, I think pretty much everyone who signed up does. Still needs a few tweaks, like merging the lists.    &mdash; The Transhumanist   23:50, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I feel that a separate member section would suffice, whereby a differentiation occurs on the page in which users that want to contribute to the Operation Portal Upgrade are listed in the separate subsection of Operation Portal Upgrade (as presently formatted on the page). Some members may not want to contribute to the upgrade, but likely want to remain members. Furthermore, in this manner, those that are interested in contributing to the portal upgrades now (at this time) are differentiated on the page, further enabling potential collaboration as it is then easier to find those interested in this particular drive. North America1000 00:11, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * That was the merge I was talking about. They are all under the members section now. I'm happy.   &mdash; The Transhumanist   00:20, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * That works for me too. Also, thanks for your interest in improving portals! North America1000 00:27, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * You are most welcome. Hey, check out this thread at village pump technical.   &mdash; The Transhumanist   00:41, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Contacting major contributors
Is there an automated tool for finding those who should be contacted concerning the deletion of a page? &mdash; The Transhumanist  07:52, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * There may be something at Toolforge, but I don't know. As a side note regarding contacting users about deletion, if you're not already aware of it, check out WP:CANVASS and be sure to use proper procedures when notifying others. North America1000 00:10, 23 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the lead, and for the caveat. I've been wondering how to go about applying these instructions from wp:MfD to all 1500 portals that have been proposed for deletion:

"For other pages, while not required, it is generally considered civil to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the miscellany that you are nominating. To find the main contributors, look in the page history or talk page of the page and/or use TDS' Article Contribution Counter or Wikipedia Page History Statistics. For your convenience, you may add" to their talk page in the "edit source" section, replacing PageName with the pagename. Please use an edit summary such as "" replacing  with the name of the nomination page you are proposing for deletion.


 * That's a hell of a lot of work to do by hand. The tools mentioned don't seem to automate the process, only part of it. Now, I'm off to read WP:CANVASS, to make sure there's no small print I've forgotten. :)    &mdash; The Transhumanist   00:31, 23 April 2018 (UTC)


 * One thing I'm not entirely sure of, is if anybody other than the nominator can send the notice to the major contributors. It doesn't explicitly cover that in the MfD instructions above, one way or the other. I'm pretty sure you can, since it's the notice that is the important thing, like the notice at the top of a nominated page, and not who posts it.   &mdash; The Transhumanist   00:45, 23 April 2018 (UTC)


 * You may have to perform manual notifications to portal creators, major contributors, etc. Perhaps the notices atop the portals will suffice. I'm not aware of any restriction whereby only a nominator can provide notifications. Indeed, I have seen instances in the past where a nominator at AfD chose not to notify page creators, after which time other users have performed the notifications. Whatever you choose to do, just be sure to know and follow WP:CANVASS. For what it's worth, the standard MfD notification template is neutrally-worded. North America1000 01:08, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the caveats. I think directing them to the RfC at this point would be overkill.
 * It would be more productive to send them an invite to the Portals WikiProject.
 * By hand? On 1500 portals? I'm spread too thin as it is! :)   &mdash; The Transhumanist   15:06, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Help
This is about the 3rd deletion nomination of Box Office India. I want your opinion on whether you clearly understood what I wanted to say there? I asked you because you relisted it. Just curious to know if I am actually incompetent to participate in AfDs. I'm losing confidence. Harsh Rathod Poke me!  03:11, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I hesitate to advise you on what to say at the AfD discussion, but it is not uncommon for users to list sources that provide significant coverage about topics that are published in independent, reliable sources. Doing so can serve to provide proof of a topic's notability directly in the discussion. You cited WP:NEXIST, meaning that sources exist that provide such coverage, so it wouldn't hurt to list those sources in the discussion. North America1000 03:33, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Okay, Thanks for the input. Harsh Rathod Poke me!  03:44, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-18
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The parameter for unpatrolled edits in recent changes filters changed name. You might need to update saved filters and links.

Problems
 * Octicons-tools.svg We are migrating wikis from Tidy to Remex. Because of a bug the 250 wikis which do not yet use Remex were switched on 23 April. This is two months early. This meant that pages with broken wikitext showed wrongly to readers. The bug was undone the next day. You can help fix broken wikitext to avoid this problem when your wiki switches. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018. You can follow the process on Phabricator.

Changes later this week
 * You will be able use CodeMirror in the 2017 wikitext editor on all wikis. CodeMirror helps with syntax highlighting. It has previously been a beta feature and only available on wikis with scripts that are written from left to right.
 * When an administrator blocks someone they will have a calendar they can use to choose when the block ends. This is to make it easier to pick a specific date.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can soon turn on the Performance Inspector in the section in your preferences. It shows information about the performance of pages. This could be the size of modules in the page, how many CSS selectors are defined on the page and how many are used, or the size of the images on the page. This tool is intended to help editors fix pages that load slowly.
 * Octicons-tools.svg There is a new abuse filter function called . You can use it to check if its first argument is equal  to any of the following ones. For example you can use it to check if the page's namespace is amongst a given set of values in a more compact way than you could earlier. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 May. It will be on all wikis from 3 May (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 1 May at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 2 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The Wikimedia Cloud Services team is working on a new project called Toolhub. The goal is to make it easier for Wikimedians to discover software tools they can use. You can leave feedback on the talk page or email jhare@undefinedwikimedia.org to leave private feedback.
 * Octicons-tools.svg All wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in all namespaces will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 2 May. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Wikibooks wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in the main namespace will switch on 9 May. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  16:18, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

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

New and easier way to handle excerpts
Attention portal maintainers!

There's a new template to improve existing and new portals, called Transclude lead excerpt.

It is a lot easier to use than copying and pasting text from articles, as it displays the paragraphs you specify automatically for you.

It makes excerpts so that they are always current and never go stale or fork.

It is more powerful than it looks, because it has the Lua Module:Excerpt supporting it.

Be careful, as it is alpha software. Please notify the WikiProject talkpage of any problems you come across.

To give you a sense of the reaction this template is generating, here is an excerpt of a discussion thread from the WikiProject's talk page:


 * This new template is fantastic. I've added it to the intro sections of the portals on Australian cities (eg P:PER) and it works brilliantly.  My compliments to its creators.  It can probably also be used in other sections of many portals (eg "Selected article" and "Selected biography"), and, for that reason, will probably make the task of maintaining portals a great deal easier. Bahnfrend (talk) 09:02, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for being so brave.  just got a lot simpler! Certes (talk) 10:43, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Kudos on a wonderful template.   &mdash; The Transhumanist   03:27, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
 * This is amazing stuff. I'm going to get to work on using it on the selected content at most of these portals very soon. WaggersTALK  13:40, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

The RfC
I wrote a comment in the the April 26 section of the RfC explaining what we are up to. I liked the excerpt above so much, that I went back to my RfC posting, and inserted it.

Wish list
What's this? An old oil lamp. It's so dirty, I think I'll polish it...

*poof*

Whoa! Are you a WikiGenie? In that case, I get 3 wishes!

I wish...
 * 1) ...that Portal:Contents/Portals becomes up-to-date.   (The missing entries are listed on the talk page, with instructions).
 * 2) ...the WikiProject to have Article Alerts.   (WikiProject Portals templates have already been placed on all portal talk pages).
 * 3) ...that Portal:Cricket becomes a shining example of portal excellence.   (It was the main example of a crappy and unmaintained portal at the RfC).

Please make my wishes come true. See you around the portals! &mdash; The Transhumanist  08:02, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice
The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly. Thanks, HasteurBot (talk) 03:00, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Draft:Jeffrey Baumgartner
 * Draft:Marianne Fassler

The Signpost: 26 April 2018
 * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:49, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject Portals Overview, May 04, 2018
Thank you for being a member of the Portals WikiProject, and thank you for all the work you have all been doing on the portal namespace. To see the activity, check out the watchlist.

This is our 3rd issue, see previous issues at the Newsletter archive.

Top priority: Main list of portals needs updating
The top, and one of the most visible parts, of the portal system is Portal:Contents/Portals, which is intended to list all (completed) portals on Wikipedia.

About half of the missing existing portals have been added since this WikiProject's reboot (April 17th). Thank you to RockMagnetist, TriNitrobrick, Polyamorph, PratyushSinha101, Ganesha811, Bermicourt, Javert2113, Noyster, Ɱ, Lepricavark, XOR'easter, and Emir of Wikipedia, for working on this.

We are half-way to completion with this. We need everyone to chip in until it is done. Instructions, and the list of missing entries are at Portal talk:Contents/Portals.

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

Thank you.

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

Special thanks
I have awarded Certes with a portals barnstar on his talk page for his work on the new excerpt templates that are revolutionizing the portal system (Template:Transclude lead excerpt & Template:Transclude random excerpt). If you'd like to show your appreciation, please feel free to stop by his talk page and add your signature to the barnstar itself.

Thank you Certes. You are enabling this WikiProject to get the right things done, fast.

By the way, the templates have already gone international. After being told about the templates, Mossab wrote:

"Thanks You very much!. Those are fantastic and great templates! I transferred them to Arabic Wikipedia and they do a magic great job. I worked to improve portal anatomy here and i do every thing i can to improve it and i am very sad for the nomination for deletion of portals :(. I am glad to be member on WikiProject Portals and i added my name with pleasure. Kind regards"

RFC
As you know, the (April 8th) proposal to delete all portals and the portal namespace inspired the reboot of this WikiProject. RfCs typically run for 30 days, which means there are 5 days left including today, before the RfC will be closed. The !votes are predominantly "oppose", but many editors have shared their disappointment with the portal system. We have our work cut out for us in correcting the problems of the portals to address their concerns. Complaints ranged from being out of date and lacking maintenance, to taking up the time of editors that they felt (due to low traffic) would be better spent improving articles.

Anti-WikiProject drama
This past week has been somewhat stressful for me, with more than a little conflict...

It culminated with my being reported at the Administrator's Noticeboard "for spamming and canvassing". This is the second time I've been reported there during the RfC; the first one was for posting notices of the deletion discussion (the RfC) at the top of all portal pages.

The accusations were 1) Posting notices of the deletion discussion (the RfC) at the top of all portal pages, 2) Adding an Article alerts section to the Portals WikiProject page, and 3) posting notices (invitations) about this WikiProject on user talk and portal talk pages.

None of which fall under the Wikipedia definitions of spamming or canvassing.

Thank you, Lionelt and Lepricavark, for coming to my rescue. I don't know how the discussion would have turned out if you had not spoken up.

The discussion was closed as "no action necessary".

After that, the person responsible posted their thoughts to my talk page. Here they are, with my response:

"Congratulations, it appears your relentless targeted advertising of the RFC, your beating the RFC Supporters with a stick by posting countless times there, your dishonest insistence that Current Events was on the chopping block, and your obstruction of clean up efforts at MfD are paying dividends. Have fun playing with Portal space where no one will read your work. I'm sure someone will eventually clean up the mess when your interest wanes. Cheers. Legacypac"


 * Thank you. I accept your congratulations on behalf of Wikiproject Portals and the portal-loving community – it was a team effort. In addition, I'd like to clarify some things about your claims above...
 * Each page nominated for deletion must have a notice at the top of its page, per the deletion guideline. Not to have one there, would be unfair to those who use such pages, and would constitute a secret deletion tribunal. We don't do things that way on Wikipedia.
 * As new facts became available (e.g., a motivated and thriving WikiProject to support the portals, new building blocks, etc.), it was appropriate to post the developments to the RfC, to support informed decision making.
 * Proposals are literal, not figurative. The proposal specified "all portals". All means all.
 * The fact is, the rebooted WikiProject is cleaning up the mess, rather rapidly. By updating and upgrading the portals, rather than getting rid of them.
 * I think I'll be hanging around for awhile, but the project is more than likely to achieve critical mass and may outlive us all, due in part to the development of tools to assist editors in building, upgrading, and maintaining portals that are fully dynamic and self-updating.
 * Portals are more fun to work with than ever. Thank you for your role in making this happen. You made us try even harder, and inspired us to pull together as a team. You'll have a warm place in our hearts, forever. The Transhumanist

Automatically refreshed excerpts
The main advancement we've made so far is applying selective transclusion Transclusion is template technology, showing a page on another page. Selective transclusion shows only part of that page. We use it to show excerpts that always match the source. The two templates we have so far, are Template:Transclude lead excerpt and Template:Transclude random excerpt.

Obsoleting subpages
Excerpts are migrating toward the base page of each portal, and where this is done, a subpage is no longer needed.

Template:Transclude lead excerpt will be able to be used to put the intro excerpt directly on the portal page, rather than on an intro subpage, once we adapt a portal design to accommodate this.

Template:Transclude random excerpt is currently being used on 1st-level subpages, and eliminates the need for 2nd-level subpages. (Many portals have 2 levels of subpages).

There are about 1500 portals, but there are around 148,000 subpages in portal space. Further discussions are needed to develop designs and components that do not require them.

It is my hope that the portal of the future will be a single page, or close to it, pulling in excerpts from specified dynamic sources (like category pages), filtered by ratings. This would obviate the need for subpages at all (except for maybe the header and footer subpages, which store a portal's settings). A more likely near-term solution would be subpages with a list maintained by a bot, or editors using semi-automatic tools.

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

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


 * WikiProject Portals
 * User:The Transhumanist (there's a fair amount of portal project traffic on my talk page these days)
 * WikiProject Portal/List of all portals/Page 1
 * WikiProject Portal/List of all portals/Page 2
 * WikiProject Portal/List of all portals/Page 3
 * WikiProject Portal/List of all portals/Page 4
 * Wikipedia:Portal:Portal Example portal. And funny.
 * Portal:Contents/Portals
 * Portal:Contents/Portals/Culture and the arts
 * Portal:Contents/Portals/Geography and places
 * Portal:Contents/Portals/Health and fitness
 * Portal:Contents/Portals/History and events
 * Portal:Contents/Portals/Infobox
 * Portal:Contents/Portals/Intro
 * Portal:Contents/Portals/Mathematics and logic
 * Portal:Contents/Portals/Natural and physical sciences
 * Portal:Contents/Portals/People and self
 * Portal:Contents/Portals/Philosophy and thinking
 * Portal:Contents/Portals/Portal nav footer
 * Portal:Contents/Portals/Reference
 * Portal:Contents/Portals/Religion and belief systems
 * Portal:Contents/Portals/Society and social sciences
 * Portal:Contents/Portals/Technology and applied sciences
 * Portal:Contents/Portals/Topic

Wrapping up...
There's more in the works, like a rating system, further redesigns, etc. Keep an eye on the discussions on the project's talk page. They should start showing up there soon.

Hope to see you there. Sincerely,    &mdash; The Transhumanist   06:23, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice
The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly. Thanks, HasteurBot (talk) 03:00, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Draft:Duke Chung
 * Draft:Peter Johnson (sports executive)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2018). Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg None
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Chochopk • Coffee • Gryffindor • Jimp • Knowledge Seeker • Lankiveil • Peridon • Rjd0060

Guideline and policy news
 * The ability to create articles directly in mainspace is now indefinitely restricted to autoconfirmed users.
 * A proposal is being discussed which would create a new "event coordinator" right that would allow users to temporarily add the "confirmed" flag to new user accounts and to create many new user accounts without being hindered by a rate limit.

Technical news
 * AbuseFilter has received numerous improvements, including an OOUI overhaul, syntax highlighting, ability to search existing filters, and a few new functions. In particular, the search feature can be used to ensure there aren't existing filters for what you need, and the new  function can be used when checking multiple namespaces. One major upcoming change is the ability to see which filters are the slowest. This information is currently only available to those with access to Logstash.
 * When blocking anonymous users, a cookie will be applied that reloads the block if the user changes their IP. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. This currently only occurs when hard-blocking accounts.
 * The block notice shown on mobile will soon be more informative and point users to a help page on how to request an unblock, just as it currently does on desktop.
 * There will soon be a calendar widget at Special:Block, making it easier to set expiries for a specific date and time.

Arbitration
 * The Arbitration Committee is seeking additional clerks to help with the arbitration process.

Obituaries
 * (Craig Franklin) passed away in mid-April. Lankiveil joined Wikipedia on 12 August 2004 and became an administrator on 31 August 2008. During his time with the Wikimedia community, Lankiveil served as an oversighter for the English Wikipedia and as president of Wikimedia Australia.

Discuss this newsletter

Subscribe

Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:05, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice
The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly. Thanks, HasteurBot (talk) 03:01, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Draft:Amsterdam Whitney Gallery
 * Draft:Billy Block
 * Draft:Christian Jacobs
 * Draft:Female Incarceration
 * Draft:OpticStudio

G13 Eligibility Notice
The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly. Thanks, HasteurBot (talk) 03:01, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Draft:Chrys Goyens
 * Draft:Facing Addiction
 * Draft:Gender issues in the workplace in Belgium
 * Draft:Kure Corp
 * Draft:Plant Based Foods Association
 * Draft:Semboku 7000 series

Tech News: 2018-19
<section begin="technews-2018-W19"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The Wikimedia Commons mobile app has a new version. It is now easier to find nearby places that need pictures. It helps you with direct uploads and title and category suggestions. The app only works on Android phones.

Problems
 * Octicons-tools.svg The abuse filters had a problem with blocks where you had changed how long they last. It used the default length everywhere. This was in late April. Abuse filter users should make sure the right block length is used and change them if needed. This is only for filters where how long blocks last had been changed.

Changes later this week
 * The advanced search function beta feature will be on all Wikimedia wikis. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 May. It will be on all wikis from 10 May (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 8 May at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 9 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg All wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in the main namespace will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 16 May. Other wikis will switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W19"/> 16:28, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice
The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly. Thanks, HasteurBot (talk) 03:00, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Draft:That Tender Touch

Nomination of Mianchi for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Mianchi 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/Mianchi until a consensus is reached, and anyone 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.
 * Sorry about the notification, I thought you wrote this article. Timmyshin (talk) 04:49, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject Portals update, 11 May 2018
We've grown to 73 members, and morale is high. Thank you for joining. Here is some news, and some tasks...

The RfC will be closed soon...
2018-05-11: preparations are being made to close the RfC. See Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure.

When there, be sure to notice the consultation link.

We're trying to get a prototypical single-page portal developed in time to show the RfC closers before they make their final decision. You can help. It's Portal:Humanism. So far, we've applied selective transclusion (automation) to excerpts, and have made the following sections without subpages: intro, selected article, selected biography, categories, related portals, wikiprojects, things to do, and wikimedia. Eight down, 4 to go, plus 2 formatting subpages (not sure we can migrate those). Automating every section, would also be nice.

Main objectives
Our main objectives currently, are:


 * 1) Replace static excerpts with selective transclusions, so that the excerpts always stay fresh (that is, match the source content). We are now doing this on the portal base page as much as possible, to reduce the number of subpages that are needed. See #2...
 * 2) Migrate the functions of subpages to the portal base pages. There are around 150,000 subpages in portal space. We aim to make these obsolete by using templates and other calls from the portal base pages.
 * 3) Improve portal design to make portals self-update. Semi-dynamic sections update from a static list, as used in Transclude random excerpt. Fully-dynamic sections would update from a list maintained elsewhere on Wikipedia, like a category. We haven't found a way to do this yet, other than to create a bot (which we will probably need to do).

Maintenance pass #1: Upgrading the intro section
The intro section of many portals transcludes an "Intro" subpage that has an excerpt in it.

We're replacing that with a selective transclusion directly in the intro section, bypassing the subpage. Though, there's a little  more to it...

For instructions, see: WikiProject Portals.

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

Maintenance pass #2: Obsoleting the Wikimedia subpages
One of the sections on many portals links to sister projects on the subject. This needlessly takes a subpage. The subpage can be made obsolete by using the template Wikimedia for portals directly on the portal base page.

This has been done for several hundred portals so far.

See WikiProject Portals for instructions.

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

}}

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

More to come...
In the meantime, see ya around the portals! &mdash; The Transhumanist  15:53, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

AfD close reasoning
Hi, I see you closed this AfD on Dahir Insaat as a "no consensus". I don't believe that the Keep !votes argued convincingly using policies and guidelines as the basis for their reasoning, and I know that I read the references provided and showed why they failed the criteria for establishing notability. Thank you. <b style="font-family: Courier; color: darkgreen;"> HighKing</b>++ 15:53, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The close for this discussion is based upon overall viewpoints and arguments relative to notability guidelines, from both sides therein. Participation in the discussion was rather divided in viewpoints regarding notability. I wouldn't be comfortable closing this with a delete close at this time. The discussion could certainly be evaluated as leaning delete relative to the strengths of arguments therein, but not enough for me to delete it. The delete !votes are more detailed, and haven't been entirely countered. However, to close this as a delete with several users providing valid reasons for the article's retention prevents me from deleting the article. North America1000 06:27, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi, thank you for the friendly response. I went back and checked the arguments provided by the "Delete" !votes. The first makes a GHITS argument. The next just comments "seems just a little notable". The next states "seems notable from its broad coverage on many different platforms. Here's another good one" and links to an article showing a promotional youtube video from the company. The final also uses a GHITS argument.
 * I just don't get it. No references were provided that meet the criteria for establishing notability and no arguments provided based on any policy or guidelines. I understand that the closing admin has some amount of discretion but at the same time, surely it has to be based on something specific/concrete and not just a tally of !votes. Sorry if this is coming off all huffy and upset - I'm not - just genuinely puzzled and trying to understand. It takes time to look at each article, read the refs and develop an opinion - I'd hate to think that it's irrelevant in the bigger picture if the quality of arguments counts for naught and it just depends on factors I know nothing about. <b style="font-family: Courier; color: darkgreen;"> HighKing</b>++ 11:18, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi : One could potentially consider Inhabit to be somewhat of a reliable source, as per their about us page, although it is a weblog. The publication has an editor-in-chief, writers, a news editor and other personnel, and appears to have an unbiased and objective, fact-based editorial focus. Again, relative to the overall arguments, the AfD discussion is leaning delete at least. Upon consideration, I have re-opened the discussion and relisted it in hopes for more input to occur. North America1000 16:21, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks NA. <b style="font-family: Courier; color: darkgreen;"> HighKing</b>++ 16:52, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

I just stumbled upon the AfD, and read the consensus there as delete. NA, I presume you have no qualms with my closing it? ~ Amory <small style="color:#555"> (u • t • c) 00:55, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Misread the dates, thought you'd done this today, not a week ago. Closed as delete. ~  Amory <small style="color:#555"> (u • t • c) 00:59, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice
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Tech News: 2018-20
<section begin="technews-2018-W20"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Dynamic maps are now available on most Wikipedias. Labels on maps can also be in different languages.
 * The new Advanced Search interface is now available as a Beta Feature on all wikis. This makes it easier to learn about and to use many of the powerful options in our search. Feedback is appreciated.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 May. It will be on all wikis from 17 May (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 16 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * In the mobile view, warnings for when something is wrong with a page are not as clear as they should be. The developers are working on this. You can give feedback and suggestions.
 * The developers are working on making the Wikipedia Android app available in more languages. You can give feedback, suggestions and help test it. Read more on mediawiki.org

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W20"/> 22:23, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

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Portals WikiProject update, 15 May 2018
We are at 74 members. If you know anyone who might find this WikiProject interesting, please invite them.

The RfC has ended
The RfC was closed May 11th, and a closing statement was posted May 12th which says "There exists a strong consensus against deleting or even deprecating portals at this time."

Ongoing tasks
Some major activities that we are in the middle of include:


 * Adding the missing existing portals to the main portals list at Portal:Contents/Portals. Instructions are on the talk page. There are about 125 portals left to be processed. (There were 400). Keep up the good work!
 * Development discussions on how to migrate the subpages to the base pages. There are around 150,000 subpages in portal space, associated with the various sections on a typical portal. We are trying to obsolete them section type by section type. Currently, we're working on obsoleting the intro subpages and the "selected articles" subpages. Please join in.

Other tasks

 * The list of portals not ready to be listed on the main list can be found at WikiProject Portals (scroll down to see them - they are marked ). They are incomplete. If you want a specific portal to work on, please consider choosing one from that list.
 * Over the years, some incomplete portals (portals under construction) got added to Portal:Contents/Portals. Therefore, every portal listed there needs to be inspected, and any that are incomplete should be removed from that list and added to the not ready list at WikiProject Portals (scroll down to see it). On Portal:Contents/Portals, I'm already almost done inspecting the portals in the culture section, and so you can skip those.  The types of things to look for are empty sections (most will have a redlinked subpage), lack of "selected" sections, portal stubs with just an intro and end sections, and very poor layout (like seriously unbalanced columns).

Portal-building resources
During his work on portals, Broter found a quote randomizer. It is Random quotation.

Trailblazer: approaching the one-page portal
Broter has transformed the Portal:Community of Christ so it is comprised of only 3 pages in portal space: the base page, its box-header subpage, and its box-footer subpage. Its other other subpages are now obsolete and are waiting for deletion. Nice job, Broter!

Well, that's all for now. See ya around the portals. &mdash; The Transhumanist  06:39, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice
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Tech News: 2018-21
<section begin="technews-2018-W21"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 May. It will be on all wikis from 24 May (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * It could become easier to reference different pages of a book in an article. You can give feedback. The last day for feedback is 27 May.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W21"/> 17:34, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update, 25 May 2018
We have grown to 79 members.

Please provide a warm welcome to our latest additions, Wpgbrown, Cactus.man, JLJ001, and Wumbolo.

A lot is going on, much of it on the WikiProject's talk page, so be sure to go there and join in on any of the many discussions taking place there.

Elsewhere around the portal project, or related to portals, the following is happening...

New news template ready for testing
Evad37 has created a new template, with supporting lua module, to handle news in portals...

Transclude selected current events is ready to be tested in some actual portals. Let Evad37 know if you need help with the search patterns.

Noyster commented that "This is the best portal innovation since sliced bread!"

See the relevant discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals.

Thank you, Evad.

Coming soon: Automatic article alerts (but there is a glitch)
Our WikiProject is now subscribed to the bot that makes automatic article alerts, but the subpage where they are posted has not been added to our WikiProject page yet because of a weird problem...

Featured portal nominations from two years ago keep popping up on there.

Please check WikiProject Portals/Article alerts to see if you can figure out how to fix this.

Once that is remedied, it will be posted on our WikiProject page.

Thank you.

Note that, this will only track base pages, because to track the rest, we'd have to create over 140,000 talk pages for the subpages, and that just isn't worthwhile (as we're trying to remove the subpages anyways). Therefore, any alerts for subpages will still need to be posted manually.

New portal, still needs work

 * Portal:Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, courtesy of Mozart834428196. See also, the discussion.

Drafting a new portals guideline
Your input/editing is welcome on the draft-in-progress of a new guideline for portals.

See or work on the draft at User:Cesdeva/sandbox11.

See also the discussion at: Wikipedia talk:Portal guidelines

RfC on new TOC layout for main portal list
There is a proposal to change the look of the table of contents at Portal:Contents/Portals.

See: Portal talk:Contents/Portals.

Deletion discussion survivors
Thank you to those who have participated in portal deletion discussions. There are still some editors out there who despise portals, and this comes across in their argumentation style. Wow. Such negativity. But, there is some good news...


 * Portal:Quidditch survived its 2nd deletion nomination
 * Portal:Prehistory of Antarctica did the same

Current deletion discussions are posted on our WikiProject page.

Portal space clean up
While portal detractors are trying to get rid of portals via MfD, we have deleted many of them via speedy deletion (per Db-p1 or Db-p2). Essentially, they were bare skeletons, with maybe a little meat on them. The plus here is that speedy deletion is without prejudice to re-creating the portals. They can easily be restarted from scratch without getting approval, or be undeleted by request by someone willing to work on them. We have kept track of these, for when someone wants to rebuild them. They are listed at Portal talk:Contents/Portals.

We are also removing subpages, the functions of which have been migrated to portal base pages. To see which ones have been removed, look for the redlinks in our watchlist.

There is also an MfD concerning some of these at Miscellany for deletion/Redundant subpages of the Cornwall portal.

For subpages that need to be deleted, you can conveniently place this speedy deletion template at the top of each of them:

Then an admin will come along and delete them.

Please help list the unlisted portals!
There are still 100 existing portals not yet presented on the main portal list at Portal:Contents/Portals. There were 400, so we've come a long way. Thank you! But we are not done yet...

Please list a couple of them. Every little bit helps. If each member of this project listed one more, it would almost all be done. Many hands make light work.

The list of missings, and instructions, are to be found at Portal talk:Contents/Portals.

I hope to see you there!

Wrapping up
These developments make up just the tip of the iceberg. I'll have more to report in the next update, soon. &mdash; The Transhumanist  00:32, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

List of kebabs
Hi, thanks for your contributions to List of kebabs. However, this is the second time you've added an "Unsorted" category to the list, and placed a link to an article that was already in the list. Per Manual of Style/Lists: "Lists should never contain "Unsorted" or "Miscellaneous" headings ... Not-yet-sorted items may be included on the list's talk page while their categorization is determined." Next time it would be great if you could take a moment or two to search the list, and if it's not there, to add it to the proper category. Or, if you really don't have the time, drop it on the talk page and I or someone else will get to it eventually. Thanks. --IamNotU (talk) 12:14, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I overlooked that the entry was already in the article, and thanks for the mos link, although I somewhat disagree with it. North America1000 16:37, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
 * No problem! --IamNotU (talk) 17:52, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 May 2018
<div class="hlist" style="margin-top:10px; font-size:90%; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:18, 24 May 2018 (UTC)