User talk:Pbsouthwood/Archive 10

Administrators' newsletter – July 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2018). Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Pbsouthwood • TheSandDoctor
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Gogo Dodo
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Andrevan • Doug • EVula • KaisaL • Tony Fox • WilyD

Bureaucrat changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Andrevan • EVula

Guideline and policy news
 * An RfC about the deletion of drafts closed with a consensus to change the wording of WP:NMFD. Specifically, a draft that has been repeatedly resubmitted and declined at AfC without any substantial improvement may be deleted at MfD if consensus determines that it is unlikely to ever meet the requirements for mainspace and it otherwise meets one of the reasons for deletion outlined in the deletion policy.
 * A request for comment closed with a consensus that the promising draft template cannot be used to indefinitely prevent a WP:G13 speedy deletion nomination.

Technical news
 * Starting on July 9, the WMF Security team, Trust & Safety, and the broader technical community will be seeking input on an upcoming change that will restrict editing of site-wide JavaScript and CSS to a new technical administrators user group. Bureaucrats and stewards will be able to grant this right per a community-defined process. The intention is to reduce the number of accounts who can edit frontend code to those who actually need to, which in turn lessens the risk of malicious code being added that compromises the security and privacy of everyone who accesses Wikipedia. For more information, please review the FAQ.
 * Syntax highlighting has been graduated from a Beta feature on the English Wikipedia. To enable this feature, click the highlighter icon (Codemirror-icon.png) in your editing toolbar (or under the hamburger menu in the 2017 wikitext editor). This feature can help prevent you from making mistakes when editing complex templates.
 * IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in July (previously scheduled for June). This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.

Miscellaneous
 * Currently around 20% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 17% a year ago. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless if you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:22, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Congrats
And welcome aboard :-) Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 14:04, 10 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Congrats!  Λυδ α  cιτγ  06:52, 11 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Hey, good to see you squeaked thru. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:01, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
 * It's certainly well deserved! --BushelCandle (talk) 23:54, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). Legobot (talk) 04:32, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Professional Association of Divers Page
Hi Pbsouthwood, Thank you for your note. Completely understand you pov, however the sources indicated for the following lines are no longer available.

PADI is often subject to criticism. In particular, accusations are sometimes made against the organization that it "dumbs down" scuba diving training courses, making them too short and easy.[81]: https://web.archive.org/web/20080512004255/http://www.cdnn.info/news/editorial/o050620.html

PADI has been referred to facetiously as a mnemonic for 'Put Another Dollar In'.[84]: https://web.archive.org/web/20070222231250/http://diveherald.com/2006/07/23/padi-put-another-dollar-in/ http://diveherald.com/2006/07/23/padi-put-another-dollar-in/

I will remove those lines for now, leaving the other point. Looking forward to your thoughts.

12.165.253.4 (talk) 18:02, 5 July 2018 (UTC) Jennifersmall4


 * Fair enough. They seem to have been removed from the archives. If someone finds them, or preferably more reliable sources again, they may be replaced. That is how Wikipedia works.
 * Please note that it is preferred that you log in when communicating on a talk page. I am assuming that you are the person who removed them previously, but it is difficult to confirm this without invading your privacy.
 * Please also note that your username suggests a close connection with PADI. The questions on your talk page refer. If you are the person who one might reasonably assume you are, you are required under the terms of use to declare any possible conflict of interest and whether editing PADI's article is part of your job. Cheers, &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 18:39, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Words to watch
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Words to watch. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography. Legobot (talk) 04:34, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways. Legobot (talk) 04:29, 10 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  12:32, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography. Legobot (talk) 04:29, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Citing sources
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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Words to watch
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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   08:46, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). Legobot (talk) 04:31, 17 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.

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.

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   11:08, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film
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User statistics
Have a look at meta:User:Perhelion/userstatus, seems to work nicely across all wikis if you add it to your version of. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 11:02, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Alt-right
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Discussion move Underwater Demolition Assault Unit to Thai Navy SEAL
Hi, I noticed there is a discussion from 4 July to move Thai Navy special forces unit Underwater Demolition Assault Unit at Talk:Underwater_Demolition_Assault_Unit. Not sure if you were aware, remembered last year when I proposed to move Frogman Corps (Denmark) you commented and also posted on Military history Wikiproject for views - I posted on military project. Regards, --Melbguy05 (talk) 11:58, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:InfoWars
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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Television
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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film
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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  00:59, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Mozambique climate
Hi Peter. Concerning your edit - could you please explain how you envision clarification? There is Koppen classification (linked from that paragraph), they have in particular aw3 which they call wet-dry. Do you think I should add a sentence clarifying what wet-dry is, or a couple of words? It would obviously affect a lot of other articles, and it is good to understand first what is missing. Thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:59, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi, The current wording makes so little sense to me that I have no immediate useful answer. "Wet dry" and "tropical temperate" are word combinations that at first reading appear completely contradictory, and I am a native English speaker with high school geography and a tertiary education. The expressions may have some technical meaning in a specialised field, but if so, should either be explained when first used in the article, or directly linked to an explanation or definition. There are several ways to do this, and I think you may be in a better position to judge which will work best in this situation. The ones which spring to mind immediately are to link the term (eg, "wet dry" or "wet-dry" or the code for it "aw3", which by itself is even less meaningful, but in context may be extremely informative) to the explanation in an article section or in a glossary of climatology. A parenthetical explanation in the article where they are used works well if only using the expression a few times, but it looks like you will be doing it often, so linking is more efficient. I could not find the exact expressions in the Koppen classification linked from the paragraph, and it is not obvious that that article would define the expressions anyway. If I am doing something stupid, it is likely that others will do the same. I like the idea of something linked that will provide sufficient explanation in a mouse-over if that is conveniently possible. Cheers, &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 10:43, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot, I will see what I can do.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:24, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
 * , After reading the Koppen article, and seeing how many options there could be, I think that using the Koppen name and a link might be easiest. See edit to the Buzi article. I don't know whether the two/three Koppen letter code adds much for most readers, but it does no harm and I would be inclined to leave it in as it links the referenced information to the text explanation. Does this help? &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 11:29, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, this definitely helps, thanks a lot for the edit and for advise.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:31, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
 * You are welcome. Cheers, &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 11:39, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Help talk:Citation Style 1
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Help talk:Citation Style 1. Legobot (talk) 04:31, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.12 30 July 2018
Hello, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

Overall the June backlog drive was a success, reducing the last 3,000 or so to below 500. However, as expected, 90% of the patrolling was done by less than 10% of reviewers. Since the drive closed, the backlog has begun to rise sharply again and is back up to nearly 1,400 already. Please help reduce this total and keep it from raising further by reviewing some articles each day.
 * June backlog drive


 * New technology, new rules
 * New features are shortly going to be added to the Special:NewPagesFeed which include a list of drafts for review, OTRS flags for COPYVIO, and more granular filter preferences. More details can be found at this page.
 * Probationary permissions: Now that PERM has been configured to allow expiry dates to all minor user rights, new NPR flag holders may sometimes be limited in the first instance to 6 months during which their work will be assessed for both quality and quantity of their reviews. This will allow admins to accord the right in borderline cases rather than make a flat out rejection.
 * Current reviewers who have had the flag for longer than 6 months but have not used the permissions since they were granted will have the flag removed, but may still request to have it granted again in the future, subject to the same probationary period, if they wish to become an active reviewer.


 * Editathons
 * Editathons will continue through August. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. —  Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)  00:00, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
 * The Signpost
 * The next issue of the monthly magazine will be out soon. The newspaper is an excellent way to stay up to date with news and new developments between our newsletters. If you have special messages to be published, or if you would like to submit an article (one about NPR perhaps?), don't hesitate to contact the editorial team here.

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  19:16, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Ohio gubernatorial election, 2018
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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers
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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources. Legobot (talk) 04:31, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Underwater diving portal
Hi Peter, first of all congrats on the creation and maintenance of the Portal:Underwater diving. I like the portal, though it is to my taste a bit too much focused on your specialty and expertise; professional and technical diving. I reckon 90% of the readers here are recreational divers like myself. That is not to say it is bad to educate them/us in other topics, but my surprise was struck how awfully poor most of the recreational dive site categories and articles actually are. I am working to improve those, especially -like you- staying "close to home"; that what you know. Taganga I created some time ago and is like the standard I want to use, I am working on my own other dive sites to get them to a good level too. I have linked to your portal in all the categories, but there is still a lot to do. We keep in contact and good night there in South Africa, definitely a place I need to visit... Baaie success, Tisquesusa (talk) 00:16, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi, Actually I am mainly a recreational diver, but I got involved in scientific diver training for a couple of decades and when I started on Wikipedia the coverage of diving was heavily skewed to recreational. So I fixed it. The portal displays randomly selected articles from lists of articles with reasonably useful lead sections, so should look different each time you view it. From my oint of view it adoes not focus on technical and professional diving, so it is interesting to see that you got that impression. It may be due to a random case of of the content selected being that way when you looked at it, so take a look a few more times and tell me if you still think it focuses more heavily on tech and professional diving. Bear in mind that more than 90% of our readers probably don't dive at all, and we have no way of knowing what they may want to know, so we try to provide everything.
 * Dive site articles are difficult to do well on Wikipedia, mostly because of the lack of reliable sources. Generally what you find in dive magazines and on the internet is poor quality travel guides touting destinations to try to get more people to visit them, often written more as advertising than journalism, and very seldom encyclopaedic in content. Quite often rating sites based on the opinions of people who have not travelled enough to make a reliable comparison, and who have a conflict or interests.
 * Also, this is an encyclopaedia, not a travel guide. I write travel guide articles at Wikivoyage. If you want to see what can be done there, take a look at Diving the Cape Peninsula and False Bay. One day I may get around to writing more about the natural environment in the places I have dived. I have already created and partly developed lists of the marine animals and seaweeds of the area, an article on the geology, and one on the Table Mountain National Park Marine Protected Area, but those are not really about diving. I plan to write something on the physical oceanography of the region some day too.
 * If you have any suggestions for improving Wikipedia's coverage of recreational diving, please discuss them at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Underwater diving, so the record is where other interested editors can see it. Cheers, &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 03:07, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi Peter, great work on that geological article! I haven't read it in detail yet, but it looks very complete and well referenced. I agree, many dive sites tend to write too "travel guide"-ish. That is why I use publications of the marine life, that links it nicely to the many biology articles we have already. I worked on Bay of Pigs and it has become quite nice I think. My plan is to equally improve the other dive locations, at least the ones I know, but I think famous dive sites as Thailand and the South Pacific can use some boost too. Cheers, Tisquesusa (talk) 22:50, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * , The geological article was one of my first on Wikipedia. I wrote it for a guide book that never got published because I found Wikipedia in time. No doubt that most Wikipedia articles about dive sites need more information. Where you can get information that looks reliable and encyclopaedic It would be good to have it included, and that information is most likely to be about the better publicised tropical sites. Where you have travel-guidish information, please consider adding it to Wikivoyage, and if you want any help there let me know. It is a different environment to Wikipedia in some ways. Cheers, &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 13:28, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2018). Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Sro23
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg KaisaL • Ymblanter

Guideline and policy news
 * After a discussion at Meta, a new user group called "interface administrators" (formerly "technical administrator") has been created. Come the end of August, interface admins will be the only users able to edit site-wide JavaScript and CSS pages like MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Common.css, or edit other user's personal JavaScript and CSS. The intention is to improve security and privacy by reducing the number of accounts which could be used to compromise the site or another user's account through malicious code. The new user group can be assigned and revoked by bureaucrats. Discussion is ongoing to establish details for implementing the group on the English Wikipedia.
 * Following a request for comment, the WP:SISTER style guideline now states that in the mainspace, interwiki links to Wikinews should only be made as per the external links guideline. This generally means that within the body of an article, you should not link to Wikinews about a particular event that is only a part of the larger topic. Wikinews links in "external links" sections can be used where helpful, but not automatically if an equivalent article from a reliable news outlet could be linked in the same manner.

Technical news
 * The WMF Anti-Harassment Tools team is seeking input on the second set of wireframes for the Special:Block redesign that will introduce partial blocks. The new functionality will allow you to block a user from editing a specific set of pages, pages in a category, a namespace, and for specific actions such as moving pages and uploading files.

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:31, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Nunodeep
Hi Peter,

I am sure that you are Peter Southwood from Cape town :)). Long time no see or speak, I hope that you are well. I would like to update the information about me in Wikipedia. Not all of it is correct (specially in the first paragraph). I would appreciate your help.

What information would you like? Please ask the questions and I will supply the answers. A lot of the information is in my New and simplified website: www.nunogomes.co.za

Best Regards from New York


 * Hi, That's me. I am well, and assume you are too. The problem we have here is that biographical information is supposed to be from a third party neutral source, so your own web page is considered a toutch dodgy as a source for some kinds of information about you. Although it is quite obvious that a person normally knows the facts about themself, some people make inaccurate claims about themselves on their blogs, and since there is no realistic way of checking that sort of thing there is a blanket ban on some kinds of self published information, on the principle that if the person really is notable, some third party will publish the information somewhere. For other information it may be quite suitable, so my suggestion is that you put the correct information on the article talk page, or if you prefer you can discuss it here. Provide references that are available, either by links or if you have paper sources like newspaper cuttings or magazine articles, send me a scan, with the details of the publication. We can look at what is admissable on Wikipedia based on the type of source, and go on from there. If there is inaccurate information, we can remove it with less stringent conditions if the subject notifies us of the error, so getting rid of some things is relatively easy, but we do need to know what specific things are wrong.
 * By the way, when you edit on a talk page you can leave your Wikipedia signature by typing for tildes ~, and the software recognises you and identifies you by substituting your user signature and a time stamp. Cheers, &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 18:30, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Legobot (talk) 04:28, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Solo diving
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Solo diving you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Courcelles -- Courcelles (talk) 21:21, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Solo diving
The article Solo diving you nominated as a good article has failed ; see Talk:Solo diving for reasons why the nomination failed. If or when these points have been taken care of, you may apply for a new nomination of the article. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Courcelles -- Courcelles (talk) 21:42, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Username policy
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Username policy. Legobot (talk) 04:29, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources. Legobot (talk) 04:32, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Words to watch
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Words to watch. Legobot (talk) 04:26, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Project namespace
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Project namespace. Legobot (talk) 04:31, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Sofia Airport
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Sofia Airport. Legobot (talk) 04:33, 15 August 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   21:09, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). Legobot (talk) 04:32, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Taiwan stations)
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Taiwan stations). Legobot (talk) 04:33, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Usage of Machine Generated Content
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Usage of Machine Generated Content. Legobot (talk) 04:29, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Duplicate parameters trigger category
Hi. Any user subpages with duplicate parameter names (as in cite templates) now trigger a link into the dups tracking category (which gains over 30 pages per day):
 * "Category:Pages using duplicate arguments in template calls"

So expect subpages with cite-template issues to be edited from there. I wish the cite web did not list user-pages as having template errors, but would need to discuss for consensus to bypass user pages, at WT:CS1. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:46, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks . That makes enough sense to live with it. What I find surprising is that it does not notice  tags Cheers, &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:34, 21 August 2018 (UTC)