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Contents
- 1 Newly registered?
- 2 Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #029, 13 Feb 2019
- 2.1 The Ref desks survived the proposal to shut them down
- 2.2 The cleanup after sockpuppet Emoteplump continues...
- 2.3 10,000 portals, here we come...
- 2.4 New portals since issue #28
- 2.5 What's next for portal pages?
- 2.6 New WikiProject for the post-saved-portal phase of operations...
- 2.7 Keep on keepin' on
- 3 Nomination for deletion of Template:NSFW
- 4 LIght Year (Isakov song) listed at Redirects for discussion
- 5 The Signpost: 28 February 2019
- 6 Notice
- 7 Please don't comment out Template:Requested move/dated
- 8 Ready bride
- 9 NPR Newsletter No.17
- 10 Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #030, 17 Mar 2019
- 11 Getting a change through
- 12 The Signpost: 31 March 2019
Newly registered?
Discussions and notifications
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Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #029, 13 Feb 2019Where we are at:
The Ref desks survived the proposal to shut them downYou might be familiar with the Ref desks, by their link on every new portal. They are a place you can go to ask volunteers almost any knowledge-related question, and have been a feature of Wikipedia since August of 2005 (or perhaps earlier). They were linked to from portals in an effort to improve their visibility, and to provide a bridge from the encyclopedia proper to project space (the Wikipedia community). Well, somebody proposed that we get rid of them, and the community decided that that was not going to happen. Thank you for defending the Ref desks! Here's a link to the dramatic discussion: The cleanup after sockpuppet Emoteplump continues...The wake of disruption left by Emoteplump and the admins who reverted many (but not all) of his/her edits is still undergoing cleanup. We could use all the help we can get on this task... Almost all of the speedy deleted portals have been rebuilt from scratch. For the portals he/she restarted (many of which were done mistakenly, overwriting restarts and further development that had already been done), and/or tagged as the maintainer, see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Emoteplump&oldid=881568794#Additional_Portals_under_my_watch 10,000 portals, here we come...We're at 5,705 portals and counting. New portals since issue #28
Prior to 2018, for the previous 14 years, portal creation was at about 80 portals per year on average. We did over 3 times that in just the past 9 days. At this rate, we'll hit the 10,000 portal mark in 5 months. But, I'm sure we can do it sooner than that. What's next for portal pages?There are 5 drives for portal development:
Let's take a closer look at these... 1: Creating new portalsPortal creation, for subjects that happen to have the necessary support structures already in place, is down to about a minute per portal. The creation part, which is automated, takes about 10 seconds. The other 50 seconds is taken up by manual activities, such as finding candidate subjects, inspecting generated portals, and selecting the portal creation template to be used according to the resources available. Tools are under development to automate these activities as much as possible, to pare portal creation time down even more. Ten seconds each is the goal. Eventually, we are going to run out of navigation templates to base portals off of. Though there are still thousands to go. But, when they do run out, we'll need an easy way to create more. A nav footer creation script. Meanwhile, other resources are being explored and developed, such as categories, and methods to harvest the links they contain. 2: Expanding existing portalsThe portal collection is growing, not only by the addition of new portals, but by further developing the ones we already have, by...
More features will be added as we dream them up and design them. So, don't be shy, make a wish. 3: Converting old portalsBy far the hardest and most time-consuming task we have been working on is updating the old portals, the very reason we revamped this WikiProject in the first place. There are two approaches here:
4: Linking to new portalsOr "portal deorphanization"... Dreamy Jazz Bot is purring along. And a tool in the form of a script is under development for linking to portals at the time they are created, or shortly thereafter. 5...See below... New WikiProject for the post-saved-portal phase of operations...Saved portals, are portals with a saved page. What is the next stage in the evolutionary progression? Quantum portals. What are quantum portals? Portals that come into existence when you click on the portal button, and which disappear when you leave the page. Or, as Pbsouthwood put it:
Introducing... Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals (see it's talk page). Keep on keepin' on...'til next time, — The Transhumanist 10:25, 14 February 2019 (UTC) Nomination for deletion of Template:NSFW
LIght Year (Isakov song) listed at Redirects for discussionAn editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect LIght Year (Isakov song). Since you had some involvement with the LIght Year (Isakov song) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. UnitedStatesian (talk) 15:08, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 28 February 2019
* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:16, 28 February 2019 (UTC) User:SMcCandlish/It
Notice
Please don't comment out Template:Requested move/datedbecause my bot isn't smart enough to notice that. RMCD bot stupidly thought that template was still being transcluded. It took me over two months to notice that my bot was reporting an odd message on its console: "Centrally-hosted discussion on Talk:2018 New York Attorney General election." Of course, on checking that page I immediately saw that this was a spurious message as this was just a normal, not a centrally-hosted discussion, which appeared to have been closed in late December. After spending maybe 30 minutes on a wild goose chase looking for what recent code or template change I made recently triggered this unexpected side effect, I looked at the wikitext source of Talk:2018 New York Attorney General election and only then I immediately saw the problem. This edit fixed it, and shortly after I made that edit the bot removed the stale notice from the article. Just like Farmers Insurance's university professor, I know a thing or two because I've seen a thing or two. So next time this happens, I'll know enough to look out for it. Too much trouble to try to code a patch to make my bot as smart as me. Low priority because it's such a rare "accident". Since you've volunteered to fix malformed requested moves, which I appreciate, I'll add you to my "team of assistants" who do this when I'm busy working on other stuff besides monitoring RM, and point you to this guidance I gave to another one of my assistants. Thanks for helping out at RM. – wbm1058 (talk) 16:30, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
Ready brideI'm ready bride of christ Christysgotit (talk) 13:34, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
NPR Newsletter No.17Hello Paine Ellsworth,
Six Month Queue Data: Today – Low – 2393 High – 4828 Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #030, 17 Mar 2019Previous issue:
This issue:
The collection of portals has shrunkAll Portals closed at WP:MfD during 2019 Grouped Nominations total 127 Portals:
Individual Nominations:
Related WikiProject: (Attribution: Copied from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Portal MfD Results) WikiProject Quantum portalsThis was a spin-off from WikiProject Portals, for the purpose of developing zero-page portals (portals generated on-the-screen at the push of a button, with no stored pages). It has been merged back into WikiProject Portals. In the MfD the vote was "demote". See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals. Hiatus on mass creation of PortalsAt WP:VPR, mass creation of Portals using semi-automated tools has been put on hold until clearer community consensus is established. See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Hiatus on mass creation of Portals. The Transhumanist banned from creating new portals for 3 monthsSee Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Proposal 1: Interim Topic-Ban on New Portals.
Until next issue...Keep on keepin' on. — The Transhumanist 03:56, 17 March 2019 (UTC) |
Getting a change through
Hi Paine! I'm very frustrated because I'm trying to do the right thing but I'm making no progress. Some random user unilaterally changes the name of the Sinhala language article and no-one bats an eyelid. Had it been discussed, it would have been rejected as "no consensus", the same as my request to change it back. I've shown plenty of evidence that "Sinhala" is overwhelmingly preferred but hasn't totally displaced Sinhalese, but it appears to me (as in this in entirely my opinion) that ignorant people who have already make up their minds are voting against it, so undoing an incorrect change is impossible. The last voter basically said "languages and people have to have the same name in English". This is demonstrably not true, but their vote to oppose counts anyway. The same goes for everyone else who voted without commenting or providing evidence for their opinions, e.g. "Sinhalese is clearly the preferred name" without sourcing their statement. How can I get a change request based on facts instead of opinions? Isn't Wikipedia supposed to be a repository of the truth? Also, how long do you recommend before trying again? Danielklein (talk) 08:43, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
- To Danielklein: I understand your frustration, because most of us have been there at one time or another. There was some support for the Sinhala title, and I think the key is to closely study all the rationales, both support and oppose, and use that knowledge to strengthen your argument. I think the key to getting an RM granted after a previous RM has closed as no consensus is to have something new to offer, an argument that cannot be effectively rebutted. It takes time to build that to where you'll be confident of acceptance, and that's why the guide indicates "the longer the better". The longer you take to build and strengthen your arguments, the more likely your request will be successful. There is no specific recommendation in the guide; however, I like to tell people to wait at least three months following a no-consensus outcome. On the other hand, if you can be confident of your request rationale sooner than that, like 8 or 10 weeks, then I'd say go for it! Paine Ellsworth, ed. put'r there 10:57, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
- Thanks for that! This was my second attempt. The first was at Sinhalese script (which as I've pointed out has a much longer history of being stable at "Sinhala alphabet/script"). Someone told me a long time ago "Don't argue with idiots. They'll beat you with experience every time!" That is what seems to be happening here. I put forth rational arguments based on verifiable evidence, and someone else comes along and adds untrue evidence, which then gets taken at face value. I then have to debunk these irrelevant points. I watched an interesting TED talk last night about Brexit and the speaker made the interesting point that in today's political climate, lies are just as credible as evidence based truth.
- I actually invited those people who'd voted against the name change to participate in the debate, but none of them did! Only one naysayer from the reopened request was willing to engage. I'd prefer not to go through another round of voting. The Wikipedia guidelines actually recommend against move requests for this very reason: they tend to be divisive rather than garner consent. I think I'll try sticking with the debate (which has already got very messy) and then raise a request for a technical move since it can't be moved by a regular user (as far as I'm aware). Danielklein (talk) 00:10, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
- I've been off Wikipedia for about a week, so I've only just seen your decision to rename the pages back to the "Sinhala" versions. Thank you! I'd hoped for a consensus rather than a policy reason for moving them back, but it's still a step in the right direction! Can these pages now be move-protected to stop single users from renaming them without discussion? I think we'll see further name-wars in the future if the pages aren't protected. Danielklein (talk) 02:23, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
- Remember that the "policy reason" actually is consensus-based, because it was a community consensus that decided what to do after a no-consensus RM decision. You can make a case for move protection at this page. Best to you, DK! Paine Ellsworth, ed. put'r there 05:01, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
- I've been off Wikipedia for about a week, so I've only just seen your decision to rename the pages back to the "Sinhala" versions. Thank you! I'd hoped for a consensus rather than a policy reason for moving them back, but it's still a step in the right direction! Can these pages now be move-protected to stop single users from renaming them without discussion? I think we'll see further name-wars in the future if the pages aren't protected. Danielklein (talk) 02:23, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 March 2019
- From the editors: Getting serious about humor
- News and notes: Blackouts fail to stop EU Copyright Directive
- In the media: Women's history month
- Discussion report: Portal debates continue, Prespa agreement aftermath, WMF seeks a rebranding
- Featured content: Out of this world
- Arbitration report: The Tides of March at ARBCOM
- Traffic report: Exultations and tribulations
- Technology report: New section suggestions and sitewide styles
- News from the WMF: The WMF's take on the new EU Copyright Directive
- Recent research: Barnstar-like awards increase new editor retention
- From the archives: Esperanza organization disbanded after deletion discussion
- Humour: The Epistolary of Arthur 37
- Op-Ed: Pro and Con: Has gun violence been improperly excluded from gun articles?
- In focus: The Wikipedia SourceWatch
- Special report: Wiki Loves (50 Years of) Pride
- Community view: Wikipedia's response to the New Zealand mosque shootings