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Tech News: 2019-04

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News

  • Some people did not get last week's issue of Tech News. This was because of a problem with MassMessage. If you did not get last week's issue, you can read it on Meta. [1]

Recent changes

  • The content translation tool can now use version 2 as the default version for users who turned on the beta feature. For example it adds the tracking category Pages with unreviewed translations to translations that might have used machine translations without fixing the problems. This is so others can find them. You can find this category in Special:TrackingCategories on Wikipedias.
  • https://mediawiki2latex-large.wmflabs.org can now convert collects of up to 800 pages to PDF, EPUB or ODT. Previously this was 200 pages.

Problems

  • When a template was edited with the visual editor, it would sometimes put all information on one line. This makes it difficult to read for editors who use the wikitext editor. It also makes it more difficult to see what happened in a diff. This problem affected edits made between 8 and 17 January and is now fixed. [2]
  • MassMessage is used to post a message to many pages. It has not been working reliably. Some messages have not been posted to everyone. [3][4]
  • Because of a database problem that had to be fixed immediately you could not edit most wikis for a couple of minutes on 17 January (UTC). This has now been fixed. [5]

Changes later this week

  • You will be able to use template styles in the Module namespace. [6]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 January. It will be on all wikis from 24 January (calendar).

Meetings

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:36, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

Northamerica1000,
Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia, and a Happy New Year to you and yours! Adityavagarwal (talk) 00:27, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
– Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year}} to user talk pages.
Hey, a very happy new year and merry christmas! This is really one of the best, if not the best, templates I have seen on Wikipedia. What could be better than this? This is masterclass and a 10/10! This is aesthetically enchanting and captivating. This is mentally refreshing and relaxing. This is elegant. This is really wonderfully made! Adityavagarwal (talk) 00:27, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
@Adityavagarwal: Well thanks, and a Happy New year to you as well. Regarding the template, I aim to please! North America1000 00:30, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Surreal Barnstar
NorthAmerica1000, or 'one of the best contributors to Wikipedia', has been doing a wonderful work by designing unique and bewitching templates. However, his has crossed the limits of allure and gone into the realm of unearthly! Adityavagarwal (talk) 00:37, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2018).

Guideline and policy news

  1. G14 (new): Disambiguation pages that disambiguate only zero or one existing pages are now covered under the new G14 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-disambig}}; the text is unchanged and candidates may be found in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as unnecessary disambiguation pages.
  2. R4 (new): Redirects in the file namespace (and no file links) that have the same name as a file or redirect at Commons are now covered under the new R4 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-redircom}}; the text is unchanged.
  3. G13 (expanded): Userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text are now covered under G13 along with other drafts (discussion). Such blank drafts are now eligible after six months rather than one year, and taggers continue to use {{db-blankdraft}}.

Technical news

  • Starting on December 13, the Wikimedia Foundation security team implemented new password policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors, et al.) must have a password at least 10 characters in length. All accounts must have a password:
  1. At least 8 characters in length
  2. Not in the 100,000 most popular passwords (defined by the Password Blacklist library)
  3. Different from their username
User accounts not meeting these requirements will be prompted to update their password accordingly. More information is available on MediaWiki.org.
  • Blocked administrators may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
  • {{Copyvio-revdel}} now has a link to open the history with the RevDel checkboxes already filled in.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • Accounts continue to be compromised on a regular basis. Evidence shows this is entirely due to the accounts having the same password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately.
  • Around 22% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 20% in June 2018. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless of whether you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:39, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Censor

No you are correct Wikipedia is not censored, and you are not being censored. Your comments are still there if people wish to read them. I am not sure this is a battle you wish to fight, I can see how this is off topic and a distraction, as well as way of the mark.Slatersteven (talk) 17:58, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

No battle here. 1) The discussion is not about the user who opined, it's about the discussion. 2) I don't want my comments hatted, I want them to be seen and read. 3) Comments were only hatted below the user's comment, but not others where people have had threaded discussions. 4) There are other comments from other users in the previously hatted area, yet the user appeared to have hatted only in response to my statements there. 5) The commentary provided context to the discussion, whereas hatting reduces context, encouraging readers to skim over the hatted content. 6) One user's judgment that the commentary is "unhelpful, and unwanted", and so the comments of several users are hatted, is inherently biased, and akin to censorship in some ways. 7) Initiating a good faith WP:BRD discussion on the users talk page was the right thing to do. The user telling me to "fuck off" in response (diff) was entirely wrong, and sophomoric. Really? North America1000 18:04, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
He hated everything in the response to him below DF.Slatersteven (talk) 18:08, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
I don't view the commentary in the previously-hatted area as "way of the mark" as you state, not at all. Makes perfect sense to me, and another user there as well. Well, hopefully that's it, as I want to now go and create a new article. North America1000 18:14, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
I appreciate that I am the last person you want to see here now, but I have to say that you were not the reason for the hat (refer to my talk page response to Steven for why I hatted it). That said, you are welcome to post on my talk page, I have rescinded the ban and reverted my outburst there and at AN/I. For whatever that is worth. I entirely understand if you don't ever wish to, and if you simply revert my edit here. Enjoy creating an article, it's better than any AN/I thread will ever be. Carry on, Mr rnddude (talk) 18:46, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #026, 20 Jan 2019

Well, here's the first issue of the new year. Enjoy...

New participants

A hearty welcome to new arrivals to the portals department:

Harvesting categories tool prototype

DannyS712 has created a user script prototype, User:DannyS712/Cat links, that can pull members from a category, a functionality we've been after since the project's revamp last Spring. Now, it's a matter of applying this technique to scripts that will place the items where needed, such as with a section starter script and/or portal builder script.

New portals since last issue

  1. Academic publishing
  2. Accounting
  3. Adam and Eve
  4. African Great Lakes
  5. Al Green
  6. Alternative views
  7. America's Next Top Model
  8. Andaman and Nicobar Islands
  9. Angles
  10. Applied mathematics
  11. Arabic
  12. Areas of mathematics
  13. Atlanta metropolitan area
  14. Atlantic Ocean
  15. Big Bash League
  16. Bijelo Dugme
  17. Bill Cosby
  18. Boats
  19. Bombardier Aerospace
  20. Bruce Willis
  21. Canadian law
  22. Cannons
  23. Caribbean American
  24. Chinese American
  25. Chinese Canadians
  26. Chinese gardens
  27. Chris Brown
  28. City
  29. Common law
  30. Criminal law
  31. Czechoslovakia
  32. Data
  33. Data warehouses
  34. DC Comics
  35. Deities
  36. DeKalb County
  37. Destiny's Child
  38. Differential equations
  39. Discrete geometry
  40. East Asia
  41. Economy of China
  42. Economy of India
  43. Economy of Malaysia
  44. Economy of the United Kingdom
  45. Ellen DeGeneres
  46. Email clients
  47. E
  48. Equations
  49. European Americans
  50. Filipino Americans
  51. Football in Algeria
  52. Fox Corporation
  53. Fractions and ratios
  54. Functional analysis
  55. Game theory
  56. Girlguiding
  57. Gloucestershire
  58. Grazhdanskaya Oborona
  59. Greek diaspora
  60. Habsburg Monarchy
  61. Hilbert's problems
  62. Hoodoo Gurus
  63. Hyundai Motor Company
  64. Iggy Azalea
  65. Indian Ocean
  66. Infinity
  67. Information theory
  68. Integrals
  69. Irish diaspora
  70. Irrational numbers
  71. Italian diaspora
  72. Japanese diaspora
  73. J. Cole
  74. Jennifer Lopez
  75. Jessica Lange
  76. John Fogerty
  77. Kehlani
  78. Kiev
  79. K. Michelle
  80. Knot theory
  81. Kool & the Gang
  82. Lakes in China
  83. Lake Van
  84. Leonardo DiCaprio
  85. Limerick
  86. Literary composition
  87. Long Island Rail Road
  88. Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
  89. Lukas Graham
  90. Mathematical optimization
  91. Matt Damon
  92. Merchant ships
  93. Metallic means
  94. Metro-North Railroad
  95. Microsoft Windows
  96. Military of India
  97. Miss America
  98. Modulation
  99. Moon landing
  100. Mozilla
  101. Music of Ireland
  102. Narratives
  103. Nashville
  104. Nassau County
  105. Norfolk
  106. Nottinghamshire
  107. One Life to Live
  108. Overseas Chinese
  109. Percentages
  110. Probability distributions
  111. Public Broadcasting Service
  112. Quezon City
  113. Raven-Symoné
  114. R. Kelly
  115. Rodeo
  116. RuneScape
  117. Sarah Silverman
  118. Saturn rockets
  119. Science and technology
  120. Sesame Street
  121. Seth MacFarlane
  122. Ships
  123. Shipwrecks
  124. Shropshire
  125. Spaceports
  126. Space suits
  127. Spanish diaspora
  128. Steam locomotives
  129. Suffolk
  130. Suzuki
  131. Tanks
  132. Tensors
  133. The CW
  134. Thomas Aquinas
  135. T.I.
  136. TISM
  137. Tom Cruise
  138. Toni Braxton
  139. Toyota
  140. Transportation in the Philippines
  141. True Blood
  142. Violin
  143. Virgin Group
  144. Vladimir Putin
  145. Volkswagen
  146. Volume
  147. Warner Bros.
  148. Warships
  149. Warwickshire
  150. Washington D.C.
  151. [[Portal:Watercraft|
  152. Web syndication
  153. Wikis
  154. Witchcraft
  155. Women's sports
  156. World of Warcraft

What else is going on

There have been some discussions at Wikipedia talk:Portal guidelines.

DreamyJazz is working on a bot to place links to portals on root articles, category pages, and navigation footer templates.

Portal bugs are getting dealt with soon after they are reported.

Lots of wikignome activity (using Hotcat, etc.).

Keep up the good work.    — The Transhumanist   08:38, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Comments

  • @The Transhumanist: From a spot check, most of these new portals appear to be orphaned, lacking a link to the portal even on the main page for the topic. Without any links to these and other new portals, nobody is going to use them, because most readers will not be aware that they even exist. Sure, it's fun to create portal pages, but will they even be read or used? Seems like the rush is all about creating new portals fast, but then, nobody takes time to properly link to them. This makes the new portals almost useless. North Americ1000 04:04, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
It's not that building portals is fun, it's that it is fast, because we don't do it all by hand -- software tools do most of the work. The main factors we are trying to take advantage of here, are division of labor, mass production, and automation. By the way, something that you may not be aware of, is that I used a script to build each portal that I created. The approach I used was to create a list of redlinks, and then ctrl-click on each redlink – this created each page in its own tab, and the script automatically took care of most of the rest of the work, as it ran in each tab simultaneously. Not particularly fun, rather tedious in fact, as it was the same task over and over again, thousands of times. Click click click click click, and it took months of work. Because of the tools used (the script, and the template placed by the script), each portal took about a minute to create, because each still had to be inspected before saving, and then tweaked afterwards. Tedious work. As was scouring the set of templates for candidates for the creation list. (If you don't believe me, try building a thousand portals using this method). But, it is well worth it, because creating the portals is a necessary step toward having linked portals (a portal network).
A cinder block waiting in a warehouse to be ordered, is valuable, because it can be used to fill an order. Same thing with new portals. Each one is a resource waiting to be utilized. The cinder block was made by one worker, and then sold by another, each better at his job than the other. This is what we are trying to achieve, through software programs.
Note that WP:AWB has been easy to apply to placing the links on category pages. Due to this, all but the latest batch of new portals has leading to them a link on the corresponding category page (when available). That's one link type down, and two link types to go.
Nobody is putting in serious amounts of time to link these new portals on root articles and navbox footers, because it takes 4 times as long to link them (manually) than it did to create the portals (with tools). I tried it for a couple hundred portals. So, if it took you 6 months to make 3500 portals, it will take 2 years for you to place these links to them by hand. It's better to wait for the tools being worked on to do the linking in a fraction of that time. I'm working on a script to make these links in seconds each, while Dreamy Jazz is working on a bot that will reduce human editor time to zero (or close to it). Evad37 presented a program concept that sounds more adaptable in certain ways than both of these. If all three are built, we'll have quite an arsenal to provide editors for tackling the linking for these and for future portals to come. (In addition to WP:AWB).
And since we are waiting for bots and scripts that can place these links, it makes sense to build as many portals as we can in the meantime. Division of labor. Team work.
Concerning the portals themselves: while apples go rotten if you let them sit around, portals self-update and therefore stay fresh. They will be ready and waiting for us when we are ready for them.
If someone is willing to build all the remaining links by hand, more power to them. The rest of us are either waiting for the right tools (building portals while we wait), or are working on building those tools.
I hope the above explanation has helped to put the current development strategy into perspective.    — The Transhumanist   22:54, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
P.S.: Once we have a worthy tool in place, or an effective set of AWB search/replace instructions, placing the links to portals will most likely take just a few days. To many readers, it will be like these portals were all created at once. They will experience an explosion of portals coming onto the scene, encountering portal links all over the place. At that time, we'll need to be ready, as the portals project will likely receive a surge in message traffic and new participants. -TT
@The Transhumanist: Kind of a WP:NODEADLINE matter, though I have to think this can be rectified to some extent with a bot. That said, if we end up with 10,000 or 20,000 portals, I think it very likely that deletionism will rise up again, and in greater force. Or at least mergeism. We really don't need a portal about stoats or about macaroni, though more general ones on mustelids and pasta will clearly be useful. Now that we have 5000+, it may be time to give the creation wave a rest and focus on the linkage (i.e., on improving the utility, and securing the portal network against "it's all useless" attacks).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:17, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: At the current rate, we won't be at 10K until October, and we're approaching a wall, as there is a limited supply of worthy navigation footer templates to drive production of new portals. They are getting fewer and farther between. As suitable templates run low, portal builders will have the challenge to either autobuild new navigation footers to enable the building of more portals, or they'll need a way to harvest another source type from which to populate portal slideshows. Both approaches are under development, but they are going sloooow. In contrast, both the bot and the script for link placement are already partially operational, capable of placing portal links on category pages (category pages are the low hanging fruit). The navigation footers are proving to be the hardest page type to add links to, but it's doable. I'd be surprised if we didn't have the bot or the script or both fully operational within a few months.    — The Transhumanist   07:26, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
@The Transhumanist and SMcCandlish: I posted about this at the Portals project (Portal linkage problems), but it was archived after 30 days. I wonder how many people actually saw the message. Out of sight, out of mind. North America1000 11:03, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
I saw it, and answered it. The only change between then and now pertaining to the topic of that thread is that work on linkage is focused through software development rather than running AWB. Nobody wants to place the links by hand. And there's no reason to, with the technology we have available to create tools to do this for us.    — The Transhumanist   11:21, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
Short reply: Well, I actually just manually added a few links to articles moments ago. Why not do some manually now, rather than waiting for who knows how long? It doesn't take that long to perform manually. North America1000 11:24, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

1) Place a portal box in the article's See also section

{{Portal|{{subst:PAGENAME}}}}

– or –

Place a list item link to a portal in the corresponding root article's See also section, using this code:

* {{Portal-inline|size=tiny|{{subst:PAGENAME}}}}

Oh, a drive. I've found that maybe a handful of editors respond to general task requests. You wind up spending as much time coordinating as the volunteers put in. It's usually faster to plunge in and do it all oneself. After a hundred or so entries, you'll start thinking about ways to do it faster, like with AWB.    — The Transhumanist   11:50, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
@The Transhumanist: I have AWB access, but don't use it much anymore. The interface is clunky, and often it's quicker to simply edit manually. Check out my user contributions, I just added many more portal links in minutes. North America1000 11:54, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
Nice catch. Damn typos!    — The Transhumanist   12:13, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
  • @The Transhumanist: I have added links to articles for about 40 of the new portals listed above. I'm just letting you know; I'm not complaining or telling you what to do. The point is, why spend time discussing about not adding portal links and waiting for a bot or users to use AWB, and instead just do it now, before there are 10,000 portals? Those for portal deletion may to look at orphaned portals with very few page views and say, "these are not needed and are not being used. Delete." Then a flurry of "delete per nom" !votes could occur, resulting in deletion and an utter waste of time for those creating portals in the first place. North America1000 12:08, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
Eight reasons. 1) I think it's paranoia. 2) The deletion arguments presented are invalid per WP:AADD, and easily defended against. 3) The level of support for portals is high, and deletion noms will attract portal defenders (and new participants) in droves (as did the RfC). 4) Within the duration of such deletion discussions, our programmers would be highly motivated to finish up the scripts and set them upon completing the task before the debate has run its course. 5) Bots are faster than manual editing. 6) Bots free up one's editing to do something else that bots cannot do. 7) We're a long ways from 10K. 8) There's WP:NODEADLINE. Number 6 is the most compelling of those reasons, IMHO. Strategically speaking, using our editors to trail blaze with the tools we do have, and our programmers to write tools to consolidate our gains, is the best use of participants' time. Doing things manually out of fear of imagined enemies wastes human resources. Patience is a virtue. Dreamy Jazz is on it. Have a little confidence in your team mates. In the meantime, being the conservative one, if you want to place the links by hand, go for it. That appears to be your preferred mode of operation. Personally, I prefer to leverage my editing with tools as much as possible, or leverage the editing of myself and others by creating those tools. Automation should be the primary focus, because, per the RfC last Spring, there just are not enough editors to do all the building and maintenance that is needed upon portals. Bring on the user scripts and bots!    — The Transhumanist   13:31, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
  • @The Transhumanist: Perhaps users should somehow be encouraged more at the Wikiproject page to follow all of the basic steps when creating a new portal. The current trend is that users are mostly just copying and pasting {{subst:Basic portal start page}}, selecting publish changes and doing absolutely nothing else. All that is needed to be complete is 1) a link to the portal in the main article 2) a portal link in the topical template, if existent. That's it. Of course, adding portal links to related pages is also necessary, but people should at least know about how to perform the basics. North America1000 13:54, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
I agree, but that these should be handled with tools, which we are working on. I've built a script to make portals, but it has a conflict with WikEd that sends it into an endless loop, and therefore, I haven't released it yet. I've been using it because it works fine with WikEd turned off, but it's easy to forget to turn it off until you acquire the habit. I'm also building a script that will place all of these links automatically, and once completed, it will be integrated into the other script just mentioned. The second functionality will be able to pick up where the editors left off, at the portal page, and place the necessary links. In the meantime, I'd rather see our editors pushing the envelope. Dreamy Jazz and I are racing to get software up and running, and it shouldn't be long. It won't be long, and we'll experience a portal explosion, of portals that have the necessary links at the time of creation. Once the tools are in place for that, I expect portal production will go up to between 2k to 3k per month.    — The Transhumanist   14:26, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
  • @The Transhumanist: Here's where we disagree a bit. I prefer quality over quantity. Unlinked portals just aren't typically read, and hence, just aren't used. Look at the page view stats for some of them; zero to one page view a day for some. Portal builders should consider focusing on specific portals and take steps to improve links to them, such as I have done with portals such as Pizza and Cakes, among others. Most of Wikipedia's traffic consists of readers. Without links, there's no there there for the readers. Another matter is, while scripts can accomplish a lot, sometimes human editing will be vastly superior, such as when adding portal links to articles per topical relevance, adding multiple portal links to articles that has several aspects to them, portal link layout in articles, etc. North America1000 16:55, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
I just see that as impatience. But, you don't have to wait for the script or bot to be ready. I prefer to wait, and keep busy some other way, which will result in more quality portals in the intermediate run.
By expanding the scope of "quality" you risk creating confusion. These are quality portals. Ready and waiting to be utilized. Until they are linked, these are just in a holding pattern. Doing no harm, except getting on your nerves. You should loosen up a bit. Cheers.    — The Transhumanist   17:52, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
  • @The Transhumanist: Actually, I'm not worried about it at all. Just thinking about how things can be simply configured to actually draw page views to the portals, rather than just having empty shells. Also, there's no risk of creating confusion here; how on earth could adding links to the portals on main topic pages and template pages possibly create confusion? [added during while comment below was posted]: It's the opposite of confusion, doing so is precision. North America1000 17:58, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
I never said adding links would cause confusion. I was referring to your definition of "quality". As for the rest, all in good time.    — The Transhumanist   18:05, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
@The Transhumanist: Portal quality is inherently improved when there are actual links to it. That's my exact point. I think you're reading into what I'm saying differently than the point, which is that higher quality is correlated with actual incoming links, and lesser quality is obviously correlated with no links. Empty shell portals that are not used are lesser quality compared to those that are actually read. That's my opinion. North America1000 18:09, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
But, if you call them "poor quality portals", that would likely be interpreted as them having poor page design, poor content, etc. They are high quality in this regard. Potential confusion.    — The Transhumanist   18:26, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
Adding links to portals improves their overall quality. Makes perfect sense.

This week's article for improvement (week 4, 2019)

A view of the Quetschenfest street fair in the community of Geichlingen, Germany
Hello, Northamerica1000.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Street fair

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Vicki Gunvalson • Page orientation

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 21 January 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Wikipedia gardening portal listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia gardening portal. Since you had some involvement with the Wikipedia gardening portal redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:04, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Portal Tajikistan listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Portal Tajikistan. Since you had some involvement with the Portal Tajikistan redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:08, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-05

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

Problems

  • When someone moves a page to a name that already exists that page that had the name the article is moved to is deleted. For a couple of months this didn't always work. Some users saw an error message instead. This has now been fixed. [7]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:15, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #027, 28 Jan 2019

Portal styles

For a visually intensive portal, see Portal:Hummingbirds.

If you find any other portals that stand out, please send me the links so I can include them in the next issue. Thank you.

Conversion continues

There are about 1100 portals left in the old style, with subpages and static excerpts. As those are very labor intensive to maintain (because their maintenance is manual), all those except the ones with active maintainers (about 100) are slated for upgrade = approximately 1000. We started with 1500, and so over a quarter of them have been processed so far. That's good, but at this rate, conversion will take another 3 years. So, some automation (AWB?) is in order. We just need to keep at it, and push down on the gas pedal a bit harder.

You can find the old-style portals with an insource search of "box portal skeleton".

Flagship portals: the portals on the Main Page

Speaking of upgrades...

The following portals are listed in the header at the top of Wikipedia's Main Page, and get far more traffic than all other portals:

  1. Portal:Arts
  2. Portal:Biography
  3. Portal:Geography
  4. Portal:History
  5. Portal:Mathematics
  6. Portal:Science
  7. Portal:Society
  8. Portal:Technology

Of those, all but one have been revamped to an automated self-updating single-page design.

The remaining one, Portal:Mathematics has manual maintainers, and has been partially upgraded.

As these are our flagship fleet, they need to be kept in top-notch condition.

Check 'em out, and improve them if you can.

And be sure they are on your watchlist.

New portals since last issue

Keep 'em coming!

Deorphanizing the new portals

As you know, thousands of the new portals are orphans, that is, having no links to them from article space. For all practical purposes, that means they are not part of the encyclopedia yet, and readers will be unlikely to find them.

What is needed are links to these portals from the See also sections of the corresponding root articles.

Dreamy Jazz to the rescue...

Dreamy Jazz has created a bot to place the corresponding category link to the end of each portal (if it is missing), and place a link to each portal in the See also section of the corresponding root articles.

That bot, named User:Dreamy Jazz Bot, is currently in its trial period performing the above described edits!

To take a look at the edits it has made so far, see Special:Contributions/Dreamy_Jazz_Bot.

It shouldn't be long before the bot is processing the entire set of new bots.

Good news indeed.

Way to go, Dreamy Jazz!

And, that's a wrap

That's all I have to report this time around.

No doubt there will be more to tell soon.

Until then,    — The Transhumanist   13:14, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 5, 2019)

Hello, Northamerica1000.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Assassination attempts

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Street fair • Vicki Gunvalson

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 28 January 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

GOCE 2018 Annual Report

Guild of Copy Editors 2018 Annual Report
Our 2018 Annual Report is now ready for review.

Highlights:

  • Overview of Backlog-reduction progress;
  • Summary of Drives, Blitzes, and the Requests page;
  • Membership news and results of elections;
  • Annual leaderboard;
  • Plans for 2019.
– Your project coordinators: Miniapolis, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Reidgreg and Tdslk.
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:31, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Directory of portals listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Directory of portals. Since you had some involvement with the Directory of portals redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:08, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Babbouche

I know you know what to do with this. Drmies (talk) 01:23, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Undeletion request

Undeletion request for Kevin Sundher. Since the article was deleted Sundher has played in the Czech Extraliga and now meets criterion 1 of WP:NHOCKEY.[8] Thanks. --SP17 (talk) 20:00, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-06

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

  • It was easy to untick a box by accident in Special:Preferences. This will now be fixed. [9]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 February. It will be on all wikis from 7 February (calendar).

Meetings

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17:12, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Ángel Abrea

Frankly I wish that hadn't been a NAC closure. I would have re-listed, hoping for more input on an interesting GNG vs. COMMONSENSE discussion. I want you to know I appreciate the time and thought you put into the discussion, and that I greatly respect your opinion, as I always have. 78.26 (spin me / revolutions) 13:02, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

@78.26: I have requested for the discussion to be reopened. See this diff for the details. North America1000 00:27, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
Nb. @78.26: The AfD discussion has been reopened. North America1000 10:07, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Nadia G's Bitchin' Kitchen

Just so you know, I have re-created this article with better sources. Erpert blah, blah, blah... 19:09, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Latter-day Saints AfDs

Every time I have a look at the AfD log there seems to be some non-notable person involved with the Latter-day Saints up for AfD, I was wondering can you not group them together into one AfD next time? Govvy (talk) 12:25, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 January 2019

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:50, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 6, 2019)

A typical Finnish school meal lunch, served free of charge to all pupils.
Hello, Northamerica1000.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

School meal

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Assassination attempts • Street fair

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 4 February 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #028, 04 Feb 2019

Here's a quicky status report:

Old-style portals: 1,018
Single-page portals: 4,367
Total portals: 5,385

But of course, there has been more going on than just that...

Dreamy Jazz Bot is up and running!

Dreamy Jazz Bot has been approved and is now up and running.

What it does is places missing links to orphaned portals. It places a link in the See also section of the corresponding root article, and it puts one at the top of the corresponding category page.

We have thousands of new portals that have yet to be added to the encyclopedia proper, just waiting to go live.

When they do go live, over the coming days or weeks, due to Dreamy Jazz Bot, it will be like an explosion of new portals on the scene. We should expect an increase in awareness and interest in the portals project. Perhaps even new participants.

Get ready...

Get set...

Go!

Another sockpuppet infiltrator has been discovered

User:Emoteplump, a recent contributor to the portals project, was discovered to be a sockpuppet account of an indefinitely blocked user.

When that happens, admins endeavor to eradicate everything the editor contributed. This aftermath has left a wake of destruction throughout the portals department, again.

The following portals which have been speedy deleted, are in the process of being re-created. Please feel free to help to turn these blue again:

And the corresponding talk pages:

New portals since the last issue

Keep up the great work

Until next time,    — The Transhumanist   09:03, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

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