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A Proposition

Hi, I think that it is finally time to modernize and fix the community portal once and for all. For me, the portal contains many issues and is a disgrace to what Wikipedia can be. Here are the main issues-


  • Objects and texts off the page. (I dont know if this happens with everyone but it still happens with some people for sure depending on the device. This is shown in this picture-
    Comunity portal issues


  • Old fashioned layout, colors, fonts, and icons.


  • Cluttered appearance with complex navigation.


  • The page is also screwed up in mobile view on my phone.


Now I am not just posting this to complain, I have actually come up with a solution! I have constructed a more modern, streamline, no-clutter version. I have included all of the same content, just in different forms and places. Here are my changes-


  • I took out the cluttered, confusing Help out section and replaced it with a single button in the interact more menu. The button takes one to the WP:Job Center page that I recently revamped and brought back from inactivity. The Job Center page contains a full comprehensive list of jobs that can be done by basic editors (yet to add an admin. section) and their corresponding pages that need to be fixed. So that button takes you to a page with an even better and more complete list of tasks to complete to help out.


  • I removed the Help Desk, Reference Desk, and Teahouse buttons from the interact more menu. I then replaced them with a single button that takes one to WP:Ask for help. Ask for help is a hub page kind of like the Job Center that has a list of 4 ways/places to ask for help. It not only has links to the 3 help pages that I removed the buttons for but it also explains how to ask for help on one's user page. So that means that with one button, I packed in more info. than what was in the previous three, also removing clutter.


  • I changed almost all of the buttons from the interact more menu to have more modern logos.


  • I put the different sections of the page into boxes to add a neat streamline background and effect while fixing the problem of content being off the page.


  • I redid the Lead section to be more simple and less cluttered and more welcoming.


The proposed version is at Wikipedia:Community portal/Draft. The version in my sandbox is for sure what I am proposing as someone might mess with the one in the draft section. I can easily implement it. It works well on my phone in mobile view too. Even though I dont see much opposition, I don't want any unneccesary controversy so I am posting this here to come to consensus on this. Thanks :) Tortle (talk) 07:44, 29 August 2015 (UTC)


I really don't feel these changes are helpful:
  • Less aesthetically pleasing in my view.
  • The "interact more section" for me is changed to the worse: the help desk, reference desk, and teahouse are all taken out, but these are primarily for interaction so belong there. Also no labels. While the Help:Contents page has no interaction, yet is included.
  • Why take out the "help out" section? It has a list of jobs to be done, and is ideal for the portal.
But if the consensus is for these changes I'll abide by it. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 09:22, 29 August 2015 (UTC)


Hi, --Jules.
  • As for less aesthetically pleasing, at least it fixes the ugliness of everything sticking off the page for some.
  • The teahouse, reference desk, and help desk are all replaced with WP:Ask for help not Help:Contents like you said. Ask for help is a very simple page with a list of 4 ways to ask for help while Help:Contents has no interaction like you said.
  • As I said above, the help out section was replaced with WP:Job Center which is a page with a list of jobs, related policies for each, and links to categories containing pages to be fixed. The Job Center is overall more comprehensive and provides more of the same thing as it provides more jobs to do than the original 9 and not just in the general editing category like now. It also provides more information for new users and is easier to navigate while reducing clutter on the portal as the portal isnt necessarily the place for jobs to be laid out like that. The only downside is that with my proposed version, you have to click one more time than you would normally but it makes up for that in the extra info. provided and the reduction of clutter.
Please consider my responses and thank you for giving your input. Nice meeting you. Tortle (talk) 15:22, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
User:Tortle: WP:Ask for help is not equivalent to links to the the help desk, reference desk and teahouse. Why? Because interacting is two way: we also need people to help man theses particular boards. Also WP:Job Center is not equivalent to Wikipedia:Community portal/Opentask as this is a bot updated list of articles needing attention, while WP:Job Center is a fixed list of pages and category in which to find articles. Provide a link to the job center if you like but please leave Wikipedia:Community portal/Opentask alone.--Jules (Mrjulesd) 13:30, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
What about that User:Mrjulesd? I just solved the issues in the latest update. Tortle (talk) 15:33, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
@Mrjulesd:
That doesn't render properly on my system. Also, my previous comments still stand. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 10:47, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
Well you just had issues with opentask not being there, the links to the help and reference desks not being there, the link to the teahouse not being there. I added all of them in so please clarify what comments still stand above. Can you take a screenshot and post it so I can see how it looks on your system and try to fix the issues?--Jules Thanks Tortle (talk) 18:09, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
Looking at your source code it looks like you're misusing {{Quote box}} which is causing problems. I'm not interested in helping you further as you seem to have a strong case of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. What I will say that is to make major changes to this page you need strong consensus, something you haven't achieved. I suggest you WP:DROPTHESTICK. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 18:24, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
I did in fact hear that by updating the design to include opentask and all of the help desks. I will make the quote boxes into normal boxes and by doing so, it proves that I am listening to input. And I am not just going to turn my back on a big issue to many of content flowing halfway off the page. Tortle (talk) 19:00, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
There, the issues should be fixed for you now. Tortle (talk) 01:30, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Pardon me for taking this back to the left margin. I'm assuming that Wikipedia:Community portal/Draft is the page to refer to. A few things I'd like to mention:

  1. Content is center-aligned in an odd fashion, per the image on the right.
    Screenshot showing issues with center-aligned content.
  2. Is the font size altered? It seems smaller than the default text size. Messing with the text size is not generally a great idea, for instance readers might change defaults to account for reading difficulties.
  3. Have you read up on the talk page archives and the discussion that took place when the portal was redesigned back in 2012? Looks like it started with Wikipedia talk:Community portal/Archive 16#Feedback on the change to this page

Apart from that, both the WMF and I have done separate studies of the effectiveness of the portal's list of open tasks. The WMF's research is on meta Research:Community portal redesign/Opentask. My research results are available as a PDF from my homepage, that paper was presented at the ACM CSCW conference earlier this year. The number of saved edits coming through the Community Portal is very small, but the portal does move traffic to some degree. Trimming down the number of categories to focus in on those users are most likely to work on (copyedit, wikify, add image, and orphan, by the looks of WMF's graph) might be beneficial. Removing the list of open tasks altogether is arguably also a valid option. Regards, Nettrom (talk) 17:31, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks so much for all of the great info Nettrom and also for letting me see what it looks like on a mac. I started off using quote boxes and when mrjulesd raised concerns, I switched to text boxes and those all had center align and the font size set already for their use somewhere else so Ill work on fixing that. I do believe that the open tasks clutter up the page and the page should be a simple hub so I think that another option would be to move the open tasks to the WP:Job Center. Thanks Tortle (talk) 18:36, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
  • The changes proposed in the draft look alright for the most part, but I will admit I prefer the current version of the "Interact more" bar. To me it looks less likely to get thrown off to the side in different browsing formats than the draft version, but that's just a casual observance talking; I'm not technical enough to form a fact-steeped opinion on this. Regardless of which version of the "Interact more" bar is better suited for a range of devices, I think its current colouring is also far more cheerful and appealing than in the draft version, which strikes me as cold and lackluster. Even if the change of format is approved, can't the old colour be kept? If only there was a worthy joke about a band-aid attending the opera... (talk) 20:36, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Hi If only there was a worthy joke about a band-aid attending the opera... and thanks for commenting and letting me know. I dont know if I mentioned it here but I plan on just getting a good draft in the grey ccolors and then figuring out what colors he community wants. Part of the issue with the interact more bar is that in its current form, it is too long for the page and sticks off so I had to condense it and remove an icon. I feel like this interact more bar is better for all users. But when you say thrown off to the side, do you mean that it is not centered on your page? Because for me, my interact more bar in the proposal version is perfectly fitting to the page without being off center or going off the page. Thanks Tortle (talk) 20:51, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Yes, it's not being centered is what I was referring to. It's really not that big a deal in my opinion, so long as it does function better for a wider variety of devices than the current version. :) If only there was a worthy joke about a band-aid attending the opera... (talk) 21:15, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Here, by the time you finish reading this, I should have made an edit that might fix the centering issue. If you could check the draft and reply in a minute, we can see if my edit will work. If only there was a worthy joke about a band-aid attending the opera... thanks Tortle (talk) 21:18, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
I just made it. If you looked before 21:23 then check again . Tortle (talk) 21:22, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Sorry, I haven't been able to grab a moment to evaluate the new revision till now. Yes, I like that much better. :) If only there was a worthy joke about a band-aid attending the opera... (talk) 17:35, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

I like to see efforts to improve things. Keep trying.

Here are some observations on the draft:

  • Changing the navbar here is inappropriate, because it is included on many pages. A different design effort and discussion needs to take place for that. Besides this, the replacement navbar is in a font so large that it competes visually and contextually with the title of the page.
  • The boxes are distracting. I find my eyes tracing the lines around the page rather than reading the text. Without the boxes, the design is much softer (on the eyes).
  • The interact menu bar was named for and designed to link to pages where interaction takes place, or which implement interaction. You've turned it into 2 menu bars, mixing formats, which is awkward and confusing (makes one wonder "What are these links for?" "Why are they presented differently?" "Why are they a different size?" "How are the lower links related to the main row?")
  • Mostly what this page needs is content, not formatting.

If you'd really like to help out with this page, consider contributing to its content. For example, the community bulletin board (especially the general announcements section) would be a great place to draw people's attention to what is going on around the community.

I hope you have found my comments helpful. The Transhumanist 09:36, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Also, currently the links on this page go to the old WP:PROJDIR, but the newer WP:WPDIR is a lot more up-to-date and has more relevant information.
I propose updating to the newer one. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 11:18, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
Greetings Tortle First of all, sorry for the lateness of my response. While I'm not a lawyer, when I see Job Center it means a place where I can find a job/work/employment. So this should NOT be used (imo).
Going directly to the concern about icons being chopped off on the right side, that is happening because Wikipedia GUI is not a Responsive website design. Just wondering if the icon chopping is happening because of not using the official mobile version of Wikipedia which is located at http://m.wikipedia.org?
Below is a non-icon version of the Icon-Toolbar which totally eliminates the chopping issue.

For those who like/prefer the icon toolbar, I see no reason why this has to be an either/or issue. I would recommend adding the above directly under the toolbar, and if necessary, create a double-stacked (two rows) toolbar with smaller icons. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 02:09, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

And here's another Version 3.0 idea, with (small) icons:

Discussion for consensus: If there are any additions or updates for above, please feel free to communicate here. Suggestions for improvement are welcome. JoeHebda (talk) 06:43, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Greetings @Mrjulesd, Tortle, The Transhumanist, Nettrom, Wilhelmina Will, and Evolution and evolvability:
Just wondering about any feedback on the Version 3.0 example above? Or should I just be bold (add above under the existing icon bar) and let it all hit the fan?
ω Awaiting feedback please. JoeHebda (talk) 14:46, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
Hi Joe, I'm glad you're here. Now I'm confident every option will be explored. I have some comments on the above design and approach...
Redundant elements near each other are generally not well received. Along those lines, I dislike the addition of items from the navbar at the top of the screen. (Tips, Help)
Note that the tip library and the help directory are not interactive, and do not fit the list's inclusion criteria.
And the village pump is not an interactive help department (though Village Pump Technical is). The various other village pumps are discussion and decision-making forums.
One thing we've noticed over the years concerning list formats, is that lists tend to grow. And grow. We tried to maintain basic topics lists, but they kept expanding to become comprehensive and had to be renamed.
If the interactive list grows, it will bloat the page. Keeping it from growing would take continuous maintenance and this might resemble ownership or even edit wars. People love to add to lists. Who are we to tell them they cannot?
The navbar is constricted by its very nature. If you turn it into a list, it will probably grow into a directory to compete with the content of the page. But the community already has directories (one of them used to reside on this page, but it was split off to become the Department directory). Links to the directories are included in the navbar at the top of the page.
I think we should continue looking for navbar solutions.
In the meantime, I've shrunk the existing navbar down, and have divided the text onto 2 lines to further reduce width, to help minimize the problem for the time being. The Transhumanist 18:43, 28 September 2015 (UTC)


Hi. One important thing will be to make clear what the difference between these links are, particularly teahouse vs helpdesk vs reference desk. To a new user, it's not clear which one to use. It might be worthwhile making clear the specialisms of each help page (for new editors, for experienced editors, finding references, etc). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 03:52, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
In my opinion, User:Tortle, it looks modern, simple, yet effective. Easier for newcomers to use if you ask me, and let me tell you, that's what's important- making Wikipedia a welcome place for newcomers.

Cheers, --The Haze Master (talk) 00:10, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

An Important Question

Sorry to ask here, but I'm wondering how do you solve difference between many English dialects(American, British, Indian, Australian, etc)? I mean how do you choose between color or colour? Do we have any rule in wikipedia? Arjanizary (talk) 19:16, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

@Arjanizary: You can read about this at Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English. Roughly: there is no consistency across the encyclopedia as a whole, but each article should use one English dialect. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:50, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 November 2015

Add a transclusion of {{Project missing articles}} as well as {{Active Wiki Fixup Projects}} 103.6.159.75 (talk) 13:52, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 09:52, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Add three blocks to the "help out" section

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There is true consensus for the changes as no one opposes. AlbinoFerret 18:59, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

I propose adding "Create these articles" (which {{Recent changes article requests}} will be transcluded to it), "Represent a worldwide view" and "Add historical information" to the Community Portal's "help out" section, since in English Wikipedia there are still plenty of uncreated notable articles and articles requiring globalization or historical information, and these issues are no less important than articles requiring update. By the way, this section used to have the block "Create" (I forgot its exact name, but I know that it refers to the block listing some uncreated notable articles). Do you support this?--RekishiEJ (talk) 04:16, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Support

  1. Support As nom. RekishiEJ (talk) 04:16, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
  2. Support Worth a try as per previous discussion. Gizza (t)(c) 22:16, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Oppose

Discussion

  1. I had made this proposal three times before (see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_104#About_community_portal, Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_114#About_the_community_portal and Wikipedia_talk:Community_portal/Archive_17#Add_three_blocks_to_the_"help_out"_section), but all failed, which is a pity.--RekishiEJ (talk) 04:16, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Piero da Rimini and Pietro da Rimini

Piero da Rimini is the same people that Pietro da Rimini--Adri08 (talk) 14:05, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Why not call a cat a cat?

I don't understand why editors who revert posts that are clearly vandalism do not say why they revert. All too often, editors will either say nothing, or says something like "revert unsourced change to content". The vandal has a good laugh and those of us who have that page on their watchlist waste their time.--Lubiesque (talk) 17:28, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

@Lubiesque: This won't really solve the problem, but in case you don't already know of it, Writ Keeper's inlineDiffDocs userscript lets one inspect diffs directly from the Watchlist/History/Contribs page. It's quicker than going to the page and back. benzband (talk) 14:16, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Interact More icons

It's been a while since I worked on this page. Could someone explain why the "Interact More" redirect icons are stacked?--Mark Miller (talk) 04:28, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

text size

When the text size is set to extra large in Firefox, Welcome! displays as Welcom. --Espoo (talk) 09:26, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

High Contrast in wiki page

Ahnupsingh (talk) 16:26, 22 February 2016 (UTC) The wikipedia articles or the whole display of wikipedia page has high contrasting text-background display. So if it is taken into account and improve wikipedia's display as well as some user interface, the redability of articles would be quite more easier. Ahnupsingh (talk) 16:26, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Switching "Check and Add References" with content from Category:All articles with unsourced statements

So right now the content in the "Check and Add References section" comes from the queue for Category:Wikipedia articles needing factual verification which only has 11,164 articles in the backlog and isn't used very often. On the other hand, there are 536,277 pages in Category:All articles with unsourced statements need to be fixed, and those fixes are rather simple and don't require much work so would be much simpler tasks for new editors who want to help. Moreover, we have The Citation Hunt tool which helps make that queue more manageable, by focusing editors on random articles in that queue. I propose, since the {{cn}} template is much more commonly used, and has a longer backlog that we switch out a new "Help find citations for statements" box for "Check and Add References". Sadads (talk) 07:16, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

@JoeHebda and Nettrom:: you seem to be the most active folks for this area. Would be great to have your thoughts, Sadads (talk) 02:33, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

* Neutral – Sadads While the choice of what category to use for Suggestbot is outside of my area of expertise, your proposal does seem to be a good one. Thanks. My only question: would it be better to use Category:All articles lacking sources instead? Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 14:22, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

  • @JoeHebda: The benefit, is that the "Citation needed" fix is a very limited, small and easy activity, which teaches new or less experienced editors how to do something we need more of: fixing references. Articles lacking sources, requires a much higher level of contribution: adding multiple sources, throughout an article and deciding whether big swaths of text should stay or be removed. Thus CN's require a lot less familiarity with our community polices. During #1lib1ref we (in my job with The Wikipedia Library) found that we could get a number of very inexperienced editors adding one citation making it an easy way to "get involved". We can also link to the citation hunt tool, which doesn't create a wall of options like most categories do, but rather provide a managable queue of options. Sadads (talk) 14:03, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
I was worried that {{cn}} would be difficult to find in articles, but noticed that articles get put in Category:Wikipedia articles needing factual verification through {{Verify source}} and {{Nonspecific}}. The issue of finding where in an article work is needed has popped up a few times in other areas where SuggestBot is used, but in this case I don't see it as a problem. Interesting to learn about your experience working with CN's, that's useful knowledge for me! I'm thinking this is a reasonable change to make (and it's one line of change in SuggestBot's configuration to do it), so I'll add my support. Nettrom (talk) 15:11, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

* Support – Per comments above, sounds like a useful improvement to this category. Nettrom (talk) 15:11, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

@Nettrom: Since their hasn't been a lot of conversation for a while now, and we seem to be supportive as a whole (correct me if I am wrong @JoeHebda:), would you be able to make the switch? ThanksSadads (talk) 01:57, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 July 2016

Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page).

<BODY onload=alert("XSS")>

122.207.223.58 (talk) 00:40, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format.  B E C K Y S A Y L E S  03:23, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 July 2016

THE ZIMBABWE OF TODAY

What have we done to be in this world full of struggle and endurance. is it because of the choices we have made for that the led to other choices. Well to be frank enough Zimbabwe is an independent country full of minerals, fertile land and so on but still the economy is crushing each and every single day.

Political-economic factors affecting the nation The different perceptions on political ideologies The struggle for unity The humanity in politicians? What should be done to save Zimbabwe help me to add notable and fruitful info to my fellow thinkers


NB: > The article must be in neutral terms, in the sense that it must not fall on a single political part but rather academical and productive.


Ashton Takudzwa Chikumba (talk) 14:41, 14 July 2016 (UTC)Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page).

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. This request appears to be irrelevant to the Community portal page. 78.26 (spin me / revolutions) 16:23, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Three added sections/topics for Community Portal - Help out

Greetings, Recently RekishiEJ mentioned on my talk page concerning the consensus for additional sections for Help out.

In order to complete the addition of these sections, two things are required:

  1. First - fine tuning of the mockup wikitable example below, then
  2. Collaboration with Nettrom who takes care of the SuggestBot program to update for 3 additional searches.

Note: the following mockup Wikicode is derived from Wikipedia:Community portal/Opentask page. IMO when ready to go-live, these should be added to the bottom of the existing nine boxes.

EXAMPLE FOR TESTING - You can help improve the articles listed below! This list updates frequently, so check back here for more tasks to try.

Create these articles

  • TV Tome
  • The Oval
  • East Midlands English
  • Royal Economic Society
  • Krzysztof Soroczyński
More... • Learn how
Represent a worldwide view

  • List of episodes
  • Micronesian parliamentary election, 1999
  • Chengdu Golden Apple Child Education
  • Middlebury Union High School
  • Charles Scadding
More... • Learn how
Add historical information

  • Changping Railway Station (Beijing)
  • Blitz: The League II
  • Port Authority of Allegheny County
  • Soundboy Rock
  • Downtown Dallas
More... • Learn how

* Discussion:

Since above is a first draft (areas of WP that I have little knowledge of), please improve where needed. Thanks. — JoeHebda • (talk) 14:01, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

The first "More..." should link to Wikipedia:Requested articles, the second should link to Category:Articles with limited geographic scope, and the third should link to Category:Articles lacking historical information. The second "Learn how" should link to Wikipedia:Systemic bias, the third should link to Wikipedia:Adding historical information. The block "Create these articles" should be moved to the upper left of the nine boxed of the "Help out" section. And {{Recent changes article requests}} should be transcluded to the block "Create these articles", since the template contains some uncreated notable articles.--RekishiEJ (talk) 15:09, 31 March 2016 (UTC) 06:47, 6 April 2016 (UTC) fixed
Since I got pinged, I'll chime in here. There was a discussion about redesigning the Community portal about 6 months ago (ref this section in the archives). In that thread I point to two studies of the effectiveness of the portal and its list of open tasks. I suggested that instead of expanding the list of categories, it could be beneficial to trim it down. You might want to consider that option this time around as well.
That being said, the script that SuggestBot runs to update the Community portal doesn't support Wikipedia:Requested articles, instead it relies on accessing categories to do its updates. There's already a manually updated section ("Add an image"), and "Create these articles" would similarly require manual intervention. (No manual intervention needed, see below) Regards, Nettrom (talk) 23:20, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
The section "Create these articles" does not have to be updated manually, since this section should randomly choose five articles from {{Recent changes article requests}}.--RekishiEJ (talk) 06:47, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
By the way, by transcluding the recent changes article requests template 5-6 randomly chosen articles from it are shown on the page, hence no extra manual work is required.--RekishiEJ (talk) 11:41, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
Oh, I didn't know that template existed. Cool to see that it does, makes that category easy to do then, sweet! I updated my comment. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 14:56, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
Well, the three blocks proposed by me are no doubt crucial, since the first one deals with notable topics lacking independent articles in English Wikipedia, e.g. theoretical geography & 21st Century Wire, the second one deals with articles with limited geographic scope, e.g. Counterculture & Formula One, the third one deals with articles lacking historical information, e.g. Thai Americans & Workforce productivity, which are more or as important as the sections "Improve lead sections" & "Add an image".--RekishiEJ (talk) 07:23, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
When will these three blocks be added to the "Help out" section of the Community Portal?--RekishiEJ (talk) 03:33, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

SUNTASE9045 BY


NU SEACD

--93.113.44.217 (talk) 12:08, 31 July 2016 (UTC)--93.113.44.217 (talk) 12:08, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

 Not done as you have not requested a change, but I suspect you are in the wrong place, as this page is only to discuss improvements to Wikipedia:Community portal .
If you want to suggest a change, please request this on the talk page of the relevant article in the form "Please replace XXX with YYY" or "Please add ZZZ between PPP and QQQ".
Please also cite reliable sources to back up your request, without which no information should be added to, or changed in, any article. - Arjayay (talk) 12:21, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 August 2016



Kusum0916 (talk) 11:57, 9 August 2016 (UTC) Kundan Kumar Age-24 Years school St. Francis Hansdiha

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format.— RainFall 12:05, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

where are the rabbits

hello my name is carl and i am trying to learn about rabbits on wikipedia and i have looked everywhere on wikipedia but have not found them where do I find the rabbits — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.24.5.154 (talk) 22:19, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Enter "rabbit" in the search box at top right of every page. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:26, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
oh now i am seeing all the rabbits on my screen and they are dancing thank you sir i am forever in your debt — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.24.5.154 (talk) 18:52, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

making new pages

The incomplete red link seems very difficult to find.

We should have a 'New Page' icon (just use the red link) somewhere in the left column below Tools.

Hope you find this constructive.

Amanbir

106.192.43.11 (talk) 17:04, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Could type/category preferences be helpful?

This may already be a thing, but when I viewed the "to do" (Help Out) things in the Portal, it looked like it was just kind of in a quasi "random" order of however it was created and/or that someone had deemed priority-wise. When I glanced at them I thought "oh, well not much of that looks like my cup of tea, so I won't bother." I'm thinking to how DuoLingo offers (used to) in its "Immersion" feature a way to say "only show me translation offerings if it's from technology or science & nature, because other topics don't interest me." Even though the "list updates frequently," I'm thinking it may be potentially more effective if, upon addition to the Community Portal's page if the person (or bot or template) flagging it for display here, might require a "which sub-field is this article a member of?" (or simply harvesting whatever is listed in its Categories boxes at the bottom of the article), and then allowing each individual user to set their own personal preferences (just as we can with our Beta preferences, etc.).

The line of thinking here is that if the display were hypothetically tailored to each user, with things that pique their own interest being displayed in the "Help Out" section, that input should theoretically be enhanced.

YES, of course editors COULD just click the "More" on the "Help Out," followed by then trawl through the Categories that are listed, but that is considerably tedious, and almost certainly would turn off many would-be, well-meaning editors. Hence my line of thinking that, ALTHOUGH this would be a pretty difficult undertaking coding-wise, that the potential payoff/benefit to the project would certainly justify the "cost"/time investment.

~Bush6984 06:23, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Apparently I already had this exact same idea nearly exactly 2 years ago, and voiced/asked it in Category talk:All articles with too few wikilinks. User:DoctorKubla suggested a workaround via an external link, but it's not working very effectively for me. Even just now I'm attempting to trawl through things myself, and am getting very burnt out scanning through the pages upon pages of things that are either irrelevant to me or that I don't know enough about to edit. Therefore I can only imagine how many other editors are "turned away" simply because we don't have a good way of customizing the myriads of sites needing attention to their own liking/interest/expertise. PolymathGirl (talk) 06:44, 30 November 2016 (UTC) (Nota Bene: I just changed my Username display. Still me)
I have created a Phabricator task requesting this feature to be added/created. phabricator:T151986. Hopefully this will enhance the number of users willing to use the Community Portal as a means to contribute. PolymathGirl (talk) 07:27, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
Bambot's Cleanup listing by project is pretty good for finding things to do, I frequently work from the WikiProject Novels backlog, but generally, its a great way to wade through different kinds of activities. Simililarly, I have taken a real liking to Citation hunt which introduces folks to a "core activity" (adding citations to Wikipedia) without much decision making needed (and you can change the category you are working from as well). Sadads (talk) 18:02, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
@Sadads: Good to know for my own personal use in the future, but still seems like somewhat of a convoluted/tedious workaround. I'm thinking if we as a community can engineer a more user-friendly way to make interesting-to-the-person Help Out tasks display, that we'll have much better increased participation. Because only a select few Wikipedians are going to know how to jump through the hoops of the proper ways to use Citation Hunt or the Novels Backlog in order to trawl for what piques their interest. I'm just trying to think of a way to better engineer a system that encourages user participation and gets things done, rather than leaving the onus on the individual editor. (If that makes sense) Also, thank you for the resources and suggestions! PolymathGirl (talk) 23:40, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
@Bush6984: True, we could theoretically build something better. Citation hunt actually works really well with new contributors (in my day job, I run a yearly campaign that gets 100s of librarians to use it: meta:The_Wikipedia_Library/1Lib1Ref/Lessons, there have also been education program projects that have used it, and contributed easily). The better situation, is actually getting folks to WikiProjects that work, and then the WikiProjects have strong curation tools (see the work being done by WP:WikiProject X (@Harej:). We also have the precedent of good work from User:SuggestBot though I have always found the recommendations from that tool less than ideal for my contributions (I edit a little too diversly). I find, that asking for something on Phabricator without having a developer or support system in mind, doesn't work very well: you might try getting that work bundled into someone elses already project. Sadads (talk) 01:40, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
@Bush6984:
seems like somewhat of a convoluted/tedious workaround. I'm thinking if we as a community can engineer a more user-friendly way to make interesting-to-the-person Help Out tasks display, that we'll have much better increased participation.
Agree. I think this can be done on the basis of WikiProjects: I made some specific suggestions regarding that here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_X/Archive_2#Improving_WikiProject_participation (ctrl+f for "#Todo is a" if you'd like to jump to the most relevant part).
Because only a select few Wikipedians are going to know how to jump through the hoops of the proper ways to use Citation Hunt or the Novels Backlog in order to trawl for what piques their interest.
Very much agree on that as well! And I have the feeling that many people here don't get this. I think those could be some very cool tools that could help people get started and increase participation if they were actually getting used by the right people. Basically the pages with relevant tasks should find the relevant people (especially inexperienced newcomers) and not the other way around. For this a system should be put in place by which users go declare their fields of interest and/or expertise (e.g. by suggesting them WikiProjects they can join etc) and by which users are analyzed for said. Then with this information at hand personalized tasks can be suggested to them (e.g. citation hunt for science fiction articles if the user is member of WikiProject science fiction; btw the same tasks could still be suggested in an unpersonalized manner until there's some data on the user - probably it should be coupled though). Personalizing the tasks is useful as people are more motivated to work within the domain of their interest and as they're typically better equipped to do so than in any other domains.
--Fixuture (talk) 21:04, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
Basically the pages with relevant tasks should find the relevant people (especially inexperienced newcomers) and not the other way around.
Exactly. This is why many apps have succeeded that have found ways to break things down into minutely-manageable time-chunks, of "I've got two minutes; I can [task]..." rather than being a labor-intensive process (I'm thinking e.g. of Duolingo and/or Memrise that I do when I have 2 mins here or 3 mins there). The part you mention about WikiProjects somewhat concerns me, only because I know, for instance, that I'm technically involved in one or two WikiProjects (Mountains and anatomy/neuroanatomy), but don't necessarily contribute there pretty much ever at all, therefore I know the "danger" of well-meaning signing up for a WikiProject and not necessarily being able to "follow through" with it. Along those lines, therefore, I'm picturing that when someone comes to the Community Portal and looks at the "Help Out" tasks (that is, not tasks related to their own WikiProject affiliation), that they're actively seeking something else/different to help out with there, whereas WikiProjects focus more specifically (and don't necessarily, at least in my observation have the same task-set of 1. Spelling/grammar, 2. Wikilinks, 3. New info, 4. Expand short articles, etc.).
For that reason, I wonder if it could perhaps, based on what you're suggesting, @Fixuture:, be somehow beneficial to go even more large-scale with this, such that WikiProjects collectively as a whole would/could be merged with this (and/or this concept/idea merged with WikiProjects), such that all new users are prompted to select e.g. 2 or 3 WikiProjects (or, let's call them "WikiInterests") upon their sign-up, and then visits to their Community Portals would automatically provide customized 1. Spelling/grammar, 2. Wikilinks, 3. New info, 4. Expand short articles, etc. (the 9 "Help Out" tasks in the Community Portal) for each of their interests? What I mean by that is that, for instance, instead of being like me who can either visit the Wikipedia:WikiProject Anatomy page to help out there, or visit the Community Portal to do different/other tasks, if those were to be somehow merged?? IDK, I'm kind of just brainstorming here and hoping more folks get the idea I'm getting at, that you clarified in that Green I highlighted of yours above. PolymathGirl (talk) 22:50, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
@Bush6984:
because I know, for instance, that I'm technically involved in one or two WikiProjects (Mountains and anatomy/neuroanatomy), but don't necessarily contribute there pretty much ever at all, therefore I know the "danger" of well-meaning signing up for a WikiProject and not necessarily being able to "follow through" with it
Well, that's a good point but I think there could be ways by which WikiProject members could be categorized by their engagement in the project. For instance a bot could check the contributions of WikiProject members and move respective users into two subsections ("active" & "passive/inactive") (or more actually) or there could be some kind of leaderboard - see this (that would probably be harder to implement but I'd prefer that). I'm not sure why people would join WikiProjects without the intention of or at least being open to contributing within their domain though.
This is actually a clever idea, to do that edit-count thing that User:Stevieistheman suggested, for various WikiProjects. I could also see, though, how displaying counts outright in a "public" fashion could cause discouragement, like User:Harej was getting at about the threat of having what appears to be a "leaderboard." As far as myself personally, the two WikiProjects I signed up for are things I'm passionate about and care to edit, but they seem rather intensive in the types of things they need done (like lots of time researching just to make a tiny dent), therefore the intention is there, but I'm typically too busy, therefore sometimes I'll opt for copyediting or linking things like from the Community Portal because those can typically be done in shorter spurts of time, without so much labor/research-intensive "studying" before an edit can be confidently added. For that reason, what I'm getting at is that I would assume it stands to reason that there are others out there like me, who want to contribute to those WikiProjects (because they interest the users), but sometimes they're looking for a "lighter" activity and thus might visit the Community Portal. Hopefully that makes sense, about the intensity of work required to make the edit being one of the differing factors. PolymathGirl (talk) 00:34, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
I'm picturing that when someone comes to the Community Portal and looks at the "Help Out" tasks (that is, not tasks related to their own WikiProject affiliation), that they're actively seeking something else/different to help out with there
I'm not saying that the community portal should be changed or abolished - I think it should be effectively replaced by more relevant task-suggestions for users. Maybe it would be a good idea to change it though - I don't know. Basically there can still be unpersonalized suggestions (or the personalized suggestions could be switched to being unpersonalized).
Oh we should definitely retain the Community Portal, and almost in the same format as it already is! I'm just thinking if we could find a way to customize what genres display to each user. Or at very least to offer the Categories to search by instead of just a massive list (such as from the Help Out page seeing four or five Categories and then following the "flow chart" of links, allowing "yeah, this interests me, if there's something needing resources added or copyedited, I can help with that...") PolymathGirl (talk) 00:34, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
whereas WikiProjects focus more specifically (and don't necessarily, at least in my observation have the same task-set of 1. Spelling/grammar, 2. Wikilinks, 3. New info, 4. Expand short articles, etc.).
Except maybe 1. I think all of those are tasks of WikiProjects (I also listed them in the tasks in my linked proposal). To return to my earlier point: I think a user would be more capable of and motivated for providing appropriate wikilinks, new info and expand short articles when those are in the domains of their expertises and/or interests. (Maybe I should emphasize the plural here.)
such that all new users are prompted to select e.g. 2 or 3 WikiProjects (or, let's call them "WikiInterests") upon their sign-up, and then visits to their Community Portals would automatically provide customized [...]
After reading on it seems that maybe I misunderstood your earlier point. More or less I was suggesting that WikiProjects be basically merged with this concept. It's just that I wouldn't fundamentally change them by e.g. naming them interests instead of projects but simply leave them as they are and use the joined WikiProjects as the data on the interests of users. But maybe it indeed would be a good thing to have users select "interests" instead - by this they'd feel less pressured (to contribute etc, newcomers who don't even get the wiki-syntax would probably still shy away from joining a project). Maybe these "interest"-fields could be generated for each WikiProject and users who have contributed to a certain extent within an interest's/project's domain get an invitation for the project. This would also be useful in filtering away inactive users from WikiProject. Very useful input!
Yeah, reducing the pressure was the main thing I was getting at. I would assume that if I get bogged down when looking at certain WikiProjects, that it stands to reason that others do too, so I figure a lower-pressure option that's still helping out the cause could be beneficial. PolymathGirl (talk) 00:34, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
Maybe these "interest"-fields could be generated for each WikiProject and users who have contributed to a certain extent within an interest's/project's domain get an invitation for the project.
Now that's an idea! I like it! That of course goes back to your idea/proposal about the leaderboard concept (which I have mixed feelings about), but I can certainly see how the metric would help provide thresholds to say "okay, anyone who's done more than X edits in this topic could be asked to join WikiProject(project type)."
I'm sure it would be quite intensive of an undertaking (as if this that I'm ambitiously dreaming up isn't ambitious enough already, lol), but what if there were a way that, after any logged-in user had made, say, 10 edits to any single specific WikiProject (even unbeknownst to them), that the system (IDK what that would even be. A bot, maybe?) could send a message to the leaders of that respective WikiProject saying "hey, we've noticed that User:XYZ has contributed 10+ edits to your WikiProject. Would you like to send them a message informing them of the existence of your project, to invite them to contribute more?" It seems like that could help maybe. PolymathGirl (talk) 00:34, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
instead of being like me who can either visit the Wikipedia:WikiProject Anatomy page to help out there, or visit the Community Portal to do different/other tasks, if those were to be somehow merged?
Yes, it would be useful if the WikiProject pages suggested tasks relevant to their project and a general page suggested personalized tasks for all of a user's WikiProjects (and maybe also other data such as the contribution history as well; and I'm not sure if that page should be the community portal).
And thanks for looking into this! --Fixuture (talk) 17:43, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Notability

Exactly what can we do about the notability issues? IlyaSedion (talk) 02:56, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Posting at WT:NOTABILITY would be a good start. The Transhumanist 04:43, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 April 2017

The company was established in 1962 not 1963 as article says 71.241.213.234 (talk) 20:03, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Community portal. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. Murph9000 (talk) 22:39, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Proposal: Add three missing blocks to the Help out section

See /Archive 18. Why not add another three blocks (all are proposed by me) to the portal ?--RekishiEJ (talk) 04:51, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Support – Great idea. See #Next steps..., below. The Transhumanist 13:00, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
Support......forgot about it...thanks for bring back-up.--Moxy (talk) 18:15, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Next steps...

RekishiEJ, this would be done by bot, and according to bot policy, new bot tasks must be approved by the bot department. See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SuggestBot 7 (the proposal that was approved for SuggestBot to maintain the lists on the Opentask page). You should work with Nettrom to submit a new proposal. He's the owner of SuggestBot, the software that updates the Help Out section. For the 3 new sections to be added, a proposal needs to be approved by a member of the Bot Approval Group (BAG), and the bot needs to be reprogrammed or reconfigured by Nettrom. Good luck. It would be nice to see those new sections added. The Transhumanist 13:00, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't think this requires a new request for bot approval. We're not making any changes to how SuggestBot updates the page, all that's changing here is the number of categories on the page and SuggestBot's configuration. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 21:36, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
Cool. That's even better! The Transhumanist 07:16, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

Thanks for pinging me about this, RekishiEJ. The way the list of open tasks is updated is that SuggestBot pulls a random number of articles from a given set of categories. I see in the archive that you propose "Represent a worldwide view" and "Add historical information". If I remember correctly, those are both templates that can be added to pages to flag a need for improvement, do they also add the articles to specific categories? If so, do you know what those categories are? Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 21:41, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

@Nettrom, JoeHebda, and RekishiEJ: Actually, I pinged you. (RekishiEJ has not been responding to pings or messages). The first cat you mentioned is a subcategory of Category:Articles with limited geographic scope, that needs to be specified for current month and year. Can SuggestBot handle that? The second one is Category:History stubs. By the way, do you have a way to generate the list of articles to create? If not, we'll need another maintenance task to replace that block with. The Transhumanist 07:16, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
@The Transhumanist: Yeah, sorry about that, thanks for the ping here! (RekishiEJ posted on my talk page) And thanks for getting the categories, that's very helpful! Category:Articles with limited geographic scope is not a problem, provided it's okay that the bot grabs a random number of articles from its direct-descendant subcategories, which is how we've handled that type of category in other cases. For Category:History stubs we can either grab articles from that category or its subcategories, looks like there's quite a variety of subcategories there that could be interesting.
When it comes to the suggestions for articles to create, I got the impression that the idea was to transclude Template:Recent changes article requests as that already does the job. Not sure how that would work out with the layout of the Community Portal, but that's typically an issue I leave to others to solve. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 18:19, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
@Nettrom, JoeHebda, and RekishiEJ: Fantastic. What's your ETA on having the bot set up for this? And what do you need on the receiving end? The Transhumanist 21:56, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
@The Transhumanist, JoeHebda, and RekishiEJ: The way I prefer to do this is that whomever wants to adds the necessary sections (preferably in their sandbox or something, but I'm not against editing Wikipedia:Community portal/Opentask directly as SuggestBot won't alter any new sections as long as the ID tags are unique). Once the page is at a stage where everyone's okay with it I'll update SuggestBot's configuration and test it, which should take less than a day since it's not much work. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 16:20, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
About articles lacking historical information, the corresponding category is no Category:History stubs, but Category:Articles lacking historical information.--RekishiEJ (talk) 15:38, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

So I think it's pretty obvious that a section for trending pages (mostly or completely articles) would be a good thing to add to this page but I'm not sure if this has been brought up here before.

There are already multiple pages that provide these (see below) but they should be built into this page. It fits here very well and would make this page more useful, constantly renewed and relevant and in effect attract more people to frequently make use of this page.

The pageviews could be combined with various other factors and meta-information such as the date of the page's creation, count of edits, page-categories etc. Such can be used for the entire section or just for subsections of it such as "Current events", "Controversial", "Significant recent expansions" (page-creation date is not taken into account but a spike in pageviews and significant content expansions occurred recently) etc.

Could this be done?

External websites that provide this or similar functionality (you could add to it):

--Fixuture (talk) 13:20, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Edit notice banner of Wikipedia:Community bulletin board

What to do with the "edit notice" banner of WP:Community portal? Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost, which the banner mentions, hasn't made one issue since February. --George Ho (talk) 18:23, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Fournier 1864?

The top page on your "check references" list is Hôtel de Lauzun and the main reference there is "Fournier 1864". Don't you think that's a little difficult and specialized for a random newbie to be asked to check? InTheClink (talk) 07:36, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Checking a reference?

So what is the procedure for checking a reference? It should be like "I checked this reference on this date and it said what it was supposed to" - In the Clink1, and then no-one needs to check it again for a while, unless I turn out to be untrustworthy, then they all need to be checked again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by InTheClink1 (talk • contribs) 09:17, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 June 2017

I don't think a discussion of Pomplamoose is complete without a discussion of the fan patronage system that funds them via www.patreon.com[1]Dwlloyd810 (talk) 15:56, 27 June 2017 (UTC) [details removed] Dwlloyd810 (talk) 15:56, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

@Dwlloyd810:, you can make this change yourself, just not here. This is the talk page for the Community Portal. You want the Pomplamoose article. That article is not protected so you can edit it yourself. Good luck. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 18:39, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ https://www.patreon.com/pomplamoose
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