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Autolinks - don't you just love 'em?

Yes! It's Template Time again!! Welcome to the Wonderful World of Infoboxes and Auto-Generated Links!!! This time, it's coats of arms and flags.

Yrs, in sorrow, Narky Blert (talk) 23:47, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Jerusalem: {{Infobox country}} has a "linking_name" parameter which it prefixes by "Flag of " etc. to make links. I set it to "Kingdom of Jerusalem". ("Narnia" would have worked too; the important thing is that there's no page called Coat of arms of Kingdom of Jerusalem.) This broke the population link, so I've had to fiddle that.
Ciudad Victoria: {{Infobox settlement}} has a "name" parameter which generates all the links. Setting it to "Ciudad Victoria" (or "Narnia") would fix this problem by removing the link, but it would create so many other problems that it's a bad idea. I believe that fixing this page requires a template change. The template is fundamentally flawed because it tries to find a page using the common name. Of course, "common" here means "popularly used", but sadly it's also "common" in the sense of being shared by other cities, so we get a link to the wrong city or to a dab.
Belgian Congo: It's the right image, according to Flag of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I've added a flag_caption to {{Infobox country}} and applied the same trick of setting linking_name to something which looks plausible enough to avoid reversion but in fact won't generate any links.
Hope that helps. We may need to bother the maintainers of Infobox settlement, but it's one of Wikipedia's most widely used and long established templates so they may take some convincing. Certes (talk) 00:38, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
Ciudad Victoria still calls DAB page Coat of arms of Victoria. The link looks circular.
Support your Narnia idea
This is not the first time I have come across WP:OWNers who should be told to get a grip. I have taken part in at least three discussions complaining to editors who thought that their templates which auto-generated links to DAB pages were the best thing since sliced bread. Narky Blert (talk) 22:29, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
I've edited Ciudad Victoria to replace the link to dab by a redlink, having failed to find a way to unlink it completely. I've raised a question at Template talk:Infobox settlement#Coat of arms link. Certes (talk) 00:55, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #017, 22 Aug 2018 (eom)

Portals WikiProject update #018, 04 Sept 2018 (eom)

Disambiguating railway stations

Thanks for the heads up re Dab Solver & {{stnlink}} and {{rws}}. When I looked I saw what looked like the correct link & didn't go back to edit mode to see the template. Is there a better tool that overcomes this issue?— Rod talk 16:39, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

I've not found a better tool. Dab Solver is so good in other respects that I just try to remember to Show Changes (rather than just the perfectly good looking Show Preview) when disambiguating railway stations. Further discussion above. Certes (talk) 16:52, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

AWB task request: please help with the backlog

Hey...

If you have AWB laying around, please dust it off and crank it up! ;)

We have a growing backlog!

There are now 546 portals. Of those, 52 are of the new design.

Many of the new portals are orphaned or near orphaned, and need links pointing to them:

  1. A portal link at the bottom of corresponding navigation footer template. E.g., Template:Machines for Portal:Machines. See examples of a portals link at the bottom of Template:Robotics and Template:Forestry.
  2. A {{Portal}} box in the See also section of the corresponding root article for each portal. If there is no See also section, create one and place the portal template in that. (Rather than placing them in an external links section -- they're not external links).
  3. A {{Portal}} template placed at the top of the category page corresponding to each portal.

To make a list of corresponding templates, you can use AWB's make list feature to make a list of the pages in Category:Single-page portals. Then you copy that list to a sandbox, and replace \nPortal: with ]]\n* [[Template:, using WP:wikEd. That will give you a list of templates to work on. Then you set skip in AWB to skip the ones that already have the portal link.

To make a list of corresponding root articles, make a list of portal links, and then remove "Portal:" from the links.

To make a list of category links to process, make sure you use a leading colon (:) in the category links, like this: [[:Category:Blue Öyster Cult]].

All new and revamped portals can be found at Category:Single-page portals.

Thank you.    — The Transhumanist   20:43, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

@The Transhumanist: I've done the first few of 1. as an experiment. Example. I have a few concerns:
  1. Do you think we should consult more widely before changing 2,000 templates, articles and categories, especially when other editors are removing such links?
  2. Other project members may be doing the same job and we may be tripping over each other. Would it be better to put large requests like this in a central place for collaborative discussion rather than copy them to several user talk pages?
  3. Requests 1. and 2. may result in multiple ads for the portal on one page. For example 24 (TV series)#See also already links to its portal; my template change adds a second link.

— Certes (talk) 12:07, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

  1. No, since the precedent is very strong for including portal links in those locations. (Unless there is a new consensus-establishing discussion somewhere that I don't know about). For example, the search insource:navbox insource:Portal: returns 3,096 navigation templates with a portal link, and insource:navbox insource:Portal: returns 904 more. Consensus lies with the existing situation, which is that portal links are standard on templates (in the "bottom" section, along with other navigation system links). In order to remove them en mass, a new community consensus must be established. The same applies to corresponding root articles and categories. Searching category namespace with insource:Portal shows 246,141 matches. Article space shows 456,330 matches. Keep in mind, that we are processing root-level only, piggyback riding on templates to take the links abroad. Thank you for asking. I hope my answer alleviates your concerns.
  2. AWB'ers don't trip over each other, they just skip on by. ;) I hope others are working on it. It'll go faster that way. Note that AWB was designed knowing that multiple users would be working on the same tasks at the same time. That's why AWB has so many auto skip features: so that you don't have to manually press "Skip" for those instances. You can also share the work by how you go about it. For example, you can avoid going over the same entries that others have already done by starting AWB at the end of the list, working bottom-up rather than top-down. Then you'll meet somewhere in the middle. Another approach is to run it in pre-parse mode first, to skip whatever anyone else has done. This helps catch situations where the task was abandoned and not completed. Since the list of portals is so small, there's no need to worry about how much of it was done by someone else. AWB will do 2,000 skips in preparse mode in 8 to 10 minutes, which covers all the single-page portals. That's much faster than a forum discussion, and you can be doing something in another window, or eating a snack/watching a show, while it does its thing.
  3. Think of the template links as secondary to whatever is in the See also section. And, because those links are less noticeable (due to font size, as well as competing links and footers), they should not be considered as replacements for the portal boxes in the See also sections of the eponymous pages (pages that share the portal's title -- corresponding root article, outline, category, glossary, and index.).
I hope you found my answers helpful.    — The Transhumanist   13:29, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
@The Transhumanist: Thanks; that's reassuring. I've done 1. for templates alphabetically up to Alabama, where I have a problem with an underlying protected template. Certes (talk) 15:54, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
@The Transhumanist: I'm finding more cases where the template uses a more generic template that doesn't permit footers. What do you think we should do about these? It may be a case of projects establishing a consistent format, i.e. consistently without portal links. Examples:
In both cases they're discarding the |below= parameter which is where we normally put the icon footer row. I've started a conversation at Template talk:US state navigation box#Below. Certes (talk) 16:27, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Short of editing the underlying lua code, placing the following at the end works, leaving the title blank; but it will replace an existing title9 section:

| title9 =
| body9 =

I couldn't figure out what the triple curlies meant, as are used in creating the capital section at the top.    — The Transhumanist   00:57, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

That's a backup plan but would put the portal and category as a section within the box rather than a distinctively styled footer. The triple curlies just substitute parameter values. {{US state navigation box|capital=Albany}} makes {{{capital}}} produce Albany, so the capital section produces Albany (capital). Certes (talk) 08:58, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
I didn't know triple curlies were used like that, thinking they were limited to {{{1}}}, {{{2}}}, etc. That's good to know. I'll take another look at the underlying source code to see if it makes more sense now.    — The Transhumanist   00:19, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Are we keeping a list of portals whose names clash with a template or category on a different subject? For example, we wouldn't want to link Portal:Apache from {{Apache}}. (I've put that template on my watchlist as a canary for anyone making the same mistake I nearly made.) Certes (talk) 11:05, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

No, but I keep running into templates on bands that usurp the root title. So, when I use the semi-auto method of portal creation (by first converting template links to portal links and ctrl-clicking on the red ones), a portal may look complete (in preview mode), except that it displays articles on the band named after the topic, rather than the topic. As I'm still primarily processing "low hanging fruit", I simply nuke the tab instead of save, and move onto the next tab.    — The Transhumanist   00:19, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
Another situation I run into a lot is a template with an extraneous "topics" or "navbox" in the title, when the main title for the template is unused. In such cases, I rename the template to match the topic, except where plurals are called for, in which case, I rename it to the plural form (if it is available). Then I restart the portal creation using the topic (or its plural) rather than the template's original title. Because, nobody wants a portal called "Portal:Metalworking navbox." :)    — The Transhumanist   00:19, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
Aluded to above, I've been working on a method for rapid portal creation — combining the use of list massage, template substitution, yours and Evad's transclusion templates, and a script — and have gotten it down to around 1 minute per portal, though many of the portals thus created need refinement of their search parameters and others have a redlinked category, which I need to go back and address. So with those issues and the placement of links leading to each portal, it's probably down to about 5 minutes each. I spent a good six hours yesterday brainstorming features to add to the script to tackle these and other tasks to shave even more time off of the creation process. Whether I can convert these ideas into workable JavaScript remains to be seen. :) The goal, of course is to get portal creation down to a few seconds rather than a few minutes. Wish me luck.    — The Transhumanist   00:27, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
One minute is excellent progress. The number of topics that lack a portal but are broad enough to merit one is limited. Multiplying that number by one minute gives the maximum time that further tuning could save, so the process may have already achieved its optimal point. It takes more than a minute just to add the template footers. (I'm also linking to books, categories and commons while I'm in there: it's useful and it's less likely to get reverted than if I took up a whole line just for the portal link.) The typing is automated but I need to integrate any existing footer, fit in with existing styles and fix any dodgy links. A good example is {{Bowerbirds}}. There's an exsting footer, and Commons:Category:Bowerbirds relates to a musical ensemble so we need Commons:Category:Ptilonorhynchidae instead. Certes (talk) 01:03, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
Good job on the templates. Keep up the great work. By the way, there are plenty more where those came from. ;)    — The Transhumanist   06:59, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
  • This blanket adding of portals to all navboxes is actually not a good idea, and should probably be discussed. They are controversial, and there has been discussion about validity of non-mainspace links in navboxes in the past. I think some consensus should be sought before this task is undertaken. I think an RFQ at WP:Wikiproject Templates would be the best forum. At the very least, it should be weighed up whether there is some benefit on a case-by-case basis. --woodensuperman 16:46, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
@Woodensuperman and The Transhumanist: The changes I made were modelled on a range of similar existing templates which I naively assumed to be acceptable. As you can see from the conversation above, I also had concerns. I paused the addition of links last month (having done roughly those beginning with A and B) as it looked as if an RfC (or at least a wider discussion) was imminent, but that doesn't seem to have happened yet. Certes (talk) 17:00, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Thank you

I implemented your suggested "intitle" fix for SearchSuite, to allow intitle to be anywhere in the search string, rather than just at the beginning.

Now, searches like insource:navbox intitle:France work like a charm.

Thank you.    — The Transhumanist   14:19, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #019, 22 Sept 2018 (eom)

A barnstar for you!

The Working Wikipedian's Barnstar
For your tireless work in fixing DABlink problems caused by badly-written, poorly-documented templates. Narky Blert (talk) 04:44, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Module:Linkless

Module:Linkless has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the module's entry on the Templates for discussion page. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 02:50, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #020, 12 Oct 2018 (eom)

This might need your help. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:15, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Fixed your sig, hope that is OK and please revert if not

See this edit and feel free to revert if you in any way disapprove. But on reflection it seemed the logical way to tidy things up, I'm assuming you just typed the wrong number of tildes, and your normal sig seems to be very standard (like mine) so I have boldly counterfeited it. Andrewa (talk) 07:00, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #021, 24 Oct 2018 (eom)

P.S.

P.S.: Certes, there's a bunch of new feature idea posts at WT:WPPORTD.

@The Transhumanist: I've been skimming those ideas as they arrived. I'm happy to fix bugs but don't plan to create any new tools at the moment, as I'm concerned that they encourage new portals on narrow topic areas which might not be universally welcomed. Certes (talk) 11:22, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
Portals themselves are not universally welcomed. But, if we improve the portal design the best we can, they may become more welcomed by more users. Nonetheless, I respect your decision, and have a humble request... Speaking of fixing bugs, the auto error reporter would help in that regard. Would you reconsider that particular tool? Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   12:15, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm happy to look at the error reporter but I have a few questions. Firstly, can we define what errors it might report? Once we know that, we'll also have consider where it can run. If we can have the templates add broken portals to categories then it may just be a few Wikipedia pages. If not then it might have to run on a platform such as Toolserver, which I've no experience of writing for. Certes (talk) 14:19, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
Thank you. The error types I run into the most are lua errors in big red type, followed by spewing errors (where a slideshow displays everything instead of one item), followed by truncation errors (where the portal is cut off prematurely). I'll start sending you examples as I run into them.    — The Transhumanist   16:24, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
This PetScan query lists the portals with Lua errors. The others would need some examples to suggest what property of the page can be measured automatically to detect such errors. Certes (talk) 17:08, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
Portal:Archaeology seems to have a spewing error. It kept happening for several purges, so I'm pretty sure the error comes up for everybody who views the page.    — The Transhumanist   00:37, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
I have replied at WT:WikiProject Portals/Design#Auto_error reporter. Certes (talk) 09:31, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi, I've spotted that you've been adding links to commons from navboxes. Please could you stop doing this as we do not allow links to external websites in navboxes. Thanks. --woodensuperman 16:40, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Participant?

I noticed you removed your name from the portals project's participants list.

Do you still wish to receive the newsletter links?    — The Transhumanist   02:28, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

I'll continue to follow the project's progress and contribute where I can, but our opponents have driven me away from actively seeking new tasks. I have the newsletter archive on my watchlist, which will notify me whenever a new edition arrives, so there's no need to bother sending me the links thanks. Certes (talk) 09:58, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Keep in mind that some opposition is a good thing. Without the RfC, which could only be described as severe opposition (after all, they wanted to bury portals in the graveyard), nobody would have been inspired to reboot the WikiProject or redesign the portals in the first place. What portals have transformed into, so far, is nothing short of amazing. "Thank you opposition!"
Speaking of transformations, I forecast that major transformations will continue to happen to portals. But who knows what those will be? Like, who saw image slideshows coming? Not me. And then excerpt slideshows grew out of that and blew my mind again. Followed by a variety of ways to populate them. Titillating. That portals transformed into single-page creations so quickly was surprising. Then conditional reporting sections were created upon request and made my jaw drop, again. Then flexible columns. Then creation times of less than a minute. Then randomized color initialization came along. Followed by stub filters.
I can hardly wait to see what breakthroughs will be next. Will it be improved automated content selection? Automated addition of new Selected topics sections? Expanded sources for news? Image sections that reach out to Wikicommons and suggest images to be added to themselves? Automated navigation footer builders? "Quantum portals" that are created for viewing on the fly with nothing stored in advance? Mind maps? Automatic color theme detection and implementation to complement a subject? Automatic placement of links in the encyclopedia leading to portals? Auto portal categorization? New types of sections? Faster portal generation? Who knows. The best innovations to come will probably be things we haven't even dreamed of.
There are some big events on the horizon as well: recognized content sections are soon to be added to all portals the corresponding subjects of which have recognized content. Followed by the upgrading of the portals presented at the top of the Main Page. That's a real big one. That will likely generate some excitement, and channel interest (and their traffic) to the rest of the portal system. If we do it right. I've already gotten started on the upgrade of Portal:History here, though there is a formatting glitch in there somewhere that I can't seem to find. Note that the upgrade is being kept in the portal's history until it is ready for rollout - it still has a ways to go before it exceeds the quality of the original. By the way, do you think we should retain its original color scheme? And do you think we should roll out all the Main Page portal upgrades at the same time?
I look forward to your reply. Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   00:39, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Presentation and appearance are important but I'm no graphic designer and it's usually wiser for me to leave that aspect to someone who has a clue. Anything that affects the Main Page needs wide input and it's probably best to have that discussion once, which probably implies having a single rollout of whatever changes gain consensus. The portal contents page may look slightly old-fashioned but it's better to have a a tried and tested format than one which looks great but doesn't work. Thanks again for all your good work and enthusiasm, Certes (talk) 00:58, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Good points. In that case, it would probably be best to upgrade the rest of the portal system first, to get the bugs out, and deal with the main page portals last. Based on what you pointed out, there's little sense proposing an upgrade that doesn't work entirely dependably and that hasn't stood the test of time. Aspects that come to mind are page load times and intermittent formatting bugs. Therefore, we need to make sure the new design works really well before we go there. Fortunately, we have lots of test cases in place to refine the design on, and plenty to keep us occupied in the meantime. Thanks for the feedback,    — The Transhumanist   08:22, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Query

How would you get a list of new portals created since a particular date?

I look forward to your reply. Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   01:44, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

@The Transhumanist: Here's a PetScan query to find this year's new portals. To use a different date, go to the "Page properties" screen and change the limit from 20180101, or just hack the URL. Certes (talk) 02:35, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
I see, it is scanning the category "All portals". Very enlightening. I will definitely get a lot of use out of this tool. Thank you!    — The Transhumanist   04:38, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Another query

We have a user without access to AWB (for making lists of redlinks).

Without using AWB, how would you get a list of missing portal talk pages?

I look forward to your reply.    — The Transhumanist   04:38, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

@The Transhumanist: There are 451 portals without a talk page. List: quarry:query/31240. This excludes 700 redirects without talk pages (mostly shortcuts like Portal:ACC) and subpages. Certes (talk) 13:03, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Nasty portal bug

I've come across a pretty serious bug in {{Transclude selected current events}}/Module:Selected current events.

Evad37, the author, doesn't appear to be on Wikipedia these days (not since October 18).

I noticed the bug when the news item on Stan Lee's death didn't show up in the Portal:Marvel Comics I had just created.

So, I dug deeper, and found that the module does not find anything that is a current news entry that stands on its own. That is, it will match search terms in entries that are either a parent list item or offspring list item.

For example, I've included some sample content from Portal:Current events below. The search parameter "Israeli" works, but "Amnesty International" returns nothing. The latter is a bullet item of its own, neither a parent nor an offspring. Search terms from the "Pope Francis" or "Marvel Comics" entries below, do not return matches of those items either.

This means that half or more of the news is not matchable by the In the news feature of portals.

Can you find the problem? This one is a doozy.    — The Transhumanist   06:46, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Armed conflicts and attacks
Arts and culture

P.S.: @FR30799386:

@The Transhumanist: I do hope Evad has no serious problems and will be back with us soon. I've enhanced the module, and Stan Lee is appearing in Portal:Marvel Comics. Certes (talk) 12:18, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
I've sent Evad an email, expressing concern. I'll let you know if he replies.
Nicely done on the bug fix. It works really well. To test it, I created the following portal:
Portal:Pope Francis
Thank you.    — The Transhumanist   13:33, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

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Design flaw in {{Box-header colour}}

There seems to be a need to more precisely control color. During the conversion of existing portals to the one-page model, customized colors are being lost.

There is a request/discussion about it at User talk:Moxy#What about the original colors?.

I thought you might be able to provide some input.    — The Transhumanist   23:43, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Spew bug found in these portals

The link you provided ( WP search to find portals that "spew" excerpts all at once rather than one per click of the slideshow controls )

Turns up these portals:

I don't have a clue how to modify the lua programs to fix this. Perhaps you could take a look?

Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   22:32, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

@The Transhumanist: I've looked at a few of these and added portal-specific comments above (and to your message below). Some cases such as Anne Murray may be fixable in the modules but it's a different enhancement for each case; sadly there's no single cause that we can fix with one line of Lua. Certes (talk) 00:50, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

A different kind of spew bug?

AmericanAirl88 reported Portal:Macroeconomics as having a spew bug, so I looked, and it appears different than the ones above.

Maybe you can figure out what is causing it.

Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   22:32, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

That one was caused by a line break within a wikilink in Monetary economics; an IP's test edit which I just reverted. Certes (talk) 23:03, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
How did you track it down?    — The Transhumanist   00:48, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
P.S.: pinging @AmericanAir88:, as he may wish to know how too.
The output stopped within the lead of Monetary economics, so I had a look at the article, which had been vandalised to add a wikilink with illegal syntax. I think we've fixed all the widespread problems by now, and each remaining case requires significant detective work on an individual basis. Certes (talk) 00:55, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

We need a way to find portals with this new kind of spew bug

I've seen this particular kind of spew bug before, so it wasn't an isolated case.

Now that you've seen this critter, can you figure out a way to find others like it?

Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   00:53, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

This report should show this particular case, but it's very unusual and we were unlucky to hit one in a portal transclusion. Certes (talk) 01:04, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Non-free images in portals

Hi Certes. File:Amos Wilson.jpg is another example of a non-free image being transcluded into a portal. It was flagged for review because it's somehow being transcluded into the "Selected images" section of Portal:Pan-Africanism. -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:23, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: That image appeared because Portal:Pan-Africanism explicitly instructed {{Random slideshow}} to show it. I've removed it. When these templates select images automatically, they filter out non-free content, but when given an explicit list they assume that's what required and do as they're told, just as [[File:…]] would. Certes (talk) 10:29, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for checking on this. Is there a way to tweak the syntax of {{Random slideshow}} so as to stop it from calling up non-free images. The people using the template are probably not aware of the issue, so maybe tweaking the template would prevent any non-free files from being transcluded by mistake. -- Marchjuly (talk) 11:22, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
We could, but it's not really the template's fault; it's just handing display requests (which an editor added to the portal) on to File:, like any other template would. If it's going to be "fixed" anywhere then it should really go in the implementation of File: within MediaWiki so that it affects all templates. Certes (talk) 11:26, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
OK. FWIW, I Crtl-F searched the edit window of the portal's page for the file, but came up empty because I searched "File:Amos Wilson.jpg"; so, I thought it might be transculded instead like in some other cases. That was a fairly simple removal I should've caught, but thanks anyway for getting it. -- Marchjuly (talk) 11:30, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Certes/sandbox/Module:Lang/data

A tag has been placed on Certes/sandbox/Module:Lang/data requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section R2 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a redirect from the article namespace to a different namespace except the Category, Template, Wikipedia, Help, or Portal namespaces.

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. Stefan2 (talk) 17:32, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

@Stefan2: Good spot. Created in error; it can go per G7 too. Certes (talk) 17:37, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Portal image banner problem

Dear Certes,

There's a bug/design_flaw/limitation (?) that FR is working on in the image banner template/module he created, but he's having a bit of trouble with it.

If this were remedied, it would vastly increase the number of pictures at commons that could be used as banner pictures, not just for portals, but in general as well.

Please have a look at the discussion thread at User talk:FR30799386#Template:Portal image banner request.

There's a sample of the problem posted there.

Thank you.

Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   07:33, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Query request

How would one generate a list of article titles that have both a matching category and a matching navbox template?    — The Transhumanist   11:35, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

A complex Quarry query could show that, though it might time out, or one could download the entire page table and write a program to check it. Certes (talk) 12:38, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Happy holidays!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2019!

Hello Certes, 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 a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2019.
Happy editing,
Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 21:37, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

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

Some banket letter for you!

I hope you like almond paste (if you don't, all the more for me). Wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Narky Blert (talk) 00:17, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Query request

Can you track down the 5000th portal?

Some of the portals were created over redirects.

So, what I need to know is the 5000th portal added to Category:All portals.

I'll be very impressed if you know how to do this one.

Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   15:05, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

As far as I can see from running "recent changes" on the category, and ignoring the last 51 creations because it has 5,051 pages, it's Portal:Major League Baseball‎ — one of the few you didn't create! Certes (talk) 16:00, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
Thank you. See the latest newsletter issue for the announcement.    — The Transhumanist   11:28, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Good point

What's the easiest way to create a list of all the portals created in a month, other than those created by me?    — The Transhumanist   10:01, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

@The Transhumanist: This Quarry query works, but only for the current month, as it relies on the "recent changes" table. PetScan doesn't seem able to filter by user. To go back further, you could try creating a pagepile of portals you created in the relevant period, add its ID to "Other sources" in the usual PetScan query and set "Combination" to "categories NOT pagepile", but I've not tested that. Certes (talk) 11:23, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

P.S.: A new update just came out. -TT

Interesting reading; you're continuing to do a great job. I have the newsletter archive page on my watchlist. Certes (talk) 11:23, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

An automated process has detected that you recently added links to disambiguation pages.

AFC Asian Cup (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
added a link pointing to International football
FIFA Women's World Cup (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
added a link pointing to International football
National Soccer Hall of Fame (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
added a link pointing to International football

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 09:21, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing them, and sorry for messing things up. I usually fix them myself, but today it is to hectic at work. I should have probably postponed the creation of the disambig until the time I could have fixed the links.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:21, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

@Ymblanter: You're welcome. Please can you look at those I tagged {dn} and consider checking the others? The places in Russia and Belarus are both close to the border and I may have got one or two wrong. Certes (talk) 13:25, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
I can not do it now but will try in the evening. Thanks again.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:47, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
I have disambiguated whichever I could, but there are still a couple I have no clue about.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:34, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. I didn't see any clues either, so let's leave the DN tags and hope a local expert comes along. Certes (talk) 12:36, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Question

Is the following statement about JS true?

If you assign a value to a variable that does not exist, it will be created automatically and will have global scope. For user scripts used on Wikipedia, having global scope means it may affect other scripts that are running, as they are technically part of the same program, being called via import from a .js page (.js pages are programs).

I look forward to your reply.    — The Transhumanist   20:13, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm not a JS expert, but Evad37's reply sounds right to me. Certes (talk) 23:55, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
Cool.    — The Transhumanist   01:32, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Query

How would I generate/obtain a list of the titles of all articles deleted from the Draft namespace that start with "Outline of"?

There may have been some that were speedy deleted that I've forgotten all about.

I look forward to your reply.    — The Transhumanist   01:32, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

@The Transhumanist: List here. Certes (talk) 09:18, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
Thank you. Not as much damage as I thought there would be. The outline of fungi got moved or copied to article space, and the rest will be easy to rebuild from scratch, as they were not highly developed (if I remember right).    — The Transhumanist   09:46, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
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