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Merry Christmas!

Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings1}} to send this message

Wishing you an amazing 2019. --TheSandDoctor Talk 07:48, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

I've swapped the template as I just realized how many identical ones you had... --TheSandDoctor Talk 07:49, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject Genealogy - newsletter No.6

Newsletter Nr 6, 2018-12-25, for WikiProject Genealogy (and Wikimedia genealogy project on Meta)

Participation:

This is the sixth newsletter sent by mass mail to members in Wikipedia:WikiProject Genealogy, to everyone who voted a support for establishing a potential Wikimedia genealogy project on meta, and anyone who during the years showed an interest in genealogy on talk pages and likewise.

(To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, please see below)

Now 100 supporters

At 3 December 2018, the list of users who support the potential Wikimedia genealogy project, reached 100!

A demo wiki is up and running!

You can already now try out the demo for a genealogy wiki at https://tools.wmflabs.org/genealogy/wiki/Main_Page and try out the functions. You will find parts of the 18th Pharao dynasty and other records submitted by the 7 first users, and it would be great if you would add some records.

And with those great news we want to wish you a creative New Year 2019!


Don't want newsletters? If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list or alternatively to opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Opted-out of message delivery to your user talk page.

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2019!

Hello Pbsouthwood, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2019.
Happy editing,

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:53, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Cheers from your WikiProject Genealogy coordinator Dan Koehl.

To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery

Merry Christmas and happy 2019!

Merry Christmas and happy new year! I was happy to see you have a successful RfA during 2018. I hope you will edit more happily in 2019 Hhkohh (talk) 12:49, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Hhkohh, Your good wishes are appreciated and reciprocated. 2018 was a productive year for me on Wikipedia by edit count, and even by getting useful stuff done, so quite happy with the results. If 2019 is as good I will have reason to be happy with it too. I wish you a productive and satisfying 2019 on Wikipedia too. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 15:33, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #024, 26 Dec 2018

Last issue, I mentioned there would be a flood, and so, here it is...

Portals status

We now have 4,620 portals.

And the race to pass 5,000 by year's end is on...

Can we make it?

The New Year, and the 5,001st portal, await.

( New portals are created with {{subst:Basic portal start page}} or {{subst:bpsp}} )

Evad is back!

After disappearing in mid-thread, Evad37 has returned from a longer than expected wikibreak.

Be sure to welcome him back.

Improved cropping is coming to Portal image banner

User:FR30799386 is working on making {{Portal image banner}} even better by enabling it to chop the top off an image as well as the bottom.

Many pictures aren't suitable for banners because they are too tall. Therefor, User:FR30799386 added cropping to this template, so that an editor could specify part of a picture to be used rather than the whole thing.

Upgrade of flagship portals is underway

Work has begun on upgrading Wikipedia's flagship portals (those listed at the top of the Main page).

So far, Portal:Geography, Portal:History, and Portal:Technology have been revamped. Of course, you are welcome to improve them further.

Work continues on the other five. Feel free to join in on the fun.

Spotting missing portals that are redirects

In place of many missing portals, there is a redirect that leads to "the next best topic", such as a parent topic.

Most of these were created before we had the tools to easily create portals (they used to take 6 hours or more to create, because it was all done manually). Rather than leave a portal link red, some editors thought it was best that those titles led somewhere.

The subjects that have sufficient coverage should have their own portals rather than a redirect to some other subject.

Unfortunately, being blue like all other live links, redirects are harder to spot than redlinks.

To spot redirects easily, you can make them all appear green.

What's new in portal space?

Here are the new portals since the last issue:
  1. Portal:17th century
  2. Portal:18th century
  3. Portal:Absinthe
  4. Portal:Abuse
  5. Portal:Academic degrees
  6. Portal:Acari
  7. Portal:Acipenseriformes
  8. Portal:Actas
  9. Portal:Actinopterygii
  10. Portal:Activision
  11. Portal:Aerobatics
  12. Portal:Aeroflot
  13. Portal:Aesop
  14. Portal:Afrosoricida
  15. Portal:Aichi
  16. Portal:Airlines
  17. Portal:Air traffic control
  18. Portal:Akon
  19. Portal:Alan Turing
  20. Portal:Alfred Nobel
  21. Portal:Alice Paul
  22. Portal:Allahabad
  23. Portal:Allgemeine-SS
  24. Portal:Allium
  25. Portal:Aluminium
  26. Portal:Alvarezsauroidea
  27. Portal:Alveolata
  28. Portal:Amazon
  29. Portal:Amino acids
  30. Portal:Ancient Greek philosophy
  31. Portal:Andalusia
  32. Portal:Andes
  33. Portal:Animax
  34. Portal:Antennas
  35. Portal:Anthrax (American band)
  36. Portal:Antibiotics
  37. Portal:Antidotes
  38. Portal:Antifungals
  39. Portal:Antimony
  40. Portal:Antivirus software
  41. Portal:Aquifers
  42. Portal:Arachnids
  43. Portal:Armadillos
  44. Portal:Armour
  45. Portal:Art movements
  46. Portal:Arvicolinae
  47. Portal:Asanas
  48. Portal:Association of Southeast Asian Nations
  49. Portal:AstraZeneca
  50. Portal:Asturias
  51. Portal:Asus
  52. Portal:Atoms
  53. Portal:Automation
  54. Portal:Aylesbury
  55. Portal:Aztecs
  56. Portal:Bags
  57. Portal:Banks
  58. Portal:Basalt
  59. Portal:Batgirl
  60. Portal:Bats
  61. Portal:Bay Area Rapid Transit
  62. Portal:Beijing Subway
  63. Portal:Belo Horizonte
  64. Portal:Ben Affleck
  65. Portal:Binondo
  66. Portal:Biodiversity of Colombia
  67. Portal:Biomes
  68. Portal:Blue Origin
  69. Portal:Board games
  70. Portal:Boca Raton, Florida
  71. Portal:Bruno Mars
  72. Portal:Budapest Metro
  73. Portal:Buffalo, New York
  74. Portal:Bullying
  75. Portal:Busan Metro
  76. Portal:Buteoninae
  77. Portal:C++
  78. Portal:Cairo Metro
  79. Portal:Canadian art
  80. Portal:Character encoding
  81. Portal:Character encodings
  82. Portal:Charity
  83. Portal:Chemical engineering
  84. Portal:Chemical synthesis
  85. Portal:Chickenpox
  86. Portal:Chili peppers
  87. Portal:Chongqing Rail Transit
  88. Portal:Climate
  89. Portal:Communication
  90. Portal:Community of Madrid
  91. Portal:Computer files
  92. Portal:Concurrent computing
  93. Portal:Conservation biology
  94. Portal:Containers
  95. Portal:Contract bridge
  96. Portal:Convicts in Australia
  97. Portal:Copenhagen Metro
  98. Portal:Crochet
  99. Portal:Cucurbita
  100. Portal:Culture of Albania
  101. Portal:Culture of Argentina
  102. Portal:Culture of Armenia
  103. Portal:Culture of Assam
  104. Portal:Culture of Australia
  105. Portal:Culture of Austria
  106. Portal:Culture of Azerbaijan
  107. Portal:Culture of Bahrain
  108. Portal:Culture of Bangladesh
  109. Portal:Culture of Belarus
  110. Portal:Culture of Belgium
  111. Portal:Culture of Belize
  112. Portal:Culture of Bengal
  113. Portal:Culture of Cornwall
  114. Portal:Culture of Djibouti
  115. Portal:Culture of England
  116. Portal:Culture of Kerala
  117. Portal:Culture of Somalia
  118. Portal:Culture of West Bengal
  119. Portal:Curitiba
  120. Portal:Databases
  121. Portal:Data mining
  122. Portal:Data storage
  123. Portal:Deforestation and desertification
  124. Portal:Delta Air Lines
  125. Portal:Demi Lovato
  126. Portal:Demography
  127. Portal:Desalination
  128. Portal:Development of the human body
  129. Portal:Disease
  130. Portal:Disney Princess
  131. Portal:Dmitri Mendeleev
  132. Portal:Dublin
  133. Portal:DVD
  134. Portal:Eating
  135. Portal:Electronic components
  136. Portal:Elizabeth Cady Stanton
  137. Portal:Elizabeth I of England
  138. Portal:Ellie Goulding
  139. Portal:Embedded systems
  140. Portal:Embroidery
  141. Portal:Emmeline Pankhurst
  142. Portal:Emmy Awards
  143. Portal:Enugu
  144. Portal:Euro
  145. Portal:Eurostar
  146. Portal:Even-toed ungulates
  147. Portal:Executables
  148. Portal:Experimental aircraft
  149. Portal:Falkland Islands
  150. Portal:Fibers
  151. Portal:File sharing
  152. Portal:File systems
  153. Portal:Frankfurt
  154. Portal:Gaels
  155. Portal:Galicia (Spain)
  156. Portal:Gardens
  157. Portal:Gemstones
  158. Portal:Geotechnical engineering
  159. Portal:Geothermal power
  160. Portal:Glass
  161. Portal:Glass production
  162. Portal:GLONASS
  163. Portal:Guangzhou Metro
  164. Portal:Habitats
  165. Portal:Hall of Fame for Great Americans
  166. Portal:Helicopters
  167. Portal:Helmets
  168. Portal:Helsinki
  169. Portal:Hilary Duff
  170. Portal:Hiroshima
  171. Portal:History of computing
  172. Portal:Honey bees
  173. Portal:Honolulu County, Hawaii
  174. Portal:Hubble Space Telescope
  175. Portal:Hummingbirds
  176. Portal:HVAC
  177. Portal:Hymenoptera
  178. Portal:Intermodal containers
  179. Portal:International Council for Science
  180. Portal:International Space Station
  181. Portal:Interstate Highway System
  182. Portal:IOS
  183. Portal:IPv6
  184. Portal:Ithaca, New York
  185. Portal:James Webb Space Telescope
  186. Portal:Jammu and Kashmir
  187. Portal:JavaScript
  188. Portal:Jay-Z
  189. Portal:John Major
  190. Portal:Kabul
  191. Portal:KFC
  192. Portal:Khuzestan Province
  193. Portal:Launch vehicles
  194. Portal:Laundry
  195. Portal:Lenovo
  196. Portal:Leo Tolstoy
  197. Portal:Library classification systems
  198. Portal:Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II
  199. Portal:Longevity
  200. Portal:Los Angeles International Airport
  201. Portal:Love
  202. Portal:Lyra (constellation)
  203. Portal:MacOS
  204. Portal:Macroeconomics
  205. Portal:Madrid
  206. Portal:Mail
  207. Portal:Malaria
  208. Portal:Malware
  209. Portal:Manhattan Project
  210. Portal:Mao Zedong
  211. Portal:Marrakesh
  212. Portal:Mathematics and art
  213. Portal:Mattel
  214. Portal:Mayotte
  215. Portal:Media culture
  216. Portal:Media manipulation
  217. Portal:Medications
  218. Portal:Men
  219. Portal:Metalworking
  220. Portal:Metropolitan Transportation Authority
  221. Portal:Michael Faraday
  222. Portal:Microeconomics
  223. Portal:Milan Metro
  224. Portal:Military aircraft
  225. Portal:Military deception
  226. Portal:Mixed reality
  227. Portal:Modern history
  228. Portal:Mood disorders
  229. Portal:Morpeth, Northumberland
  230. Portal:Moscow Metro
  231. Portal:MPEG
  232. Portal:MTR
  233. Portal:Multihulls
  234. Portal:Museums
  235. Portal:Music of Scotland
  236. Portal:NASA
  237. Portal:National anthems
  238. Portal:Natural language processing
  239. Portal:Neoplasms
  240. Portal:New Delhi
  241. Portal:Northern Cyprus
  242. Portal:Nuclear weapons
  243. Portal:Nuts
  244. Portal:Odd-toed ungulates
  245. Portal:Ores
  246. Portal:Organ transplantation
  247. Portal:Orthoptera
  248. Portal:Oslo
  249. Portal:Palmyra
  250. Portal:Pan-Africanism
  251. Portal:Panasonic
  252. Portal:Parrots
  253. Portal:Parties
  254. Portal:Peanuts
  255. Portal:Peanuts (comic strip)
  256. Portal:Perl
  257. Portal:Permaculture
  258. Portal:Pesticides
  259. Portal:Physical fitness
  260. Portal:Physiology
  261. Portal:Plant nutrition
  262. Portal:Porcelain
  263. Portal:Ports and harbors
  264. Portal:Pre-Columbian era
  265. Portal:Prehistoric Scotland
  266. Portal:Private transport
  267. Portal:Programming languages
  268. Portal:Programming paradigms
  269. Portal:Prostitution
  270. Portal:Protests
  271. Portal:Psychological manipulation
  272. Portal:P. T. Barnum
  273. Portal:Public housing in the United Kingdom
  274. Portal:Public transport in Helsinki
  275. Portal:Public transport in Istanbul
  276. Portal:Pueblos
  277. Portal:Pune
  278. Portal:Quilting
  279. Portal:Racing
  280. Portal:Radiation
  281. Portal:RAID
  282. Portal:Rail transport in Argentina
  283. Portal:Rail transport in Finland
  284. Portal:Rail transport in Germany
  285. Portal:Rail transport in Israel
  286. Portal:Rail transport in Malaysia
  287. Portal:Rail transport in Norway
  288. Portal:Rail transport in Singapore
  289. Portal:Rail transport in Spain
  290. Portal:Rail transport in Sri Lanka
  291. Portal:Rail transport in Thailand
  292. Portal:Rail transport in the United Arab Emirates
  293. Portal:Realism (arts)
  294. Portal:Recycling
  295. Portal:Religion in China
  296. Portal:Religion in Egypt
  297. Portal:Religion in Iran
  298. Portal:Religion in Israel
  299. Portal:Religion in Mexico
  300. Portal:Religion in Mozambique
  301. Portal:Religion in Myanmar
  302. Portal:Religion in Norway
  303. Portal:Religion in Pakistan
  304. Portal:Religion in Poland
  305. Portal:Religion in Portugal
  306. Portal:Religion in Romania
  307. Portal:Religion in Scotland
  308. Portal:Religion in South Africa
  309. Portal:Religion in Sweden
  310. Portal:Religion in Thailand
  311. Portal:Religion in Turkey
  312. Portal:Religion in Zimbabwe
  313. Portal:Republic of Artsakh
  314. Portal:Revolutions
  315. Portal:Reykjavík
  316. Portal:Rhythm
  317. Portal:Rocket engines
  318. Portal:Rodenticides
  319. Portal:Roofs
  320. Portal:Roscosmos
  321. Portal:Roses
  322. Portal:Rowing
  323. Portal:RuPaul
  324. Portal:Saint Helena
  325. Portal:Sales
  326. Portal:San Juan, Puerto Rico
  327. Portal:San Marino
  328. Portal:São Paulo
  329. Portal:Scottish art
  330. Portal:Scottish clans
  331. Portal:Sex work
  332. Portal:Shinkansen
  333. Portal:Shipbuilding
  334. Portal:Silk
  335. Portal:Simple living
  336. Portal:SkyTrain (Vancouver)
  337. Portal:South Ossetia
  338. Portal:Space Shuttles
  339. Portal:SpaceX
  340. Portal:Spike Lee
  341. Portal:SQL
  342. Portal:Starbucks
  343. Portal:Statue of Liberty
  344. Portal:Stem cells
  345. Portal:Stonehenge
  346. Portal:Street newspapers
  347. Portal:Stuttgart
  348. Portal:Submarines
  349. Portal:Suffragettes
  350. Portal:Susan B. Anthony
  351. Portal:Systems
  352. Portal:Tallinn
  353. Portal:Tashkent
  354. Portal:Telephony
  355. Portal:Tents
  356. Portal:Tigers
  357. Portal:Tobacco
  358. Portal:Tomatoes
  359. Portal:Toronto Transit Commission
  360. Portal:Tortoises
  361. Portal:Transnistria
  362. Portal:Transport in Afghanistan
  363. Portal:Transport in Barcelona
  364. Portal:Transport in Belgium
  365. Portal:Transport in Bristol
  366. Portal:Transport in Bucharest
  367. Portal:Transport in Buckinghamshire
  368. Portal:Transport in Cardiff
  369. Portal:Transport in Chennai
  370. Portal:Transport in China
  371. Portal:Transport in Edinburgh
  372. Portal:Transport in Glasgow
  373. Portal:Transport in Guyana
  374. Portal:Transport in Hong Kong
  375. Portal:Transport in India
  376. Portal:Transport in Ireland
  377. Portal:Transport in Israel
  378. Portal:Transport in Kiev
  379. Portal:Transport in London
  380. Portal:Transport in Somerset
  381. Portal:Transport in Tamil Nadu
  382. Portal:Transport in Tiruchirappalli
  383. Portal:Transport in Vietnam
  384. Portal:Transport in Warsaw
  385. Portal:Tuberculosis
  386. Portal:Twitter
  387. Portal:Umayyad Caliphate
  388. Portal:United States Armed Forces
  389. Portal:United States Congress
  390. Portal:USB
  391. Portal:Valencian Community
  392. Portal:Vijayawada
  393. Portal:Voting
  394. Portal:Washington Metro
  395. Portal:Waterfalls
  396. Portal:Weapons
  397. Portal:Weaving
  398. Portal:Web browsers
  399. Portal:Websites
  400. Portal:Wendy's
  401. Portal:Women's prisons in the United States
  402. Portal:Woodworking
  403. Portal:World Chess Championships
  404. Portal:Yangtze

Keep 'em coming!

And I'll see you next issue.

Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   08:11, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #025, 30 Dec 2018

We can now crop the tops of pics to make banners

Before, we could only cut off the bottom of pics.

User:FR30799386 has pulled it off, and made the upgrade to {{Portal image banner}}...

So, this:

Niagara falls, from the Canadian side
Niagara falls, from the Canadian side

Becomes this:

Niagara falls, from the Canadian side
Niagara falls, from the Canadian side

Here's the code for the above banner:

{{Portal image banner|File:American Falls from Canadian side in winter.jpg | [[Niagara falls]], from the Canadian side |maxheight=175px |overflow=Hidden|croptop=10}}

To see it employed in a portal, check out Portal:Niagara Falls.

About that end of the year goal...

We were racing against time to create 5,000 portals by the end of the year (just for the heck of it).

We made it. We've passed the 5,000 portals mark, with time to spare!

And the 5,000th portal is Portal:Major League Baseball, by Happypillsjr.

Congratulations!

What's next?

The 10,000th portal mark. But...

...there is plenty else to do in addition to building new portals:

  1. The new portals need to be linked to from the encyclopedia.
  2. On those portals about subjects that are not typically capitalized, the search parameters need to be refined/expanded, to maximize the chances of Did you know and In the news items being found and displayed.
  3. A Recognized content section needs to be added to each portal that has a corresponding WikiProject.
  4. Addition of a category on those portals that lack a subject category.
  5. Implement the portal category system, adding the appropriate categories to each portal.
  6. Upgrade, and complete (as per the tasks enumerated above), the old-style portals that are not regularly maintained, which have not been converted yet (about 1,100 of them).
  7. Find and fix the remaining bugs in the underlying lua modules.
  8. Build portal tools (scripts) to assist in the creation, development, and maintenance of portals.
  9. Build a script to help build navbox footer templates, via the harvesting of categories, amongst other methods.
  10. Update the portal building instructions.
  11. Update the portal guideline.
  12. Refine the programming of the portals to reduce their load time.
  13. Design and develop the next generation of portals and portal components.

And whatever else you can dream up.

But most of all, have a...

Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   12:04, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Short description

Hi Rbsouthwood, Greetings to you. I just want to know the tag {{short description|xxx xxx}} and {{SHORTDESC:xxx xxx}} is the same thing and it will transport the information to Wikidata. I am adding short description to articles and would like to know which one is the correct format. Thanks for the advice in advance. Cheers. CASSIOPEIA(talk) 07:05, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi CASSIOPEIA, I am delighted to hear that you will be doing this, there is enough work for all of us. Please use {{short description|xxx xxx}} as it adds useful maintenance categories. I am busy converting all the bare magic word versions {{SHORTDESC:xxx xxx}} which do not add categories and don't show up with the same scripts to the template version, so eventually there should not be any. I assume you have read the project page, but please feel welcome to ask and discuss if there are any points that need clarification and if you have any good ideas. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 09:06, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
Hi Pbsouthwood, Thank you for the advice above. cheers. CASSIOPEIA(talk) 12:46, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
Hi Pbsouthwood, Greeting to you. I am working on the short description on the sport person articles, stating with combat sports, and since the short description is said to limit (preferably) to 40 characters, I used "MMA fighter" instead of "mixed martial arts fighter" and BJJ practitioner instead of "Brazilian jiu jitsu practitioner" as MMA and BJJ are very commonly used in the media and just like UN for United Nation or USSR for Union Soviet Socialist of Republics. I just want to make sure it is ok to use MMA/mma and BJJ/bjj in the short description tag (I have done about 300 pages of using these abbreviation already). Kindly advise. Thank you. CASSIOPEIA(talk) 08:33, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
Hi CASSIOPEIA, I tend to go for intelligibility in preference to brevity, but there is no broad consensus, so you can do what you can justify to anyone who queries. I use the short descriptions as link annotations, and for that purpose longer works just fine. I will not force them into a short format just because the reading team at WMF find it convenient for their current needs, and 100 characters of clarity beats 40 characters of confusion in my books. Obviously sometimes you can be both brief and clear, but a lot of the time it is one or the other. Consider the reader. Will the average reader know what your abbreviations mean? If yes, then they will probably be fine. If no, then they are not serving a useful purpose. MMA would be meaningful to me, as a non-follower with a bit of background, but BJJ would tell me nothing. You probably need to consult a few other potential users to get a better idea for those examples. I would not use those abbreviations, but I can't tell you to not to. Cheers, · · ·Peter (Southwood) (talk): 09:15, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
Hi Pbsouthwood, Thank your for your quick response. Appreciate it. Cheers. CASSIOPEIA(talk) 09:33, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
Hi Pbsourthwood, Greeting to you. I came across this script [1]. Just want to check you this is same as {{SHORTDESC:xxx xxx}} ? or I could use this script and it will adds useful maintenance categories. This article Dave_Grosz was short descripted using this script and shown short description on the hidden category. I just want to make sure I do the right things before using the script or I show just tag manually on each article using {{short description|xxx xxx}}. Thank in advance. cheers. CASSIOPEIA(talk) 16:53, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
@CASSIOPEIA:, I use Galobtter's script all the time. It is very convenient and does almost all of what you would want. It does not handle editing automatically transcluded short descriptions in disambiguation pages or from infoboxes, or bare magic word short descriptions - to change those you have to make a manual edit - but it is great for editing and saving short descriptions from Wikidata ( some of them are quite adequate), for drag and drop creation from lead paragraphs, and for general trimming and copyediting. The short description category is included with the {{short description}} template, so don't worry about that, it is part of the package and the reason why the bare magic word is deprecated. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 18:24, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
The Dave Grosz short description looks fine. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 18:26, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
OK Thank you Ppsouthwood for the advice and info. I installed the script - see [2] and I dont see any additional function from "More" drop down menu (or any where actually). I believe I miss /dont get something here. Kindly help to fill me in with advice what should I do. Thanks in advance. CASSIOPEIA(talk) 21:11, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

@CASSIOPEIA:, The gadget should show you a couple of lines of text at the top of the page in read mode, below the article title. For example, at Plebeian Council I see:

Wikidata: plebeian council (Q15056619), Ancient Roman assemby
Aliases: Comitia Plebis Tributa, Concilium Plebis, Plebian Assembly
The principal assembly of the ancient Roman Republic (Edit)

Another example, at Political institutions of ancient Rome:

Wikidata: political institutions of ancient Rome (Q2915100), no description given
Aliases: None
Missing article description (Add)

The first two lines are the item, description, and aliases at Wikidata, complete with link to the item at Wikidata. The third line is the current short description on Wikipedia

If you click on (edit) or (add) it should open a small editing window in the third line with the current short description and give the options (Save) and (Cancel)

Does this not happen for you? · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 15:46, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi Ppsouthwood, thanks for the reply. For the two examples above. I could not see the Wikidata and Aliases info but I could see the short description info/missing article description. I tried on other articles and I could input and change the short descriptions and they also appear on hidden category "Articles with short description" on the articles. Since I could not see the Wikidata and Aliases info, does this mean what I have done would not connect/transfer to Wikidata. Kindly advise. thank you. CASSIOPEIA(talk) 19:22, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
@CASSIOPEIA:, If you want to change Wikidata you have to do that separately. It is optional. Sometimes the description on Wikidata will be OK as it is, sometimes the Wikipedia version will also be better on Wikidata. This is something you will have to judge for yourself, but when there is no description on Wikidata it is a safe bet that adding the Wikipedia description will be an improvement on Wikidata.
If you are not seeing the Wikidata and aliases, maybe I have another gadget running that does that. I tend to forget these things once installed. Galobtter will probably be able to explain it all better than I can. I will also have a closer look tomorrow and see if I can work it out as it is a bit late for analytical thinking and problem solving here and I have had a busy day. It is worth getting the Wikidata stuff visible, specially if you want to fix Wikidata too. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 19:45, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
Appreciate it and I would be convenience to see Wikidata and aliases as well. Take your time to provide me the info and have a good rest and sweet dream. Thanks a lot. CASSIOPEIA(talk) 19:57, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood and CASSIOPEIA:, The wikidata and and aliases thing is indeed from another gadget, that should be installable through mw.loader.load("//www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=User:Yair rand/WikidataInfo.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript"); (IIRC what that gadget did) Galobtter (pingó mió) 04:34, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Galobtter, I now remember. That is the gadget I use and find very helpful. I have been trying to work out what it was for the last hour, so your reply is timely and helpful. CASSIOPEIA, that is the way to go. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 04:44, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
Hi Galobtter and Pbsouthwood, Thank you so much for the help. Appreciate it and Happy New Year . Cheers. CASSIOPEIA(talk) 11:07, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
Hi Pbsouthwood, Just one more thing, I think I would put subject's nickname as the "alias" as per Pseudonym. Many combat sport fighters do have nicknames and I want to make sure it is ok to add in them and not find myself receiving some unpleasant messages of my actions is not appropriate or I have to go back and remove them later. Here are some (about 400) nicknames of the mma fighters - see List of current UFC fighters and pls advise if it is ok to add them. Thank you. CASSIOPEIA(talk) 11:28, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
CASSIOPEIA, the alias is a field in Wikidata, It is not generally used in short descriptions, though there is no rule about it specifically. The short description is there to give the reader a better idea of whether the article is the one they need to get the information they want. It may be that in combat sport this is a good way of identifying the content, but I do not know and cannot advise you as it is not in my field of interest or expertise. I would suggest that you find an appropriate WikiProject and ask for ideas there. If you dont get any useful advice you can be bold, but preferably with some discretion. Remember that a short description is like any other content - anyone who has a better short description can edit it to improve the existing one, and BRD applies as everywhere else. Also one does not simply delete a short description without substituting what you think is a better one, and should be prepared to explain why it is better if challenged. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 13:01, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
Hi Pbsouthwood, Sorry I think i was not clear of my question. The question is NOT about short description but it is about "Alias field" in Wikidata. Can nicknames be considered as alias (I know stage name, pen name can). CASSIOPEIA(talk) 13:38, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
CASSIOPEIA, Sorry, I misunderstood. Yes, I would think that a nickname would be an appropriate alias on Wikidata. I would not expect any problem with adding a fighting name in the alias field. It is another way to identify the person. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 13:57, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
Hi Pbsouthwood, OK. You have been very helpful, quick in reply and very polite. Thank you. Appreciate it. Have a good new year eve. Cheers. CASSIOPEIA(talk) 14:04, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
CASSIOPEIA, If I have helped you to do constructive work on the encyclopaedia, the time was well spent. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 06:35, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Happy happy

Happy New Year
and all the best for 2019!
- Evad37 [talk] 02:21, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Evad37, and the same to you. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:06, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2019

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

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

Short descriptions

Happy New Year, Peter!

Following on your suggestion that we should standardise on an initial capital letter, I think we could use the {{ucfirst:}} "magic" function to force an initial capital letter without affecting the rest of the description, like this:

  • <div class="shortdescription nomobile noexcerpt noprint searchaux" style="display:none">{{ucfirst:{{{1|}}}}}{{SHORTDESC:{{ucfirst:{{{1|}}}}}|{{{2|}}}}}</div>

What do you think? --RexxS (talk) 19:55, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

You have a good year too RexxS, with some good dives in it.
If that code means that the short description will display with an initial capital, and that annotated links and any other calls returning the content will be capitalised, then I like it as a simple fix. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:08, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
Rats - I'd forgotten about the annotated links, which read the parameter to the template, not its display. Okay, we can drop my idea, and just encourage folks to use a capital letter. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 10:05, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
Another option could be to force the capital in the annotated link too? In the long term having the SD formatted consistently is less likely to cause unforeseen complications I guess. Possibly a thing that could be fixed with AWB. One day I must work out how to use the thing. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 11:16, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

There is now a clear consensus against the use of annotated links on disambiguation pages, due to their violating the formatting principles outlines in MOS:DAB, and providing different information than what is required for disambiguation. Cheers! bd2412 T 22:57, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

@BD2412:, Thank you for the notification. Where is the discussion? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 04:14, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
The discussion is at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Use of annotated links. I should mention that another issue raised was the disconnection of material on the disambiguation page from the editing of the disambiguation page itself. bd2412 T 04:31, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
@BD2412:, Thanks, I had just found it. Some of the points made are valid, so I agree that it would sometimes be problematic. I will link to the discussion from the short description template, and WikiProject short description pages. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 04:45, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for your understanding. bd2412 T 04:47, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
@BD2412:, No problem, we are here to build the encyclopaedia. Some of the early quibbling deserved a good trouting, but eventually some solid reasoning came up and your summation was accurate, clear and to the point. I have used part of your summation on the template talk page to explain the position, you might wish to check if you agree with my explanation. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:37, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Translation project for "onderwaterduik"

Hi Peter! How are you?

What's going on with (our) translation of scuba terminology on af:wiki?

Best regards & Happy New Year! --Aliwal2012 (talk) 06:39, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

I am well, Aliwal2012, kind of busy with real life and other Wikistuff. Season's greetings to you too, and I trust you are also well. I am afraid I have been somewhat distracted by other projects the last while. I am going to have to take a look and see what more (if anything) needs to be done before moving to mainspace. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 07:03, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
Thanks! --Aliwal2012 (talk) 12:32, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
I just moved it, and will comment out the English definitions, as original plan. They will still be available in edit mode for checking. Maybe it will get more attention now. Who knows. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 14:16, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #026, 20 Jan 2019

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

New participants

A hearty welcome to new arrivals to the portals department:

Harvesting categories tool prototype

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

New portals since last issue

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

What else is going on

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

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

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

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

Keep up the good work.    — The Transhumanist   08:39, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Hello Pbsouthwood. The above two articles were flagged by the bot as potential copyright problems. Like a case I reported to you a couple years ago, the bot is picking up technical material that is difficult or impossible to summarise or paraphrase. Nevertheless I have done some paraphrasing and removal of content to reduce the overlap. Please let me know if you have any questions. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 18:39, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Diannaa, I will take a look. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 19:14, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
Diannaa, That looks fine. The Tsitsikamma section just needs a brief summary, I will be making a full article later, and the Helderberg article has not lost too much. I expect to be working on a whole batch of similar articles over the next couple of months, and though I do try to avoid getting too close to the source, sometimes a list of species will look much the same as another list of the same species. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 19:33, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
There were a few others already this week, which I marked as "no action needed". I will continue to review each report and do additional paraphrasing for instances that I think need it and I can think of a way to paraphrase without losing the meaning . Thanks for your help and understanding. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 19:39, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
And thank you for your diligence and attention to detail. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 19:46, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #027, 28 Jan 2019

Portal styles

For a visually intensive portal, see Portal:Hummingbirds.

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

Conversion continues

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

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

Flagship portals: the portals on the Main Page

Speaking of upgrades...

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

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

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

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

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

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

And be sure they are on your watchlist.

New portals since last issue

Keep 'em coming!

Deorphanizing the new portals

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

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

Dreamy Jazz to the rescue...

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

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

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

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

Good news indeed.

Way to go, Dreamy Jazz!

And, that's a wrap

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

No doubt there will be more to tell soon.

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

Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors!

The 2018 Cure Award
In 2018 you were one of the top ~250 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs.

Thanks again :-) -- Doc James along with the rest of the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 17:41, 28 January 2019 (UTC)