User talk:Dan Koehl/2019

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #026, 20 Jan 2019 edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

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

New participants edit

A hearty welcome to new arrivals to the portals department:

Harvesting categories tool prototype edit

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 in a section starter script and/or portal builder script.

New portals since last issue edit

What else is going on edit

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 08:13, 20 January 2019 (UTC)Reply

Re: Invitation to join the Ten Year Society edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Thank you so much for your invitation. -- Ktsquare (talk) 18:52, 24 January 2019 (UTC)Reply

Do you remember the hysteria that media created of Ingmark Stenmark ? edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hello Dan. As you too is Swedish, perhaps you could read, and make brief a comment at [[1]] ? Not so much on his achievements in his sport. But the turmoil and commotions which at not so few occasions more or less got entire Sweden to watch him (or listening to the radio). Even Riksdagen ajouned more than once. And I think our Ingmar Stenmark article has to picture that as well. Just write what you remember and feel. That other person is just a besserwisser - he/she never discusses anything. Even deletes discussions etc. (Like the worst administrators at SW-Wiki, but he's just a common contributor here. Who's getting more and more troublesome) Just a brief and honest comment is good enough. Cheers Dan ! Boeing720 (talk) 01:00, 27 January 2019 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #027, 28 Jan 2019 edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Portal styles edit

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 edit

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 edit

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:

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 edit

Keep 'em coming!

Deorphanizing the new portals edit

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 portals.

Good news indeed.

Way to go, Dreamy Jazz!

And, that's a wrap edit

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

No doubt there will be more to tell soon.

Until then, — The Transhumanist 13:10, 28 January 2019 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #028, 04 Feb 2019 edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

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! edit

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 edit

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 edit

Keep up the great work edit

Until next time, — The Transhumanist 08:59, 4 February 2019 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #029, 13 Feb 2019 edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Where we are at:

Single-page portals: 4,704

Total portals: 5,705

The Ref desks survived the proposal to shut them down edit

You 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:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Indefinitely_semiprotecting_the_refdesk#Proposal_II:_Shut_down_the_Ref_Desks

The cleanup after sockpuppet Emoteplump continues... edit

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... edit

We're at 5,705 portals and counting.

New portals since issue #28 edit

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? edit

There are 5 drives for portal development:

Create new portals
Expand existing portals, such as with new sections like Recognized content
Convert or restart old-style portals into automated single-page portals
Link to new portals from the encyclopedia
Pageless portals

Let's take a closer look at these...

1: Creating new portals edit

Portal 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 portals edit

The portal collection is growing, not only by the addition of new portals, but by further developing the ones we already have, by...

Improving and/or adding search parameters to better power the Did you know and In the news sections.
Adding more selected content sections, like Selected biographies.
Adding and maintaining Recognized content sections, via JL-Bot.
Adding pictures to the image slideshow.
Adding panoramic pics.
Categorizing portals.

More features will be added as we dream them up and design them. So, don't be shy, make a wish.

3: Converting old portals edit

By 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:

A) Restart a portal from scratch, using our automated tools. For basic no-frills portals, that works find. But, for more elaborate portals, as that tends to lose content and features, the following approach is being tried...

B) Upgrade a portal section by section, so little to nothing is lost in the process.

4: Linking to new portals edit

Or "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... edit

See below...

New WikiProject for the post-saved-portal phase of operations... edit

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:

...portals that exist only as a probability function (algorithm) until you collapse the wave form by observing through the portal button (run the script), and disappear again after use...

Introducing...

Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals (see it's talk page).

Keep on keepin' on edit

...'til next time, — The Transhumanist 10:18, 14 February 2019 (UTC)Reply

Hej Dan ! edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I moved last spring, and had to change internet supplier. I had Telia (and their web-mail) and lost all contacts. Could you give me a mail ? It's the same as before, but after the @ , it's "comhem.se". All my contacts were on the internet, and Telia don't deliver to my new physical address. "Överbelastning" they say, only one flat of six can use the (extern) copper wires here. Thanks for the Christmas greeting. Boeing720 (talk) 01:41, 13 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

NPR Newsletter No.17 edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hello Dan Koehl,

News

The WMF has announced that Google Translate is now available for translating articles through the content translation tool. This may result in an increase in machine translated articles in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to use the {{rough translation}} tag and gently remind (or inform) editors that translations from other language Wikipedia pages still require attribution per WP:TFOLWP.

Discussions of interest

Two elements of CSD G6 have been split into their own criteria: R4 for redirects in the "File:" namespace with the same name as a file or redirect at Wikimedia Commons (Discussion), and G14 for disambiguation pages which disambiguate zero pages, or have "(disambiguation)" in the title but disambiguate a single page (Discussion).
{{db-blankdraft}} was merged into G13 (Discussion)
A discussion recently closed with no consensus on whether to create a subject-specific notability guideline for theatrical plays.
There is an ongoing discussion on a proposal to create subject-specific notability guidelines for chemicals and organism taxa.

Reminders

NPR is not a binary keep / delete process. In many cases a redirect may be appropriate. The deletion policy and its associated guideline clearly emphasise that not all unsuitable articles must be deleted. Redirects are not contentious. See a classic example of the templates to use. More templates are listed at the R template index. Reviewers who are not aware, do please take this into consideration before PROD, CSD, and especially AfD because not even all admins are aware of such policies, and many NAC do not have a full knowledge of them.

NPP Tools Report

Superlinks – allows you to check an article's history, logs, talk page, NPP flowchart (on unpatrolled pages) and more without navigating away from the article itself.
copyvio-check – automatically checks the copyvio percentage of new pages in the background and displays this info with a link to the report in the 'info' panel of the Page curation toolbar.
The NPP flowchart now has clickable hyperlinks.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – Low – 2393 High – 4828
Looking for inspiration? There are approximately 1000 female biographies to review.
Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:18, 15 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #030, 17 Mar 2019 edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Previous issue:

Single-page portals: 4,704

Total portals: 5,705

This issue:

Single-page portals: 4,562

Total portals: 5,578

The collection of portals has shrunk edit

All Portals closed at WP:MfD during 2019

Grouped Nominations total 127 Portals:

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/US County Portals Deleted 64 portals
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Districts of India Portals Deleted 30 Portals
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portals for Portland, Oregon neighborhoods Deleted 23 Portals
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Allen Park, Michigan Deleted 6 Portals
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Cryptocurrency Deleted 2 Portals
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:North Pole Deleted 2 Portals

Individual Nominations:

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Circles Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Fruits Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:E (mathematical constant) Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Burger King Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Cotingas Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Prostitution in Canada Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Agoura Hills, California Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Urinary system Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:You Am I Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Cannabis (2nd nomination) Reverted to non-Automated version
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Intermodal containers Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Adventure travel Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Adam Ant Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Benito Juárez, Mexico City Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Spaghetti Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Wikiatlas Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Greek alphabet Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Accounting Deleted G7
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Lents, Portland, Oregon Deleted P2
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Ankaran Deleted
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Jiu-jitsu Deleted G8
Portal:University of Nebraska Speedy Deleted P1/A10 exactly the same as Portal:University of Nebraska–Lincoln also created by the TTH

Related WikiProject:

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals Demoted

(Attribution: Copied from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Portal MfD Results)

WikiProject Quantum portals edit

This 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 Portals edit

At 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 months edit

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Proposal 1: Interim Topic-Ban on New Portals.

Until next issue... edit

Keep on keepin' on. — The Transhumanist 03:49, 17 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

Category:Buildings and structures in Chleby has been nominated for discussion edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Category:Buildings and structures in Chleby, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Marcocapelle (talk) 21:11, 26 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

Category:Buildings and structures in Hodonín has been nominated for discussion edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Category:Buildings and structures in Hodonín, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Marcocapelle (talk) 21:28, 27 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

WikiProject newsletters still linking to obsolete category edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hi Dan,

Please can you revise your standard templates for WikiProject Genealogy and WikiProject Zoo newsletters, so that instead of linking to Category:Opted-out of message delivery to Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery? (per consensus at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 October 16)

Of course, the opt-out mechanism for each of the newsletters may also need updating.

You did say "yes" here, but the late 2018 newsletters for those two projects still linked to the old category. – Fayenatic London 15:18, 4 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

Dear @Fayenatic london:, thanks for pointing this out, I will follow your recommendations. Dan Koehl (talk) 03:04, 5 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

msg re https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:107.77.161.12 edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I have no idea who Elisha Gray is and I've never made any changes there. Of course this is a shared (dynamic) IP address. My internet connection is a cell phone, the IP is assigned to AT&T, I have no control over it.

This is a really backwards way of doing things, why not have people log in to make a change? It's not the first time I've gotten one of these, I've never signed up for an account. 107.77.161.12 (talk) 20:33, 5 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

[[:Category:Zájezd] has been nominated for discussion

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Category:Zájezd, which you created, has been nominated for possible merging. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:42, 13 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Tourism in Vyškov edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

A tag has been placed on Category:Tourism in Vyškov requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. DannyS712 (talk) 01:22, 24 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

Disambiguation link notification for April 27 edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Swedes (Germanic tribe), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Norse (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:11, 27 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #031, 01 May 2019 edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Back to the drawing board edit

Implementation of the new portal design has been culled back almost completely, and the cull is still ongoing. The cull has also affected portals that existed before the development of the automated design.

Some of the reasons for the purge are:

Portals receive insufficient traffic, making it a waste of editor resources to maintain them, especially for narrow-scope or "micro" portals
The default {{bpsp}} portals are redundant with the corresponding articles, being based primarily on the corresponding navigation footer displayed on each of those articles, and therefore not worth separate pages to do so
They were mass created

Most of the deletions have been made without prejudice to recreation of curated portals, so that approval does not need to be sought at Deletion Review in those cases.

In addition to new portals being deleted, most of the portals that were converted to an automated design have been reverted.

Which puts us back to portals with manually selected content, that need to be maintained by hand, for the most part, for the time being, and back facing some of the same problems we had when we were at this crossroads before:

Manually maintained portals are not scalable (they are labor intensive, and there aren't very many editors available to maintain them)
The builders/maintainers tend to eventually abandon them
Untended handcrafted portals go stale and fall into disrepair over time

These and other concepts require further discussion. See you at WT:POG.

However, after the purge/reversion is completed, some of the single-page portals might be left, due to having acceptable characteristics (their design varied some). If so, then those could possibly be used as a model to convert and/or build more, after the discussions on portal creation and design guidelines have reached a community consensus on what is and is not acceptable for a portal.

See you at WT:POG.

Curation edit

A major theme in the deletion discussions was the need for portals to be curated, that is, each one having a dedicated maintainer.

There are currently around 100 curated portals. Based on the predominant reasoning at MfD, it seems likely that all the other portals may be subject to deletion.

See you at WT:POG.

Traffic edit

An observation and argument that arose again and again during the WP:ENDPORTALS RfC and the ongoing deletion drive of {{bpsp}} default portals, was that portals simply do not get much traffic. Typically, they get a tiny fraction of what the corresponding like-titled articles get.

And while this isn't generally considered a good rationale for creation or deletion of articles, portals are not articles, and portal critics insist that traffic is a key factor in the utility of portals.

The implication is that portals won't be seen much, so wouldn't it be better to develop pages that are?

And since such development isn't limited to editing, almost anything is possible. If we can't bring readers to portals, we could bring portal features, or even better features, to the readers (i.e., to articles)...

Some potential future directions of development edit

Quantum portals? edit

An approach that has received some brainstorming is "quantum portals", meaning portals generated on-the-fly and presented directly on the view screen without any saved portal pages. This could be done by script or as a MediaWiki program feature, but would initially be done by script. The main benefits of this is that it would be opt-in (only those who wanted it would install it), and the resultant generated pages wouldn't be saved, so that there wouldn't be anything to maintain except the script itself.

Non-portal integrated components edit

Another approach would be to focus on implementing specific features independently, and provide them somewhere highly visible in a non-portal presentation context (that is, on a page that wasn't a portal that has lots of traffic, i.e., articles). Such as inserted directly into an article's HTML, as a pop-up there, or as a temporary page. There are scripts that use these approaches (providing unrelated features), and so these approaches have been proven to be feasible.

What kind of features could this be done with?

The various components of the automated portal design are transcluded excerpts, news, did you know, image slideshows, excerpt slideshows, and so on.

Some of the features, such as navigation footers and links to sister projects are already included on article pages. And some already have interface counterparts (such as image slideshows). Some of the rest may be able to be integrated directly via script, but may need further development before they are perfected. Fortunately, scripts are used on an opt-in basis, and therefore wouldn't affect readers-in-general and editors-at-large during the development process (except for those who wanted to be beta testers and installed the scripts).

The development of such scripts falls under the scope of the Javascript-WikiProject/Userscript-department, and will likely be listed on Wikipedia:User scripts/List when completed enough for beta-testing. Be sure to watchlist that page.

Where would that leave curated portals? edit

Being curated. At least for the time being.

New encyclopedia program features will likely eventually render most portals obsolete. For example, the pop-up feature of MediaWiki provides much the same functionality as excerpts in portals already, and there is also a slideshow feature to view all the images on the current page (just click on any image, and that activates the slideshow). Future features could also overlap portal features, until there is nothing that portals provide that isn't provided elsewhere or as part of Wikipedia's interface.

But, that may be a ways off. Perhaps months or years. It depends on how rapidly programmers develop them.

Keep on keepin' on edit

The features of Wikipedia and its articles will continue to evolve, even if Portals go by the wayside. Most, if not all of portals' functionality, or functions very similar, will likely be made available in some form or other.

And who knows what else?

No worries.

Until next issue... — The Transhumanist 00:19, 2 May 2019 (UTC)Reply

Invitation to join the Fifteen Year Society edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Dear Dan Koehl/2019,

I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Fifteen Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for fifteen years or more.

Best regards, Urhixidur (talk) 19:11, 8 May 2019 (UTC)Reply

Thanks Urhixidur, I joined. Dan Koehl (talk) 01:15, 9 May 2019 (UTC)Reply

NPR Newsletter No.18 edit

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hello Dan Koehl,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

Niharika Kohli, a product manager for the growth team, announced that work is underway in implementing improvements to New Page Patrol as part of the 2019 Community Wishlist and suggests all who are interested watch the project page on meta. Two requested improvements have already been completed. These are:

Allow filtering by no citations in page curation
Not having CSD and PRODs automatically marked as reviewed, reflecting current consensus among reviewers and current Twinkle functionality.

Reliable Sources for NPP

Rosguill has been compiling a list of reliable sources across countries and industries that can be used by new page patrollers to help judge whether an article topic is notable or not. At this point further discussion is needed about if and how this list should be used. Please consider joining the discussion about how this potentially valuable resource should be developed and used.

Backlog drive coming soon

Look for information on the an upcoming backlog drive in our next newsletter. If you'd like to help plan this drive, join in the discussion on the New Page Patrol talk page.

News

Following a request for comment, the subject-specific notability guideline for pornographic actors and models (WP:PORNBIO) was removed; in its place, editors should consult WP:ENT and WP:GNG.

Discussions of interest

A request for bot approval for a bot to patrol two kinds of redirects
There has been a lot discussion about Notability of Academics
What, if anything, would a SNG for Softball look like

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7242 Low – 2393 High – 7250

Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk) at 19:17, 17 May 2019 (UTC)Reply

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 14 edit

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Newsletter • June 2019

Updates: I've been focusing largely on the development side of things, so we are a lot closer now to being ready to actually start discussing deploying it and testing it out here.

There's just a few things left that need to be resolved:

A bunch of language support issues in particular, plus some other release blockers, such as the fact that currently there's no good way to find any hubs people do create.
We also probably need some proper documentation and examples up to even reference if we want a meaningful discussion. We have the extension documentation and some test projects, but we probably need a bit more. Also I need to be able to even find the test projects! How can I possibly write reports about this stuff if I can't find any of it?!

Some other stuff that's happened in the meantime:

Midpoint report is out for this round of the project, if you want to read in too much detail about all the problems I've been running into.
WikiProject Molecular Biology have successfully set up using the old module system that CollaborationKit is intended to replace (eventually), and it even seems to work, so go them. Based on the issues they ran into, it looks like the members signup thing on that system has some of the same problems as we've been unable to resolve in CK, though, which is... interesting. (Need to change the content model to the right thing for the formwizard config to take. Ugh, content models.)

Until next time,

-— Isarra ༆ 21:43, 21 June 2019 (UTC)Reply

Scope of WikiProject Genealogy feedback edit

Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Dan,

Since you are the Project coordinator, I invite you to provide feedback on the scope of WikiProject Genealogy. Thanks.

Tea and crumpets (talk) 02:26, 29 June 2019 (UTC)Reply

I have revamped WikProject Genealogy with new goals. Your help and feedback are appreciated. Tea and crumpets (talk) 17:45, 2 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

Dear @Tea and crumpets:, great that you engage! Im presently training a group of elephants in a rather remote location in Cambodia, and have limited time for Wikis, for the time being, but will try to give feedback later. Dan Koehl (talk) 03:14, 4 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

New Page Review newsletter July-August 2019 edit

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hello Dan Koehl,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

More new features are being added to the feed, including the important red alert for previously deleted pages. This will only work if it is selected in your filters. Best is to 'select all'. Do take a moment to check out all the new features if you have not already done so. If anything is not working as it should, please let us know at NPR. There is now also a live queue of AfC submissions in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to review AfCs, but bear in mind that NPP is an official process and policy and is more important.

QUALITY of REVIEWING

Articles are still not always being checked thoroughly enough. If you are not sure what to do, leave the article for a more experienced reviewer. Please be on the alert for any incongruities in patrolling and help your colleagues where possible; report patrollers and autopatrolled article creators who are ostensibly undeclared paid editors. The displayed ORES alerts offer a greater 'at-a-glance' overview, but the new challenges in detecting unwanted new content and sub-standard reviewing do not necessarily make patrolling any easier, nevertheless the work may have a renewed interest factor of a different kind. A vibrant community of reviewers is always ready to help at NPR.

Backlog

The backlog is still far too high at between 7,000 and 8,000. Of around 700 user rights holders, 80% of the reviewing is being done by just TWO users. In the light of more and more subtle advertising and undeclared paid editing, New Page Reviewing is becoming more critical than ever.

Move to draft

NPR is triage, it is not a clean up clinic. This move feature is not limited to bios so you may have to slightly re-edit the text in the template before you save the move. Anything that is not fit for mainspace but which might have some promise can be draftified - particularly very poor English and machine and other low quality translations.

Notifying users

Remember to use the message feature if you are just tagging an article for maintenance rather than deletion. Otherwise articles are likely to remain perma-tagged. Many creators are SPA and have no intention of returning to Wikipedia. Use the feature too for leaving a friendly note note for the author of a first article you found well made or interesting. Many have told us they find such comments particularly welcoming and encouraging.

PERM

Admins are now taking advantage of the new time-limited user rights feature. If you have recently been accorded NPR, do check your user rights to see if this affects you. Depending on your user account preferences, you may receive automated notifications of your rights changes. Requests for permissions are not mini-RfAs. Helpful comments are welcome if absolutely necessary, but the bot does a lot of the work and the final decision is reserved for admins who do thorough research anyway.

Other news

School and academic holidays will begin soon in various places around the Western world. Be on the lookout for the usual increase in hoax, attack, and other junk pages.

Our next newsletter might be announcing details of a possible election for co-ordinators of NPR. If you think you have what it takes to micro manage NPR, take a look at New Page Review Coordinators - it's a job that requires a lot of time and dedication.

Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:38, 30 June 2019 (UTC)Reply

Pages with DEFAULTSORT conflicts edit

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hello there. One or more of your pages have DEFAULTSORT conflicts: (search)

User:Dan Koehl/Ströhen Zoo

Please either

<nowiki> DEFAULTSORTs (if your page is a draft consisting of multiple subjects); or
remove redundant DEFAULTSORTs (if your page is a draft with multiple DEFAULTSORTs); or
remove all DEFAULTSORTs (otherwise)

in the affected pages. Thank you. – Ase1este^t@lk_c0ntribs 01:42, 4 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

Bots Newsletter, August 2019 edit

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Greetings!

Here is the 7th issue of the Bots Newsletter, a lot happened since last year's newsletter! You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM

Nothing of note happened. Just like we like it.

BAG

Several (1 + 12 = 13) users have been retired/resigned from the BAG due to inactivity, per our new activity requirements (discussion).

BAG members are expected to be active on Wikipedia to have their finger on the pulse of the community. After two years without any bot-related activity (such as posting on bot-related pages, posting on a bot's talk page, or operating a bot), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice. Retired members can re-apply for BAG membership as normal if they wish to rejoin the BAG.

Two BAG members retired
- Madman (talk · contribs) retired.
- BU Rob13 (talk · contribs) vanished and retired.
Three new BAG members have been voted in, welcome to the BAG!
- Primefac (talk · contribs) joined on 2018-12-12 (RfBAG). Primefac operates PrimeBOT (talk · contribs) which does a plethora of tasks.
- TheSandDoctor (talk · contribs) joined on 2019-01-21 (RfBAG). TheSandDoctor operates several bots including DeprecatedFixerBot (talk · contribs).
- Enterprisey (talk · contribs) joined on 2019-08-07 (RfBAG). Enterprisey operates EnterpriseyBot (talk · contribs), which does a plethora of tasks, RemindMeBot (talk · contribs) which posts reminders, and codes several scripts.

We thank former members for their service and wish Madman a happy retirement. We note that Madman and BU Rob13 were not inactive and could resume their BAG positions if they so wished, should their retirements happens to be temporary.

BOTDICT

Two new entries feature in the bots dictionary

Editor-hostile wikitext – describes wikitext structuring that is editor hostile, even if it renders correctly
Spectrum of usefulness – describes how tasks are deemed useful or not

BOTPOL

Activity requirements: BAG members now have an activity requirement. The requirements are very light, one only needs to be involved in a bot-related area at some point within the last two years. For purpose of meeting these requirements, discussing a bot-related matter anywhere on Wikipedia counts, as does operating a bot (RFC).
Copyvio flag: Bot accounts may be additionally marked by a bureaucrat upon BAG request as being in the "copyviobot" user group on Wikipedia. This flag allows using the API to add metadata to edits for use in the New pages feed (discussion). There is currently 1 bot using this functionality.
Mass creation: The restriction on mass-creation (semi-automated or automated) was extended from articles, to all content-pages. There are subtleties, but content here broadly means whatever a reader could land on when browsing the mainspace in normal circumstances (e.g. Mainspace, Books, most Categories, Portals, ...). There is also a warning that WP:MEATBOT still applies in other areas (e.g. Redirects, Wikipedia namespace, Help, maintenance categories, ...) not explicitely covered by WP:MASSCREATION.

BOTREQs and BRFAs

As of writing, we have...

20 active BOTREQs, please help if you can!
14 open BRFAs and 1 BRFA in need of BAG attention (see live status).
In 2018, 96 bot task were approved. An AWB search shows approximately 29 were withdrawn/expired, and 6 were denied.
Since the start of 2019, 97 bot task were approved. Logs show 15 were withdrawn/expired, and 15 were denied.
10 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion). 5 other bots have been deflagged per operator requests or similar (see discussion).

New things

All bot-related discussion pages now have a centralized and searchable archive box (see discussion). Discussions are searchable per noticeboard, or globally.
{{Bot}} now supports |status=expired (see discussion). This led to the deletion of Category:Indefinitely blocked Wikipedia bots as useless (see discussion).
WP:BOTREQ now mentions WP:SCRIPTREQ and WP:AWBTASKS as alternatives to bot requests.
The bot creation guide now mentions bot flags, and two new languages Awk and MATLAB. Other minor tweaks have been made.
AAlertBot has received major code updates. In particular, WP:AALERTS will now report splits, mergers, and AFC submissions.
Citation bot has received several updates (User talk:Citation bot/Archive 10/11/12/13/14/15/16/17). In particular, the bot stopped the automated removal of |publisher= from {{cite journal}}, and stopped the automated addition of CiteSeerX links, and now uses OAuth to authenticate those who make requests of the bot.

Other discussions

These are some of the discussions that happened / are still happening since the last Bots Newsletter. Many are stale, but some are still active.

See also the latest discussions at the bot noticeboard.

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 17:24, 7 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

IP block exemption edit

Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Dan Koehl (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

Request reason:

It seems the IP I presently uses has been blocked by User:ProcseeBot, with reason that my IP is an open proxy? Please unblock or make an Wikipedia:IP block exemption. , my IP address is: 96.9.90.77, which is the IP for Angkor Village Resort, a hotel in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Best regards, Dan Koehl (talk) 04:59, 20 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

Decline reason:

You need to provide your IP address. You may appeal at WP:UTRS if you don't want that information to be public. — JJMC89 (T·C) 05:53, 20 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

Dear @JJMC89:, my IP address is: 96.9.90.77, which is the IP for Angkor Village Resort, a hotel in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Dan Koehl (talk) 10:41, 20 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who accepted the request.

Dan Koehl (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

Request reason:

It seems the IP I presently uses has been blocked by User:ProcseeBot, with reason that my IP is an open proxy? Please unblock or make an Wikipedia:IP block exemption. , my IP address is: 96.9.90.77, which is the IP for Angkor Village Resort, a hotel in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Best regards, Dan Koehl (talk) 12:35, 20 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

Accept reason:

I have added the ipblock-exempt userright to your account with an expiry of one month. Feel free to make a new request if you need an extension. Regards, decltype (talk) 13:38, 20 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

Help edit

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hi Dan,

Would you able to help me to validate this logo for our label Revealed Recordings: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Revealed_Recordings_2019_Logo.jpg

We currently have a lot of issues with dealing with our old logo as the old logo appears #1 on google, we would like to use our new logo and grant Wikipedia permission but we are not sure how.

Let me know, Sebastien

(Revealed Recordings Director) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sebastien88NL (talk • contribs) 17:51, 14 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

ArbCom 2019 election voter message edit

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:03, 19 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

Happy New Year! edit

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

^{George Bellows, North River (1908), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.}		Best wishes for a healthy and prosperous 2020.
		Thank you for your contributions toward making Wikipedia a better and more accurate place. BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 12:24, 30 December 2019 (UTC)Reply

VERY BIGBRAIN edit

Hello, Dan Koehl. You have new messages at Dan Koehl's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

My bigbr/ain contribution tho the wikIIII page was in fact veryconstructive as it allowed even a 3-year old to know what the section was about it is worth noting that true gamers will now be able To CoMpReHeNd the WiKi PaGe..,;'/'[[;';;p

AfD: Nominated for deletion; see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vehicle engineering edit

Latest comment: 4 years ago6 comments6 people in discussion

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Sandstein 15:08, 31 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

Vehicle engineering edit

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

This article represents WP:SYNTHESIS. There is no sub-discipline with this name mentioned in mechanical engineering, as would be expected from what is claimed in the lead paragraph, nor is it a term of art found in a literature search, except as a course of study in Chinese universities (where the term appears to be a literal translation into English for what is known as automotive engineering). None of the references cited use the term, either. HopsonRoad (talk) 14:03, 23 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2020 March 23. —^{cyberbot I}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 14:27, 23 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
Delete or Redirect Right now this appears to be a list of other disciplines that do have their own articles, and (admittedly cursory) searches on the subject mostly return information about automotive engineering. I'd change my mind if someone proposed a more useful vision for this article, but right now I'm not seeing one myself. Tpdwkouaa (talk) 16:44, 23 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Engineering-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 23:12, 23 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

Delete per WP:SIGCOV, WP:NOTINHERITED, WP:V. The only source that even mentions this title is very brief. None of the other sources, as far as I can see, even describes what you can do with vehicle engineering. Sub-fields of a career are not automatically notable. Bearian (talk) 12:43, 31 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

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