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September 2018

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Basketball

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Moot

– Closed before I got to it.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Basketball. Legobot (talk) 04:25, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #018, 04 Sept 2018

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

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, — The Transhumanist 23:33, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

"Fast Stanton"

Latest comment: 6 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Since you're a big-time pool hustler, upon finding this essay, I thought of you. Just so you know, the content of the essay did not remind me of you in terms of who you are, your editing, etc., I just thought you'd find it interesting relative to pool, since you're a cue sports fan. Cheers, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 07:19, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

@Northamerica1000: Well, yeah – I wrote that one! :-) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 13:55, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

WT...Fudge. Well, I didn't check the page history. Go figure that Fast Stanton wrote it. You're too fast for me, FS!

North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 13:58, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Perche

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Perche. Legobot (talk) 04:26, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Red Hand Commando

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Moot

– Already closed by the time I looked.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Red Hand Commando. Legobot (talk) 04:26, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Hello

Latest comment: 6 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion

Would you consider writing for the Signpost? I like your user page and a lot of what you have there is appropriate. Best Regards, Barbara ✐ ✉ 23:16, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

@Barbara (WVS): Sorry for the delay; was taking a long wiki-break. I've thought of submitting something to the SP before, but don't have the time or energy to commit to doing anything regular. I'm not sure if you're soliciting an editorial (and if so, whether you had something specific in mind), or are looking for a regular columnist or reporter. Please don't be fooled by my little WP:On the Radar thing. I write very little of it (it's mostly just pointers to others' articles). I hardly ever update it – just when I see something that relates strongly to off-site entities colluding to manipulate our content, and other major but soto voce threats to WP's long-term viability. Most of the non-article and non-talk stuff I write here is catalogued at User:SMcCandlish/Essays. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 14:03, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

I really don't expect anyone to volunteer to do something on a regular basis because I don't think it is necessary to cajole anyone into anything they don't want to do. I just found such interesting things on your user page that I think others would find it interesting. I would like to grab one of your essays to reprint it in the Signpost if that is okay. Best Regards, Barbara ✐✉ 00:45, 10 November 2018 (UTC) (I have changed my signature)

@Barbara (WVS): That would be neat. Which one? I may want to revise it a bit – some of them haven't been touched in years, and I swear I find a new typo in every one of them no matter how many times I proofread! Heh. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:52, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

This is great! Thanks for doing this. Just tell me which essay you want to use, I will put into Signpost draftspace, give you the link and you can work on it there in your leisure. We are going to publish early because of the Holdays. If that isn't enough time, don't sweat it. We will move to the next issue. You know, I can't find the 'tilde' character on my phone. Oh well, you know it's me. Barbara Page

Got caught up in other stuff. Will try to look into this shortly. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:13, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Logical quotation on Wikipedia

Latest comment: 6 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Resolved

Hello. I found your piece Wikipedia:Logical quotation on Wikipedia rather interesting, thoroughly researched and entertainingly written. So thank you. What confused me was that it was tagged as "humor' - you know, the one that says it's retained because it's funny.

I don't get this - neither the suggestion that it is humorous nor the idea ( ... retention) that if it wasn't funny it wouldn't be kept ... in fact, I found this latter bit somewhat patronizing: I feel it should be kept simply because it is useful.

I see that it has been tagged and untagged. I've untagged it and invoked BRD, much good though that may do! Did you intend it to be funny? I just don't see it, somehow, and would be interested to know your view. Thanks and best wishes DBaK (talk) 10:01, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

@DisillusionedBitterAndKnackered: It was WP:POINTy nonsense by one of my long-term antagonists. Thanks for fix it. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 13:57, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Ah, right, I did wonder. Cheers DBaK (talk) 18:33, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.13 18 September 2018

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hello SMcCandlish, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

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

Project news

The New Page Feed now has a new "Articles for Creation" option which will show drafts instead of articles in the feed, this shouldn't impact NPP activities and is part of the WMF's AfC Improvement Project.

As part of this project, the feed will have some larger updates to functionality next month. Specifically, ORES predictions will be built in, which will automatically flag articles for potential issues such as vandalism or spam. Copyright violation detection will also be added to the new page feed. See the projects's talk page for more info.

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

Other

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

Moving to Draft and Page Mover

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

List of other useful scripts for New Page Reviewing

Twinkle provides a lot of the same functionality as the page curation tools, and some reviewers prefer to use the Twinkle tools for some/all tasks. It can be activated simply in the gadgets section of 'preferences'. There are also a lot of options available at the Twinkle preferences panel after you install the gadget.
In terms of other gadgets for NPR, HotCat is worth turning on. It allows you to easily add, remove, and change categories on a page, with name suggestions.
MoreMenu also adds a bunch of very useful links for diagnosing and fixing page issues.
User:Equazcion/ScriptInstaller.js^(info): Installing scripts doesn't have to be complicated. Go to your common.js and copy importScript( 'User:Equazcion/ScriptInstaller.js' ); into an empty line, now you can install all other scripts with the click of a button from the script page! (Note you need to be at the ".js" page for the script for the install button to appear, not the information page)
User:TheJosh/Scripts/NewPagePatrol.js^(info): Creates a scrolling new pages list at the left side of the page. You can change the number of pages shown by adding the following to the next line on your common.js page (immediately after the line importing this script): npp_num_pages=20; (Recommended 20, but you can use any number from 1 to 50).
User:Primefac/revdel.js^(info): Is requesting revdel complicated and time consuming? This script helps simplify the process. Just have the Copyvio source URL and go to the history page and collect your diff IDs and you can drop them into the script Popups and it will create a revdel request for you.
User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js^(info): Creates a "Page Curation" link to Special:NewPagesFeed up near your sandbox link.
User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/deletionFinder.js: Creates links next to the title of each page which show up if it has been previously deleted or nominated for deletion.
User:Evad37/rater.js^(info): A fantastic tool for adding WikiProject templates to article talk pages. If you add: rater_autostartNamespaces = 0; to the next line on your common.js, the prompt will pop up automatically if a page has no Wikiproject templates on the talk page (note: this can be a bit annoying if you review redirects or dab pages commonly).

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

Portals WikiProject update #019, 22 Sept 2018

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

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:

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.
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).
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#These are not listed yet. 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 {{PAGENAME}}, 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), {{PAGENAME}} turned up nothing. But, when more parameters were added, as in the wikicode below...

{{Transclude selected recent additions | {{PAGENAME}} | Iron Man | Spiderman | Antman | Hawkeye | The Hulk | Incredible Hulk | David Banner | Captain America | Scarlet Witch | Black Widow | Tony Stark | Nick Fury | Age of Ultron | Infinity War | months=36 | header={{Box-header colour|Did you know... }}|max=6}}

... 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, — The Transhumanist 06:21, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Are you okay?

Latest comment: 6 years ago8 comments7 people in discussion

I have just realized I haven't seen you around for a while and according to your contributions you haven't edited since mid-August! If you are just busy in real-life or taking a wiki-break then that's none of our business and I wish you all the best. Betty Logan (talk) 14:23, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, the silence is slightly unsettling. Hope all is well, Johnbod (talk) 02:53, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

I was thinking the same. Best wishes! DonIago (talk) 13:04, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

On Aug. 12, S wrote, "I'm out of wiki time for the nonce". Sounds like he got busy with something else, so I'm not worried, but I do miss him, too. Dicklyon (talk) 14:36, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

And he made an edit on 29 September. So around somewhere (looks around). Randy Kryn (talk) 17:58, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

I just realized that was his last edit as of this post, too, so I have no clue when (let's go with that) the section I just created (permanent link) will be answered. It has been nearly two weeks; doesn't he know that WP:YANI and WP:WPDNNY do not apply to him? Seriously, though, I hope all is well and that this is just a well-deserved wikibreak (or very lucrative work). —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 22:27, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

@Betty Logan, Doniago, Johnbod, Dicklyon, and Nøkkenbuer: Sometimes just need to do other stuff and give the wikigeekery a rest. Don't worry; if I die or go into a coma, that would be a major situational change, so I would be sure to log back in and update my User talk:SMcCandlish/Status. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:57, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Do...other...stuff? :p DonIago (talk) 05:49, 10 November 2018 (UTC)