Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Tasks

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Discussions about WikiProject tasks

January 2020

The ArbCom case has now closed. Whilst the case quite rightly concentrated on conduct, it also has a few practical effects on content and suggests some tasks which we can profitably start. Certes (talk) 22:26, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Guidelines

ArbCom recommends establishing guidelines for portals. Good progress has already been made here and it has restarted following a pause during the case. Both discussions should guide our progress in the medium term. That leaves a few short term questions about activity while that process continues. Certes (talk) 22:26, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Deletions

I hope that we can reach consensus about future portal MfDs. At one end of the scale, the process can be seen as a conveyor belt systematically ridding the namespace of all or almost all of its portals. At the other end, we have the vision of MfD functioning like XfD in other namespaces: an exceptional event for a few pages which suffer from unfixable problems not shared by their peers. Editors active in the namespace need to know which strategy will apply, so they can direct their efforts either to improving portals or to defending them from deletion. Certes (talk) 22:26, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Reverted changes

Many portals were recently updated to use transclusions rather than content forks, but those edits were reverted in bulk. Many but not all of the changes have now been reinstated, and in many cases further improvements have already been made. We need consensus on whether to reinstate the remaining changes in whole, to assess them individually, or to decide that the original versions were preferable. Certes (talk) 22:26, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Regarding transclusion vs fork - the best option may be to fork the main article (the article with the same name as the portal), but transclude selected articles (as forks can easily get out of date, vandalised etc and not be spotted) - see this discussion. DexDor ^(talk) 22:04, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

The best option may be to wait until the guideline is finalised, as it may specifically disallow either of these options. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 15:43, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Other tasks

Most other work should probably wait until the guidelines appear, or at worst until it becomes obvious that they will not appear any time soon. Any exceptions can be noted here. Certes (talk) 22:26, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Comments

Excellent and well said. I appreciate the ideas of Certes above. this all sounds fine to me. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 15:40, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Discussions about new portals or specific portals

Please revive Portal:Basketball and Portal:Golf

I noticed that a couple months ago, the portal for basketball was deleted (see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Basketball). The same thing happened to golf. These were misguided moves, since every other major sport has a portal (see Portal:Baseball, Portal:Association football, Portal:Ice hockey, Portal:American football, Portal:Volleyball, Portal:Cricket, and Portal:Tennis). This leaves basketball and golf as the only major world sports without a portal. I have no experience in creating portals, so someone needs to help. Sanjay7373 (talk) 00:09, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

The portals were deleted per Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Basketball (November 5) and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Golf (August 3). You would need to revisit the MFDs in order to request restoration. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:41, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

@Sanjay7373: Also, you state that you "have no experience in creating portals" - do you have experience in maintaining portals? If not, and you can't find someone to do it, there's no point in recreating either of them since one of the reasons that both were deleted was that they were neglected - nobody was actively maintaining them. Portals aren't static, they should be dynamic, with something fresh at frequent intervals. See for example Portal:Trains - the "Selected article" and "Selected image" both change weekly, the "Did you know..." usually has a new item added (and an old one removed) once a day, the "Selected anniversaries" changes daily. That's the thing: Slambo (talk · contribs) is willing to set aside time each day to maintain this portal, can you do the same for your sports? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:00, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

@Sanjay7373: And I would add that you should definitely first reach out to the corresponding WikiProjects (Wikipedia:WikiProject Basketball and Wikipedia:WikiProject Golf) to see if there is interest in creating and maintaining the portal. "There are other portals, so we need one" is not sufficient. UnitedStatesian (talk) 17:14, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Portal:Methodism assistance

Hi, I'm trying to revive/revitalize the Methodism work group. This portal absolutely falls within our Project and I'd like to help maintain it, but I know nothing about portals. If anyone's willing to help me learn I'm willing to help maintain. Jerod Lycett (talk) 22:09, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

@Jerodlycett: Hi, it's great to have someone who knows the topic and is willing to maintain the portal. It looks to be in decent shape but could benefit from having the excerpts updated from the copy-pasted text like Portal:Methodism/Selected article/7. We can replace those pages by transclusions which update automatically when the articles are edited. If you wish, we can add a collapsed list of articles and have a subpage (aimed at editors) with all the current excerpts visible simultaneously. This might also be a good time to review the lists of selected articles and biographies, perhaps with using the quality article listing. Certes (talk) 10:17, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

@Jerodlycett: I recommend soliciting for portal assistance at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Christianity/Methodism work group, where I notice you have already posted your Revitalization efforts thread. Another idea is to post at the wider Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Christianity/Noticeboard page about wanting to improve Portal:Methodism. As Certes stated above, I agree that the use of transclusion templates would improve the portal. These templates provide readers with current, up-to-date information that is verbatim to that in articles. The eight articles at Portal:Methodism/Selected article could even be migrated directly into the main portal page using the templates. Same goes for the Portal:Methodism/Selected biography content. Regarding the transclusion templates themselves, a consensus approving their usage in portals was formed at this Village Pump discussion. The discussion also provides an overview of the templates that are available.

Some immediate ideas to improve the portal include:

• Expand it with more FA/GA-class articles
• Add an images section
• Enlarge and expand the Categories section to 100% width, which makes it easier to navigate
• Expand the Methodist topics section
• Consider adding a DYK section.

If you're interested in any of these improvement ideas, I can help you to implement them. Feel free to ping me here if I can be of any further assistance. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 15:47, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

A few ideas for additional articles are in this search. It needs a human to filter out cases like Pithole, Pennsylvania which briefly mentions a Methodist church. If you want to use a subpage which shows all excerpts but only one when transcluded, there is an example here. Note the use of |showall= within a noinclude tag. Certes (talk) 11:07, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

In The News and Did You Know can also be automated but again I'd recommend manual filtering to avoid barely related articles.

Did you know...

... that the little-known 1758 Methodist hymn "Sun of Unclouded Righteousness" asks God to send the doctrine of the "Unitarian fiend ... back to hell", referring to both Islam and Unitarianism? ... that the specific name of Hydrolagus homonycteris refers to a professor at Illinois Wesleyan University known as "bat man" by his students? ... that Titus Awotwi Pratt, Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church Ghana, was commissioned as a minister by his father, who at that time headed the church in Ghana? ... that Cameron Chesterfield Alleyne was the first resident bishop in Africa for the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church? ... that just three years after starting radio station WESQ, North Carolina Wesleyan College sold it, partly because of a failure to integrate the station into its curriculum? No recent news

Hope that helps, Certes (talk) 11:07, 9 February 2020 (UTC)