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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   11:09, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Kenneth Edgeworth
I've completely redone the page for this fellow as it was a stub - just a couple of paragraphs. I went to post it just now and was presented with a page of bold red warning text, the first time this has happened. There was a note to refer to Ww2censor. What do I do next? Dm4244 (talk) 20:31, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I've no idea what you encountered. I don't know where you got the idea that you should refer to me. Please provide links to what you saw. What did the warning text state? I have not touched that page nor its talk page. Do you have the proposed prose in a sandbox page? If so I'll look at it. I do note however that the current article has no references or inline citations. ww2censor (talk) 22:19, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
 * The text below was copied and pasted from the preview box after I pasted the text:

Portal maintenance status: (June 2018)

This portal is not manually maintained. However, please contact Ww2censor when you plan to make significant changes. This portal's subpages should be checked. Superfluous subpages should be nominated for deletion.

Please take care when editing, especially if using automated editing software, and seek consensus before making major changes. Dm4244 (talk) 22:26, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
 * It looks like you were trying to add some text to a portal page and not to the Kenneth Edgeworth article. Is that the case? If so what page? Though I doubt he would not be notable enough to have a biography page on the Ireland Portal. Why not just improve the subjects own page? ww2censor (talk) 22:36, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I spotted the problem. A couple of tags, including the Ireland portal one, were incorrectly configured on my text version of Edgeworth's page. Still not sure why it would refer to you. Anyway, the page is up now so one stub fewer. Thank you. Dm4244 (talk) 10:56, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
 * It looks much better now. Thanks ww2censor (talk) 15:53, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

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

Excerpt slideshows are here!
Can you say "paradigm shift"?

Now, in addition to picture slideshows, we have slideshows that can display excerpts. Portals are not just for topic tasting anymore. Now they can be made useful for surveying Wikipedia's coverage of entire subjects. This gives a deeper meaning to their name. Hmmm. "Portals"... Doorways to knowledge.

Portal:Lithuania was redesigned using excerpt slideshows. Check it out.

For those of you who cannot wait to test out these new toys...

We have not one, but three excerpt slideshow components to pick from:

Transclude excerpts as random slideshow


 * For this one, you specify the page names where the excerpts are to be extracted from.

Transclude list item excerpts as random slideshow


 * This one accepts source pages from where the page names are gathered from list items. Then an excerpt from one of those pages is displayed. The selection of what is included in the slide show can be limited to a specific number from the collection (of the page names gathered), and that selection is renewed from scratch each time the page is purged.


 * For example, if you specify Template:World Heritage Sites in Spain as a source page, the slideshow will cycle through those sites. Now you don't have to type them in one-by-one. This greatly reduces portal creation time.

Transclude linked excerpts as random slideshow


 * Same as above, but gathers links instead of just linked list items.

Panoramic banners
Portal image banner displays a panoramic picture the width of the page, and adjusts its size, so it stays that way even if the user changes page view size. And it accepts multiple file names, so that the picture displayed randomizes between them each time the page is visited/purged.

Give resizing the page a try:

Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.

You can now balance section boxes
Before:

After:

Notice how the box bottoms line up. That readjusts even if you click the slideshow buttons.

The template used for this is Flex columns.

By the way, when you include more than one box in a column, any left over whitespace in that column is divided between them.

Box-header colour
You may have noticed the new Box-header colour template used above. It lets you pick the color locally (right on the same page). Before, this was handled on a subpage somewhere.

Testing, testing
Now that we have lots of toys to play with for making cool portals...

Don't forget, that the majority of views of Wikipedia these days are from mobile devices. We need to make certain that portals display well on those. So, remember to check your work on portals in mobile view mode...

To see a portal in mobile view mode, insert a ".m" into a portal's url, after "en", like this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Reptile

If you discover problems in a portal you can't fix, report them on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Design.

Until next time...
Have fun. &mdash; The Transhumanist  01:01, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #015, 31 July 2018
Now that we have lots of toys to play with, it's play time!

Here are some fun activities to use our new toys on...

Fun activity #1: put the improved panorama template to use
Would you like to travel around the world? Well, this may be the next best thing...

Here's another fun toy to play with: Portal image banner

To see what it looks like, check out the panoramas at the tops of the following portals:
 * Portal:India
 * Portal:Melbourne
 * Portal:Perth
 * Portal:Monaco
 * Portal:South Sudan
 * Portal:Thiruvananthapuram
 * Portal:Lithuania
 * Portal:Brisbane
 * Portal:Abu Dhabi
 * Portal:Athens
 * Portal:Barcelona
 * Portal:Calgary
 * Portal:Dhaka
 * Portal:Dresden
 * Portal:Edinburgh
 * Portal:Florence
 * Portal:Houston
 * Portal:Miami
 * Portal:Milan
 * Portal:Moscow
 * Portal:Munich
 * Portal:Seattle
 * Portal:Stockholm
 * Portal:Turin
 * Portal:Bermuda

The task: There are many geography portals that lack panoramas. Please add some. Please keep the file size down below 2 megabytes, and keep in mind that you may find quality banners at at less than 200K (.2 megabytes). Good search terms to include with the place name are "banner", "cityscape", "skyline", "panorama", "landscape", etc.

Related task: There are also lots of geography portals that have panoramas used as gaudy banners (with print or icons splattered across them) or that display them in some random location on the page. In many cases, those pages would be improved by displaying the panorama as a clean picture at the top of the intro section, like on the examples above. This works best with banner-like panoramas. Please fix such pages when you come across them, if you believe it would improve the look of the page.

Taller images might be better suited displayed further down the page, or in the "Selected images" section.

Note that Portal image banner supports multiple images, and displays one at random upon the first visit, and each time the page is purged.

Fun activity #2: install "Selected images" sections
That is, image slideshows!

Over 200 have been installed so far. Just 1200 to go. (Be sure not to install them on portals with active maintainers, unless they want you to).

The title "Selected images" reflects the fact that not all images on Wikipedia are pictures, and encompasses maps, graphs, diagrams, sketches, paintings, pictures, and so on.

The toys we have to work with for this are:

Random slideshow

and

Transclude files as random slideshow

The task: Using one of the above templates directly on a portal's base page, replace static "Selected picture" sections, with a section like one of these:

The one on the left uses Random slideshow (which accepts file names), and the one on the right uses Transclude files as random slideshow (which accepts source pages from which the filenames are gathered).

The above section formatting is used on many of the pages you will come across, but not all. In those cases, use whatever section formatting matches the rest of the page.

Note that you may come across "Selected picture" sections done with Random portal component templates. That template call is the entire section. Replace it with a section that matches the other sections on the page, and put the new slideshow inside that.

For example, in Portal:California, this code:

was replaced with this code:

And the new section blended right in with the formatting of the rest of the page. Note the use of the  magic word. Plain article titles also work. Don't feel limited to one or two page names. But be sure to test each slideshow before installing the next one. (Or if you prefer, in batches - just don't leave them hanging). Report technical problems at the Portal design talk page.

Fun activity #3: upgrade "Selected article" sections
These sections, where unmaintained, have gone stale. That's because 1) the excerpts are static, having been manually copied and pasted, and 2) because they lack automatic addition of new entries.

They can be upgraded with:

Transclude random excerpt

or

Transclude list item excerpt

or

Transclude linked excerpt

All three of these will provide excerpts that won't go stale. The latter two can provide excerpt collections that won't go stale, by providing new entries over time. The key is to select source pages or source sections that are frequently updated, such as root article sections, mainstream lists, or navigation templates.

Where will this put us?
When the above tasks are completed for the entire collection of portals (except the ones with specific maintainers), we'll be more than half-way done with the portal system upgrade.

Keep up the great work. &mdash; The Transhumanist  19:19, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

The Intro? Isn't that done already?

Yes, and no.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you on the project's talk pages.

Sincerely,   &mdash; The Transhumanist   21:11, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

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

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

The templates are ready for general use for portal creation.

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

I look forward to seeing what new portals you create!

Be sure to report bugs at WT:WPPORTD.

The main portal creation template is box portal skeleton.

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

Need a laugh?
Check out the Did you know? section on Portal:Determinism. &mdash; The Transhumanist  02:42, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 12
Newsletter • August 2018

This month: WikiProject X: The resumption

Work has resumed on WikiProject X and CollaborationKit, backed by a successfully funded Project Grant. For more information on the current status and planned work, please see this month's issue of the newsletter!

-— Isarra ༆ 22:24, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feel free to join in on the fun. ;)

Thank you,   &mdash; The Transhumanist   06:59, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Apollo 15 postage stamp incident
I felt obliged to honor the decision reached on the talk page on the article name. I am happy to see it revisited though, if you want to repeat your comments from the regrettably closed FAC there.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:44, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The talk page discussion only discussed whether the term should be tempered from scandal to incident. It never touched on the actual essence of the article itself which the current title misses entirely. If you like I'll nominate a page move unless you would prefer to see some discussion before that. ww2censor (talk) 15:55, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Either way is fine. I can express any views I have just as well on the page move as on talk.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:11, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
 * And despite some of the critical comments by others, I consider this article the go-to resource on this incident. There really isn't anything else that covers it (ha ha) in any detail.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:16, 18 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)

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)

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  07:25, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

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


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

Way to go!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Using both  and   produces this:

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

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

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

Discussion has resumed on the portal guidelines.

Until next issue...
See ya round the portal system! &mdash; The Transhumanist  11:47, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

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

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

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

( New portals are created with  or   )

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


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

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


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

Keep 'em coming!

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

In closing
We'll keep it short this issue.

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

Cheerio,  &mdash; The Transhumanist   08:06, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 13
Newsletter • December 2018

This month: A general update.

The current status of the project is as follows:
 * Progress of the project has been generally delayed since September due to development issues (more bitrot than expected, some of the code just being genuinely confusing, etc) and personal injury (I suffered a concussion in October and was out of commission for almost two months as a result).
 * I currently expect to be putting out a proper call for CollaborationKit pilots in January/February, with estimated deployment in February/March if things don't go horribly wrong (they will, though, don't worry). As a part of that, I will properly update the page and send out announcement and reach out to all projects already signed up as pilots for WikiProject X in general, at which point those (still) interested can volunteer specifically to test the CollaborationKit extension.
 * WikiProject X/Pilots was originally created for the first WikiProject X prototype, and given this is where the project has since gone, it's only logical to continue to use it. While I haven't yet updated the page to properly reflect this:
 * If you want to add your project to this page now, feel free. Just bear in mind that more information what to actually expect will be added later/included in the announcement, because by then I will have a much better idea myself.
 * Until then, you can find me in my corner working on making the CollaborationKit code do what we want and not just what we told it, per the workboard.

Until next time,

-— Isarra ༆ 22:44, 20 December 2018 (UTC)