Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals/Tasks archive

AWB task: place Portal talk on portal talk pages
Here's a simple AWB task for anyone who is interested:


 * Make sure Portal talk is on every Portal talk page. Just the base pages (not subpages). The Prepend feature works well for this.


 * Remember to skip pages that already have it, so it doesn't wind up on there twice.


 * Remove talkheader (it shows up on some of the pages). (Normal search/replace to null).


 * Be sure to inspect the pages when you are done, to make sure there are not two talk page boxes (there might be some custom ones floating around out there).

If you have any questions, or get stuck, drop me a note or ping me.

Have fun! &mdash; The Transhumanist  00:18, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Add a missing Associated Wikimedia section
The following portals need to be checked for an Associated Wikimedia section, and if they don't have one, have one added.

Here's the the template code for geographical portals:  This goes inside whatever box formatting is used on the portal for its sections.

Upgrade introduction sections
To do this on each portal, transclude the intro excerpt directly onto the portal base page, swapping out intro excerpt subpage transclusion with "selective transclusion"...

Many portals include an intro section with a static excerpt copied from the lead of the corresponding article and pasted into a subpage which is transcluded onto the portal base page. That's inefficient: the excerpt goes stale over time, and the subpage is not needed anymore.

The new method is to use the template Transclude lead excerpt directly in the intro box on the portal base page. This provides an excerpt that always matches the source (that is, stays fresh), and makes the subpage obsolete.

So, instead of this line:

You put something like this:

But, now you have to make it so the edit link in the section doesn't go to the subpage anymore. To do that, remove  from the following line:

So it looks like this:

If you would like editors who change intros to Transclude lead excerpt, to not edit your portal's intro page, then please add this comment:

By the way, please skip Portal:American Civil War, as that is specifically being maintained by hand.

The section below goes into more detail on how to use selective transclusion templates...

Using transclusion templates
If a portal page contains text copied and pasted from the lead of some article Foo, it can be replaced by. Other wikitext such as images and a "Read more..." link can be kept or can also be replaced by adding the options to the template call. For example, will select only paragraphs 1, 3, 4 and 5 from the lead, and will retain the first file (usually an image) found there. (By default, the template transcludes all paragraphs and no files.) Further information:.

If a portal page selects an extract randomly, it can be replaced by Transclude random excerpt. This works exactly like Transclude lead excerpt but it accepts multiple article names from which it selects one at random. For example, will show up to four paragraphs from the lead of Foo, Bar or Baz (random choice), showing the first of any images which appear within that article's lead. Further information:.

Please check carefully that the results are what you were hoping for. In particular, if the article's lead contains only one short sentence, that's all you'll get in the portal. If the previous version of the portal contained carefully selected paragraphs from later sections, that may be a backward step, but it will usually indicate that the article lead could be improved - the article quality criteria for the lead section are relevant here, and by improving the lead for the articles to be transcluded, both the portal and the articles are improved. See Manual of Style/Lead section. Images within infoboxes are currently not picked up automatically (they don't count as "within the lead") so they also need to be included manually. As the modules are still in alpha testing, this behaviour may change.

For further information on selective transclusion, see: Mediawiki extension.

Add a panorama or skyline to a geographic portal
Here's a task that really brightens up a page...

Add a panoramic pic to the top of geographic portals, such as cities, states, provinces, countries, regions, and continents.

Do one, here or there, as you feel like it. Do as many as you like. Every little bit helps.

Please do not add pics over 2 megabytes in size, as they can cause the portal scripts to time out, causing empty sections, or sections with error messages. Watch out, because some of those pictures are huge, like 12 megabytes or more. Less than one megabyte is best, if you can manage it.

Pictures can be found at. Search strings that work well with the city name to find these are "skyline" or "panorama". There are a large number of wide images at 7:1 aspect ratio used as Wikivoyage banners in Commons:Category:Wikivoyage banners. Most of these are not very large files.

Geographic portals are listed in the Geography section of Portal:Contents/Portals. City portals are shown in parentheses (though they are not the only ones in parentheses).

Here is an example of the main template used to place panoramic pics:

Which looks like this:

Here are some examples of city portals with panoramas or panoramic skylines in their intro sections:


 * Portal:Kyoto
 * Portal:Miami
 * Portal:Seattle
 * Portal:Houston
 * Portal:Tokyo
 * Portal:New Orleans
 * Portal:Brisbane
 * Portal:Calgary
 * Portal:Moscow
 * Portal:Munich
 * Portal:Prague
 * Portal:Vienna

Install image slideshows
Replace "Selected image" sections with "Selected images" sections.

The code for an image slideshow would look like this, for most existing portals:

For examples of portals that have image slideshows, see Portal:Reptiles, Portal:Amphibians, Portal:Sacramento, California, and Portal:Bangladesh. Or follow this link, and scroll down to see the latest list.

I know what you are about to ask...

Where do you find pictures?


 * At Featured pictures, some of Wikipedia's best pictures are listed by subject. Many of those subjects correspond to a portal name.


 * On the portal's subpages, if any.


 * Throughout Wikipedia articles.


 * On Wikimedia Commons. This is a great place to find pictures not used in articles.

Now that you are ready to start installing picture slideshows on every portal...

On your mark, get set, go!

AWB task: Convert category sections
Here is one for our AWB and JWB users:

We are migrating the category content to portal base pages, using a category tree call.

For details, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Tasks.

Process news subpages
Some portal news sections have static news posts that are are years out of date. These should be cleared.

News sections work best if the portal has significant scope. For portals on a niche subject the likelihood of there being any available news is greatly reduced.

The User:JJMC89 bot/Wikinews importer runs hourly, and can be used to provide a stream of up-to-date news items on a subject, if Wikinews has any news available, which it generally doesn't.

Or can transclude items from the daily subpages of Portal:Current events, which often have more up to date and relevant news. For further information and examples, see Template:Transclude selected current events/doc.

Inspect the portals listed at Portal:Contents/Portals
Some of the portals listed at Portal:Contents/Portals were placed there prematurely, and are not ready yet. Unlike articles, portals are listed once their construction is complete, because until then, they look broken. This has to do with their page formatting.

So, all the portals listed at Portal:Contents/Portals need to be inspected for completion. Those that are under construction need to be removed from that list, and added to the list on its talk page where such entries are marked.

Portals that are not ready yet may have any of the following problems:
 * Empty boxes (usually with a redlinked subpage in its center)
 * Lack of "selected" sections ("selected article", "selected picture")
 * It is just a portal stub, with only an intro, and perhaps end sections
 * Very poor layout (like with seriously unbalanced columns)