User talk:Cplakidas/Archive 22

This is an archive of past discussions about User:Cplakidas, for the period 5/2018 – 10/2018.
Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 15

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Archive 20

Argentine warships purchased by Greece

Can you explain why have you removed the links detailing the Argentine names? Lyndaship (talk) 18:24, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Hi Lyndaship, I haven't removed them, I've merely embedded them in the text. {{other ships}} is a dab template meant to be used at the top of a page, for ships with the same name as the article name. In a context where the article uses the Greek names throughout, it was potentially confusing. Cheers, --Constantine ✍ 19:12, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Sorry I think you are mistaken. Other ships is a template which leads to a set index page and may be used at the top of an article or section of an article as stated in WP:HATNOTE. It needs to be in the article as these ships were ordered and launched under the Argentinian names and somebody who landed on the page looking for another ship of the same Argentinian name needs a link to the list of Argentinian ships of that name. It would be confusing to place it at the top of these articles as the article title is for the ship in Greek service so it belongs at the top of the appropriate section where the Argentinian name is mentioned. You can see I do exactly the same for the many Greek ships which were transferred by the USA and the articles are under the American names. Will you kindly revert your edits to these articles please Lyndaship (talk) 19:59, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

"somebody who landed on the page looking for another ship of the same Argentinian name needs a link to the list of Argentinian ships of that name". Quite, and once again, the link is there, only embedded in the text rather than as a hatnote. Sorry, but I don't see how the hatnote works better in that specific case and context. The reader sees a not "for other ships of the same name, see X" right under the "Origin" section, with X being a name that does not match the one used in the article title. In other words, it provides no disambiguation of the actual article title, but a link to another set index about a different name. There is no requirement in WP to use a hatnote template, and I strongly feel that it is more natural and less confusing, for the average reader, when worked into the text. Constantine ✍ 20:24, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Unfortunately we disagree about what is both necessary and also confusing. I feel that you are only considering it from the side of someone who has arrived on the article page after searching for the Greek name. I am therefore going to revert the articles to the status quo ante. If you unwilling to accept this I suggest you raise it at WP:Ships and let other uninvolved editors who are familiar with the way articles on ships which have been named by different navies are handled express a view Lyndaship (talk) 08:19, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Hi, Lyndaship! I'm a WP:SHIPS member. Cplakidas is correct, I'm afraid. These sorts of name changes are usually written into the text, rather than hatnotes. See, for examples, Chilean battleship Almirante Latorre, HMS Eagle (1918), and HMS Agincourt (1913). We're not worried about the "somebody who landed on the page looking for another ship of the same Argentinian name" because if they type "ARA Santa Fe" in the search bar, they're going to land on the set index page (ARA Santa Fe). See also WP:Hatnote #3. Best, Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 23:15, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Please note Ed has changed Almirante Latorre since he quoted it as an example above Lyndaship (talk) 07:30, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for jumping in Ed. I think you are misunderstanding our disagreement, I want to list the other ships having that name by means of the other ships template placed at the head of the relevant national service section if the article title is different from the shipindex page I am linking to. Cplakidas thinks that the template should not be used and that a blue link on the ships name in the text to the shipindex page is preferable. Sadly none of the three articles you give provides any sort of example, Latorre has no link to the Chilean ship index page (which exists) at all merely linking to HMS Canada at the head of the article - I would prefer to put this above the section which details the British service, Eagle likewise has no link to the Chilean Cochrane index page (which exists), and a link to Other HMS Eagles as a hatnote at the top which I agree with and Agincourt has no link to a Brazilian Rio de Janeiro index page (which does not exist) and a link to other HMS Agincourts as a hatnote at the top which again I agree with. None have a link to other ships named the same by means of a blue link within the text Lyndaship (talk) 08:13, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Hey Lyndaship, thanks for your reply. While I didn't misunderstand your disagreement, I could have perhaps explained it better. We write name changes like this into the text and do not use hatnotes to link to them—hence the three articles I linked. Again, see WP:Hatnote #3. (I also don't think that any link to ARA Santa Fe is needed in Greek destroyer Ierax (1911), but I'm not especially bothered by it either.) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 01:46, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

I too edit WP:SHIPS pages, but don't wave the flag around like it's some kind of credential. Disagree wholeheartedly with Ed. Hatnote#3 does not apply. For balance, Greek destroyer which was ordered by Argentina, link should be included. Per WP:Easter Egg, a link to a Ship Index page should not be hidden in text. Llammakey (talk) 11:10, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

@Llammakey: A few things. One, I was responding to "If you unwilling to accept this I suggest you raise it at WP:Ships ...". Two, you need to re-read WP:EASTER. That's not at all what it says. Three, please explain how hatnote point three doesn't apply? Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:02, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

Because an article about an Argentine ship needs to be linked to appropriately. This is not just a Greek ship, it was an Argentine ship, paid for by the Argentinians to their specifications. The Greeks only took it over after it was built. The article has to show balance and hiding it as a tiny little link is not balanced. As for hatnote#3, Argentinians looking for their own ships might arrive at this page not by mistake. Personally I don't give a hoot what you were responding to, or frankly, your opinion on anything. It's not a credential. Llammakey (talk) 16:18, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

"Argentinians looking for their own ships" would arrive at ARA Santa Fe. On WP:SHIPS, in no way was I trying to wield it as a credential; I only said it in response to the suggestion that Cplakidas bring the conversation to the project talk page. But please, continue to assume bad faith. I'm done here. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 19:41, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

A hatnote pointing to ARA Santa Fe does have value, but needs to be kept practical. As it stood, the Santa Fe hatnote didn't make much sense as the only name already mentioned in the article was Ierax and it therefore appeared to contradict the initial hatnote. I've edited the Lead to give the 1st para more context, but the 'Other ships' template still looks wrong. I think better would be something like For other Argentinian warships of the same name see ARA Santa Fe, though perhaps there is a more elegant way to format it. Davidships (talk) 11:28, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Ed and Cplakidas. The template at the subsection is confusing because it goes against the article name. Edit-warring to add it was a very poor editorial choice which confuses and overwhelms the short "Origin" section. I have removed it. Dr. K. 18:46, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

I think that that was premature. Firstly because, while I agree with you that the 'other ships' template doesn't work in this example, you don't address the question of whether a different formulation would be functionally satisfactory. Secondly the current length of the article or section is irrelevant to the need or otherwise for a hat note - there are stub articles that rightly have them, and no doubt the section in question will grow anyway.

This discussion is important as it will guide the treatment of differing examples of the need to point readers to shipindex pages where the name is not the article name (starting perhaps with the currently nonsensical one at Chilean battleship Almirante Latorre). Can this discussion be transcluded to the ship proect talk page, and continued there? Davidships (talk) 22:47, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

If you agree with me that the 'other ships' template doesn't work in this example,... then that's where the buck stops. The template gets removed pending a better option. We don't keep a confusing template until we achieve a better solution. Remove it first, then, if you get a better solution, you implement it. Keeping a bad option because you cannot come up with a better solution is no justification for keeping the bad option. There is such thing as editorial discretion. I exercised it, and I am happy I did. Dr. K. 02:27, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

....because you cannot come up with a better solution.... Did you read it? Is it a better one? Davidships (talk) 12:15, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject Portals Overview, May 04, 2018

Thank you for being a member of the Portals WikiProject, and thank you for all the work you have all been doing on the portal namespace. To see the activity, check out the watchlist.

This is our 3rd issue, see previous issues at the Newsletter archive.

Top priority: Main list of portals needs updating

The top, and one of the most visible parts, of the portal system is Portal:Contents/Portals, which is intended to list all (completed) portals on Wikipedia.

About half of the missing existing portals have been added since this WikiProject's reboot (April 17th). Thank you to RockMagnetist, TriNitrobrick, Polyamorph, PratyushSinha101, Ganesha811, Bermicourt, Javert2113, Noyster, Ɱ, Lepricavark, XOR'easter, and Emir of Wikipedia, for working on this.

We are half-way to completion with this. We need everyone to chip in until it is done. Instructions, and the list of missing entries are at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet.

I hope you'll join me there. ("Many hands make light work").

Thank you.

Membership

We're at 66 members, with more joining daily. We even have 6 WikiGnomes!

Special thanks

I have awarded Certes with a portals barnstar on his talk page for his work on the new excerpt templates that are revolutionizing the portal system (Template:Transclude lead excerpt & Template:Transclude random excerpt). If you'd like to show your appreciation, please feel free to stop by his talk page and add your signature to the barnstar itself.

Thank you Certes. You are enabling this WikiProject to get the right things done, fast.

By the way, the templates have already gone international. After being told about the templates, Mossab wrote:

Thanks You very much!. Those are fantastic and great templates! I transferred them to Arabic Wikipedia and they do a magic great job. I worked to improve portal anatomy here and i do every thing i can to improve it and i am very sad for the nomination for deletion of portals :(. I am glad to be member on WikiProject Portals and i added my name with pleasure. Kind regards

RFC

As you know, the (April 8th) proposal to delete all portals and the portal namespace inspired the reboot of this WikiProject. RfCs typically run for 30 days, which means there are 5 days left including today, before the RfC will be closed. The !votes are predominantly "oppose", but many editors have shared their disappointment with the portal system. We have our work cut out for us in correcting the problems of the portals to address their concerns. Complaints ranged from being out of date and lacking maintenance, to taking up the time of editors that they felt (due to low traffic) would be better spent improving articles.

Anti-WikiProject drama

This past week has been somewhat stressful for me, with more than a little conflict...

It culminated with my being reported at the Administrator's Noticeboard "for spamming and canvassing". This is the second time I've been reported there during the RfC; the first one was for posting notices of the deletion discussion (the RfC) at the top of all portal pages.

The accusations were 1) Posting notices of the deletion discussion (the RfC) at the top of all portal pages, 2) Adding an Article alerts section to the Portals WikiProject page, and 3) posting notices (invitations) about this WikiProject on user talk and portal talk pages.

None of which fall under the Wikipedia definitions of spamming or canvassing.

Thank you, Lionelt and Lepricavark, for coming to my rescue. I don't know how the discussion would have turned out if you had not spoken up.

The discussion was closed as "no action necessary".

After that, the person responsible posted their thoughts to my talk page. Here they are, with my response:

Congratulations, it appears your relentless targeted advertising of the RFC, your beating the RFC Supporters with a stick by posting countless times there, your dishonest insistence that Current Events was on the chopping block, and your obstruction of clean up efforts at MfD are paying dividends. Have fun playing with Portal space where no one will read your work. I'm sure someone will eventually clean up the mess when your interest wanes. Cheers. Legacypac

Thank you. I accept your congratulations on behalf of Wikiproject Portals and the portal-loving community – it was a team effort. In addition, I'd like to clarify some things about your claims above...

Each page nominated for deletion must have a notice at the top of its page, per the deletion guideline. Not to have one there, would be unfair to those who use such pages, and would constitute a secret deletion tribunal. We don't do things that way on Wikipedia.
As new facts became available (e.g., a motivated and thriving WikiProject to support the portals, new building blocks, etc.), it was appropriate to post the developments to the RfC, to support informed decision making.
Proposals are literal, not figurative. The proposal specified "all portals". All means all.
The fact is, the rebooted WikiProject is cleaning up the mess, rather rapidly. By updating and upgrading the portals, rather than getting rid of them.
I think I'll be hanging around for awhile, but the project is more than likely to achieve critical mass and may outlive us all, due in part to the development of tools to assist editors in building, upgrading, and maintaining portals that are fully dynamic and self-updating.

Portals are more fun to work with than ever. Thank you for your role in making this happen. You made us try even harder, and inspired us to pull together as a team. You'll have a warm place in our hearts, forever. The Transhumanist

Automatically refreshed excerpts

The main advancement we've made so far is applying selective transclusion Transclusion is template technology, showing a page on another page. Selective transclusion shows only part of that page. We use it to show excerpts that always match the source. The two templates we have so far, are Template:Transclude lead excerpt and Template:Transclude random excerpt.

Obsoleting subpages

Excerpts are migrating toward the base page of each portal, and where this is done, a subpage is no longer needed.

Template:Transclude lead excerpt will be able to be used to put the intro excerpt directly on the portal page, rather than on an intro subpage, once we adapt a portal design to accommodate this.

Template:Transclude random excerpt is currently being used on 1st-level subpages, and eliminates the need for 2nd-level subpages. (Many portals have 2 levels of subpages).

There are about 1500 portals, but there are around 148,000 subpages in portal space. Further discussions are needed to develop designs and components that do not require them.

It is my hope that the portal of the future will be a single page, or close to it, pulling in excerpts from specified dynamic sources (like category pages), filtered by ratings. This would obviate the need for subpages at all (except for maybe the header and footer subpages, which store a portal's settings). A more likely near-term solution would be subpages with a list maintained by a bot, or editors using semi-automatic tools.

New portals

Since the reboot, a new portal has been created:

Portal:Limited recognition

Please watchlist these pages

Some central pages in the portal system. The more eyes on them, the better.

Wrapping up...

There's more in the works, like a rating system, further redesigns, etc. Keep an eye on the discussions on the project's talk page. They should start showing up there soon.

Hope to see you there. Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 06:22, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Constantine Komnenos Angelos

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Constantine Komnenos Angelos you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Courcelles -- Courcelles (talk) 17:41, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Constantine Komnenos Angelos

The article Constantine Komnenos Angelos you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Constantine Komnenos Angelos for things which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Courcelles -- Courcelles (talk) 18:02, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Euthymius I of Constantinople

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Euthymius I of Constantinople you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Courcelles -- Courcelles (talk) 00:40, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Euthymius I of Constantinople

The article Euthymius I of Constantinople you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Euthymius I of Constantinople for things which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Courcelles -- Courcelles (talk) 01:01, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Constantine Dalassenos (Duke of Antioch)

Hello Cplakidas,

I wanted to let you know that I just tagged Constantine Dalassenos (Duke of Antioch) for deletion, because it appears to duplicate an existing Wikipedia article, Constantine Dalassenos (duke of Antioch).

If you feel that the article shouldn't be deleted, you can contest this deletion, but please don't remove the speedy deletion tag from the top.

You can leave a note on my talk page if you have questions.

Arthistorian1977 (talk) 11:59, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Battle of Fardykambos

The article Battle of Fardykambos you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Battle of Fardykambos for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Gog the Mild -- Gog the Mild (talk) 18:21, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Constantine Komnenos Angelos

The article Constantine Komnenos Angelos you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Constantine Komnenos Angelos for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Courcelles -- Courcelles (talk) 19:41, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Greek submarine Amfitriti‎

I see you've just removed the alternative spelling of Amphitriti from this. I put it in as on the US and UK records of ships transferred its often (wrongly) transliterated like that. Not much bothered either way but thought I best explain to you Lyndaship (talk) 08:08, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Good Article Backlog

Hi Cplakidas. I am looking to encourage suitable editors to review more articles at WP:GAN. Currently you have five nominations awaiting review and as you are probably aware there is a large backlog. This means you and other editors may have to wait months before your articles are reviewed. I can not find any records of reviews you may have done at User:GA bot/Stats, but looking at your user page I see you have helped promote 139 articles to Good Status. This suggests that you are familiar with the criteria and should be able to contribute to reviews. If you need some help with the review process feel free to ask me or leave a note at the help desk. Regards AIRcorn (talk) 11:17, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Maleinos

Hello friend! Long time no see! I created pt:Leão Maleíno in Portuguese using the Prosopography and according to its article Leon was probably son of Constantine Maleinos, not Nikephoros Maleinos as the article Maleinos family says. According to the article about Nikephoros, he was probably brother or son of Eustathios Maleinos. Maybe all this information should be added to show the different points of view. Cheers!--Renato de carvalho ferreira (talk) 02:07, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Hi Renato, indeed, I hope everything is going well with you :). Thanks for the heads up, but dear lord, this is a mess. The PMBZ seems to follow Loparev's reconstruction of the genealogy for the early members, which is tentative at best, and some statements are directly antithetical in the different sources: e.g. Krsmanović names the older Eustathios as "presumably a brother or son of the first known member of the Maleinos lineage", where she obviously (?) means Nikephoros Maleinos, whereas the PMBZ suggests that Eustathios, who was born ca. 845, was possibly the brother or father (!!!) of Nikephoros. Who is correct? Someone obviously miscopied or mistyped, and my money is on the PMBZ (a man active in a position of authority in 866 cannot be the son of a man born in 845), but how to prove this? And if the PMBZ is wrong about that, then how can one trust anything else about the genealogy of the 9th-century Maleinoi in this particular work? Sigh... This will require some delving into, and checking up with the original sources. Constantine ✍ 09:16, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Euthymius I of Constantinople

The article Euthymius I of Constantinople you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Euthymius I of Constantinople for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Courcelles -- Courcelles (talk) 21:21, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Megas logothetes

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Megas logothetes you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of HaEr48 -- HaEr48 (talk) 05:40, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject Portals update, 11 May 2018

We've grown to 73 members, and morale is high. Thank you for joining. Here is some news, and some tasks...

The RfC will be closed soon...

2018-05-11: preparations are being made to close the RfC. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure#Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/RfC: Ending the system of portals.

When there, be sure to notice the consultation link.

We're trying to get a prototypical single-page portal developed in time to show the RfC closers before they make their final decision. You can help. It's Portal:Humanism. So far, we've applied selective transclusion (automation) to excerpts, and have made the following sections without subpages: intro, selected article, selected biography, categories, related portals, wikiprojects, things to do, and wikimedia. Eight down, 4 to go, plus 2 formatting subpages (not sure we can migrate those). Automating every section, would also be nice.

Main objectives

Our main objectives currently, are:

Replace static excerpts with selective transclusions, so that the excerpts always stay fresh (that is, match the source content). We are now doing this on the portal base page as much as possible, to reduce the number of subpages that are needed. See #2...
Migrate the functions of subpages to the portal base pages. There are around 150,000 subpages in portal space. We aim to make these obsolete by using templates and other calls from the portal base pages.
Improve portal design to make portals self-update. Semi-dynamic sections update from a static list, as used in {{Transclude random excerpt}}. Fully-dynamic sections would update from a list maintained elsewhere on Wikipedia, like a category. We haven't found a way to do this yet, other than to create a bot (which we will probably need to do).

Maintenance pass #1: Upgrading the intro section

The intro section of many portals transcludes an "Intro" subpage that has an excerpt in it.

We're replacing that with a selective transclusion directly in the intro section, bypassing the subpage. Though, there's a little more to it...

For instructions, see: Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Transclude intro excerpt directly on the portal base page.

Please skip Portal:American Civil War, as that is specifically being maintained by hand.

Maintenance pass #2: Obsoleting the Wikimedia subpages

One of the sections on many portals links to sister projects on the subject. This needlessly takes a subpage. The subpage can be made obsolete by using the template {{Wikimedia for portals}} directly on the portal base page.

This has been done for several hundred portals so far.

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Obsolete a Wikimedia subpage for instructions.

Maintenance pass #3: calling the category tree from the portal base page

Certes figured out how...

{{subst:Text|<category|tree>}}{{subst:PAGENAME}}{{subst:Text|</categorytree>}}

For more information, see the thread Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Rendering PAGENAME inside categorytree tag doesn't work (it does now).

More to come...

In the meantime, see ya around the portals! — The Transhumanist 15:32, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CXLIV, May 2018

Your Military History Newsletter

Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results
Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content
Book review: Hawkeye7 looks at coalitions and logistics in World War II, and Nick-D at Australia's frontier wars
Timeline: This month in World War I

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 15:00, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update, 15 May 2018

We are at 74 members. If you know anyone who might find this WikiProject interesting, please invite them.

The RfC has ended

The RfC was closed May 11th, and a closing statement was posted May 12th which says "There exists a strong consensus against deleting or even deprecating portals at this time."

Ongoing tasks

Some major activities that we are in the middle of include:

Adding the missing existing portals to the main portals list at Portal:Contents/Portals. Instructions are on the talk page. There are about 125 portals left to be processed. (There were 400). Keep up the good work!
Development discussions on how to migrate the subpages to the base pages. There are around 150,000 subpages in portal space, associated with the various sections on a typical portal. We are trying to obsolete them section type by section type. Currently, we're working on obsoleting the intro subpages and the "selected articles" subpages. Please join in.

Other tasks

The list of portals not ready to be listed on the main list can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#These are not listed yet (scroll down to see them - they are marked Not ready). They are incomplete. If you want a specific portal to work on, please consider choosing one from that list.
Over the years, some incomplete portals (portals under construction) got added to Portal:Contents/Portals. Therefore, every portal listed there needs to be inspected, and any that are incomplete should be removed from that list and added to the not ready list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#These are not listed yet (scroll down to see it). On Portal:Contents/Portals, I'm already almost done inspecting the portals in the culture section, and so you can skip those. The types of things to look for are empty sections (most will have a redlinked subpage), lack of "selected" sections, portal stubs with just an intro and end sections, and very poor layout (like seriously unbalanced columns).

Portal-building resources

During his work on portals, Broter found a quote randomizer. It is {{Random quotation}}.

Trailblazer: approaching the one-page portal

Broter has transformed the Portal:Community of Christ so it is comprised of only 3 pages in portal space: the base page, its box-header subpage, and its box-footer subpage. Its other other subpages are now obsolete and are waiting for deletion. Nice job, Broter!

Well, that's all for now. See ya around the portals. — The Transhumanist 06:37, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Talk:Al-Adil ibn al-Sallar/GA1

Cplakidas, it looks like a ping from this GA review made a little over a week ago won't have gotten through, so I thought I'd let you know that the review is ready and is waiting for your response. Thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 21:50, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

History of Zakynthos

Don't know if you saw Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Original_research,_refusal_to_communicate,_ridiculously_excessive_detail,_etc. and hence the new History of Zakynthos I spun off. I'd be very grateful for any thoughts (& still more edits) you have on it. It doesn't much look like copyvio to me, but I can't access or read the sources. Johnbod (talk) 23:46, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Megas logothetes

The article Megas logothetes you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Megas logothetes for things which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of HaEr48 -- HaEr48 (talk) 23:01, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Al-Adil ibn al-Sallar

The article Al-Adil ibn al-Sallar you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Al-Adil ibn al-Sallar for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Sturmvogel 66 -- Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:21, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Sack of Damietta

Can you point me to the other articles on the other Sacks of Damietta? If this is the only one covered by Wikipedia, it goes at the base name. If there are others but this is the primary topic, it goes at the base name. Since no other articles or redirects start with "Sack of Damietta", I moved it per WP:PRECISION. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:56, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Hi JHunterJ! You are not incorrect on naming, however the Siege of Damietta (1218–1219) also resulted in a sack of the city. In the context of Wikipedia namespace, it may however be expedient to adopt the simpler name, as you suggest. Let me think it over a few days please. Constantine ✍ 21:10, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

I'll put a disambiguation page at the base name until then, to avoid the incorrect arrangement of a base name pointing to a qualified version of the same name (primary topics go at the base name). -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:02, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Ah, but now it points to a disambiguation page. That works too. Cheers! -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:04, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.11 25 May 2018

Hello Cplakidas, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

ACTRIAL:

WP:ACREQ has been implemented. The flow at the feed has dropped back to the levels during the trial. However, the backlog is on the rise again so please consider reviewing a few extra articles each day; a backlog approaching 5,000 is still far too high. An effort is also needed to ensure that older unsuitable older pages at the back of the queue do not get automatically indexed for Google.

Deletion tags

Do bear in mind that articles in the feed showing the trash can icon may have been tagged by inexperienced or non NPR rights holders. They require your further verification.

Backlog drive:

A backlog drive will take place from 10 through 20 June. Check out our talk page at WT:NPR for more details. NOTE: It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing. Despite our goal of reducing the backlog as much as possible, please do not rush while reviewing.

Editathons

There will be a large increase in the number of editathons in June. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.

Paid editing - new policy

Now that ACTRIAL is ACREQ, please be sure to look for tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary. There is a new global WMF policy that requires paid editors to connect to their adverts.

Subject-specific notability guidelines

The box at the right contains each of the subject-specific notability guidelines, please review any that are relevant BEFORE nominating an article for deletion.
Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves with the new version of the notability guidelines for organisations and companies.

Not English

A common issue: Pages not in English or poor, unattributed machine translations should not reside in main space even if they are stubs. Please ensure you are familiar with WP:NPPNE. Check in Google for the language and content, tag as required, then move to draft if they do have potential.

News

Development is underway by the WMF on upgrades to the New Pages Feed, in particular ORES features that will help to identify COPYVIOs, and more granular options for selecting articles to review.
The next issue of The Signpost has been published. The newspaper is one of the best ways to stay up to date with news and new developments. between our newsletters.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:34, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update, 25 May 2018

We have grown to 79 members.

Please provide a warm welcome to our latest additions, Wpgbrown, Cactus.man, JLJ001, and Wumbolo.

A lot is going on, much of it on the WikiProject's talk page, so be sure to go there and join in on any of the many discussions taking place there.

Elsewhere around the portal project, or related to portals, the following is happening...

New news template ready for testing

Evad37 has created a new template, with supporting lua module, to handle news in portals...

{{Transclude selected current events}} is ready to be tested in some actual portals. Let Evad37 know if you need help with the search patterns.

Noyster commented that "This is the best portal innovation since sliced bread!"

See the relevant discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals#Alternative to Wikinews.

Thank you, Evad.

Coming soon: Automatic article alerts (but there is a glitch)

Our WikiProject is now subscribed to the bot that makes automatic article alerts, but the subpage where they are posted has not been added to our WikiProject page yet because of a weird problem...

Featured portal nominations from two years ago keep popping up on there.

Please check Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals/Article alerts to see if you can figure out how to fix this.

Once that is remedied, it will be posted on our WikiProject page.

Thank you.

Note that, this will only track base pages, because to track the rest, we'd have to create over 140,000 talk pages for the subpages, and that just isn't worthwhile (as we're trying to remove the subpages anyways). Therefore, any alerts for subpages will still need to be posted manually.

New portal, still needs work

Portal:Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, courtesy of Mozart834428196. See also, the discussion.

Drafting a new portals guideline

Your input/editing is welcome on the draft-in-progress of a new guideline for portals.

See or work on the draft at User:Cesdeva/sandbox11.

See also the discussion at: Wikipedia talk:Portal guidelines#RfC on new portal guidelines

RfC on new TOC layout for main portal list

There is a proposal to change the look of the table of contents at Portal:Contents/Portals.

See: Portal talk:Contents/Portals#RFC on layout update.

Deletion discussion survivors

Thank you to those who have participated in portal deletion discussions. There are still some editors out there who despise portals, and this comes across in their argumentation style. Wow. Such negativity. But, there is some good news...

Portal:Quidditch survived its 2nd deletion nomination
Portal:Prehistory of Antarctica did the same

Current deletion discussions are posted on our WikiProject page.

Portal space clean up

While portal detractors are trying to get rid of portals via MfD, we have deleted many of them via speedy deletion (per {{Db-p1}} or {{Db-p2}}). Essentially, they were bare skeletons, with maybe a little meat on them. The plus here is that speedy deletion is without prejudice to re-creating the portals. They can easily be restarted from scratch without getting approval, or be undeleted by request by someone willing to work on them. We have kept track of these, for when someone wants to rebuild them. They are listed at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet.

We are also removing subpages, the functions of which have been migrated to portal base pages. To see which ones have been removed, look for the redlinks in our watchlist.

There is also an MfD concerning some of these at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Redundant subpages of the Cornwall portal.

For subpages that need to be deleted, you can conveniently place this speedy deletion template at the top of each of them:

{{Db-g6|rationale=of subpage clean up – this subpage's function has been migrated to the portal base page and is no longer needed}}

Then an admin will come along and delete them.

Please help list the unlisted portals!

There are still 100 existing portals not yet presented on the main portal list at Portal:Contents/Portals. There were 400, so we've come a long way. Thank you! But we are not done yet...

Please list a couple of them. Every little bit helps. If each member of this project listed one more, it would almost all be done. Many hands make light work.

The list of missings, and instructions, are to be found at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet.

I hope to see you there!

Wrapping up

These developments make up just the tip of the iceberg. I'll have more to report in the next update, soon. — The Transhumanist 00:31, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Whoa, I missed one...

There's an article about the Portals WikiProject in the new issue of Signpost:

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2018-05-24/WikiProject report

Enjoy.

P.S.: We now have 80 members. Evad37 just joined! — The Transhumanist 01:36, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Nikephoros Komnenos (brother of Alexios I)

The article Nikephoros Komnenos (brother of Alexios I) you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Nikephoros Komnenos (brother of Alexios I) for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Iazyges -- Iazyges (talk) 21:41, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Andronikos Komnenos (son of Alexios I)

The article Andronikos Komnenos (son of Alexios I) you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Andronikos Komnenos (son of Alexios I) for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Iazyges -- Iazyges (talk) 22:02, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #007, 31 May 2018

We have grown to 89 members.

This is the seventh issue of this newsletter. For previous issues, see our newsletter archive.

Welcome

A warm welcome to our nearly one dozen new members...

Our new members include:

Be sure to say "hi" and welcome them to the team.

The portal set has shrunk

There were 1515 portals, but now we have 1475, because we speedy deleted a bunch of incompleted portals that had been sitting around for ages, that were empty shells or had very little content. Because they were speedied, they can be rebuilt from scratch without acquiring approval from WP:DRV.

Maintenance runs on the portals set have begun

This is what we have been gearing up for: upgrading the portals en masse, using AWB.

More than half of the Associated Wikimedia sections have been converted to no longer use a subpage. This chore will probably be completed over the next week or two. Many thanks to the WikiGnome Squad, who have added an Associated Wikimedia section to the many geography-related portals that lacked one. The rest of the subjects await. :)

The next maintenance drive will be on the intro sections. Notices have gone out to the WikiProjects for which one or more portals fall within their subject scope. Once enough time has elapsed for them to respond (1 week), AWB processing of intro sections will begin.

Thank you, you

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your part in the RfC. I went back and reread much of it. I believe your enthusiasm played a major part in turning the tide on there. I'm proud of all of you.

Why reread that mess, you ask?

To harvest ideas, and to keep the problems that need to be fixed firmly in mind. But, also to keep in touch. See below...

Thank yous all around

I've contacted all of the other opposers of the RfC proposal to delete portals, to thank them for their support, and to assure them that their decision was not made in vain. I updated them on our activities, provided the link to the interviews about this project in the Signpost, pointed out our newsletter archive so they can keep up-to-date with what we are doing, and I invited them all to come and have a look-see at our operations (on our talk page).

Sockpuppet, and reverting his work

It so happened that one of our members was a sockpuppet: JLJ001. According to the admin who blocked him, he was a particularly tricky long term abuser. This is a weird situation, since the user was quite helpful. He will be missed.

This has been somewhat disruptive, because admins are doing routine deletions of the pages (portals, templates, etc.) he created, and reversion of his edits (I don't know if they will be reverting all of them). Please bear with them, as they are only doing what is best in the long run.

The following pages have been deleted by the admins so far, that I know of:

Automation so far, section by section...

Intro – {{Transclude lead excerpt}}
Selected article – {{Transclude random excerpt}}
In the news – {{Transclude selected current events}}
Associated Wikimedia – {{Wikimedia for portals|species=no|voy=no}}
Categories – {{#tag:categorytree|{{PAGENAME}}}}

Automatic article alerts is up and running

Automatic article alerts are now featured on the project page.

Some super out-of-date entries kept showing up on there, so posting it on the Project page was delayed. Thanks to Evad37 and AfroThundr for providing solutions on this one. Evad37 adjusted the workflow settings per Wikipedia:Article alerts/Subscribing#Choosing workflows, to make sure only the appropriate page types show up. AfroThundr removed the tags from the old entries that caused them to keep showing up in the article alerts.

Other things that could use some automation

Noyster pointed out that it would be nice to automate the updating of the portals section at the Community bulletin board.

Another major component of the portal system is the main list of portals, at Portal:Contents/Portals. How would we go about automating the updating of that?

Please post your ideas on the WikiProject's talk page. Thank you.

Deletion discussion survivors

Keep in mind that we have already speedy deleted almost all of the nearly empty portals, which can be rebuilt without approval whenever it is convenient to do so. Other portals should be completed if at all possible rather than delete them through MfD (which requires approval from Deletion review to rebuild).

Portal:Juanes – see the discussion

(Current deletion discussions are posted on our WikiProject page).

Portals needing repair

Portal:Toys

Wrapping up

There's still more, but it will have to wait until next issue.

Until then, see ya around the project. — The Transhumanist 12:00, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Just double checking

Would you concur with me?[1] - LouisAragon (talk) 17:23, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

@LouisAragon: Definitely concur. It is about states, not ethnic groups, and multiple empires, not only the Achaemenid one. Constantine ✍ 16:52, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Aight. Btw, do you perhaps know how to get (full) access to the latest / up-to-date version of the Enc. of Islam? LouisAragon (talk) 17:21, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

You mean EI THREE? AFAIK it is only an online resource, so you need some university or similar account. If you want anything specific, email me. --Constantine ✍ 18:33, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Done - LouisAragon (talk) 09:31, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

...Though belated, wanted to say thanks!! ;-) - LouisAragon (talk) 11:16, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

You're welcome :) Constantine ✍ 19:58, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Sent you another mail. - LouisAragon (talk) 16:08, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #008, 7 June 2018

The WikiProject now has 92 participants, including 16 admins.

Welcome

A warm welcome to the newest members of the team:

Be sure to say hi.

Congrats

Pbsouthwood has just gotten through the grueling RfA process to become a Wikipedia administrator. Be sure to congratulate him.

The reason he went for it was: "For some time I expect to be busy with subpage deletion for Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals as mentioned above. The amount of work is expected to keep me busy for some time. I am primarly a content creator and contributor to policy discussions, but would be willing to consider other admin work on request, providing that I feel that my involvement would be appropriate and not too far outside my comfort zone."

New feature: Picture slideshow

Picture slideshow

Image 1Capitol Mall, seen from the Capitol
Image 2US Bank Tower
Image 3Old Town Sacramento, the capital as it looked like in 19th century
Image 4Sacramento Memorial Auditorium
Image 5Pocket Sacramento Canal
Image 6Tower Bridge
Image 7State Capitol Building
Image 8Sacramento from near the Sacramento River

Evad37 has figured out a way to let the user flip through pictures without purging the page. Purging is awkward because there is an intermediary confirmation screen that you have to click on "yes". In the new picture slideshow section, all you have to do is click on the > to go to the next picture or < to instantly show the previous feature. The feature also shuffles the pictures when the page is initiated, so that they are shown in a different order each time the user visits the page (or purges it).

It is featured in Portal:Sacramento, California. Check it out to the right.

Keep in mind that the feature is a beta version. Please share your comments on how to refine this feature, at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals#Refining the Picture slideshow.

The one-page portal has been achieved

We now have a one-page portal design. It isn't fully automated, nor is it even fully semi-automated, as there are still some manually filled-in areas. But it no longer requires any subpages in portal space, and that is a huge improvement. For example, Portal:Sacramento, California utilizes the one-page design concept. While is employs heavy use of templates, it does not have any subpages of its own.

I commend you for your teamwork

This is the most cooperative team I've ever seen. With a strong spirit of working together to get an important job done. Kudos to you.

In conclusion...

There's more. A lot more. But it will have to wait until next issue, but you don't have to wait. See what's going on at the WikiProject's talk page. — The Transhumanist 02:08, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Battle of Lalakaon copyedit

Hello, Cplakidas. This is a courtesy notice that the copy edit you requested for Battle of Lalakaon at the Guild of Copy Editors requests page is now complete. All feedback welcome! Good luck with FA and all the best, Miniapolis 18:21, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Miniapolis, your help is much appreciated! Constantine ✍ 19:25, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CXLVI, June 2018

Your Military History Newsletter

Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results
Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content
Book review: Recent external reviews
Op-ed: TomStar81 on a supergun of World War I
Timeline: This month in World War I

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 10:35, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

NPP Backlog Elimination Drive

Hello Cplakidas, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel: there are currently 2900 unreviewed articles, and 4000 unreviewed redirects.

Announcing the Backlog Elimination Drive!

As a final push, we have decided to run a backlog elimination drive from the 20th to the 30th of June.
Reviewers who review at least 50 articles or redirects will receive a Special Edition NPP Barnstar: . Those who review 100, 250, 500, or 1000 pages will also receive tiered awards: , , , .
Please do not be hasty, take your time and fully review each page. It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 06:57, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #009, 15 June 2018

(Article slideshow prototype)
Selected animals

Image 1

The horse (Equus ferus caballus) is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, Eohippus, into the large, single-toed animal of today. Humans began domesticating horses around 4000 BCE, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BCE. Horses in the subspecies caballus are domesticated, although some domesticated populations live in the wild as feral horses. These feral populations are not true wild horses, which are horses that never have been domesticated. There is an extensive, specialized vocabulary used to describe equine-related concepts, covering everything from anatomy to life stages, size, colors, markings, breeds, locomotion, and behavior.

Horses are adapted to run, allowing them to quickly escape predators, and possess a good sense of balance and a strong fight-or-flight response. Related to this need to flee from predators in the wild is an unusual trait: horses are able to sleep both standing up and lying down, with younger horses tending to sleep significantly more than adults. Female horses, called mares, carry their young for approximately 11 months and a young horse, called a foal, can stand and run shortly following birth. Most domesticated horses begin training under a saddle or in a harness between the ages of two and four. They reach full adult development by age five, and have an average lifespan of between 25 and 30 years.

Horse breeds are loosely divided into three categories based on general temperament: spirited "hot bloods" with speed and endurance; "cold bloods", such as draft horses and some ponies, suitable for slow, heavy work; and "warmbloods", developed from crosses between hot bloods and cold bloods, often focusing on creating breeds for specific riding purposes, particularly in Europe. There are more than 300 breeds of horse in the world today, developed for many different uses. (Full article...)
Image 2

The cat (Felis catus), also referred to as domestic cat or house cat, is a small domesticated carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species of the family Felidae. Advances in archaeology and genetics have shown that the domestication of the cat occurred in the Near East around 7500 BC. It is commonly kept as a pet and farm cat, but also ranges freely as a feral cat avoiding human contact. Valued by humans for companionship and its ability to kill vermin, the cat's retractable claws are adapted to killing small prey like mice and rats. It has a strong, flexible body, quick reflexes, and sharp teeth, and its night vision and sense of smell are well developed. It is a social species, but a solitary hunter and a crepuscular predator. Cat communication includes vocalizations—including meowing, purring, trilling, hissing, growling, and grunting–as well as body language. It can hear sounds too faint or too high in frequency for human ears, such as those made by small mammals. It secretes and perceives pheromones.

Female domestic cats can have kittens from spring to late autumn in temperate zones and throughout the year in equatorial regions, with litter sizes often ranging from two to five kittens. Domestic cats are bred and shown at events as registered pedigreed cats, a hobby known as cat fancy. Animal population control of cats may be achieved by spaying and neutering, but their proliferation and the abandonment of pets has resulted in large numbers of feral cats worldwide, contributing to the extinction of bird, mammal, and reptile species.

As of 2017
'"`UNIQ--nowiki-00000019-QINU`"'
,^[update]
'"`UNIQ--nowiki-0000001A-QINU`"'
the domestic cat was the second most popular pet in the United States, with 95.6 million cats owned and around 42 million households owning at least one cat. In the United Kingdom, 26% of adults have a cat, with an estimated population of 10.9 million pet cats as of 2020
'"`UNIQ--nowiki-0000001B-QINU`"'
.^[update]
'"`UNIQ--nowiki-0000001C-QINU`"'
As of 2021
'"`UNIQ--nowiki-0000001D-QINU`"'
,^[update]
'"`UNIQ--nowiki-0000001E-QINU`"'
there were an estimated 220 million owned and 480 million stray cats in the world. (Full article...)
Image 3
House mouse (Mus musculus)

A mouse (<abbr title="
'"`UNIQ--nowiki-0000001F-QINU`"'
">pl.: mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (Mus musculus). Mice are also popular as pets. In some places, certain kinds of field mice are locally common. They are known to invade homes for food and shelter.

Mice are typically distinguished from rats by their size. Generally, when a muroid rodent is discovered, its common name includes the term mouse if it is smaller, or rat if it is larger. The common terms rat and mouse are not taxonomically specific. Typical mice are classified in the genus Mus, but the term mouse is not confined to members of Mus and can also apply to species from other genera such as the deer mouse (Peromyscus).

Domestic mice sold as pets often differ substantially in size from the common house mouse. This is attributable to breeding and different conditions in the wild. The best-known strain of mouse is the white lab mouse. It has more uniform traits that are appropriate to its use in research. (Full article...)
Image 4

The dog (Canis familiaris or Canis lupus familiaris) is a domesticated descendant of the wolf. Also called the domestic dog, it was selectively bred from an extinct population of wolves during the Late Pleistocene by hunter-gatherers. The dog was the first species to be domesticated by humans, over 14,000 years ago and before the development of agriculture. Experts estimate that due to their long association with humans, dogs have gained the ability to thrive on a starch-rich diet that would be inadequate for other canids.

Dogs have been bred for desired behaviors, sensory capabilities, and physical attributes. Dog breeds vary widely in shape, size, and color. They have the same number of bones (with the exception of the tail), powerful jaws that house around 42 teeth, and well-developed senses of smell, hearing, and sight. Compared to humans, dogs have an inferior visual acuity, a superior sense of smell, and a relatively large olfactory cortex. They perform many roles for humans, such as hunting, herding, pulling loads, protection, companionship, therapy, aiding disabled people, and assisting police and the military.

Communication in dogs includes eye gaze, facial expression, vocalization, body posture (including movements of bodies and limbs), and gustatory communication (scents, pheromones, and taste). They mark their territories by urinating on them, which is more likely when entering a new environment. Over the millennia, dogs became uniquely adapted to human behavior; this adaptation includes being able to understand and communicate with humans. As such, the human–canine bond has been a topic of frequent study, and dogs' influence on human society has given them the sobriquet of "man's best friend". (Full article...)

Don't mind that box to the right. We'll be talking about that later, below.

Almost done...

With the portals upgrades?

No. :)

What is almost done is the updating of the main list of portals!

There are 23 portals left to be listed.

Kudos to the WikiGnome Squadron, for spearheading this.

Once it is fully updated, we need to keep it up to date. When you complete a portal, remember to add it to Portal:Contents/Portals.

Concerning portal upgrades, we are working on those section-by-section...

Associated Wikimedia section conversion task complete

The Associated Wikimedia sections of the entire set of portals have been upgraded. These are now handled on each portal base page (bypassing the previously used corresponding subpages), using the {{Wikimedia for portals}} template rather than reiterated copied/pasted code.

So, to be more accurate on reporting upgrade progress, that's one section down (for the whole set of portals), with (about) nine sections to go. (Skipping curated portals, regarding custom content sections, of course).

Further section conversions (using AWB)

Work is underway on converting Portals' introduction sections, and the categories sections.

If you would like to help, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Upgrade introduction sections and Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#AWB task: Convert category sections

Further section conversions (by hand)

Work has also started with converting selected picture sections to picture slideshow sections. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Install picture slideshows.

Quality rating system for portals under development

Currently, there is no quality rating for portals: in the Portals WikiProject box on each portals' talk page, it just says "Portal". But times are a changin'. Quality assessment is on the way, and you can help. See the discussion.

What's coming: excerpt slideshows

Evad37 has figured out a way to apply the picture slideshow feature to displaying article excerpts (now you can check out the provided box above). :) This allows us to bypass page purging to see the next selection, and you can even click through them rather quickly. Currently, the wikicode for doing this for article excerpts is a bit eye-boggling, and so we are looking into simplifying it. A streamlined version may be just around the corner.

Note that this is a prototype, not ready for widespread use. Click on the box in between the lesser than and greater than signs, to see what I mean. It was meant for pictures, and so the thumbnail feature doesn't apply to article prose very well. I've presented it even though it isn't ready, to show the direction portal development is heading. See the discussion.

Wow

I'm amazed at how rapidly portals are evolving. And we're still within a single generation of portal technological evolution. Imagine what they might be in 2 or 3 more generations of developments. Pretty soon, portals will be able to shake your hand. :) — The Transhumanist 11:03, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 28

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 28, April – May 2018

#1Bib1Ref
New partners
User Group update
Global branches update
- Wikipedia Library global coordinators' meeting
Spotlight: What are the ten most cited sources on Wikipedia? Let's ask the data
Bytes in brief

Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Italian and French versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:33, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Category:7th-century Gothic people has been nominated for discussion

Category:7th-century Gothic people, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Marcocapelle (talk) 19:27, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #010, 30 June 2018

We've grown to 94 participants.

A warm welcome to dcljr and Kpgjhpjm.

Rating system for portals

We are in the process of developing a rating system specifically for portals, as the quality assessment scheme for articles does not apply to portals. It is coming along nicely. Your input would be very helpful. See the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/General#Proposed new quality class assessments.

Better than a barnstar

One of our participants got involved with this WikiProject through interest in how the new generation of portals would be handled in WP's MOS (Manual of Style). It didn't take long before he got sucked in deeper. This has given him an opportunity to look around, and so, he has made an assessment of this WikiProject's operations:

I'm quite frankly really impressed and inspired by what's happening here. If you'd asked me a year ago if I thought portals should just be scrapped as a failed, dragged-out experiment, I would have said "yes". This planning and the progress toward making it all practical is exemplary of the wiki spirit, in particular of a happy service-to-readers puppy properly wagging its technological and editorial tail instead of the other way around, and without "drama". It's also one of the few examples I've seen in a long time of a new wikiproject actually doing something useful and fomenting constructive activity (instead of acting as a barrier to participation, and a canvassing/ownership farm for PoV pushers). Kudos all around. — SMcCandlish

Congratulations, everyone. Keep up the great work.

Slideshow development

We've run into a glitch with slideshows: they don't work on mobile devices.

Initially, we will need to explore options that allow portals to have slideshows without adversely affecting mobile viewers. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Design#Mobile view support.

Eventually, we may need another way to do slideshows. If we do go this route, and I don't see why we wouldn't, then (user configurable) automatic slideshows also become a possibility.

TemplateStyles RfC passed

Once implemented, this will allow editors to create and edit cascading style sheets for use with templates. This will expand what we can do with portals. For more detail, see mw:Extension:TemplateStyles and Wikipedia:TemplateStyles.

Automation effort

We've run into an obstacle using Lua-based selective transclusion: Lua is incapable (on Wikipedia) of reading in article names from categories. Because of this, we'll need to seek other approaches for fully automating the Selected article section. We are exploring sources other than categories, and other technologies besides Lua.

Speaking of using other sources, the template {{Transclude list item excerpt}} collects list items from a specified page, or from a section of that page, and transcludes the lead from a randomly selected link from that list. Courtesy of Certes. So, if you use this in a portal, and if the template specifies a page or section serviced by JL-Bot, you've now got yourself an automatically updated section in the portal. JL-Bot provides links to featured content and good articles, by subject.

What is "fully automated"? When you create a portal using a creation template, and the portal works thereafter without editor intervention, the portal is fully automated. That is, the portal is supported by features that fetch new content. If you have to add new article names every so often for it to display new content, then it is only semi-automated.

Currently, the Selected article section is semi-automated, because it requires that an editor supplies the names of the various articles for which excerpts are (automatically) displayed. For examples, look at the wikisource code of Portal:Reptiles, Portal:Ancient Tamil civilization, and Portal:Reference works.

So far, 3 sections are fully automatable: the introduction section, the categories section, and the Associated Wikimedia section.

Where is all this heading?

Henry.

Or some other name.

Eventually, the portal department will be a software program. And we won't have to do anything (unless we want to). Not even tell it what portals to create (unless we want to). It will just do it all (plus whatever else we want it to do). And we will of course give it good manners, and a name.

But, that is a few years off.

Until then, building portals is still (partially) up to us. — The Transhumanist 13:29, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

Halmyros

Hi. A small remark : the first sentence of the "sources" § seems to me questionable ("Three sources report in some detail on the events before and during the battle, all of them drawing on first-hand Catalan accounts and reflecting the Catalan point of view") I don't have access to the full book of DeVries so I can't check if he gives justifications for this, but 1) I wonder on what basis Gregoras can be described as "drawing on first-hand Catalan accounts" 2)The Aragonese version of the Chronicle of the Morea ([2]) is not the only one that deals with the battle, so does the Greek version ([3]) and the battle is also alluded to in the French version; and as the Aragonese is a (later) translation, the fact that it is written in some spanish langage doesn't necessarily imply that its author/translator had access to "first-hand Catalan accounts". (that every version of the Chronicle deals more or less with the battle can be sourced with Jacoby - by the way I can send it to you in pdf if you don't have it, tell me if you wish). Does DeVries explain how they "reflect the Catalan POW"? --Phso2 (talk) 20:18, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your input. TBH I had wondered about that bit myself, DeVriews does not really explain it. Muntaner is clearly reliant on eyewitness account, but he makes the same assumption about the Aragonese CotM, and then writes that Gregoras' narrative "seems to have been taken from Catalan or Turkish participants". He does not cite any secondary scholarship to that effect though. Though I think that the article as such is rather comprehensive and correct (pending your comments), the source situation needs some work, so any help there would be appreciated. Having a copy of Jacoby's work would definitely help, thanks a lot. --Constantine ✍ 09:16, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

I also think it "is rather comprehensive and correct", perhaps it could be a little bit less affirmative in some points (that rely on DeVries), it seems DeVries is a bit too superficial or inconsistent somehow, and merely follows the extremely influencial Miller : he seems to accept without discussion the location near the Kephissos, doubt the marsh story at the end but seems to accept it as well without reservation in other parts, the bibliography he gives in note 3 seems weaker (Cheetham and Pascot are not of the scholarliest trend) and older than this article's (for example DeV cites Setton, but Setton's position has varied much from his older works to his later ones, in the papacy and the Levant he seems to endorse Jacoby's views)...Do you understand the remark that the battle (which he describes as a quasi total annihilation of one side - including its leader - quickly followed by the conquest of its land) "perhaps even could be defined as decisive"? How could a battle be more "decisive" than this one?

Besides, perhaps you (as a native speaker) could also add some more about the Greek writers's theories about the location? (though they seem to have been discarded, they look interesting for the sake of history's history). --Phso2 (talk) 19:08, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Brill Online

Hey, I just sent you another email. :-) - LouisAragon (talk) 16:28, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Replied. - LouisAragon (talk) 18:20, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Sent you one more! - LouisAragon (talk) 11:18, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Greek help

Hey, hope its going fine. I just finished writing Antiochus XII Dionysus. I still need to write the lede and arrange the infobox but the article itself is done. However, this one have four epithets!!! I was wondering if you can write them in Greek alphabet :)

they are Dionysus - Epiphanes - Philopator - Callinicus

Appreciate your help. Cheers.--Attar-Aram syria (talk) 20:57, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Done, always a pleasure. I'll give it a read tomorrow :) --Constantine ✍ 22:17, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks!

		Military history reviewers' award
		On behalf of the Milhist coordinators, thank you for your review during the April to June 2018 quarter. Here is a WikiStripe for your contribution to our article quality processes. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:29, 7 July 2018 (UTC) Keep track of upcoming reviews. Just copy and paste `{{WPMILHIST Review alerts}}` to your user space

Your GA nomination of Megas logothetes

The article Megas logothetes you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Megas logothetes for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of HaEr48 -- HaEr48 (talk) 01:01, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CXLVII, July 2018

Your Military History Newsletter

Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results
Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content
Book review: This month's external reviews
Op-ed: TomStar81 on the murder of the Romanovs
Timeline: This month in World War I

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 12:12, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #011, 10 July 2018

We now have 97 participants.

Be sure to welcome our newest members, BrantleyIzMe, Coffeeandcrumbs, and Nolan Perry, with warm regards.

Work is proceeding apace. We have 2 major thrusts right now: converting the intro sections of portals, and building the components of the one-page automated model...

Converting the intro sections

We need everybody, except those building software components, to work on converting intros. If you have AWB, definitely use that. If not, then work on them manually. Even one a day, or as often as you can muster, will help a lot. There are only about 1,000 of them left to go, so if everyone chips in, it will go pretty quickly. Remember, there are 97 of us!

The intros for most of the portals starting with A through F have already been converted to use the {{Transclude lead excerpt}} template.

The standard wikicode for the automated intro that we want to put into place looks like this:

{{/box-header|Introduction|noedit=yes|}}
{{Transclude lead excerpt | {{PAGENAME}} | paragraphs=1-2 | files=1}}
{{Box-footer|[[{{PAGENAME}}|Read more...]]}}

That works for most portals, but not all. For some portals it requires some tweaking, and for others, we may have to use a different or more customized approach. Remember to visually inspect each portal you work on and make sure that it works before moving on to the next one.

Be sure to skip user-maintained portals. They are listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Portals#Specific_portal_maintainers.

AWB tips

I've started an AWB tips page, for those of you feeling a bit overwhelmed by that power user tool. Feel free to add to it and/or improve it.

Portal automation

We have some very talented Lua programmers, who are pushing the limits of what we can do in gathering data from Wikipedia's various namespaces and presenting it in portals. Due to their efforts, Lua is powering the selective transclusion core of our emerging automated portal design, in the form of selected article sections that rotate content, and slideshows.

To go beyond Lua's limits, to take full advantage of Mediawiki's API, we are in the midst of adding another programming language to the resources we shall be making use of: JavaScript. The ways that JavaScript can help us edit portals to boost the power of our Lua solutions, are being explored, which will likely make the two languages synergistic if not symbiotic. Research is under way on how we can use JavaScript to make some of the portal semi-automated features fully automatically self-updating, in ways that Lua cannot. Like gathering random members from a category and inserting them into a portal's templates as parameters. Once the parameters are in place, Lua does the rest.

If you would like to get involved with design efforts, or just keep up on them, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Design.

When should we start building new portals?

Well, not at the present time, because building portals is quite time consuming. The good news is that we are working on a design that will be fully automated, or as close to that as we can get. And the new design is being implemented in the portal department's main portal creation template. This means, that not only will portals update themselves, their creation will be highly automated as well. That's the nature of templates. You put them in place, and they just... work.

What I'm getting at here, is that it would be better to wait to build lots of new portals until after the new design is completed. Because with it, instead of taking hours to create a new portal, it will likely take minutes.

That does not mean we should be idle in the meantime. The main reason most of us are here is because it became apparent that portals were largely unmaintained and had grown out-of-date. This had become so apparent that a proposal was made to delete all the portals and the portal namespace to boot. That makes our main objective in the short term to improve all the existing portals so that the community will want to keep them—forever.

Building lots of new portals comes later. Let's fix up the ones we have first. ;)

And on that note, I bid you adieu. Until next newsletter, see ya 'round the WikiProject. — The Transhumanist 12:29, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Response to the sock puppet section of Pumpie

One response on Wikipedia in the article: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Pumpie was on the section that it still not responded for about two weeks. I have responded to that. The reason is that I did not respond to this answer was that I took a break from editing on Wikipedia. I was unaware to it but I had an editing break.

In some new edits, I paste one existing article into another article, with different ones in some parts. Some are perfectly (or comparably) translated from another language into English. Sentences has to be in perfect from, not with spelling errors, I understand that. Also that I definitely understood, a new article has to come with a reference or two and references comes from articles that have been translated from another language into English. In some portions, a newly created article being translated into English from Wikipedia in another language has to come with a photo that is from Commons, even from what is on that version of Wikipedia.

All new edits I continue to do, as correct and proper as possible. I will be more careful in my edits and spelling. I have no clue that I can ask for a review on spelling correction after I create some new article. If I make one or two error, one different user may be needed to correct a translation or sentence if necessary. Terriffic Dunker Guy (talk) 22:50, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

(This section, and the next one, were added to my talk page on Wikimedia Commons. I have moved them here.) Terriffic Dunker Guy: there is a bit of confusion here, as I am not connected with that investigation. Cplakidas, this comes up rather infrequently for me, but it does come up: the way you have your signature set up can occasionally mislead people into going to my user talk instead of yours, or referencing me instead of you. It might make sense to distinguish it in some way. --Constantine (talk) 23:53, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi Constantine, sorry that you got involved in this. You say that this comes up "infrequently". I am curious, has it come up ever before? This is entirely the first time I see anyone mistaking us for one another,and I find it hard to believe that anyone other than Pumpie, with his inability to understand even basic English, and his general incompetence/incoherent behaviour, would fail to simply follow the link to my user page or talk page. Cheers, Constantine ✍ 06:28, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Some sock puppets of Pumpie on Wikipedia are not of the user

Some sock puppets of Pumpie, one or two are not actually related to the user Pumpie. It was of other users. Terriffic Dunker Guy (talk) 23:35, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Greek warship prefixes

There is a debate here [4] about made up ship prefixes used by NATO. In the discussion the question has been raised if Greek warships use the prefix HS as part of their name and therefore should be referred to as HS Foo just as we refer to HMS or USS Foo? Grateful your advice Lyndaship (talk) 17:32, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #012, 15 July 2018

We have 97 participants.

Getting faster

Automation makes things go faster, even portal creation. One of the components Certes made was {{Transclude list item excerpt}}. I became curious about its possible applications.

So I worked out a portal design using it, the initial prototypes being Portal:Kyoto (without a "Selected pictures" section), and Portal:Dubai (with a "Selected pictures" section). Then I used Portal:Dubai as the basis for further portals of this type...

I was able to revamp Portal:Munich from start to finish in less than 22 minutes.

Portal:Dresden took about 19 minutes.

Portal:Athens took less than 17 minutes.

Did Portal:Florence in about 13 minutes.

Portal:Stockholm also in about 13.

Portal:Palermo approx. 12 minutes.

Why?

To see, and to show, what may become feasible via automation.

It now looks highly feasible that we could get portal construction time down to a few minutes, or maybe even down to a few seconds.

The singularity is just around the corner. :)

Slideshows

When using the {{Random slideshow}} template to display pictures, be sure to use the plural tense in the section title: "Selected pictures". That's because slideshows don't show up on many mobile devices. Instead the whole set of pictures is shown, hence the section title "Selected pictures", as it fits both situations.

In case you are curious, here is a list of the portals so far that have a slideshow:

Sacramento
Saint Petersburg
Salem
Scottish Islands
South East England
Stockholm
Surrey
Sydney
Tamil People
Telephones (empty – please add some pictures)
Turin
Underwater diving
Vienna
West Sussex

Progress on intro conversions

The intros for most of the portals up through the letter "O" have been converted, using this wikicode:

{{/box-header|Introduction|noedit=yes|}}
{{Transclude lead excerpt | {{PAGENAME}} | paragraphs=1-2 | files=1}}
{{Box-footer|[[{{PAGENAME}}|Read more...]]}}

Where the pagename didn't match the article title for the subject, the title was typed in.

Most of the portals that do not contain {{/intro}} or {{{{FULLPGENAME}}/Intro}} have not yet been processed.

About a thousand portals use the method of selective transclusion for the intro section. That's about two-thirds. That means we have one-third of the way to go on the intro section conversions.

Much more to come...

So much has been happening with portals that I can't keep up with it. (That's good). Which means, more in the upcoming issue. Until then, see ya 'round the project. Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 08:44, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #013, 18 July 2018

I got overwhelmed IRL (in real life) during the production of issue #12. So, here is a catch-up issue, to help bring you (and me) up to speed on what is happening with portals...

By the way, we still have 97 participants. (Tell all your friends about this WikiProject, and have them join!)

Panoramas!

One cool feature of some of the geographical portals is a panoramic picture at the top of the intro section.

Check these out:

The Portals WikiGnome squadron is busy adding panoramas to geographical portals that don't yet have one. Feel free to join in on the fun. See task details at Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Add a panorama or skyline to a geographic portal.

Caveat: avoid super-huge pics, as they can cause portal scripts to time-out. Please try to keep picture size down below 2 megabytes. Thank you.

Auto-populated slideshows

Speaking of pictures...

We now have two slideshow templates. You may be familiar with {{Random slideshow}}, in which the editor types in (or copies/pastes) a list of pictures he or she wants it to display.

Well, now we have another template, courtesy of Evad37, which accepts one or more page names instead, and displays a random image off of the listed pages. So instead of listing dozens of files by hand, you can include a title or three to be scanned automatically. It even lets you specify particular sections.

The new slideshow template is {{Transclude files as random slideshow}}.

Here's a sample, that grabs images from a single page:

Selected motorcycle or motorcycling pictures

Image 1Ernesto 'Che' Guevara (left) holding the handlebars of his 500 cc single cylinder Norton motorcycle (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling)
Image 2Joey Dunlop on his Honda RC30 ready for the Senior TT (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling)
Image 3Honda CB750 inline four, the first to be called a 'superbike', and the archetypal Universal Japanese Motorcycle (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling)
Image 4Brough Superior SS 100 1925 (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling)
Image 5FIM Motocross World Championship, taking place at Mallory Park, England (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling)
Image 6Honda Super Cub, the archetypal underbone and the world's best-selling motor vehicle (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling)
Image 7BMW's first motorcycle, the 1923-1925 R32 (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling)
Image 82015 BMW R1200RT Sport Touring Motorcycle (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling)
Image 9Lucius Copeland 1894 (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling)
Image 10Logo of the British Motorcyclists Federation (BMF) (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling)
Image 11A 1969 Harley-Davidson chopper, a replica of the 'Captain America' bike from Easy Rider (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling)
Image 12A 1954 Triumph T110 (from Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling)

New Template:Box-header colour

Speaking of new templates, here's another one!

Also from Evad37, we have a new component for starting section boxes, that is color configurable, and that bypasses the need for box-header subpages altogether. It is {{Box-header colour}}.

For color support, see Web colors.

For the discussion in which this was inspired, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Tasks#Colour combinations for accessibility.

(In case you didn't notice, the slideshow box above uses this new template).

BTW, don't forget to close your box with {{Box-footer}}.

Where are we on the redesign?

The answer to this question is quite involved, and would fill this page to overflowing. Therefore, this subject, including a complete update on where we are at and where we are going with portal design, is covered at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Design.

Where are we on portal conversion?

An AWB pass to convert intros on the portals has been completed. The pass couldn't convert them all (due to various formatting configurations, etc.).

All but about 170 portals now have introductions selectively transcluded on the base page. Not counting manually maintained portals, that leaves about 70 portals that either need their intros converted, or they need an intro.

Next, we'll be converting the categories sections!

What's the plan, man?

The course of action we have been taking goes something like this, with all steps being pursued simultaeneously...

1) Design a one-page automated portal model

2) Convert existing portals to that design (except those being manually maintained)

3) Remove subpages no longer needed

4) Develop further tools to empower editors working on portals

Later, when the tools are up to the task, filling in the gaps in coverage (with new portals) will also become practical.

Are we caught up yet?

Probably not.

Who knows what our programmers and editors have dreamed up while I was writing this.

See ya again soon, — The Transhumanist 11:05, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Books

Hello friend! I'm looking for some books that are not sold in Brazil, and I needed the entire books not a minimal fraction of them (that's why I didn't ask for help elsewhere). I'm gonna put them below:

Cyrille Toumanoff, Les dynasties de la Caucasie chrétienne de l'Antiquité jusqu'au xixe siècle : Tables généalogiques et chronologiques, Rome
Christian Settipani, Continuité des élites à Byzance durant les siècles obscurs. Les princes caucasiens et l'Empire du vie au ixe siècle, Paris, de Boccard, 2006
Dédéyan, Gérard (2007). Histoire du peuple arménien. Tolosa: Éd. Privat. ISBN 978-2-7089-6874-5
P'awstos Buzand (1989). Garsoïan, Nina, ed. The Epic Histories Attributed to Pʻawstos Buzand: (Buzandaran Patmutʻiwnkʻ). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University.

If you could check in any library you know it there is any of these book and, most important, if you don't mind sending me a pdf version of them, I would really appreciate your support. I'm editing about Caucasian people, but always I need those books and don't have them. Cheers!--Renato de carvalho ferreira (talk) 18:23, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi Renato, sorry for the delay, I was away on vacation. Unfortunately, I don't have access to these works. I have a Greek translation of Dedeyan, but it is buried in some box in Greece :(. As for Settipani, may I caution you to use him only sparingly; his thesis about elite continuity is not exactly uncontroversial. Cheers, Constantine ✍ 08:49, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Congratulations from the Military History Project

		The Military history A-Class medal with swords
		On behalf of the Military History Project, I am proud to present the A-Class medal with Swords for Junayd of Aydın, Battle of Halmyros, and 19th Mechanized Division (Greece). MilHistBot (talk) 00:30, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #014, 27 July 2018

Development of design continues, full speed ahead...

Excerpt slideshows are here!

Can you say "paradigm shift"?

Now, in addition to picture slideshows, we have slideshows that can display excerpts. Portals are not just for topic tasting anymore. Now they can be made useful for surveying Wikipedia's coverage of entire subjects. This gives a deeper meaning to their name. Hmmm. "Portals"... Doorways to knowledge.

Portal:Lithuania was redesigned using excerpt slideshows. Check it out.

For those of you who cannot wait to test out these new toys...

We have not one, but three excerpt slideshow components to pick from:

For this one, you specify the page names where the excerpts are to be extracted from.

This one accepts source pages from where the page names are gathered from list items. Then an excerpt from one of those pages is displayed. The selection of what is included in the slide show can be limited to a specific number from the collection (of the page names gathered), and that selection is renewed from scratch each time the page is purged.

For example, if you specify Template:World Heritage Sites in Spain as a source page, the slideshow will cycle through those sites. Now you don't have to type them in one-by-one. This greatly reduces portal creation time.

Same as above, but gathers links instead of just linked list items.

Panoramic banners

{{Portal image banner}} displays a panoramic picture the width of the page, and adjusts its size, so it stays that way even if the user changes page view size. And it accepts multiple file names, so that the picture displayed randomizes between them each time the page is visited/purged.

Give resizing the page a try:

Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.

You can now balance section boxes

Before:

Reptile types

Image 1

Common box turtle

Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines, characterized by a special shell developed mainly from their ribs. Modern turtles are divided into two major groups, the Pleurodira (side necked turtles) and Cryptodira (hidden necked turtles), which differ in the way the head retracts. There are 360 living and recently extinct species of turtles, including land-dwelling tortoises and freshwater terrapins. They are found on most continents, some islands and, in the case of sea turtles, much of the ocean. Like other amniotes (reptiles, birds, and mammals) they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. (Full article...)
Image 2

Clockwise from top left: veiled chameleon (Chamaeleo calyptratus), rock monitor (Varanus albigularis), common blue-tongued skink (Tiliqua scincoides), Italian wall lizard (Podarcis sicula), giant leaf-tailed gecko (Uroplatus fimbriatus), and legless lizard (Anelytropsis papillosus)

Lizard is the common name used for all squamate reptiles other than snakes (and to a lesser extent amphisbaenians), encompassing over 7,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The grouping is paraphyletic as some lizards are more closely related to snakes than they are to other lizards. Lizards range in size from chameleons and geckos a few centimeters long to the 3-meter-long Komodo dragon. (Full article...)
Image 3

Northern tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus punctatus)

The tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) is a species of reptile endemic to New Zealand. Despite its close resemblance to lizards, it is part of a distinct lineage, the order Rhynchocephalia. The name tuatara is derived from the Māori language and means "peaks on the back". (Full article...)
Image 4

Yacare caiman, Caiman yacare

A caiman (/ˈkeɪmən/ (also spelled cayman) from Taíno kaiman^{[additional citation(s) needed]}) is an alligatorid belonging to the subfamily Caimaninae, one of two primary lineages within the Alligatoridae family, the other being alligators. Caimans are native to Central and South America and inhabit marshes, swamps, lakes, and mangrove rivers. They have scaly skin and live a fairly nocturnal existence. They are relatively small-sized crocodilians with an average maximum weight of 6 to 40 kg (13 to 88 lb) depending on species, with the exception of the black caiman (Melanosuchus niger), which can grow more than 4 m (13 ft) in length and weigh in excess of 450 kg (1,000 Ib). The black caiman is the largest caiman species in the world and is found in the slow-moving rivers and lakes that surround the Amazon basin. The smallest species is the Cuvier's dwarf caiman (Paleosuchus palpebrosus), which grows to 1.2 to 1.5 m (3.9 to 4.9 ft) long. There are six different species of caiman found throughout the watery jungle habitats of Central and Southern America. The average length for most of the other caiman species is about 2 to 2.5 m (6.6 to 8.2 ft) long. (Full article...)
Image 5

Corallus caninus

Snakes are elongated, limbless reptiles of the suborder Serpentes (/sɜːrˈpɛntiːz/). Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads (cranial kinesis). To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have independently evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs at least twenty-five times via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. These resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, although this rule is not universal (see Amphisbaenia, Dibamidae, and Pygopodidae). (Full article...)
Image 6

Aldabra giant tortoise
(Aldabrachelys gigantea)

Tortoises (/ˈtɔːrtəs.ɪz/ TOR-təs-iz) are reptiles of the family Testudinidae of the order Testudines (Latin for "tortoise"). Like other turtles, tortoises have a shell to protect from predation and other threats. The shell in tortoises is generally hard, and like other members of the suborder Cryptodira, they retract their necks and heads directly backward into the shell to protect them. (Full article...)
Image 7

Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus)

Crocodiles (family Crocodylidae) or true crocodiles are large semiaquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia. The term crocodile is sometimes used even more loosely to include all extant members of the order Crocodilia, which includes the alligators and caimans (family Alligatoridae), the gharial and false gharial (family Gavialidae) among other extinct taxa. (Full article...)
Image 8

An American alligator (top) and a Chinese alligator

An alligator, or colloquially gator, is a large reptile in the genus Alligator of the family Alligatoridae of the order Crocodilia. The two extant species are the American alligator (A. mississippiensis) and the Chinese alligator (A. sinensis). Additionally, several extinct species of alligator are known from fossil remains. Alligators first appeared during the late Eocene epoch about 37 million years ago. (Full article...)
Image 9

Blanus cinereus, Spain

Amphisbaenia /æmfɪsˈbiːniə/ (called amphisbaenians or worm lizards) is a group of typically legless lizards, comprising over 200 extant species. Amphisbaenians are characterized by their long bodies, the reduction or loss of the limbs, and rudimentary eyes. As many species have a pink body and scales arranged in rings, they have a superficial resemblance to earthworms. While the genus Bipes retains forelimbs, all other genera are limbless. Phylogenetic studies suggest that they are nested within Lacertoidea, closely related to the lizard family Lacertidae. Amphisbaenians are widely distributed, occurring in North America, Europe, Africa, South America, Western Asia and the Caribbean. Most species are less than 6 inches (15 cm) long. (Full article...)
Image 10

Male gharial

The gharial (Gavialis gangeticus), also known as gavial or fish-eating crocodile, is a crocodilian in the family Gavialidae and among the longest of all living crocodilians. Mature females are 2.6 to 4.5 m (8 ft 6 in to 14 ft 9 in) long, and males 3 to 6 m (9 ft 10 in to 19 ft 8 in). Adult males have a distinct boss at the end of the snout, which resembles an earthenware pot known as a ghara, hence the name "gharial". The gharial is well adapted to catching fish because of its long, narrow snout and 110 sharp, interlocking teeth. (Full article...)

Amphibian types

Image 1

European fire-bellied toad (Bombina bombina), a member of the family Bombinatoridae

Toad is a common name for certain frogs, especially of the family Bufonidae, that are characterized by dry, leathery skin, short legs, and large bumps covering the parotoid glands.

In popular culture (folk taxonomy), toads are associated with drier, rougher skin and more terrestrial habitats. However, this distinction does not align precisely with scientific taxonomy. (Full article...)
Image 2

Spotted salamander, Ambystoma maculatum

Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by their lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults. All ten extant salamander families are grouped together under the order Urodela from the group Caudata. Urodela is a scientific Latin term based on the Ancient Greek οὐρά δήλη: ourà dēlē "conspicuous tail". Caudata is the Latin for "tailed ones", from cauda: "tail".

Salamander diversity is highest in eastern North America, especially in the Appalachian Mountains; most species are found in the Holarctic realm, with some species present in the Neotropical realm. Salamanders never have more than four toes on their front legs and five on their rear legs, but some species have fewer digits and others lack hind limbs. Their permeable skin usually makes them reliant on habitats in or near water or other cool, damp places. Some salamander species are fully aquatic throughout their lives, some take to the water intermittently, and others are entirely terrestrial as adults.

This group of amphibians is capable of regenerating lost limbs as well as other damaged parts of their bodies. Researchers hope to reverse engineer the regenerative processes for potential human medical applications, such as brain and spinal cord injury treatment or preventing harmful scarring during heart surgery recovery. The remarkable ability of salamanders to regenerate is not just limited to limbs but extends to vital organs such as the heart, jaw, and parts of the spinal cord, showing their uniqueness compared to different types of vertebrates. ⁤⁤This ability is most remarkable for occurring without any type of scarring. ⁤⁤This has made salamanders an invaluable model organism in scientific research aimed at understanding and achieving regenerative processes for medical advancements in human and animal biology. (Full article...)
Image 3

Various types of frog

A frog is any member of a diverse and largely carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order Anura (coming from the Ancient Greek ἀνούρα, literally 'without tail'). The oldest fossil "proto-frog" Triadobatrachus is known from the Early Triassic of Madagascar (250 million years ago), but molecular clock dating suggests their split from other amphibians may extend further back to the Permian, 265 million years ago. Frogs are widely distributed, ranging from the tropics to subarctic regions, but the greatest concentration of species diversity is in tropical rainforest. Frogs account for around 88% of extant amphibian species. They are also one of the five most diverse vertebrate orders. Warty frog species tend to be called toads, but the distinction between frogs and toads is informal, not from taxonomy or evolutionary history.

An adult frog has a stout body, protruding eyes, anteriorly-attached tongue, limbs folded underneath, and no tail (the tail of tailed frogs is an extension of the male cloaca). Frogs have glandular skin, with secretions ranging from distasteful to toxic. Their skin varies in colour from well-camouflaged dappled brown, grey and green to vivid patterns of bright red or yellow and black to show toxicity and ward off predators. Adult frogs live in fresh water and on dry land; some species are adapted for living underground or in trees.

Frogs typically lay their eggs in the water. The eggs hatch into aquatic larvae called tadpoles that have tails and internal gills. They have highly specialised rasping mouth parts suitable for herbivorous, omnivorous or planktivorous diets. The life cycle is completed when they metamorphose into adults. A few species deposit eggs on land or bypass the tadpole stage. Adult frogs generally have a carnivorous diet consisting of small invertebrates, but omnivorous species exist and a few feed on plant matter. Frog skin has a rich microbiome which is important to their health. Frogs are extremely efficient at converting what they eat into body mass. They are an important food source for predators and part of the food web dynamics of many of the world's ecosystems. The skin is semi-permeable, making them susceptible to dehydration, so they either live in moist places or have special adaptations to deal with dry habitats. Frogs produce a wide range of vocalisations, particularly in their breeding season, and exhibit many different kinds of complex behaviors to attract mates, to fend off predators and to generally survive. (Full article...)
Image 4

Oscaecilia ochrocephala (Caeciliidae)

Caecilians (/sɪˈsɪliən/; New Latin for 'blind ones') are a group of limbless, vermiform (worm-shaped) or serpentine (snake-shaped) amphibians with small or sometimes nonexistent eyes. They mostly live hidden in soil or in streambeds, and this cryptic lifestyle renders caecilians among the least familiar amphibians. Modern caecilians live in the tropics of South and Central America, Africa, and southern Asia. Caecilians feed on small subterranean creatures such as earthworms. The body is cylindrical and often darkly coloured, and the skull is bullet-shaped and strongly built. Caecilian heads have several unique adaptations, including fused cranial and jaw bones, a two-part system of jaw muscles, and a chemosensory tentacle in front of the eye. The skin is slimy and bears ringlike markings or grooves and may contain scales.

Modern caecilians are a clade, the order Gymnophiona /ˌdʒɪmnəˈfaɪənə/ (or Apoda /ˈæpədə/), one of the three living amphibian groups alongside Anura (frogs) and Urodela (salamanders). Gymnophiona is a crown group, encompassing all modern caecilians and all descendants of their last common ancestor. There are more than 220 living species of caecilian classified in 10 families. Gymnophionomorpha is a recently coined name for the corresponding total group which includes Gymnophiona as well as a few extinct stem-group caecilians (extinct amphibians whose closest living relatives are caecilians but are not descended from any caecilian). Some palaeontologists have used the name Gymnophiona for the total group and the old name Apoda for the crown group'. However, Apoda has other even older uses, including as the name of a genus of Butterfly making its use potentially confusing and best avoided. 'Gymnophiona' derives from the Greek words γυμνος / gymnos (Ancient Greek for 'naked') and οφις / ophis (Ancient Greek for 'snake'), as the caecilians were originally thought to be related to snakes and to lack scales.

The study of caecilian evolution is complicated by their poor fossil record and specialized anatomy. Genetic evidence and some anatomical details (such as pedicellate teeth) support the idea that frogs, salamanders, and caecilians (collectively known as lissamphibians) are each other's closest relatives. Frogs and salamanders show many similarities to dissorophoids, a group of extinct amphibians in the order Temnospondyli. Caecilians are more controversial; many studies extend dissorophoid ancestry to caecilians. Some studies have instead argued that caecilians descend from extinct lepospondyl or stereospondyl amphibians, contradicting evidence for lissamphibian monophyly (common ancestry). Rare fossils of early gymnophionans such as Eocaecilia and Funcusvermis have helped to test the various conflicting hypotheses for the relationships between caecilians and other living and extinct amphibians. ('Full article...)

After:

Reptile types

Image 1

Northern tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus punctatus)

The tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) is a species of reptile endemic to New Zealand. Despite its close resemblance to lizards, it is part of a distinct lineage, the order Rhynchocephalia. The name tuatara is derived from the Māori language and means "peaks on the back". (Full article...)
Image 2

Clockwise from top left: veiled chameleon (Chamaeleo calyptratus), rock monitor (Varanus albigularis), common blue-tongued skink (Tiliqua scincoides), Italian wall lizard (Podarcis sicula), giant leaf-tailed gecko (Uroplatus fimbriatus), and legless lizard (Anelytropsis papillosus)

Lizard is the common name used for all squamate reptiles other than snakes (and to a lesser extent amphisbaenians), encompassing over 7,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The grouping is paraphyletic as some lizards are more closely related to snakes than they are to other lizards. Lizards range in size from chameleons and geckos a few centimeters long to the 3-meter-long Komodo dragon. (Full article...)
Image 3

Male gharial

The gharial (Gavialis gangeticus), also known as gavial or fish-eating crocodile, is a crocodilian in the family Gavialidae and among the longest of all living crocodilians. Mature females are 2.6 to 4.5 m (8 ft 6 in to 14 ft 9 in) long, and males 3 to 6 m (9 ft 10 in to 19 ft 8 in). Adult males have a distinct boss at the end of the snout, which resembles an earthenware pot known as a ghara, hence the name "gharial". The gharial is well adapted to catching fish because of its long, narrow snout and 110 sharp, interlocking teeth. (Full article...)
Image 4

Aldabra giant tortoise
(Aldabrachelys gigantea)

Tortoises (/ˈtɔːrtəs.ɪz/ TOR-təs-iz) are reptiles of the family Testudinidae of the order Testudines (Latin for "tortoise"). Like other turtles, tortoises have a shell to protect from predation and other threats. The shell in tortoises is generally hard, and like other members of the suborder Cryptodira, they retract their necks and heads directly backward into the shell to protect them. (Full article...)
Image 5

Common box turtle

Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines, characterized by a special shell developed mainly from their ribs. Modern turtles are divided into two major groups, the Pleurodira (side necked turtles) and Cryptodira (hidden necked turtles), which differ in the way the head retracts. There are 360 living and recently extinct species of turtles, including land-dwelling tortoises and freshwater terrapins. They are found on most continents, some islands and, in the case of sea turtles, much of the ocean. Like other amniotes (reptiles, birds, and mammals) they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. (Full article...)
Image 6

Corallus caninus

Snakes are elongated, limbless reptiles of the suborder Serpentes (/sɜːrˈpɛntiːz/). Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads (cranial kinesis). To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have independently evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs at least twenty-five times via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. These resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, although this rule is not universal (see Amphisbaenia, Dibamidae, and Pygopodidae). (Full article...)
Image 7

Blanus cinereus, Spain

Amphisbaenia /æmfɪsˈbiːniə/ (called amphisbaenians or worm lizards) is a group of typically legless lizards, comprising over 200 extant species. Amphisbaenians are characterized by their long bodies, the reduction or loss of the limbs, and rudimentary eyes. As many species have a pink body and scales arranged in rings, they have a superficial resemblance to earthworms. While the genus Bipes retains forelimbs, all other genera are limbless. Phylogenetic studies suggest that they are nested within Lacertoidea, closely related to the lizard family Lacertidae. Amphisbaenians are widely distributed, occurring in North America, Europe, Africa, South America, Western Asia and the Caribbean. Most species are less than 6 inches (15 cm) long. (Full article...)
Image 8

An American alligator (top) and a Chinese alligator

An alligator, or colloquially gator, is a large reptile in the genus Alligator of the family Alligatoridae of the order Crocodilia. The two extant species are the American alligator (A. mississippiensis) and the Chinese alligator (A. sinensis). Additionally, several extinct species of alligator are known from fossil remains. Alligators first appeared during the late Eocene epoch about 37 million years ago. (Full article...)
Image 9

Yacare caiman, Caiman yacare

A caiman (/ˈkeɪmən/ (also spelled cayman) from Taíno kaiman^{[additional citation(s) needed]}) is an alligatorid belonging to the subfamily Caimaninae, one of two primary lineages within the Alligatoridae family, the other being alligators. Caimans are native to Central and South America and inhabit marshes, swamps, lakes, and mangrove rivers. They have scaly skin and live a fairly nocturnal existence. They are relatively small-sized crocodilians with an average maximum weight of 6 to 40 kg (13 to 88 lb) depending on species, with the exception of the black caiman (Melanosuchus niger), which can grow more than 4 m (13 ft) in length and weigh in excess of 450 kg (1,000 Ib). The black caiman is the largest caiman species in the world and is found in the slow-moving rivers and lakes that surround the Amazon basin. The smallest species is the Cuvier's dwarf caiman (Paleosuchus palpebrosus), which grows to 1.2 to 1.5 m (3.9 to 4.9 ft) long. There are six different species of caiman found throughout the watery jungle habitats of Central and Southern America. The average length for most of the other caiman species is about 2 to 2.5 m (6.6 to 8.2 ft) long. (Full article...)
Image 10

Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus)

Crocodiles (family Crocodylidae) or true crocodiles are large semiaquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia. The term crocodile is sometimes used even more loosely to include all extant members of the order Crocodilia, which includes the alligators and caimans (family Alligatoridae), the gharial and false gharial (family Gavialidae) among other extinct taxa. (Full article...)

Amphibian types

Image 1

Oscaecilia ochrocephala (Caeciliidae)

Caecilians (/sɪˈsɪliən/; New Latin for 'blind ones') are a group of limbless, vermiform (worm-shaped) or serpentine (snake-shaped) amphibians with small or sometimes nonexistent eyes. They mostly live hidden in soil or in streambeds, and this cryptic lifestyle renders caecilians among the least familiar amphibians. Modern caecilians live in the tropics of South and Central America, Africa, and southern Asia. Caecilians feed on small subterranean creatures such as earthworms. The body is cylindrical and often darkly coloured, and the skull is bullet-shaped and strongly built. Caecilian heads have several unique adaptations, including fused cranial and jaw bones, a two-part system of jaw muscles, and a chemosensory tentacle in front of the eye. The skin is slimy and bears ringlike markings or grooves and may contain scales.

Modern caecilians are a clade, the order Gymnophiona /ˌdʒɪmnəˈfaɪənə/ (or Apoda /ˈæpədə/), one of the three living amphibian groups alongside Anura (frogs) and Urodela (salamanders). Gymnophiona is a crown group, encompassing all modern caecilians and all descendants of their last common ancestor. There are more than 220 living species of caecilian classified in 10 families. Gymnophionomorpha is a recently coined name for the corresponding total group which includes Gymnophiona as well as a few extinct stem-group caecilians (extinct amphibians whose closest living relatives are caecilians but are not descended from any caecilian). Some palaeontologists have used the name Gymnophiona for the total group and the old name Apoda for the crown group'. However, Apoda has other even older uses, including as the name of a genus of Butterfly making its use potentially confusing and best avoided. 'Gymnophiona' derives from the Greek words γυμνος / gymnos (Ancient Greek for 'naked') and οφις / ophis (Ancient Greek for 'snake'), as the caecilians were originally thought to be related to snakes and to lack scales.

The study of caecilian evolution is complicated by their poor fossil record and specialized anatomy. Genetic evidence and some anatomical details (such as pedicellate teeth) support the idea that frogs, salamanders, and caecilians (collectively known as lissamphibians) are each other's closest relatives. Frogs and salamanders show many similarities to dissorophoids, a group of extinct amphibians in the order Temnospondyli. Caecilians are more controversial; many studies extend dissorophoid ancestry to caecilians. Some studies have instead argued that caecilians descend from extinct lepospondyl or stereospondyl amphibians, contradicting evidence for lissamphibian monophyly (common ancestry). Rare fossils of early gymnophionans such as Eocaecilia and Funcusvermis have helped to test the various conflicting hypotheses for the relationships between caecilians and other living and extinct amphibians. ('Full article...)
Image 2

Spotted salamander, Ambystoma maculatum

Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by their lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults. All ten extant salamander families are grouped together under the order Urodela from the group Caudata. Urodela is a scientific Latin term based on the Ancient Greek οὐρά δήλη: ourà dēlē "conspicuous tail". Caudata is the Latin for "tailed ones", from cauda: "tail".

Salamander diversity is highest in eastern North America, especially in the Appalachian Mountains; most species are found in the Holarctic realm, with some species present in the Neotropical realm. Salamanders never have more than four toes on their front legs and five on their rear legs, but some species have fewer digits and others lack hind limbs. Their permeable skin usually makes them reliant on habitats in or near water or other cool, damp places. Some salamander species are fully aquatic throughout their lives, some take to the water intermittently, and others are entirely terrestrial as adults.

This group of amphibians is capable of regenerating lost limbs as well as other damaged parts of their bodies. Researchers hope to reverse engineer the regenerative processes for potential human medical applications, such as brain and spinal cord injury treatment or preventing harmful scarring during heart surgery recovery. The remarkable ability of salamanders to regenerate is not just limited to limbs but extends to vital organs such as the heart, jaw, and parts of the spinal cord, showing their uniqueness compared to different types of vertebrates. ⁤⁤This ability is most remarkable for occurring without any type of scarring. ⁤⁤This has made salamanders an invaluable model organism in scientific research aimed at understanding and achieving regenerative processes for medical advancements in human and animal biology. (Full article...)
Image 3

European fire-bellied toad (Bombina bombina), a member of the family Bombinatoridae

Toad is a common name for certain frogs, especially of the family Bufonidae, that are characterized by dry, leathery skin, short legs, and large bumps covering the parotoid glands.

In popular culture (folk taxonomy), toads are associated with drier, rougher skin and more terrestrial habitats. However, this distinction does not align precisely with scientific taxonomy. (Full article...)
Image 4

Various types of frog

A frog is any member of a diverse and largely carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order Anura (coming from the Ancient Greek ἀνούρα, literally 'without tail'). The oldest fossil "proto-frog" Triadobatrachus is known from the Early Triassic of Madagascar (250 million years ago), but molecular clock dating suggests their split from other amphibians may extend further back to the Permian, 265 million years ago. Frogs are widely distributed, ranging from the tropics to subarctic regions, but the greatest concentration of species diversity is in tropical rainforest. Frogs account for around 88% of extant amphibian species. They are also one of the five most diverse vertebrate orders. Warty frog species tend to be called toads, but the distinction between frogs and toads is informal, not from taxonomy or evolutionary history.

An adult frog has a stout body, protruding eyes, anteriorly-attached tongue, limbs folded underneath, and no tail (the tail of tailed frogs is an extension of the male cloaca). Frogs have glandular skin, with secretions ranging from distasteful to toxic. Their skin varies in colour from well-camouflaged dappled brown, grey and green to vivid patterns of bright red or yellow and black to show toxicity and ward off predators. Adult frogs live in fresh water and on dry land; some species are adapted for living underground or in trees.

Frogs typically lay their eggs in the water. The eggs hatch into aquatic larvae called tadpoles that have tails and internal gills. They have highly specialised rasping mouth parts suitable for herbivorous, omnivorous or planktivorous diets. The life cycle is completed when they metamorphose into adults. A few species deposit eggs on land or bypass the tadpole stage. Adult frogs generally have a carnivorous diet consisting of small invertebrates, but omnivorous species exist and a few feed on plant matter. Frog skin has a rich microbiome which is important to their health. Frogs are extremely efficient at converting what they eat into body mass. They are an important food source for predators and part of the food web dynamics of many of the world's ecosystems. The skin is semi-permeable, making them susceptible to dehydration, so they either live in moist places or have special adaptations to deal with dry habitats. Frogs produce a wide range of vocalisations, particularly in their breeding season, and exhibit many different kinds of complex behaviors to attract mates, to fend off predators and to generally survive. (Full article...)

Notice how the box bottoms line up. That readjusts even if you click the slideshow buttons.

The template used for this is {{Flex columns}}.

By the way, when you include more than one box in a column, any left over whitespace in that column is divided between them.

Box-header colour

You may have noticed the new {{Box-header colour}} template used above. It lets you pick the color locally (right on the same page). Before, this was handled on a subpage somewhere.

Testing, testing

Now that we have lots of toys to play with for making cool portals...

Don't forget, that the majority of views of Wikipedia these days are from mobile devices. We need to make certain that portals display well on those. So, remember to check your work on portals in mobile view mode...

To see a portal in mobile view mode, insert a ".m" into a portal's url, after "en", like this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Reptile

If you discover problems in a portal you can't fix, report them on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Design.

Until next time...

Have fun. — The Transhumanist 00:57, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Pumpie

Hi, it's good to see that Terriffic Dunker Guy / Pumpie has finally been blocked. He actually wrote some kind of confession that he is Pumpie and a promise to improve his editing on my talk page at Commons, well we've seen that before. Some weeks ago I made a (partially sorted) list of all articles Terriffic Dunker Guy edited, I copied it to User:Pumpie/Cleanup. We can remove articles that have been checked. I'll look into the Greece and Cape Verde geography articles first, I hope User:Jstuby can check some of the astronomy articles. Markussep ^Talk 11:25, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Markussep, I will try to do my bit. Cheers, --Constantine ✍ 12:56, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

He's back, new name The Awesome Master. I updated the list at User:Pumpie/Cleanup, there were only a few new articles. Markussep ^Talk 07:48, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.12 30 July 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months. (Purge)

Hello Cplakidas, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

June backlog drive

Overall the June backlog drive was a success, reducing the last 3,000 or so to below 500. However, as expected, 90% of the patrolling was done by less than 10% of reviewers.
Since the drive closed, the backlog has begun to rise sharply again and is back up to nearly 1,400 already. Please help reduce this total and keep it from raising further by reviewing some articles each day.

New technology, new rules

New features are shortly going to be added to the Special:NewPagesFeed which include a list of drafts for review, OTRS flags for COPYVIO, and more granular filter preferences. More details can be found at this page.
Probationary permissions: Now that PERM has been configured to allow expiry dates to all minor user rights, new NPR flag holders may sometimes be limited in the first instance to 6 months during which their work will be assessed for both quality and quantity of their reviews. This will allow admins to accord the right in borderline cases rather than make a flat out rejection.
Current reviewers who have had the flag for longer than 6 months but have not used the permissions since they were granted will have the flag removed, but may still request to have it granted again in the future, subject to the same probationary period, if they wish to become an active reviewer.

Editathons

Editathons will continue through August. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.

The Signpost

The next issue of the monthly magazine will be out soon. The newspaper is an excellent way to stay up to date with news and new developments between our newsletters. If you have special messages to be published, or if you would like to submit an article (one about NPR perhaps?), don't hesitate to contact the editorial team here.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 00:00, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Φίλιππος - Ελλ. Μακεδονια

Καλησπέρα. Εδώ και μερικες ημέρες τα άρθρα του Φιλίππου και της Αρχαιας Μακεδονίας αλλαζουν προς Το χειρότερο... Από αρχαιο ελληνικό βασίλειο ην Μακεδονία γίνεται απλά αρχαιο και αφαιρέθηκε από τα see also η περιφέρεια της ελλ. Μακεδονίας. Ήταν γραμμένο πως ηταν ελληνικό βασίλειο εδώ και χρονια και ξαφνικά το άλλαξαν. Η σελιδα του Φιλίππου πρέπει να κλειδωθεί όπως είναι κλειδωμένη του Αλέξανδρου. Μπορείς να κάνεις κάτι? Ευχαριστω Dourvakis (talk) 11:21, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Portals tasks requests: presented in the newsletter below...

Portals WikiProject update #015, 31 July 2018

Now that we have lots of toys to play with, it's play time!

Here are some fun activities to use our new toys on...

Fun activity #1: put the improved panorama template to use

Would you like to travel around the world? Well, this may be the next best thing...

Here's another fun toy to play with: {{Portal image banner}}

To see what it looks like, check out the panoramas at the tops of the following portals:

The task: There are many geography portals that lack panoramas. Please add some. Please keep the file size down below 2 megabytes, and keep in mind that you may find quality banners at commons: at less than 200K (.2 megabytes). Good search terms to include with the place name are "banner", "cityscape", "skyline", "panorama", "landscape", etc.

Related task: There are also lots of geography portals that have panoramas used as gaudy banners (with print or icons splattered across them) or that display them in some random location on the page. In many cases, those pages would be improved by displaying the panorama as a clean picture at the top of the intro section, like on the examples above. This works best with banner-like panoramas. Please fix such pages when you come across them, if you believe it would improve the look of the page.

Taller images might be better suited displayed further down the page, or in the "Selected images" section.

Note that {{Portal image banner}} supports multiple images, and displays one at random upon the first visit, and each time the page is purged.

Fun activity #2: install "Selected images" sections

That is, image slideshows!

Over 200 have been installed so far. Just 1200 to go. (Be sure not to install them on portals with active maintainers, unless they want you to).

The title "Selected images" reflects the fact that not all images on Wikipedia are pictures, and encompasses maps, graphs, diagrams, sketches, paintings, pictures, and so on.

The toys we have to work with for this are:

and

The task: Using one of the above templates directly on a portal's base page, replace static "Selected picture" sections, with a section like one of these:

Selected images

Image 1The red lionfish (Pterois volitans) is a venomous coral reef fish from the Indian and western Pacific Oceans. The red lionfish is also found off the east coast of the United States, and was likely first introduced off the Florida coast in the early to mid 1990s.
Image 2A discus (Symphysodon discus) is guarding its eggs. As for most cichlids, brood care is highly developed with both the parents caring for the young. Additionally, adult discus produce a secretion through their skin, off which the larvae live during their first few days.
Image 3Salmon fry hatching (Salmo salar) - the larva has grown around the remains of the yolk - visible are the arteries spinning around the yolk and little oildrops, also the gut, the spine, the main caudal blood vessel, the bladder and the arcs of the gills.
Image 4Koi are ornamental domesticated varieties of the common carp Cyprinus carpio, originated from China and widely spread in Japan. They are very closely related to goldfish. The word "koi" comes from Japanese meaning "carp".

Selected images

Image 1Elk Bath, an award-winning photograph of elk avoiding a wildfire in Montana (from Wildfire)
Image 2A Russian firefighter extinguishing a wildfire (from Wildfire)
Image 3Ecological succession after a wildfire in a boreal pine forest next to Hara Bog, Lahemaa National Park, Estonia. The pictures were taken one and two years after the fire. (from Wildfire)
Image 4Virgin forest about 2,500 m (8,200 ft) above sea level in Shennongjia Forestry District, Hubei, China (from Old-growth forest)
Image 5Aerial view of deliberate wildfires on the Khun Tan Range, Thailand. These fires are lit by local farmers every year to promote the growth of a certain mushroom. (from Wildfire)
Image 6Old-growth red cedar stump near Port Renfrew, British Columbia (from Old-growth forest)
Image 7Redwood tree in northern California redwood forest: According to the National Park Service, "96 percent of the original old-growth coast redwoods have been logged." (from Old-growth forest)
Image 8Araucariaceae: awl-like leaves of Cook pine (Araucaria columnaris) (from Conifer)
Image 9Animation of diaphragmatic breathing with the diaphragm shown in green (from Wildfire)
Image 10First-growth or virgin forest near Mount Rainier, 1914 (from Old-growth forest)
Image 11Charred shrubland in suburban Sydney (2019–20 Australian bushfires). (from Wildfire)
Image 12National map of groundwater and soil moisture in the United States. It shows the very low soil moisture associated with the 2011 fire season in Texas. (from Wildfire)
Image 13In Abies grandis (grand fir), and many other species with spirally arranged leaves, leaf bases are twisted to flatten their arrangement and maximize light capture. (from Conifer)
Image 14Dry Mountain Fire Lookout in the Ochoco National Forest, Oregon, US circa 1930 (from Wildfire)
Image 15Globosa, a cultivar of Pinus sylvestris, a northern European species, in the North American Red Butte Garden (from Conifer)
Image 16The narrow conical shape of northern conifers, and their downward-drooping limbs, help them shed snow. (from Conifer)
Image 17Avatar Grove near Port Renfrew, British Columbia: Giant Douglas firs (left) and red cedars (right) fill the grove. (from Old-growth forest)
Image 18Cupressaceae: scale leaves of Lawson's cypress (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana); scale in mm (from Conifer)
Image 19A wildfire in Venezuela during a drought (from Wildfire)
Image 20Global fires during the year 2008 for the months of August (top image) and February (bottom image), as detected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite. (from Wildfire)
Image 21Old-growth European beech forest in Biogradska Gora National Park, Montenegro (from Old-growth forest)
Image 22Wildfire near Yosemite National Park, United States, in 2013. The Rim Fire burned more than 250,000 acres (1,000 km²) of forest. (from Wildfire)
Image 23Old-growth forest in the Opal Creek Wilderness, a wilderness area located in the Willamette National Forest in the U.S. state of Oregon, on the border of Mount Hood National Forest. It has the largest uncut watershed in Oregon. (from Old-growth forest)
Image 24A dirt road acted as a fire barrier in South Africa. The effects of the barrier can clearly be seen on the unburnt (left) and burnt (right) sides of the road. (from Wildfire)
Image 25Wildland firefighter working a brush fire in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, US (from Wildfire)
Image 26Mist condensing over rainforest in Danum Valley Conservation Area, Malaysia (from Old-growth forest)
Image 27Fungus Climacocystis borealis on a tree stump in the Białowieża Forest, one of the last largely intact primeval forests in Central Europe (from Old-growth forest)
Image 28Sediment off the Yucatán Peninsula (from Wildfire)
Image 29Lightning-sparked wildfires are frequent occurrences during the dry summer season in Nevada. (from Wildfire)
Image 30A surface fire in the western desert of Utah, United States (from Wildfire)
Image 31Eucalyptus regnans forest in Tasmania, Australia (from Old-growth forest)
Image 32A coniferous forest pictured in the coat of arms of the Kainuu region in Finland (from Conifer)
Image 33Wildfire burning in the Kaibab National Forest, Arizona, United States, in 2020. The Mangum Fire burned more than 70,000 acres (280 km²) of forest. (from Wildfire)
Image 34Forest fires visible from a distance in Dajti National Park, Tirana, Albania (from Wildfire)
Image 35Antarctic beech old growth in Lamington National Park, Queensland, Australia (from Old-growth forest)
Image 36A thin transverse section showing the internal structure of conifer wood (from Conifer)
Image 37Tāne Mahuta, the biggest kauri (Agathis australis) tree alive, in the Waipoua Forest of the Northland Region of New Zealand. (from Conifer)
Image 382003 Canberra bushfires, visible from Parliament House (from Wildfire)
Image 39Cool temperate rainforest in Tasmania, Australia (from Old-growth forest)
Image 40Pinaceae: unopened female cones of subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa) (from Conifer)
Image 41Wildfire smoke in atmosphere off the U.S. West Coast in 2020 (from Wildfire)
Image 42The 2020 Córdoba wildfires imaged by NASA's FIRMS (from Wildfire)
Image 43Charred landscape following a crown fire in the North Cascades, United States (from Wildfire)
Image 44Phylogeny of the Pinophyta based on cladistic analysis of molecular data. (from Conifer)
Image 45The northern spotted owl primarily inhabits old-growth forests in the northern part of its range (Canada to southern Oregon) and landscapes with a mix of old and younger forest types in the southern part of its range (the Klamath region and California). (from Old-growth forest)
Image 46Downed wood replenishes topsoil as it decays. (from Old-growth forest)
Image 47Smoke from the 2020 California wildfires settles over San Francisco (from Wildfire)
Image 48Pinaceae: needle-like leaves and vegetative buds of Coast Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii) (from Conifer)
Image 49A prescribed burn in a Pinus nigra stand in Portugal (from Wildfire)
Image 50A Monterey pine forest in Sydney, Australia (from Conifer)
Image 51Fire Propagation Model (from Wildfire)

The one on the left uses {{Random slideshow}} (which accepts file names), and the one on the right uses {{Transclude files as random slideshow}} (which accepts source pages from which the filenames are gathered).

The above section formatting is used on many of the pages you will come across, but not all. In those cases, use whatever section formatting matches the rest of the page.

Note that you may come across "Selected picture" sections done with {{Random portal component}} templates. That template call is the entire section. Replace it with a section that matches the other sections on the page, and put the new slideshow inside that.

For example, in Portal:California, this code:

{{Random portal component|max=21|seed=27|header=Selected picture|subpage=Selected picture}}

was replaced with this code:

{{/box-header|Selected images|noedit=yes}}
{{Transclude files as random slideshow
| {{PAGENAME}}
| Culture of {{PAGENAME}}
}}
{{Box-footer}}

And the new section blended right in with the formatting of the rest of the page. Note the use of the {{PAGENAME}} magic word. Plain article titles also work. Don't feel limited to one or two page names. But be sure to test each slideshow before installing the next one. (Or if you prefer, in batches - just don't leave them hanging). Report technical problems at the Portal design talk page.

Fun activity #3: upgrade "Selected article" sections

These sections, where unmaintained, have gone stale. That's because 1) the excerpts are static, having been manually copied and pasted, and 2) because they lack automatic addition of new entries.

They can be upgraded with:

or

All three of these will provide excerpts that won't go stale. The latter two can provide excerpt collections that won't go stale, by providing new entries over time. The key is to select source pages or source sections that are frequently updated, such as root article sections, mainstream lists, or navigation templates.

Where will this put us?

When the above tasks are completed for the entire collection of portals (except the ones with specific maintainers), we'll be more than half-way done with the portal system upgrade.

Keep up the great work. — The Transhumanist 19:09, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Creation of Byzantine source rating

Hey Cplakidas,

I started a basic list based on your assessment of several Byzantine sources. I was wondering if you had any interest in making a more comprehensive databank listing the good and bad sources; some of the good sources are listed in places, but it might be helpful to list the ones to stay away from, or which should only be used as tertiary sources. -- Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 20:05, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi Iazyges, that is not a bad idea, but simply listing the authors is not enough; Kazhdan, Bury, Treadgold, etc have many works, each of different qualities. I've expanded a bit on the commentary, though. Constantine ✍ 16:50, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

I've reorganized the article with subheadings, so each author gets a subheading with a short description, and then a breakdown of their works. -- Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 17:11, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Iazyges (talk · contribs), I support the idea. If I can't help anyway, call me. And Constantine, thanks for the help once more.--Renato de carvalho ferreira (talk) 00:38, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

About the sources in red on the list, Konstantios Doukas, for exemple, was written using a lot Canduci and Norwich. Maybe something needed to be done.--Renato de carvalho ferreira (talk) 08:45, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Κωνσταντινούπολη 1555-1559

Καλησπέρα, σε περίπτωση που δεν τις έχει δει νομίζω πως οι φωτογραφίες στο el:Χρήστης:Gts-tg/πρόχειρο4#Κωνσταντινούπολη_1555-1559 από τα έργα του Λορκ είναι εξαιρετικά ενδιαφέρουσες. Άντε με το καλό και νέος χάρτης κάποια στιγμή. Gts-tg (talk) 14:41, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Οκ τα έβαλα όλα σε ένα πρότυπο στο el:Πρότυπο:Κωνσταντινούπολη 1559 κατά σειρά φύλλου και με σημειώσεις. Θα βοηθούσε αν το έριχνες μια ματιά σε ότι αφορά τα σχόλια (περιορισμένος χώρος για περιγραφές). Μόλις συμμαζευτούν κάπως καλύτερα και τα ξαναελέγξω θα τα βάλω σε διάφορα λήμματα el και κατόπιν commons και όπου ταιριάζει στο en. Gts-tg (talk) 20:39, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Εξαιρετικές εικόνες, όντως. Από τις περιγραφές έχω ορισμένες απορίες: ο Χριστός Χαλκίτης πού φαίνεται? Το ίδιο και για το Μέγα Παλάτιον, καθώς και το Παλάτι του Αντιόχου (του οποίου η τοποθεσία είναι λάθος). Από τον Κεράτιο, όλα αυτά τα κτίσματα (πέραν του ότι τον 16ο αιώνα ήταν ερηπωμένα) θα επισκιάζονταν από την Αγία Σοφία. Constantine ✍ 08:14, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Δες το http://www.melchiorlorck.com/112686/ το pdf του Volume 4, διαβάζοντας τις περιγραφές από ότι κατάλαβα αυτές ήταν οι τοποθεσίες. Αν δεν κατάλαβα κάτι εγώ καλά ή στην περιγραφή υπάρχει κάποιο σφάλμα κάνε ότι αλλαγές (ή και αφαιρέσεις ή προσθήκες) θεωρείς σωστές (το παραπάνω πρότυπο χρησιμοποιείται στο el πλέον σε 2 λήμματα έως τώρα, και σε 3 όταν τελειώσω το λήμμα που φτιάχνω για τον Λορκ). Gts-tg (talk) 05:54, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Ωπ συγνώμη λάθος (αν και το παραπάνω link είναι πολύ ενδιαφέρον), ο σωστός σύνδεσμος για αυτό που αναφέρομαι είναι το http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/17732/1/Lorichs_JSAH.pdf σελ. 62-87. Gts-tg (talk) 05:58, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Philip I Philadelphus FAC

Hi Constantine, I wonder if you could comment on this one before I look at closing it? If you're pushed for time, or it's not quite within your expertise, even a high-level check would be welcome. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 08:58, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi Ian, I'll have a look at it over the next few days. Cheers, --Constantine ✍ 11:20, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CXLVIII, August 2018

Your Military History Newsletter

Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results
Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content
Book review: Nick-D looks at a classic US official history
Op-ed: TomStar81 on belated declarations of war in 1916–18
Timeline: This month in World War I

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 08:35, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Al-Mu'tazz

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Al-Mu'tazz you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of West Virginian -- West Virginian (talk) 00:01, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Battle of Azaz (1030)

The article Battle of Azaz (1030) you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Battle of Azaz (1030) for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Gog the Mild -- Gog the Mild (talk) 12:42, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Al-Mu'tazz

The article Al-Mu'tazz you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Al-Mu'tazz for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of West Virginian -- West Virginian (talk) 16:03, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Hey congrats on the GA passing. Have you thought about doing a GA review yourself? The project has a backlog of nominations and so there's likely to be a nomination of interest for you. If you're interested you can read the review instructions. If I can answer any questions about reviewing for GA let me know. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:44, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #016, 15 Aug 2018

Future portal tool

Discussions are underway on the design of a portal tool (user script) that will hopefully have features for modifying portals at the click of a menu item, to make editing them easier. It might do things like change the color for you, add to a selection, add a new section, move a section, and so on.

If you'd like to be involved and suggest features for the tool, please join us at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Design#What would you want a portal tool to be able to do?.

Progress report: upgrade of portals

As new portal components are built by our Lua gurus, those components are being used to upgrade portals. Each component automates a section of a portal in a particular way.

The sections that are mostly upgraded so far are the Intro, and the Associated Wikimedia section.

The sections currently undergoing upgrade are: Selected image, Categories, and the Intro.

The Intro? Isn't that done already?

Yes, and no.

The upgrade of the excerpt in intros is mostly complete (there are about 70 non-standard portals that still need it).

Now we are doing another upgrade of intros in the form of adding a panoramic picture at the top of the intro, on portals for which such a picture is available on Commons:. Dozens of panoramas have been added so far, and they are really starting to affect the look of portals — the portals that have them look really good.

Regions are the most likely subjects to have panoramas, but a surprising number of other subjects have banner-shaped pictures too. Some examples of non-geographic portals that they have been added to are:

Speaking of pictures, several hundred Selected image sections have been upgraded to include image slideshows.

Progress report: design

The push for automation continues, with new components under continuous testing in the field. As problems are spotted, they are reported to our programmers, who have done a fantastic job of keeping up with bug reports and fixing the relevant Lua modules fast. I am highly impressed.

Construction time on new portals is now down to as little as a minute or less. Though not in general. If you are lucky enough to spot portals that fit the profile of the new tools (their strengths), then a portal can be complete almost as soon as it is created, with the added time it takes to find and add a panorama. Source page titles are not generally standardized, and so it source pages in many cases must be entered manually. Where source page titles follow a standard naming convention, portal creation for those subjects goes quickly.

So, we still have some hurdles, but the outlook on portals is very good. New features, and many improvements to features are on the horizon. I'll be sure to report them when they become available.

What will the portal of the future look like? That is up to you!

See you on the project's talk pages.

Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 21:00, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:08, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Gerda, best wishes to you! Constantine ✍ 07:46, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #017, 22 Aug 2018

This issue is about portal creation...

Creating new portals

Myself and others have been testing and experimenting with the new components in upgrading existing portals and in building new portals. They have now been applied in hundreds of portals.

The templates are ready for general use for portal creation.

They are still a bit buggy, but the only way we are going to work the rest of the bugs out is by using them and reporting the bugs as we come across them.

I look forward to seeing what new portals you create!

Be sure to report bugs at WT:WPPORTD.

The main portal creation template is {{box portal skeleton}}.

Portal creation tips

After starting a portal using {{box portal skeleton}}...

Placing a panorama (banner picture) at the top of the intro section is a nice touch, and really makes a portal look good. {{box portal skeleton}} doesn't automatically insert panoramas. So, you will need to do that by hand. They can be found at Commons:. For some examples, check out Portal:Sharks, Portal:Cheese, and Portal:Florence
The search term provided in the Did you know? and In the news sections is very basic and rarely matches anything. It is best to replace that term with multiple search arguments, if possible (separate each argument with a pipe character). For example, in Portal:Capital punishment, see https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Portal:Capital_punishment&diff=855255361&oldid=855137403 Searches in templates use Lua search notation.
Check the In the news and Did you know? sections for mismatches. That is, sometimes entries come up that shouldn't be displayed. If there are any, refine the search strings further, so they don't return such results.
Finish each portal you've created before creating a new one. We don't want unfinished portals sitting around.

Need a laugh?

Check out the Did you know? section on Portal:Determinism. — The Transhumanist 02:43, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 29

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 29, June – July 2018

New partners
- Economic & Political Weekly–10 accounts
Wikimania
Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
Global branches update
Bytes in brief

Hindi, Italian and French versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:02, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Too many images on the Greece article

Hello, I know you are quite active in WikiProject:Greece and would appreciate your input on an ongoing discussion regarding User:AlbusTheWhite's additions of (quite frankly) a ton of images on various articles, notably Greece and Thessaloniki. I feel it strongly brings down the quality of the article by overpowering it with pictures. You can find the discussion here. I look forward to hearing your thoughts! --Philly boy92 (talk) 00:26, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Wikiproject Military history coordinator election nominations open

Nominations for the upcoming project coordinator election are now open. A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available here. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 UTC on 14 September! Voting doesn't commence until 15 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the coord team. Cheers, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:53, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #018, 04 Sept 2018

Bug hunt!

As you know, portals are now supported by a number of new templates, which are in turn supported by some new Lua modules.

Those templates and modules are being put to the test, in the new portals that have been created since this WikiProject rebooted, plus a number of existing portals that have been revamped.

The new portals, and revamped ones, can be found at Category:Single-page portals.

Please browse the new portals at your leisure, and report any and all problems that you spot. Post bug and other portal problem reports at WT:WPPORTD. Please report bugs, quirks, awkward aspects, or anything weird or off that you notice. Compliments and suggestions are also welcome. :)

When you report a bug, please indicate the portal's name, the section that the problem appeared in, and the name of the article appearing (first) in the section with the problem. Most problems will likely be encountered in the Selected general articles" section, due to quirks in a displayed article's wikicode that the lua modules don't handle yet. Your help in spotting those is of utmost value. Thank you.

Don't delete portal subpages just yet

For portals that have been converted to the single-page design, we are not deleting their subpages at this time, because we are working on ways to harvest the data from those pages. For example, the Selected picture subpages include filenames and captions that would be valuable for the image slideshows. Please don't delete portal subpages, for now. They'll be slated for d-batch speedy deletion after harvesting. Thank you.

Development notes

We are currently testing a feature added to {{Transclude files as random slideshow}} that allows it to accept both sourcepages and filenames. Courtesy of Evad37. This will pave the way for harvesting files and their captions from portal subpages, for use in image slideshows.

We need your help

The bulk of the work is being done by a handful of editors. But we can't do it all. We need help with spotting bugs, refining the search parameters in new/revamped portals (in the "Did you know..." and "In the news" sections), adding images to slideshows for a broader selection (they default to showing the images on the root article page but are capable of showing so much more), adding panoramic pictures at the top of the intro section of region portals (cities, counties, states, provinces, countries, continents, and other regions), to name but a few task types.

It is rewarding to be a part of the growing portal phenomenon. And you get to see its expansion and refinement up close.

Feel free to join in on the fun. ;)

Thank you, — The Transhumanist 06:41, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Battle of Meligalas DYK nomination

It is rather obvious, but I thought it would not hurt anyone if I wrote to you a message that any suggestion(s) that you may have concerning the DYK nomination re the article on the battle of Meligalas, which you diligently translated from Greek, would be more than welcome. Regards, Ashmedai 119 (talk) 13:43, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi Ashmedai 119, nothing that springs to mind. Thanks a lot for the nomination! Constantine ✍ 14:15, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Talk:Constantine (son of Leo V)/GA1

Hello, just wondering, do you intend on editing this?KAVEBEAR (talk) 20:58, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Alexios Komnenos (governor of Dyrrhachium)

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Alexios Komnenos (governor of Dyrrhachium) you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Gog the Mild -- Gog the Mild (talk) 09:41, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CXLIX, September 2018

Your Military History Newsletter

Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results
Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content
Book review: Indy Beetle and Nick-D on the Katangese Gendarmes and India during World War II
Op-ed: TomStar81 looks at two important treaties of World War I
Timeline: This month in World War I

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 22:19, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Milhist coordinator election voting has commenced

G'day everyone, voting for the 2018 Wikiproject Military history coordinator tranche is now open. This is a simple approval vote; only "support" votes should be made. Project members should vote for any candidates they support by 23:59 (UTC) on 28 September 2018. Thanks, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:35, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Milhist coordinator election voting has commenced

G'day everyone, voting for the 2018 Wikiproject Military history coordinator tranche is now open. This is a simple approval vote; only "support" votes should be made. Project members should vote for any candidates they support by 23:59 (UTC) on 28 September 2018. Thanks, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:22, 15 September 2018 (UTC) Note: the previous version omitted a link to the election page, therefore you are receiving this follow up message with a link to the election page to correct the previous version. We apologies for any inconvenience that this may have caused.

NPR Newsletter No.13 18 September 2018

Hello Cplakidas, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

The New Page Feed currently has 2700 unreviewed articles, up from just 500 at the start of July. For a while we were falling behind by an average of about 40 articles per day, but we have stabilised more recently. Please review some articles from the back of the queue if you can (Sort by: 'Oldest' at Special:NewPagesFeed), as we are very close to having articles older than one month.

Project news

The New Page Feed now has a new "Articles for Creation" option which will show drafts instead of articles in the feed, this shouldn't impact NPP activities and is part of the WMF's AfC Improvement Project.

As part of this project, the feed will have some larger updates to functionality next month. Specifically, ORES predictions will be built in, which will automatically flag articles for potential issues such as vandalism or spam. Copyright violation detection will also be added to the new page feed. See the projects's talk page for more info.

There are a number of coordination tasks for New Page Patrol that could use some help from experienced reviewers. See Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Coordination#Coordinator tasks for more info to see if you can help out.

Other

A new summary page of reliable sources has been created; Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources/Perennial sources, which summarizes existing RfCs or RSN discussions about regularly used sources.

Moving to Draft and Page Mover

Some unsuitable new articles can be best reviewed by moving them to the draft space, but reviewers need to do this carefully and sparingly. It is most useful for topics that look like they might have promise, but where the article as written would be unlikely to survive AfD. If the article can be easily fixed, or if the only issue is a lack of sourcing that is easily accessible, tagging or adding sources yourself is preferable. If sources do not appear to be available and the topic does not appear to be notable, tagging for deletion is preferable (PROD/AfD/CSD as appropriate). See additional guidance at WP:DRAFTIFY.
If the user moves the draft back to mainspace, or recreates it in mainspace, please do not re-draftify the article (although swapping it to maintain the page history may be advisable in the case of copy-paste moves). AfC is optional except for editors with a clear conflict of interest.
Articles that have been created in contravention of our paid-editing-requirements or written from a blatant NPOV perspective, or by authors with a clear COI might also be draftified at discretion.
The best tool for draftification is User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js^(info). Kindly adapt the text in the dialogue-pop-up as necessary (the default can also be changed like this). Note that if you do not have the Page Mover userright, the redirect from main will be automatically tagged as CSD R2, but in some cases it might be better to make this a redirect to a different page instead.
The Page Mover userright can be useful for New Page Reviewers; occasionally page swapping is needed during NPR activities, and it helps avoid excessive R2 nominations which must be processed by admins. Note that the Page Mover userright has higher requirements than the NPR userright, and is generally given to users active at Requested Moves. Only reviewers who are very experienced and are also very active reviewers are likely to be granted it solely for NPP activities.

List of other useful scripts for New Page Reviewing

Twinkle provides a lot of the same functionality as the page curation tools, and some reviewers prefer to use the Twinkle tools for some/all tasks. It can be activated simply in the gadgets section of 'preferences'. There are also a lot of options available at the Twinkle preferences panel after you install the gadget.
In terms of other gadgets for NPR, HotCat is worth turning on. It allows you to easily add, remove, and change categories on a page, with name suggestions.
MoreMenu also adds a bunch of very useful links for diagnosing and fixing page issues.
User:Equazcion/ScriptInstaller.js^(info): Installing scripts doesn't have to be complicated. Go to your common.js and copy importScript( 'User:Equazcion/ScriptInstaller.js' ); into an empty line, now you can install all other scripts with the click of a button from the script page! (Note you need to be at the ".js" page for the script for the install button to appear, not the information page)
User:TheJosh/Scripts/NewPagePatrol.js^(info): Creates a scrolling new pages list at the left side of the page. You can change the number of pages shown by adding the following to the next line on your common.js page (immediately after the line importing this script): npp_num_pages=20; (Recommended 20, but you can use any number from 1 to 50).
User:Primefac/revdel.js^(info): Is requesting revdel complicated and time consuming? This script helps simplify the process. Just have the Copyvio source URL and go to the history page and collect your diff IDs and you can drop them into the script Popups and it will create a revdel request for you.
User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js^(info): Creates a "Page Curation" link to Special:NewPagesFeed up near your sandbox link.
User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/deletionFinder.js: Creates links next to the title of each page which show up if it has been previously deleted or nominated for deletion.
User:Evad37/rater.js^(info): A fantastic tool for adding WikiProject templates to article talk pages. If you add: rater_autostartNamespaces = 0; to the next line on your common.js, the prompt will pop up automatically if a page has no Wikiproject templates on the talk page (note: this can be a bit annoying if you review redirects or dab pages commonly).

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:11, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Please see Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib

Deleted as requested: Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib. AGK [•] 18:36, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you AGK. --Constantine ✍ 18:39, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Citations in ancestry boxes

Try telling some editors that citations are superfluous and that just looking at the links gives all the verification necessary. I've tried, but got nowhere, just a heads up. Urselius (talk) 18:54, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

@Urselius: yeah, I can imagine, but it is inane, an ancestry box is essentially the same as a navbox... I will consider myself warned, though ;) Constantine ✍ 18:56, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

There is one particular editor, naming no names, who sticks quite elaborate 'citation needed' notices on ancestry boxes. Although he isn't particularly a Byzantine, or related subjects, specialist you might come across them! Urselius (talk) 19:02, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

The ancestry box 'citation needed police' have struck the Manuel I Komnenos page, in this case not the constable I was aware of, who is also an admin. They must be breeding. Urselius (talk) 09:18, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Ancestry sections

Please refer to WT:Featured article candidates/archive69#References for Ancestry sections. Ancestry sections are NOT exempt from WP:V, so an {{unreferenced}} tag on Manuel I Komnenos is warranted. That article was promoted back in 2006 and reviewed in 2008, when standards were more lax. Regards, —howcheng {chat} 05:10, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

To be clear, I don't really care if you add citations to it or not. Just be aware that the article isn't going to get selected again for WP:Selected anniversaries until the section is referenced. If you don't care about getting Main Page appearances, then I'm perfectly fine with you leaving the article in its current state. —howcheng {chat} 05:23, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Hmmm, interesting. A lot of people I respect are quite adamant about it, and I do get the point and would agree that if the information is not otherwise present in the article, but only in the ancestry tree, it should be referenced. However, like Queen Victoria mentioned in the discussion you linked, do we really need to re-verify that Manuel was the grandson of Alexios I and great-grandson of Adelaide of Rheinfelden? I don't think that is in the spirit of WP:V, although it may be in the letter of it.

To be likewise clear, what bothers me most here was the way you went about this. Putting a tag on an article is an act of assuming some editorial responsibility over it, and there must be a reason for it. If you have reason to challenge the veracity of the information presented, in a FA no less, do it properly, by commenting on the talk page, putting a {{cn}} tag on the specific information, or even initiating a WP:FAR, if the article is indeed not up to our standards any more. Drive-by tagging is annoying as hell, and saying "don't care either way" after I removed it doesn't make it look any better, TBH. If you "don't care" and don't have reason to suspect the veracity of the information included, then why did you tag this? Cheers, Constantine ✍ 19:13, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

If you are not familiar with who I am (which is interesting, because both of us have been editors since 2005 so one would think we would have run into each other before), I have, for the last ~6 years, been maintaining the subpages of WP:OTD on a daily basis. In early 2017, there began a drive to hold articles appearing in OTD to a higher standard, under a desire to make sure that we are showcasing our best articles on the Main Page, so things that would have been allowed before (case in point, Ancestry sections without references) can cause an article to be excluded. The point of the tag is quite honestly a shortcut for me. As the rules specifically exclude articles with maintenance tags on them, and it can take me several hours to go through the pool of possible articles, if I see the orange tag then I can quickly move on to the next item. I don't have to think about it. So yes, there are other alternative actions I could take as you described. However, I have a limited amount of time per day to editing and I need to accomplish a specific task during that time, so you'll have to forgive me if I choose the course of action that makes my job easier. But I also believe that my "drive-by tagging" is in the spirit of WP:BRD, and now we're in the D part of that acronym.

You said earlier that you see the ancestry tree like a navbox, but I disagree. The navbox IMHO functions like a mini-category. It shows articles that are related in some way. On the other hand, in my view the ancestry tree is a statement of fact. "Manuel I Komnenos is a direct descendant of Richeza of Lotharingia." If that's written in sentence form in an article, you'd expect to see a citation for that, wouldn't you? The only difference is in how that information is presented. I also refer you to WP:Summary style, which says that each article should stand on its own. So forcing readers to go to another article to find a reference establishing a relationship between parent and child (especially higher up in the tree) is not really acceptable, and also that's often not even feasible.

So agree or disagree with the tagging, that's up to you. This is just my explanation of my reasoning and motivation. —howcheng {chat} 22:59, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #019, 22 Sept 2018

Portals progress report

Don't blink. You might miss something.

As of a few days ago, portals had doubled in about a month and a half.

Also, there were 98 incompleted portals in Category:Portals under construction. Now there are just 43.

The WikiProject page has been thoroughly revised

The goals, plans, and task sections have all been updated.

Orphaned portals need a home...

Many new portals are still orphans, and need links pointing to them:

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.
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).
A {{Portal}} template placed at the top of the category page corresponding to each portal.

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

Portal:Contents/Portals

This is the main list of portals.

Nearly 2,000 of the new portals need to be listed here.

They can be found at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet. Instructions are included there.

Customized Portal Rating system is now in place

Portals now have a new rating system of their own designed specifically to support portal evaluation! We were trying to use the standard assessment system for articles, but that doesn't fit portals very well.

Many thanks to Evad37, Waggers, AfroThundr3007730, SMcCandlish, Tom, BrendonTheWizard, and Pbsouthwood for their work and input on this.

The new system can be found at the top of all portal talk pages, in the WikiProject portals box. Those with "???" ratings need to be assessed, which makes up most of the older portals.

Most of the new portals were started out with an initial "Low" level of importance when their talk pages were created. Those deserving higher importance should be promoted as you come across them.

Improving the new portals

The starting point for new portals included minimal parameters and content, in the form of default values in the template(s) used for their creation.

Embellishing embedded search strings

So, for the search strings in the "Did you know..." and "In the news" sections, this was the magic word {{PAGENAME}}, which represents the portal's name. Unfortunately, the resulting term is alway capitalized, which limits its effectiveness as a search string for anything but proper nouns. Results for those two sections can be improved, by replacing the "PAGENAME" magic word with multiple search strings, and search strings that begin with lower case letters. There is no inherent limit as to how many search parameters may be included. Lua search notation is used. The more general the subject, the more subtopic search terms you may want to include. For example, on Portal:Avengers (comics), {{PAGENAME}} turned up nothing. But, when more parameters were added, as in the wikicode below...

{{Transclude selected recent additions | {{PAGENAME}} | Iron Man | Spiderman | Antman | Hawkeye | The Hulk | Incredible Hulk | David Banner | Captain America | Scarlet Witch | Black Widow | Tony Stark | Nick Fury | Age of Ultron | Infinity War | months=36 | header={{Box-header colour|Did you know... }}|max=6}}

... that returned several results in the portal's DYK section.

Be sure you make the improvements to both the DYK section and the "In the news" section, as they both require the search strings.

Expanding the slideshow contents

The default starting selection for the image slideshow in most new portals is whatever images happen to be in the corresponding root article (via the PAGENAME magic word). You can improve image slideshows by adding more sourcepages and filenames as parameters in the "Selected images" section of portals.

See Template:Transclude files as random slideshow/doc for instructions.

More exciting things are to come...

Portals used to take about 6 hours or more to create. Now, for subjects that have particular navigation support, we've got that down to about one minute each, with even more content displayed than ever. True, that means the new portals pick you, rather than the other way around. Creating a specific portal that doesn't happen to have the requisite navigation support is still pretty time consuming. But, we are working on extending our reach beyond the low-hanging fruit.

And efforts are ongoing to keep shaving time off of the creation process. Eventually, we may get it down to seconds each.

In addition to improving automation, we're always looking for new features and improvements that we can add to portals, and there is plenty of potential to expand on the standard design so that new portals are even better right out of the starting gate. Additional designs are also possible.

On the horizon, there are many more portals waiting to be created. And we can expect to see at least a few more section types emerge. I never expected slideshows, for example, especially not for excerpts. Who knows where innovation will take us next?

Keep up the great work everyone.

Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 07:05, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Have your say!

Hi everyone, just a quick reminder that voting for the WikiProject Military history coordinator election closes soon. You only have a day or so left to have your say about who should make up the coordination team for the next year. If you have already voted, thanks for participating! If you haven't and would like to, vote here before 23:59 UTC on 28 September. Thanks, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:29, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Nikephoros and image

Καλησπέρα! How are you, Cplakidas? :) I'm so glad that you have the image of Adrianos. Do you know; is there maybe an image of his brother Nikephoros? Maybe his seal? But thank you still — I am very glad!-Miha (talk) 20:38, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Monastic State of the Knights Hospitaller in Rhodes?

Hi Cplakidas. I want to know if the Knights Hospitaller had a Monastic State in Rhodes like the Teutonic Knights. In italian wikipedia exist an article called Stato monastico dei Cavalieri di Rodi. A greetings Kardam (talk) 19:37, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi Kardam! Certainly the Knights Hospitaller were sovereign on Rhodes and other Dodecanese islands, so yes they had a state there, much as they later did at Malta. The question is, what is a "monastic state"? I would associate this term with Mount Athos perhaps, but with the Hospitallers I am hesitant; although undoubtedly technically correct, I am not sure whether it is accurate/enough. The state of the Hospitallers was much more than a state of monks (let alone a state of monasteries, which it definitely was not); it was a Crusader principality and hence a colonial society, a warrior state dedicated to waging holy war and hence a theocratic frontier society, etc. Unless a number of sources actually use the term, I would avoid it. Constantine ✍ 20:36, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

There's an easy answer to this, as the knights have never been monks at any stage in the order's history. They are laymen (and now women) in a lay order, with some individual exceptions. The same goes for the Teutonic Knights. Johnbod (talk) 20:53, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

There you have it. Thanks Johnbod. Constantine ✍ 21:09, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Important Notice

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have recently shown interest in the Balkans. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect: any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or any page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

TonyBallioni (talk) 00:23, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Sorry about the template, we have to use one. I'm just alerting anyone who was involved on the Rise of Macedon dispute about this. It really has no implication of wrongdoing. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:23, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CL, October 2018

Your Military History Newsletter

Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results
Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content
Book review: Nick-D looks at the use of so-called "substandard" manpower in armies
Interview: On the Bugle turning 150 (issues that is!)
Op-ed: TomStar81 on the collapse of empires at the close of World War I
Timeline: This month in World War I

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 07:00, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

Zypriotische Parteizugehörigkeiten

Hallo Cplakidas, nachdem User:ASPARSIS08 im IRC um Hilfe bat, habe ich ihm bei der Formatierung und Belegung von Draft:Nikos_Christodoulides, dem amtierenden zypriotischen Außenminister geholfen. Als Folge davon habe ich einen dabei aufgestöberten Artikel der Cyprus Mail verwendet, um Anastasiades government zu bearbeiten. Im letzteren Artikel war noch nichts über den Kabinettwechsel von März 2018 eingetragen. Ich bin mir ziemlich sicher, daß ich die meisten betroffenen Politiker und Parteien richtig habe, aber was Parteien angeht war der Zeitungsartikel schweigsam. Kannst du mir vielleicht helfen, die Parteizugehörigkeiten der aktuellen zyprischen Minister zu klären? Ich kann kein griechisch, deswegen komme ich auf dich. Würde mich freuen. 2.247.243.245 (talk) 17:39, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi, sehr gerne. Soweit ich sehen kann, sind die Parteien korrekt. Transportministerin ist jetzt aber Vasiliki Anastasiadou, die soweit ich sehen kann keiner Partei gehört sondern Beamter war. Innenminister ist seit 11 Mai 2017 Konstantinos Petridis, und sein Nachfolger als Vizeminister beim Präsidenten ist Vasilis Palmas. In der neuen Regierung gibt es zusätzlich einen Vizeminister für Schifffahrt, Natasa Pileidou (DISY). Constantine ✍ 19:54, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Vielen lieben Dank so weit. Hab das so weit eingearbeitet. Vielleicht schaust du abschließend nochmal, ob die Auflistung so stehen bleiben kann. Für mich ist der Keks damit erstmal gegessen. :) 2.247.241.164 (talk) 07:45, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Hab noch etwas korrigiert, schaut OK aus. Danke fürs Interesse, Zypern ist leider ein etwas vernachlässigtes Thema hier... Constantine ✍ 19:10, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

PS noch etwas, ich glaube, man sollte vielleicht den Artikel spalten, da formell nach März 2018 es ein neues Kabinett entstanden ist. --Constantine ✍ 19:20, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

So wie z.B. jedes Merkel-Kabinett einen eigenen Artikel hat. Finde ich gut. Leider kann ich das selber nicht machen, da ich kein Wikipedia-Konto möchte. (Höchstens per Draft-> AFC, aber das dauert.) 2.247.242.222 (talk) 09:05, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Ich kann das machen, sobald ich etwas Zeit habe. Könnte also evtl. bis zum Wochenende dauern. Constantine ✍ 10:33, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Gute Arbeit, Constantine. Im Artikel über das aktuelle Kabinett waren noch keine Belege angegeben. Habe eine passende Cyprus Mail-Meldung hinzugefügt. Ich hoffe, das ganze ist nicht zu obskur, so daß es wirklich jemandem nützt. 2.247.241.134 (talk) 13:08, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Talk:Rise of Macedon --> HELLENIC KINGDOM

New WP:CONSENSUS Building. Greek or Hellenic precedes "kingdom" in the first sentence (based on sources). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dragao2004 (talk • contribs) 04:26, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #020, 12 Oct 2018

Whew, a lot has been happening.

A bit of defending of the portals has been needed. But, most activity recently has been directed upon maintenance and development of existing portals.

The majority of portals now use the new design, about 2400 of them, leaving around 1200 portals that still employ the old style.

Newest portals

Please inspect these portals, and report problems or suggest improvements at WT:WPPORTD. Thank you.

MfDs

Since the last issue of this newsletter, Nineteen portals were nominated for deletion. All posted by the same person.

Two portals were deleted.

One resolved as "no consensus".

Sixteen resolved as "keep".

Links to the archived discussions are provided below:

Many thanks to those who participated in the discussions.

To watch for future MfD's, keep in mind that the Portals WikiProject is supported by automatic alerts. You can see them at: Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals#Article alerts: portals for deletion at MfD

Creation criteria

There was also some discussion of creation criteria for portals. The result was that one of the participants in the discussion reverted the portal guidelines to the old version, which has the minimum number of articles for a portal included in there: "about 20 articles", a guideline that was in place since 2009.

Many of the portals that existed prior to April 2018 do not have that many (being limited to however many subpages the portal creator created), and therefore, these portals need to be upgraded to the new design (which automatically provides many articles for display). Using the new design, exceeding 20 articles for display is very easy.

Linking to the new portals

Efforts have been underway to place links to new portals (all 2200 of them created since April).

Link (portal button) from corresponding category pages. Done
Link from See also section on corresponding root articles. Partially implemented
Link from bottom of corresponding templates. Partially implemented
Link for each portal on Portal:Contents/Portals. Partially implemented

Your help is needed. It is easy to access the page mentioned in #1, #2, & #3 from the portals themselves.

AWBers could do these tasks even faster (that's how the category pages were done), except #4...

Item #4 above pretty much has to be done by hand. (If you can find a way to speed that up, I would be very impressed). The links needing placement can be found at Portal talk:Contents/Portals#These are not listed yet. Instructions are included there.

The conversion effort: news sections

There are still around 1200 old-style portals that have only undergone partial conversion to the new design concepts, still relying on subpages with copied/pasted excerpts that have been going stale for years, out of date (manually posted) news entries, etc.

The section currently being tackled on these is news. You can help by deleting any news section on the old-style portals that has news entries that are years old (that is the dead giveaway to a manual news section). Be sure not to delete the news sections of portals that have up-to-date news, or active maintainers. For maintainers, look at the portal's categories, and/or check the participants list at WP:WPPORT.

Eventually, conditional news sections (that appear only when news items are available for display) will be added using AWB to all portals without a news section.

News items (and even the news sections themselves) are automatically generated for portals that were created using the Basic portal start page. On those portals, there is a hidden comment at the top of the page (that you can see in the edit window), that says this:

Design development

Presently, we are in the process of implementing the new design features, creating new portals with them, and installing them in existing portals.

But, what about development of new new design features?

We have a wish department.

Post your wishes at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Design#Discussions about possible cool new features, and they might come true. Many have already, and for many of those, this is where they were posted.

Cascade effect

A resource that has been elusive so far will be obtained eventually: categories. That is, the ability to pull category member links to populate a page.

Rather than populate portals directly with such links, it may be more beneficial to the encyclopedia to utilize them in navigation footers, because portals already have the ability to generate themselves based on those.

So, this would create a cascade effect: auto-gathering entries from categories, would enable the construction of new navigation footers, that would in turn support the development of new portals.

The cascade effect would also be felt by existing portals, as existing navigation footers could be expanded using the category harvesting methods, which would in turn expand the coverage of portals that access those navigation footers.

You can help by providing leads about any potential category harvesting methods. Please report anything you know about harvesting categories at WT:WPPORTD. Thank you.

Looking into the future: the quantum portal?

One idea that has been floating around is the concept of a pageless portal. That is, a portal that isn't stored anywhere, instead being generated when you click on a menu item or button.

Many of the new portals were generated by a single click, and then saved via a second click.

Therefore, it seems likely that the portals of the future will employ the one-click concept.

Because of the need for customization by users, this concept would need to be augmented with a way to integrate user contributions. This could be done in at least two ways: posting an existing portal, autogenerating one from scratch if such does not yet exist, or have a special data page for user contributions that is folded into the auto-generated portal.

How soon? That is up to you. All that is needed are persons to implement it.

Until next time...

Keep up the good work on portals. They are improving daily. Thank you. — The Transhumanist 04:17, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Βοήθεια στην μετάφραση

Επειδή είσαι γερμανομαθής θα σε παρακαλούσα να με βοηθήσεις στην μετάφραση του όρου Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich που είναι ο επίσημος τίτλος του Εξουσιοδοτικού νόμου. Στα αγγλικά μεταφράζεται ως ("Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich". Τι θα πρότεινες εσύ; Ευχαριστώ εκ των προτέρων (Dor-astra (talk) 14:46, 12 October 2018 (UTC))

Καλησπέρα Dor-astra! Κυριολεκτικά είναι "Νόμος για την Αντιμετώπιση της Ανάγκης του Λαού και του Ράιχ", μια ελαφρώς πιο ελεύθερη μετάφραση, που αποδίδει όμως καλύτερα το πνεύμα της ονομασίας, είναι "Νόμος για την Άρση/Αντιμετώπιση των Δεινών του Λαού και του Ράιχ". Constantine ✍ 19:29, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Ευχαριστώ πολύ! (Dor-astra (talk) 14:39, 13 October 2018 (UTC))

Basil II

Constantine, do you know of any good sources for Basil II? Векочел (talk) 14:27, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi Векочел, the best are already in the article: Magdalino 2002, Holmes 2005, Stephenson 2003, and Kaldellis 2017 are probably the most relevant right now, as they also discuss the various issues and controversies in scholarly cycles, and offer a critical interpretation of the sources and previous studies. An up-to-date and concise resource is the PMBZ entry ([5]), while the PBW entry ([6]) gives a set of primary source quotes that concern Basil's life. I would also recommend that you read Whittow's The Making of Orthodox Byzantium and the relevant parts of Treadgold's History of the Byzantine Empire, they provide valuable context about the world Byzantium existed in and the major issues of the day (Treadgold reflects a more traditional view of scholarship, IMO). Ostrogorsky's History of the Byzantine State is now a bit outdated, but if you want a good summary of the scholarly consensus as it was until the 1980s, you should check it out.

For more specific areas, Kennedy 2004 is an excellent overview and standard work over early Islamic history, I heartily recommend it to you regardless of the present article. Stephenson 2000 and Strässle's Krieg und Kriegführung in Byzanz: die Kriege Kaiser Basileios' II. gegen die Bulgaren (976-1019) are invaluable for the war against Bulgaria, which is arguably the chief military/political event of his reign. The Economic History of Byzantium is a standard reference work on the topic, and the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium can give you short but adequate descriptions of the major persons, topics, and terms. These alone should suffice for an article that is comprehensive and up-to-date, but for details you will probably have to delve in other sources (e.g. the section about the Syrian campaigns, where most Byzantine-centred works don't provide many details, I had to use other, more dedicated sources). Specific topics of interest would be the Church and provincial reorganization of the Balkans after 1018, his agrarian/anti-dynatoi legislation and relations with them in general, Basil as a general, relations with the Caucasian princes and the Muslim world, with his brother, the question of succession (and lack of wife and children), the strong men in Basil's regime (e.g. Basil Lekapenos and Ouranos). Parts of this are already in some form in the article, but in a thrown-together manner, that does not make their importance clear and does not help provide context.

FWIW, I would absolutely avoid any online reference of the type of National Geographic or Ancient History Encyclopedia, and any source that is older than ca. 1950, unless for very specific reasons. You also need to check up on the references in the article as it is now, there are quite a few reference errors, let alone the inconsistency in style. I recommend using {{sfn}} footnotes rather than full bibliographic citations. If you need any help in locating sources or don't understand something, don't hesitate to ask. I also recommend that you have a look around for other FA biographies of monarchs, Cleopatra, Alcibiades, and Edward III are nice examples, which combines both a chronological narrative and a topical analysis. Constantine ✍ 15:12, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

I have removed some of Psellus' description of Basil and added a statement that Basil's brother and co-ruler at one point had military command alongside him. I will look for the books you mentioned, hopefully sometime soon. Векочел (talk) 18:19, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Should I remove the sources "of the type of National Geographic or Ancient History Encyclopedia, and any source that is older than ca. 1950" already listed? Векочел (talk) 14:07, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

I would definitely look at replacing them with something better. However, again, I would recommend that you leave the article be for a time, and read up on the subject. By concentrating on the minor issues you lose the forest for the trees. Constantine ✍ 14:17, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

I found a description of Basil detailing the length of his reign, but I don't know the page number. Векочел (talk) 01:30, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Actually, I was able to find it. Векочел (talk) 01:35, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

I am trying but I find it to be quite hard to find sources for Basil. Векочел (talk) 20:51, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Can I get your current judgement on the article of Basil II? Векочел/Vecochel (talk) 02:02, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Battle of Settepozzi

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Battle of Settepozzi you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Gog the Mild -- Gog the Mild (talk) 20:41, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Battle of Trapani

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Battle of Trapani you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Gog the Mild -- Gog the Mild (talk) 21:02, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of File:GreeceContinental.PNG

The file File:GreeceContinental.PNG has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Orphaned map.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated files}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the file's talk page.

Please consider addressing the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated files}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and files for discussion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 16:45, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.14 21 October 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months.

Hello Cplakidas, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

Backlog

As of 21 October 2018^[update], there are 3650 unreviewed articles and the backlog now stretches back 51 days.

Community Wishlist Proposal

There is currently an ongoing discussion regarding the drafting of a Community Wishlist Proposal for the purpose of requesting bug fixes and missing/useful features to be added to the New Page Feed and Curation Toolbar.
Please join the conversation as we only have until 29 October to draft this proposal!

Project updates

ORES predictions are now built-in to the feed. These automatically predict the class of an article as well as whether it may be spam, vandalism, or an attack page, and can be filtered by these criteria now allowing reviewers to better target articles that they prefer to review.
There are now tools being tested to automatically detect copyright violations in the feed. This detector may not be accurate all the time, though, so it shouldn't be relied on 100% and will only start working on new revisions to pages, not older pages in the backlog.

New scripts

User:Enterprisey/cv-revdel.js^(info) — A new script created for quickly placing {{copyvio-revdel}} on a page.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 20:49, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Greek inscription

Hey Konstantinos! I need your help. One of the most significant Greek inscriptions found in Armenia is the on found near the Temple of Garni. There are several Armenian and English translations of the text. But I could find the original Greek in one source only. It is from 1947 (http://echmiadzin.asj-oa.am/374/1/1947-3-4(61).pdf). The Greek text is found on page 7 of the PDF.

What I need you to do is check if the text from the source (https://i.imgur.com/RwceaZI.png) and my rendering below are accurate.

Ήλιος Τιριδάτης [ό μέγας]

μεγάλης Άρμενίας δνα[κτος]

ώς δεσπότης. Ατκτισε ναί[διον]

βασιλία[ο]α τόν άνίχητον χασ[ιν ένι]

αιτούς. Αι. Τής βασιλεί[ας αύτου]

με[γαλείας]. Υπό έξουσίά στεγάν[ου]

λίτουρος τώ μεγάλώ σπ[ήι εύχεσε]

μετά ματήμι καί ευχαρ [ιατίαν ύχήν]

τού μαρτυρίου.

Երևանցի ^talk 07:51, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi Yerevantsi! With pleasure, the correct text from the image (with some minor corrections in the diacritics) is:

Ἣλιος Τιριδάτης [ὁ μέγας]

μεγάλης Ἀρμενίας ἄνα[κτος]

ὡς δεσπότης. Αἴκτισε ναΐ[διον]

βασιλίσ[σ]α τὸν ἀνίκητον κασ[ιν ἐνι]

αιτούς. Αι. Τῆς βασιλεί[ας αὐτοῦ]

με[γαλείας]. Ὑπὸ ἐξουσίᾳ στεγάν[ου]

λίτουργος τῷ μεγάλῳ σπ[ῆι εὔχεσθε]

μετὰ ματήμι καὶ εὐχαρ[ιστίαν εὐχήν]

τοῦ μαρτυρίου.

Be aware that the text is in places un-orthographic and un-grammatical, AFAICS. Best, Constantine ✍ 08:52, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Thank you very much. It was probably written by a non-native speaker? ----Երևանցի ^talk 10:01, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Possible. I am not that knowledgeable about contemporary conventions in Greek, and frankly the meaning of the final sentences is unclear to me; but the genitive form ἄνα[κτος] (unless the reconstruction is wrong?) or Αἴκτισε instead of Ἔκτισε are definitely odd to this modern reader... Constantine ✍ 13:53, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Books & Bytes, Issue 30

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 30, August – Septmeber 2018

Library Card translation
Spotlight: 1Lib1Ref spreads to the Southern Hemisphere and beyond
Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
Global branches update
Bytes in brief

French version of Books & Bytes is now available in meta!
Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:43, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #021, 24 Oct 2018

Portals have passed the 4,000 mark.

More new portals...

Here's a list of portals created since the last issue

List of new portals

Please inspect these portals, report problems or suggest improvements at WT:WPPORTD, or develop them further (see below). Thank you.

What's next?

There is still lots to do...

There are many subject gaps that need to be filled. This can be done by creating new portals, or by adding Selected article sections to existing portals. To create a new portal, simply place {{subst:Basic portal start page}} on an empty portal page, and click "Preview". If the portal is complete, click "Save". After you try it, come share your experience and excitement at WT:WPPORTD.

Each new portal is just a starting point. Each portal of the new design can be further developed by:

refining the search parameters to improve the results displayed in the Did you know and In the news sections.
adding more specific Selected articles sections, like Selected biographies.
inserting a Recognized content section.
adding more pictures to the image slideshow.
placing a panoramic picture at the top of the intro section (especially for geographic portals).

Besides the new portals, there are still about 1200 portals of the old design that need to be converted to the new design.

Many portals need to be de-orphaned, by placing links to them (in the See also section of the corresponding root articles, at the bottom of the corresponding navigation footer templates, and on the corresponding category pages).

Many of the new portals still need to be listed at Portal:Contents/Portals.

Bugs keep popping up in portals. These need to be tracked down and reported at WT:WPPORTD.

Tools are needed to make developing and maintaining portals quicker and easier.

Dreaming up new features and capabilities. Innovation needs to continue, to design the portal of tomorrow, and the portal development-maintenance-system of the future. Automation!

So, if you find yourself with a little (or a lot) of free time, pick an area (or more) above and...

...dive in! — The Transhumanist 07:25, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Battle of Settepozzi

The article Battle of Settepozzi you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Battle of Settepozzi for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Gog the Mild -- Gog the Mild (talk) 22:02, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Hard earned and richly deserved

		Scholarly Barnstar
		I can think of no other editor who more thoroughly deserves this. I am amazed that it has not already been awarded. Long may you be a beacon of scholarly example to other editors. Gog the Mild (talk) 11:27, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

It is not my habit to award two barnstars to a single editor, much less simultaneously, but your case cries out to IAR .

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		"Tireless" is the first word which springs to mind when thinking of your edits. The more I experience Wikipedia myself, the more in awe I am of the long years during which you have somehow combined a continuous prodigious rate of output with impeccable standards. Is it possible that there are two of you? Gog the Mild (talk) 11:27, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

(blushing) Thanks, coming from you it means a lot. "Tireless" is perhaps a gentle way of saying "stays inside on weekends working on WP articles", but no, seriously, I have social life, if I could only remember where I put it? :P Cheers, and thanks again, Constantine ✍ 12:25, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Talk:Uzunköprü

Hello, Cplakidas. You have new messages at Talk:Uzunköprü.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

CeeGee 13:21, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

		Humor Barnstar!
		For your respond on the Talk:Uzunköprü.

CeeGee 17:49, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Battle of Trapani

The article Battle of Trapani you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Battle of Trapani for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Gog the Mild -- Gog the Mild (talk) 13:01, 28 October 2018 (UTC)