User talk:Wumbolo/Archive 3

Thank you for fixing the template

 * thank you very much. I wanted to test the template and the instructions showed up where they shouldn't. I immediately figured it must be because  tags were misplaced, and I put them around the instructions so that the instructions don't show up when they shouldn't. Cheers!  w umbolo   ^^^  18:52, 10 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Cool, I am so glad that this caught your careful eyes before others. I did the updates in a hurry and left for dinner. Lot of other editors also use this template and so, you saved me from some embarrassment. :D -- D Big X ray ᗙ  18:59, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Heads up
This is apparently a thing: Articles for deletion/Oleg Viktorovich Maltsev (2nd nomination). Just a courtesy heads up since OP didn't notify you.Reyk YO! 12:24, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Your spam subpage
You recently pinged me with a request at your User talk:Wumbolo/spam page, which you seem to be using for transient messages, which you then delete. That's not a good idea. We strive for full transparency here. If you have a request to make of an admin, the proper procedure is to just leave them a message on their talk page. Or, post a request to WP:ANI, where it will be seen by a broader audience of admins. In either case, there will be a trail left in the history and/or archives, so anybody in the future can refer back and see what transpired. Thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:49, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * That makes sense. I tagged it for U1. w umbolo   ^^^  14:50, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Along those lines, I see you also deleted that user's comment on another user's talk page. Please don't do stuff like that.  Talk pages are essentially logs of what's happening on the project.  Deleting material from them just makes it harder for other people to understand the history, and it's particularly inappropriate to delete messages on other people's talk pages.  Leave things like that to admins.  Thanks.  -- RoySmith (talk) 14:57, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Articles_for_deletion/Xterm
Hi Wumbolo, I didn't get a chance to respond to your last comment before the discussion was closed. You asked me if I read your prior comment, and I did. I don't think software guidebooks written by independent authors should be excluded from WP:GNG. I mentioned the "at least one lengthy paragraph, preferably more" rule of thumb to show that there wouldn't be a bias toward complicated software, since it doesn't take an entire manual to establish significant coverage. A lengthy paragraph in an article would be enough.

If you disagree, and want to argue that independently written software guidebooks should be excluded, consider starting a request for comment at Wikipedia talk:Notability or Village pump (policy). Perhaps you and other editors can establish more specific criteria for using certain kinds of books as sources, and then include them into WP:GNG. —  Newslinger  talk   22:26, 13 September 2018 (UTC)


 * and in front of your rule of thumb it says "References about the subject". That means that the source should contain material describing the subject, not merely instructing someone to install the subject as a prerequisite or a dependency for the actual subject of the source material. w umbolo   ^^^  09:09, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * All three of the sources I mentioned in that discussion do contain material describing the subject, and none of the linked pages contain instructions for installing the software. If you want to exclude software guidebooks from WP:GNG, you can propose the exclusion in an RfC. —  Newslinger   talk   09:17, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I see now that I've looked into it in detail. You didn't link to a specific page in the books so I skimmed over the search results you provided and only saw the mentions within instructions. w umbolo   ^^^  09:31, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Thinsulate
I saw your comment on Articles for deletion/Thinsulate. I am personally sure that it must be notable, and this is not because I am wearing a Thinsulate hat while typing this. What should I be specifically looking for to show notability? I gathered some reports from the New York Times archives, and there are some other news reviews. But the line between significant coverage and passing mention is not clear to me. &mdash; Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 16:00, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * there is no single definitive answer to that question, but I will attempt to answer as clearly as possible. Please read WP:WHYN if you haven't already. WP:NCORP / WP:ORG is a well-written notability guideline about organizations and corporations. You can see the rest at . There are also notability essays, which have less value than guidelines. WP:PRODUCT is a section of NCORP, and you can see that it is quite short. However, it manages to be pretty useful. For example, it generally doesn't allow writing permastubs about products. WP:GNG is essentially the notability guideline we should follow for cases where a subject-specific notability guideline does not apply, or we can't determine if something is notable. WP:ROUTINE is a section of WP:EVENT, and it is useful to see which events are simply too common to be of any significance. The rest of WP:EVENT is also useful. Notability essentially asks the question of whether we can write an article from some sources. If we can only pull one or two sentences of useful information from a source, the source is not significant coverage of the subject. Also note that WP:GNG states, Significant coverage [...] does not need to be the main topic of the source material. And of course, we can't rely on primary sources such as press releases, and we also can't even rely on reliable sources merely reporting the news, without discussing it in any way, per WP:PRIMARYNEWS. WP:ORG very nicely explains what one should watch out for when citing product reviews to demonstrate that a product is notable.  w umbolo   ^^^  16:49, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I don't know if this got me any closer to showing notability for Thinsulate, but at least I have a better idea of the guidelines. &mdash; Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 17:16, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

AfDs
I am a bit concerned you're way over doing it, you really need to step away from nominating AfDs, some of what you're nominating, the computer software program articles are very common software that people use. For instance; Xterm is a very popular piece of software and you put the article to AfD?? KWin is surprisingly used a lot in the industry, .NET Framework version history could be considered a useful resource article. Over nominating could get you into trouble. Govvy (talk) 16:14, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * If I nominate a couple dozen articles, and one or two turn out to be notable, is not too bad. I don't care how often something is used in the industry, and whether something "could be considered a useful resource article"; I nominate on the basis of notability (WP:GNG and WP:NPRODUCT). I don't see how software which is only mentioned in manuals (in context of explaining how to do something, not what a software actually is) could be notable. w umbolo   ^^^  16:40, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Do you do web searches before you nominate an article?? Govvy (talk) 16:42, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I do a Google News search with as much combinations of keywords as needed, a reliable source search engine search (and sometimes the one below which is usually for video games), a Google Books search, and a Google Scholar search. For the articles with seemingly significant coverage, I do some research to see if they are reliable (if necessary). w umbolo   ^^^  16:45, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * So really you're not too concerned if in 5% of the articles you nominate volunteers efforts get unnecessarily trashed ?   And that is the reason why I've been de-prod'ing a lot of articles because I can't trust you to be safe and its an overload situation at the moment at AfD. If you want to say tidy up articles related to password manager articles then discuss and get consensus at project level first.  Because amongst the crud there are some Gem's that need merging.  Please stop.  Thankyou.Djm-leighpark (talk) 17:32, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * no need to use the ping template on my own talk page. Bundling AfD nominations and discussing on a project-level is generally a bad idea because most articles are different. Separate AfD nominations are the safest deletion procedure. They don't end up trashing articles needlessly because they last as long as necessary, and if there aren't enough convincing votes, the nominated articles are kept by default. w umbolo   ^^^  18:15, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * You have to be careful on using Google News and the like searches to decide if something is notable as that has a bias towards recentism. A lot of older software predate the ubiquitous of online news sources. Google books searches also have similar limits though going in the other direction. PaleAqua  (talk) 19:24, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm aware of that and many paper reviews are available online. Still, most of them are hard to find but I wouldn't want to rely on them in the vast majority of cases, because the decent sources afforded to be published online. I also look at WorldCat when appropriate. w umbolo   ^^^  19:53, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

This is a bit out of hand now, I kindly asked you to take a break from AfD, but you haven't so I posted to ANI. Govvy (talk) 22:57, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Govvy (talk) 22:57, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Sorry to say this, but for me this feels like the "German Wikipedia sickness": Do not improve, but remove. Please go to the doctor ;) Bassklampfe (talk) 05:04, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

AWB task request: please help with the backlog
Hey...

If you have AWB laying around, please dust it off and crank it up! ;)

We have a growing backlog!

There are now portals. Of those, are of the new design.

Many of the new portals are orphaned or near orphaned, and need links pointing to them:


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

To make a list of corresponding templates, you can use AWB's make list feature to make a list of the pages in Category:Single-page portals. Then you copy that list to a sandbox, and replace  with  , using WP:wikEd. That will give you a list of templates to work on. Then you set skip in AWB to skip the ones that already have the portal link.

To make a list of corresponding root articles, make a list of portal links, and then remove "Portal:" from the links.

To make a list of category links to process, make sure you use a leading colon in the category links, like this:.

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

Thank you. &mdash; The Transhumanist  20:45, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.13 18 September 2018
Hello, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

The New Page Feed currently has 2700 unreviewed articles, up from just 500 at the start of July. For a while we were falling behind by an average of about 40 articles per day, but we have stabilised more recently. Please review some articles from the back of the queue if you can (Sort by: 'Oldest' at Special:NewPagesFeed), as we are very close to having articles older than one month.


 * Project news
 * The New Page Feed now has a new "Articles for Creation" option which will show drafts instead of articles in the feed, this shouldn't impact NPP activities and is part of the WMF's AfC Improvement Project.
 * As part of this project, the feed will have some larger updates to functionality next month. Specifically, ORES predictions will be built in, which will automatically flag articles for potential issues such as vandalism or spam. Copyright violation detection will also be added to the new page feed. See the projects's talk page for more info.


 * There are a number of coordination tasks for New Page Patrol that could use some help from experienced reviewers. See New pages patrol/Coordination for more info to see if you can help out.


 * Other
 * A new summary page of reliable sources has been created; Identifying reliable sources/Perennial sources, which summarizes existing RfCs or RSN discussions about regularly used sources.


 * Moving to Draft and Page Mover
 * Some unsuitable new articles can be best reviewed by moving them to the draft space, but reviewers need to do this carefully and sparingly. It is most useful for topics that look like they might have promise, but where the article as written would be unlikely to survive AfD. If the article can be easily fixed, or if the only issue is a lack of sourcing that is easily accessible, tagging or adding sources yourself is preferable. If sources do not appear to be available and the topic does not appear to be notable, tagging for deletion is preferable (PROD/AfD/CSD as appropriate). See additional guidance at WP:DRAFTIFY.
 * If the user moves the draft back to mainspace, or recreates it in mainspace, please do not re-draftify the article (although swapping it to maintain the page history may be advisable in the case of copy-paste moves). AfC is optional except for editors with a clear conflict of interest.
 * Articles that have been created in contravention of our paid-editing-requirements or written from a blatant NPOV perspective, or by authors with a clear COI might also be draftified at discretion.
 * The best tool for draftification is User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js(info). Kindly adapt the text in the dialogue-pop-up as necessary (the default can also be changed like this). Note that if you do not have the Page Mover userright, the redirect from main will be automatically tagged as CSD R2, but in some cases it might be better to make this a redirect to a different page instead.
 * The Page Mover userright can be useful for New Page Reviewers; occasionally page swapping is needed during NPR activities, and it helps avoid excessive R2 nominations which must be processed by admins. Note that the Page Mover userright has higher requirements than the NPR userright, and is generally given to users active at Requested Moves. Only reviewers who are very experienced and are also very active reviewers are likely to be granted it solely for NPP activities.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:11, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Your assumption at SA farm attacks
A word to the wise:


 * "Let's just assume Trump's always lying and fact check him backward."

This will save you a lot of time and embarrassment, and increase your credibility. BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 20:46, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
 * where did you get the idea that I don't do that? Face-smile.svg I've never trusted something he said without good reason. w umbolo   ^^^  20:57, 18 September 2018 (UTC)


 * This comment made me wonder. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 23:16, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Misrepresenting sources
You have on multiple occasions cited sources on talk pages which purportedly support something, which it then turns out that the sources do not at all in any way do whatsoever. This is highly disruptive and you should stop doing it. I've seen you do it previously in discussions on the RS noticeboard about the Daily Wire's RS status, Trump administration family separation policy and South African farm attacks, for example. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 16:16, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I often only read a headline to quickly judge the content of an article, when I have to judge the consensus of multiple sources. When I actually go ahead and cite a source, I read it carefully. That's the case with the other articles you mentioned, in which you misrepresented the sources. With regards to the Daily Wire discussion, I provided about 30 sources, of which only a handful turned out to be misrepresented. w umbolo   ^^^  16:23, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Again, a blatant lie about what sources say. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 16:45, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I think you don't read the sources you cite, only headlines. If you bothered to read e.g. the CJR source, which says:
 * And the site’s algorithm is often gamed by right-wing trolls to get their hoaxes or fake news high up in the recommended list, an example of what the Oxford Internet Institute has called “computational propaganda.”
 * unless you believe that YouTube and it's algorithms are synonymous with "right-wing trolls", you're wrong and misrepresenting both sources and my comments. So it's more of a "again a blatant lie" on your part and this section you created on my talk page is basically you giving yourself WP:ROPE. w umbolo   ^^^  17:08, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * If the algorithm is being gamed to promote hoaxes and conspiracy theories, then the algorithm promotes conspiracy theories. And the other sources (which you either did not read or misunderstood) make it explicitly clear that the algorithms promote conspiracy theories, in case that snippet from the CJR article was too hard to understand.
 * WSJ: "Behind that growth is an algorithm that creates personalized playlists. YouTube says these recommendations drive more than 70% of its viewing time, making the algorithm among the single biggest deciders of what people watch. The Journal investigation found YouTube’s recommendations often lead users to channels that feature conspiracy theories, partisan viewpoints and misleading videos, even when those users haven’t shown interest in such content. When users show a political bias in what they choose to view, YouTube typically recommends videos that echo those biases, often with more-extreme viewpoints."
 * NY Times: "This was the first sign that YouTube’s algorithm systemically directs users toward extremist content. A more neutral algorithm would most likely produce a few distinct clusters of videos — one of mainstream news coverage, another of conspiracy theories, another of extremist groups. Those who began in one cluster would tend to stay there. Instead, the YouTube recommendations bunched them all together, sending users through a vast, closed system composed heavily of misinformation and hate."
 * Again, this is part of a broader problem where you repeatedly misrepresent what sources say, and usually in service of fringe viewpoints or promulgators of conspiracy theories. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 17:18, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The WSJ doesn't say what you think it says, and the NY Times source is even unsure of the validity of what it says, when it writes "most likely", "would tend", and the rest is editorializing. Again, this is part of a broader problem when you accuse me of misrepresenting what sources say, when you're the one misrepresenting them, usually in disservice of WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:NOT and occasionally WP:V. Also a problem where you describe everyone who disagrees with you as "fringe". w umbolo   ^^^  17:30, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, all the RS are either wrong/editorializing or when they say "blue", they are actually saying "red". I got you. The NY Times is "editorializing" when it says something I disagree with and when the CJR says YouTube's algorithms promotes conspiracy theories, CJR is actually saying the opposite. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 17:40, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keep up the great work everyone.

Sincerely,   &mdash; The Transhumanist   07:11, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Kudos for Breitbart removals
Good job undertaking the manual labor cleaning up Wikipedia. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 14:48, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. w umbolo   ^^^  14:49, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Personal attacks
Please stop calling people dishonest or liars. Have some good faith and respect for the people you are discussing with. Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:26, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I am responding to arguments. I did not assume good faith only once, but that was for arguably an IDHT problem. w umbolo   ^^^  13:30, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Responding to arguments does not necessitate assuming the malicious intent that "dishonest" and "lie" implies Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:42, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
 * But I'm of the opinion that these arguments were so bad that they overshadowed the benevolent intent behind the editors making them. w umbolo   ^^^  13:48, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I will reinforce the warning. Stop the personal attacks, accept consensus, and drop the stick. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  16:57, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Bbb23's comment and my reply
Archiving for future reference: (revision before it was selectively archived by a blocked sock)

Speedy deletion nomination of Ana Maria Archila


A tag has been placed on Ana Maria Archila requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done for the following reason:

"G5 - created by a blocked sock of who was previously topic-banned from editing political biographies, and the subject of this article is heavily involved in politics"

Under the criteria for speedy deletion, pages that meet certain criteria may be deleted at any time.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. w umbolo  ^^^  15:37, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Please nominate that page for discussion at WP:AfD. Sagecandor (talk) 15:37, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think the article is non-notable or anything like that. But I'm not going to entertain your request unless you request that your topic ban is lifted. w umbolo   ^^^  15:39, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Update: Tag was removed. Speedy delete tagging was contested. Sagecandor (talk) 15:42, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
 * After speedy delete tag was removed, tagging user immediately nominated for deletion at Articles for deletion/Ana Maria Archila. Sagecandor (talk) 16:01, 1 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Stop tagging articles created by Sagecandor for g5. It's absolutely improper and again shows poor judgment on your part as to our deletion processes.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:03, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
 * are you going to name any reason? If I tag an article for g5, because it passes everything described at the WP:G5 policy, are there some further exceptions which are not listed at WP:CSD? w umbolo   ^^^  16:06, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Results from global Wikimedia survey 2018 are published
Hello! A few months ago the Wikimedia Foundation invited you to take a survey about your experiences on Wikipedia. You signed up to receive the results. The report is now published on Meta-Wiki! We asked contributors 170 questions across many different topics like diversity, harassment, paid editing, Wikimedia events and many others.

Read the report or watch the presentation, which is available only in English. Add your thoughts and comments to the report talk page. Feel free to share the report on Wikipedia/Wikimedia or on your favorite social media. Thanks!

-- EGalvez (WMF) 19:25, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!
thank you very much! "Weinstein effect" is a very confusing title, and you're far from being the only one to misinterpret it ;) w umbolo   ^^^  18:26, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

reply to your final comment at the IIAGTS AFD
With regards to this edit, since you said to "consider this my last reply to this thread", I was unsure whether you were watching that page or not. Just in case, I thought I'd reply here instead to ensure you saw it. I'm sorry you've been harrassed; that shouldn't happen on the English Wikipedia. (Have you seen WP:DWH?) If a page meets a criteria for speedy deletion, then tagging it duly is your go-to action. If it's declined, your next step should be a discussion with the administrator who declined it. If you're not satisfied with that, take the declination to deletion review, though that's really your last avenue. The AFD process is more geared towards the article itself having deficiencies that make it unsuitable, not that the author is a problem. Lastly, please refrain from making personal attacks by calling other editors names. Your targets will certainly appreciate it, and it will serve you better in the long-run. Be well. —  fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124;  16:23, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * thanks. I haven't been hurt by any harassment directly; I just meant that some blocked editors used emails and talk page access to disrupt my AfD nominations. Sorry for the personal attacks; I took it too far. With regards to CSD, I was told not to tag if borderline here. Cheers, w umbolo   ^^^  16:54, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Alessandro Strumia blog
Hello. Could you share with me the blog that was canvassing votes for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alessandro Strumia ? I am just curious what it looks like. Openlydialectic (talk) 01:45, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
 * This blog, but probably more of these "anti-feminist" blogs drawing various conclusions. w umbolo   ^^^  09:01, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Wumbolo, Thank you. Openlydialectic (talk) 10:13, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
 * and the WaPo: . w umbolo   ^^^  09:35, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

User talk:TaylanUB
I have reverted your latest comment at User talk:TaylanUB as it appears to have no connection to the the block or block appeal, and comes across as verging on trolling. Please avoid commentary that is not directly related to the block appeal. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:18, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

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

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

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

Newest portals

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

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

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

Two portals were deleted.

One resolved as "no consensus".

Sixteen resolved as "keep".

Links to the archived discussions are provided below:


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

Many thanks to those who participated in the discussions.

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But, what about development of new new design features?

We have a wish department.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time...
Keep up the good work on portals. They are improving daily. Thank you. &mdash; The Transhumanist  04:26, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Bad Interpretation
The notability policy refers to anything that is "significant, interesting, or unusual."2601:447:4101:41F9:76:3C05:FB9D:7DCA (talk) 16:57, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Once again, your interpretation is bad.2601:447:4101:41F9:76:3C05:FB9D:7DCA (talk) 17:02, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

It is a very bad interpretation when you assume that one sentence doesn't work with the others and accounts for the entire policy.2601:447:4101:41F9:76:3C05:FB9D:7DCA (talk) 17:17, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.14 21 October 2018
Hello, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

, there are 3650 unreviewed articles and the backlog now stretches back 51 days.
 * Backlog


 * Community Wishlist Proposal
 * There is currently an ongoing discussion regarding the drafting of a Community Wishlist Proposal for the purpose of requesting bug fixes and missing/useful features to be added to the New Page Feed and Curation Toolbar.
 * Please join the conversation as we only have until 29 October to draft this proposal!


 * Project updates
 * ORES predictions are now built-in to the feed. These automatically predict the class of an article as well as whether it may be spam, vandalism, or an attack page, and can be filtered by these criteria now allowing reviewers to better target articles that they prefer to review.
 * There are now tools being tested to automatically detect copyright violations in the feed. This detector may not be accurate all the time, though, so it shouldn't be relied on 100% and will only start working on new revisions to pages, not older pages in the backlog.


 * New scripts
 * User:Enterprisey/cv-revdel.js(info) — A new script created for quickly placing copyvio-revdel on a page.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. —  Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)  20:49, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Closure
Trouble maker. PackMecEng (talk) 02:32, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...dive in! &mdash; The Transhumanist  07:11, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Hatting replies to comments
Greetings. Letting the original "narrow notability" comment stand and hatting the responses with the pretext that they are looks a lot like POV-pushing or trying to suppress the input of your fellow editors who happen to disagree with you. You should know better than that. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 21:16, 28 October 2018 (UTC)


 * the original comment is more than just about "narrow notability". All the other ones are only about notability. w umbolo   ^^^  21:23, 28 October 2018 (UTC)