Archive 1 Archive 2

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #031, 01 May 2019

Back to the drawing board

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

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

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

Quantum portals?

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

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?

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

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   01:01, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

June 2019 WPTC Newsletter

Volume XIV, Issue 39, May 31, 2019

 

The Hurricane Herald is the arbitrarily periodical newsletter of WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The newsletter aims to provide in summary the recent activities and developments of the WikiProject, in addition to global tropical cyclone activity. The Hurricane Herald has been running since its first edition ran on June 4, 2006; it has been almost thirteen years since that time. If you wish to receive or discontinue subscription to this newsletter, please visit the mailing list. This issue of The Hurricane Herald covers all project related events from April 14–May 31, 2019. This edition's editor and author is Hurricane Noah (talk · contribs).

Please visit this page and bookmark any suggestions of interest to you. This will help improve the newsletter and other cyclone-related articles. Past editions can be viewed here.

34 · 35 · 36 · 37 · 38

Article of the month, by Jason Rees


History of tropical cyclone naming - The practice of using names to identify tropical cyclones goes back several centuries, with storms named after places, saints or things they hit before the formal start of naming in each basin. The credit for the first usage of personal names for weather systems is given to the Queensland Government Meteorologist Clement Wragge, who named tropical cyclones and anticyclones between 1887 and 1907. This system of naming fell into disuse for several years after Wragge retired, until it was revived in the latter part of World War II for the Western Pacific basin. Over the following decades, various naming schemes have been introduced for the world's oceans, including for parts of the Atlantic, Pacific and the Indian Ocean. The majority of these lists are compiled by the World Meteorological Organization's tropical cyclone committee for the region and include names from different cultures as well as languages. Over the years there has been controversy over the names used at various times, with names being dropped for religious and political reasons. For example, female names were exclusively used in the basins at various times between 1945 - 2000 and were the subject of several protests. The names of significant tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean and Australian region are retired from the naming lists and replaced with another name, at meetings of the various tropical cyclone committees.


Storm of the month and other tropical activity


 

Cyclone Fani was an extremely severe cyclonic storm that made landfall in Odisha, India on May 3. The storm achieved peak intensity as a near Category 5-equivalent cyclone with 3-minute sustained winds of 215 km/h (130 mph), 1-minute sustained winds of 250 km/h (155 mph), and a minimum central pressure of 937 hPa (mbar). Fani caused over $1.8 billion (2019 USD) in damage in India and Bangladesh and killed at least 89 people.

Since the last newsletter, twelve systems have formed.

  • Southwest Indian Ocean
    In the Southwest Indian Ocean, Cyclone Kenneth made landfall in Mozambique approximately 1 month after Cyclone Idai, causing widespread flooding and destruction. Overall, Kenneth killed at least 52 people and caused more than $100 million in damage. Additionally, Tropical Cyclone Lorna formed over the eastern portion of the basin in late April and dissipated in early May without affecting land.
  • Australian Region
    In the Australian Region, cyclones Lili and Ann formed in early May and both affected land. No deaths were reported, although Lili caused moderate damage in the Maluku Islands and East Timor.
  • South Pacific
    In the South Pacific, a tropical depression formed in mid-may, but failed to intensify and dissipated a few days later.
  • South Atlantic
    In the South Atlantic, Subtropical Storm Jaguar formed in late May and lasted for approximately two days before becoming extratropical.
  • Western Pacific
    In the Western Pacific, three weak tropical depressions existed during the first half of May.
  • North Atlantic
    In the North Atlantic, Subtropical Storm Andrea formed on the same day as Jaguar, but failed to intensify and dissipated on the next day.




  • The Eastern Pacific hurricane season began on May 15.
  • The Atlantic hurricane season will begin at 2:00 AM EDT on June 1.
  • The Central Pacific hurricane season will begin sometime after 12:00 AM HST on June 1.
Recent storms of the month
Edition Storm
36 Cyclone Idai
35 Typhoon Wutip (2019)

New WikiProject Members since the last newsletter in April 2019


More information can be found here. This list lists members who have joined/rejoined the WikiProject since the release of the last issue in April 2019. Sorted chronologically. Struckout users denote users who have left or have been banned.

To our new members: welcome to the project, and happy editing! Feel free to check the to-do list at the bottom right of the newsletter for things that you might want to work on. To our veteran members: thank you for your edits and your tireless contributions!

Editorial for welcoming new users, by Hurricanehink


Every year, editors new and old help maintain the new season of season articles. The older users are likely used to the standards of the project, such as how to Wikilink and reference properly. Newer users might make mistakes, and they might make them over and over again if they don't know better. If anyone (who happens to read this) comes across a new user, please don't bite, because with enough pushback, they'll decide that this group of editors is too mean, and unfun. This is all a volunteer project; no one can force anyone to do anything. We're all on here because of our love of knowledge and tropical cyclones. If you find someone new, consider using the official WPTC welcome template - Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones/Welcome.

I also encourage that if you know any tropical cyclone researchers, please speak up and try recruiting them to edit. Veteran editors can't keep editing forever. Life gets busy, and the real world beckons!

Member of the month (edition) – Yellow Evan


 

Yellow Evan has been involved with WPTC since 2008. Since the last newsletter, Yellow Evan has taken 5 typhoon articles to good article status as well as created 2 more. Overall, he has created and/or significantly contributed to more than 130 good articles. Your work in the Western Pacific Basin is invaluable... Thank you for your contributions!

Latest WikiProject Alerts


The following are the latest article developments as updated by AAlertBot, as of the publishing of this issue. Due to the bot workings, some of these updates may seem out of place; nonetheless, they are included here.

Today's featured articles

Featured list candidates

Featured topic candidates

Good article nominees

Featured topic removal candidates

Requested moves

Articles to be merged

(5 more...)

Articles for creation

  Featured Content

This section lists content that have become featured, articles and lists, since the past newsletter in mid-April 2019.
From April 14–May 31, 2019, 1 featured article was promoted:

WikiProject Tropical Cyclones: News & Developments

  • An awards program for the project began on May 31. It involves 25 levels that may be gained by earning points for completing various actions such as getting good or featured articles. Additional awards will be added in the future.
  • As of this news letter, there are more articles ranked a good article or better (1317) than articles ranked B-class or worse (1272), for the first time in the project's history.
  • Every Atlantic hurricane season from 1945 to 2007 is rated at least a GA. That is an impressive feat, and an incredibly body of work among many editors.
  • Cyclone Raja became the 150th featured article in the project. Thanks to all of the editors and their tireless edits for writing 2.7% of all of Wikipedia's featured articles.
  • In the 24 hours after Hurricane Michael's TCR was released, the article on the hurricane was edited 82 times by 18 different users.
  • In March 2019, the most popular article in the project was Cyclone Idai, viewed 231,969 times during the month. The generic cyclone was 2nd most popular, with 131,080 views. In 3rd place was Hurricane Katrina with 112,283 views. Included in the top 20 were the 2018 and 19 Atlantic hurricane seasons, hurricanes Michael, Florence, Irma, Maria, and Harvey, and the 1896 Cedar Keys hurricane, which was TFA on March 20th.

New articles since the last newsletter include:

New GA's include:

Current assessment table


Assessments valid as of this printing. Depending on when you may be viewing this newsletter, the table may be outdated. See here for the latest, most up to date statistics.
As of this issue, there are 150 featured articles and 69 featured lists. There are 142 A-class articles, but that number is subject to change, depending if we mandate that all A-class articles have an A-class review first. There are 956 good articles, meaning it is possible we get to our 1000th GA by the end of the year. There are only 61 B-class articles, perhaps because because most articles of that quality already passed a GA review. There are 350 C-class articles, 720 start-class articles, and 141 stub-class articles, with 29 lists and 8 current articles. The number of lists may decrease further as the "Tropical cyclone X" articles continue to be reclassified as set index articles. These figures mean that nearly half of the project is rated a GA or better - including the lists/current/future articles, there are 1272 articles that are below GA status, versus 1317 that are GA or better.

About the assessment scale →

From the Main Page


From the Main Page documents WikiProject related materials that have appeared on the main page from April 14–May 31, 2019 in chronological order.

 Today's Featured Article
 Did you know...?

WikiProject To-Do


 

Here are some tasks you can do:

Project Goals & Progress


The following is the current progress on the three milestone goals set by the WikiProject as of this publishing. They can be found, updated, at the main WikiProject page.

NoahTalk 21:47, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

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Extinct cultures at RFD

Hello. I listed the page you created, Extinct cultures, for discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 September 22#Extinct cultures, which I invite you for input. --George Ho (talk) 03:09, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

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Fixed your talk page archiving

Hi! I took the liberty of fixing the auto-archiving settings at the top of this page. --rchard2scout (talk) 12:47, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you! Trinitrobrick 13:51, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

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Your draft article, Draft:Ricardo Velosa

 

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