User talk:Slambo/Archives/2018/December
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Hello
How are you, Slambo?. I have six months to go until I am unblocked, still working on my ideas on notepad until I get unblocked in June 2019.2601:540:8200:D52E:78B0:F4DB:51C5:6CAA (talk) 20:11, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – December 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2018).
Administrator changes
Al Ameer son • Randykitty • Spartaz
Boson • Daniel J. Leivick • Efe • Esanchez7587 • Fred Bauder • Garzo • Martijn Hoekstra • Orangemike
Interface administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- Following a request for comment, the Mediation Committee is now closed and will no longer be accepting case requests.
- A request for comment is in progress to determine whether members of the Bot Approvals Group should satisfy activity requirements in order to remain in that role.
- A request for comment is in progress regarding whether to change the administrator inactivity policy, such that administrators "who have made no logged administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped". Currently, the policy states that administrators "who have made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped".
- A proposal has been made to temporarily restrict editing of the Main Page to interface administrators in order to mitigate the impact of compromised accounts.
Technical news
- Administrators and bureaucrats can no longer unblock themselves unless they placed the block initially. This change has been implemented globally. See also this ongoing village pump discussion (permalink).
- To complement the aforementioned change, blocked administrators will soon have the ability to block the administrator that placed their block to mitigate the possibility of a compromised administrator account blocking all other active administrators.
- Since deployment of Partial blocks on Test Wikipedia, several bugs were identified. Most of them are now fixed. Administrators are encouraged to test the new deployment and report new bugs on Phabricator or leave feedback on the Project's talk page. You can request administrator access on the Test Wiki here.
Arbitration
- Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 3 December 2018. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.
Miscellaneous
- In late November, an attacker compromised multiple accounts, including at least four administrator accounts, and used them to vandalize Wikipedia. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. Sharing the same password across multiple websites makes your account vulnerable, especially if your password was used on a website that suffered a data breach. As these incidents have shown, these concerns are not pure fantasies.
- Wikipedia policy requires administrators to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enabling two-factor authentication. A committed identity can be used to verify that you are the true account owner in the event that your account is compromised and/or you are unable to log in.
Obituaries
- Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (Raymond Arritt) passed away on 14 November 2018. Boris joined Wikipedia as Raymond arritt on 8 May 2006 and was an administrator from 30 July 2007 to 2 June 2008.
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?
Keep 'em coming!
And I'll see you next issue. 
Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 08:12, 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:
Becomes this:
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:
- The new portals need to be linked to from the encyclopedia.
- 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.
- A Recognized content section needs to be added to each portal that has a corresponding WikiProject.
- Addition of a category on those portals that lack a subject category.
- Implement the portal category system, adding the appropriate categories to each portal.
- 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).
- Find and fix the remaining bugs in the underlying lua modules.
- Build portal tools (scripts) to assist in the creation, development, and maintenance of portals.
- Build a script to help build navbox footer templates, via the harvesting of categories, amongst other methods.
- Update the portal building instructions.
- Update the portal guideline.
- Refine the programming of the portals to reduce their load time.
- Design and develop the next generation of portals and portal components.
And whatever else you can dream up.
But most of all, have a...
Slambo/Archives/2018, thank you for your contributions to the Portals Project, and have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year.
Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 12:05, 30 December 2018 (UTC)