Wikipedia talk:Community portal/Open tasks/Archive 4

Trim this template?
Based on what I'm seeing in the data, it appears that some sections of the opentask list are much more appealing to users than others. Check out the image to the right: that's the opentask template with percentages of clicks going to each task type. As you can see, the top two task types, wikifying and copyediting, get a fourth of all total clicks on the list.

Part of this might have to do with length/order: the current list is so long that it looks like people are just skipping over the middle sections and looking only at the top and bottom. I'd like to propose cutting a few of the task types for a tighter and more useful list. Take a look at , based on the most popular task types by clicks and edits.

Thoughts? (Also posted on the Community portal talk page.) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 18:40, 14 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Would a 'show/hide' function be useful in keeping the less popular but under-serviced areas on, without taking up too much space on screen (until someone clicks on 'show' to unhide the other tasks)? --PFHLai (talk) 21:35, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Redefined Wikify category
After Template:Wikify was deleted and turned into a disambiguation page, its corresponding category (Category:All articles that need to be wikified) was deleted, leaving SuggestBot unable to update that part of the list of open tasks. I've coded up a fix that instead grabs articles that have been tagged with the following templates: Dead end, Inadequate lead, Lead too short, Lead too long, Underlinked, and Overlinked.

Given that a couple of the templates refer to the lead rather than the number of wikilinks, the current description of the "wikify" task category ("Add wikilinks") should be rephrased, and the link to the tutorial should change (or be supplemented). I'm currently not sure what the new description should be or where it should link to, so I hope someone else could come up with some good suggestions. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 21:52, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I went ahead and made a minor change the category description and reinstated the necessary span-elements to make SuggestBot update the category again. Let me know if bugs happen.  Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 18:39, 16 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for jumping in and fixing the missing cleanup list, Nettrom! I think those categories, wikifying and lead section improvement, should probably be split up into two – perhaps we could replace Clean up (which is pretty vague) with Improve lead section? That seems like a really great new user task, since all it requires is a bit of skimming and adding information that already exists in the body of an article to the top. I'd be interested to try that out at Template:Opentask-short, too... Maryana (WMF) (talk) 23:04, 16 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I think splitting and replacing the "Clean up" category sounds like a good idea. I had a quick look at Cleanup process, which is what "Learn how" linked from "Clean up" leads to, and that page looked pretty overwhelming!  The three lead-related templates all put articles into Category:Wikipedia introduction cleanup, so how about we switch "Clean up" with articles from that category, then? That would also mean that what was previously "Wikify" becomes a category only about wikilinks.  Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 14:37, 17 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I went ahead with this change. What used to be "Clean up" is now "Improve lead sections", leaving the wikilinks section to only be about wikilinks.  Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 16:49, 22 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Excellent! Thanks, Nettrom! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Priority sort by incoming wikilinks
use these when selecting updates?


 * Fix spelling and grammar
 * Fix wikilinks
 * Remove unsourced material
 * Expand short articles
 * Check and add references
 * Update with new information
 * Improve lead sections
 * Add an image
 * Translate and clean up

192.186.163.25 (talk) 05:13, 9 October 2013 (UTC)


 * The current code behind these updates uses a combination of random selection, average popularity, and predicted article quality when choosing which articles to display (with some variation as part of a research experiment that we just wrapped up). Using incoming wikilinks to select articles could be added to the criteria, but I would probably use it to penalise articles with higher numbers because those articles are more likely to be found by random chance and thus doesn't need the visibility of the Community Portal as much (the same idea is used in one of SuggestBot's recommenders).   Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 16:14, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Scientist redlinks
people love creating articles, right? That's why AFD is such a source of heat, and the notability criteria are so contentious, and why we have Drafts/AfC etc, right? Could you please add redlinks from WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Thompson-Reuters most cited scientists into the mix here every once and a while? Maybe on a rotating basis with some of the less urgent bluelinks categories (or a permanent basis if you make the two least urgent bluelinks categories rotate out?) Thanks! EllenCT (talk) 19:03, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

I ask further opinions be expressed at Wikipedia talk:Community portal. EllenCT (talk) 18:11, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Proposal: Shaded heading boxes?
Greetings, After a little experimentation, wondering if making all the heading boxes shaded would be an improvement? Here's a mockup example of just one row.

Note: see section below (Full 3 X 3 Wikitable shading mock-up) for full-size example.

Discussion for consensus If additional editors have feedback, please feel free to communicate here. Suggestions for improvement are welcome. Cheers! JoeHebda (talk) 16:35, 26 September 2015 (UTC)


 * feedback & discussion on above shading example.
 * JoeHebda (talk) 11:39, 1 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I like the shading. How about you divide the heading so that the link to "Learn how" is a sub-header? The way it is now, lines are wrapped depending on how wide the browser window is, and mine wrapped the lines right after the "•", which looks a little odd.  Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 14:52, 1 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the feedback. Above, I changed the bullet ( • ) to just a plain dash ( - ). Does that look better? On the Tip-Of-The-Day WP, the dash is used as a good separator, and I'm sure other places as well. JoeHebda (talk) 15:15, 1 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Not really, because the problem is that the line can break anywhere, and if it happens right after that separator, it looks quite odd. Can I suggest instead switching to this the code shown below, or something similar to it? Note, my HTML and CSS skills are somewhat rusty, I haven't really been proficient in those for about 15 years.


 * With regards to the suggestion, first, it separates the header from the text, thus the two are semantically different. Secondly, the header is here a header (h3) so that it has the appropriate semantic markup.  Third, the two are always separated, thus there will not be a line break in odd places.  The downside is that this always requires two lines, so the header will arguably take more space.  Regards, Nettrom (talk) 16:37, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Fix spelling and grammar Learn how


 * Above, I moved the "• Learn how" to the footer of each box/section, right after the "More" link. This might be a reasonable compromise - single line above & "same looking" mini-footer (with diff. wikilinks of course). JoeHebda (talk) 17:42, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Full 3 X 3 Wikitable shading mock-up
Below is the shading mockup for all 3 columns & rows, mainly to check wikicode & spot any fixes needed. et:Vikipeedia:Kogukonnavärav/Ootavad tegemist

Greetings and page watchers, If above looks okay it can be moved to the project page. I tried to preserve the existing line spacing, but if there is some secret wikicode trick to make this work with SuggestBot, changes might be needed. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 20:52, 5 October 2015 (UTC)


 * ; Shaded boxes - Status Update
 * feedback please.
 * * Item 1
 * While doing the above mock-up, I did notice that for Add an image section, it is missing a line. Wonder if that is why the lines beneath are all a bit higher horizontally than lines on the left & right sections?


 * * Item 2
 * User Nettrom: For moving this wikicode live, is this something you need to do/prefer to do? I see the Bot fires off at approximately xx:15 and xx: 45 each hour, so I'm sure those time slots would need to be avoided for timing of the update. Please advise course of action.


 * Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 16:33, 8 October 2015 (UTC)


 * For Item 1 above, I added the "span id" line & will check back later to see if it survives the next SB update. JoeHebda (talk) 20:54, 11 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Left a message at User talk:Nettrom asking if okay to proceed with above update. JoeHebda (talk) 14:50, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this, JoeHebda, and thanks also for pinging me about it! I don't have any particular thoughts about the design, looks good to me. SuggestBot shouldn't have any problems updating it since you've kept the … parts and the corresponding IDs, and what the bot does is just replace everything inside of those each time. The "Add image" section is not updated though, due to those articles not being part of the category structure like all the other one. Updating that section has to be done manually, not sure by whom. Let me know if there's anything else. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 16:21, 12 October 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅ - Posted to proj. page. JoeHebda (talk) 21:41, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Where can I find articles to make more neutral?
Don't write praising or demeaning things in articles. --Turkeybutt (talk) 22:35, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Please try Category:Articles needing POV-check & Category:Articles with minor POV problems. --PFHLai (talk) 22:46, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Completed Tasks
This is my first go at working with the Opentask section (I've been doing a bit of editing here and there for a few years), and I was wondering if we need to, or if there is a way to mark a request completed, or remove it from the list. I added a graphic to Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies from the Commons, and am planning on trying to knock out a few more tasks here and there.

Thanks, Vwwally (talk) 18:21, 14 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi Vwwally, apologies for not responding to this sooner! The tasks are automatically updated every half hour, with the exception of the "Add an image" category. Those are instead manually updated every now and then, mainly by PFHLai it seems like (who should get another barnstar for their tireless efforts). Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 15:43, 18 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Not a problem, thanks for the info. Vwwally (talk) 19:19, 18 October 2016 (UTC)