Wiki143:WikiProject Portals

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Welcome to WikiProject Portals, dedicated to developing and maintaining portals and portal tools. New participants are welcome; please feel free to join.

This project collaborates to build, improve and maintain portals, their support pages, and portal tools.

  1. Maintaining portals means updating them, and fixing problems that arise.
  2. We also build new portals to fill gaps in the portal system, and expand the portal system's coverage of subjects on Wikipedia.
  3. Portal support pages include the portal guidelines, portal building instructions, and this WikiProject.
  4. Gaining community consensus for the WikiProject's activities in the Portal, Template, and Main namespaces.
  5. Fixing bugs and repairing formatting errors that emerge, placing links to the portals, etc.
  6. Administration of the WikiProject (updating support pages and guidelines, publishing the project's newsletter, managing tasks, posting announcements and invitations, etc.)
  7. Create new portals for all the core topics that have enough coverage to need a portal
  8. Keep existing portals fully upgraded and running smoothly

Portals WikiProject-related news

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Portals status report

  • 0 Current all portals (this number automatically updates as pages are added to or deleted from Category:All portals)
  • Historical trivia: up through mid-2018, French Wikipedia actually used a bot to keep regular track of how many Portals were here, in English Wikipedia; the bot's report history is here.
  • 0 Current single page portals (new creations and restarts, net of deletions).
  • 1,485 The number of portals when we started the project reboot (April 2018)
  • 4,220 Added portals (at least) April 2018-Feb 13, 2019 (many of these were subsequently deleted at MfD)
  • 5,705 Approximate peak number of portals from Newsletter #29 on Feb 13, 2019 (many of these were subsequently deleted at MfD)

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Focus: Portals

The focus of this WikiProject is portals, all existing and future portals on Wikipedia.

What is a portal?

File:Portal blue question a.svg

"Portal" is an archaic word which means "doorway", so a portal is a form of entrance. A good synonym for a Wikipedia Portal is "signposted doorway to knowledge". Portals serve as entrance points for topics which extend across many related articles, but with more depth and engagement than a list of links. A portal focuses on a range of articles based on its title, and seeks to emulate a main page for that range. This helps specify more familiar articles and files, and narrows down searches for important and interesting, but otherwise more obscure aspects. Like a main page, a portal is not an article, but a passageway to many articles. Portals may vary in format and approach, but their main purpose is always to capture interest and provide various routes of topic exploration.

Here are a couple definitions for the word "portal" from Wiktionary:

  1. An entrance, entry point, or means of entry. For example: The local library, a portal of knowledge.
  2. A website or page that acts as an entrance to other websites or pages on the Internet.

Each portal name follows the subject covered, so we have a portal of "Geography", but all portals have a namespace, defined by adding "Portal:" to the title, so the geography portal is Portal:Geography.

The best portals are not simply domains of information, but nodes of knowledge and categorization complimenting the category, listing, and outline systems.

When a subject is covered by a range of articles, the parent portal can be considered a root article as related articles branch from it. Portals take us beyond the root article however to guide and encourage exploration of the branches. If there are too few branches, a portal is not appropriate because the root article is a better navigation tool.

As an example of how portals may be useful, the article mathematics summarizes its general subject in descriptive terms, but with over 40,000 articles on mathematics topics, navigating the various branches of the mathematics topic from the root mathematics article, or its categories and lists, can be somewhat awkward and unengaging. A portal expands the list based navigation concepts to make a subject more accessible. Portal:Mathematics, for instance, provides a selection of reading samples including more obscure and trivial topics, such as DYKs, chosen and structured to provoke interest, beside a guide to related on-wiki projects, all underscored by a comprehensive, collapsible link tree for users drawn deeper into the subject.

Portals begin as a basic template. But the design of the portal progresses and evolves to the stage where static content display transforms to dynamic user interface. With interactive components such as slideshows and rotating featured content (emulating a main page), portals aspire to be a go-to area for seeking knowledge in a particular categorical subject.

Good portals should fill a niche not covered by lists, categories, outlines or articles and improve dissemination of all categorical subjects. Innovation in the style and design of portals individually is both desired and encouraged.

Purposes of portals

File:Project.svg

Each portal on Wikipedia acts as an alternative entrance to a subject. Portals supplement the encyclopedia. They support their subjects in various ways, including but not limited to:

  1. Providing a variety of sample content of subtopics ("topic tasters"), from within each portal's subject, that the reader may find interesting. Kind of like a magazine. Like what Wikipedia's Main Page does in general.
  2. Aiding navigation - portals are one of Wikipedia's navigation subsystems, designed to help users find their way around the vast amount of knowledge on Wikipedia to material within a particular subject. So, in addition to sample content, a portal may also present in various ways, links, and lists of links.
  3. Providing bridges between reading and editing, and between the encyclopedia proper and the Wikipedia community, via links to pages in project space (and the other namespaces) that are relevant to the portal's subject. A portal may be associated with one or more WikiProjects; unlike a WikiProject, however, it is meant for both readers and editors of Wikipedia, and should promote content and encourage contribution. Note that portals are created for encyclopedic topics only and not for article maintenance categories.

Discussion announcements

Script error: No such module "anchor". Article alerts: portals for deletion at MfD

Manual listing

Note that portal subpages are not included in the automatic alerts. For example, if a specific subpage is nominated for deletion.
For archives, see: Portals for deletion at MfD.

Automated alerts

{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals/Article alerts}}

Tools

Watchlist

Template:Mbox

A list of all portal pages is provided below. (It is possible to get all portal pages into your watchlist, but it is difficult and tedious). The list is current as of 17 May 2022.

{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Portal/List of all portals}}

SearchSuite

Most older portals have subpages. Search is kind of cludgy for looking at these. you can use PrefixIndex for extracting subpages (Example).

SearchSuite enhances Wikipedia search results. It has a feature (menu item) that reformats search results to one-line entries, which is convenient for looking at portal subpages as a list. It has another menu item that formats the links (asterisk-style, with link delimeters) for copying/pasting into an editor. And another for sorting the results. Each feature works on the output of the others, and the script remembers the setting of each menu item between pages. When one is turned on, it stays on for all searches.

Templates

Navigation

Markers

These markers control how a portal is edited.

  • Template:Tl – tells bots not to edit the page.
  • Template:Tl – used to record various maintenance metadata for a portal

Portal components

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Here's a portal displaying the components that can be used in each section:

Here's a list of components used to build portals. Their placement (left column, etc.) is suggested only.

  • Top of portal
  • Left column
    • Template:Tlx – same as above, but specify multiple sources for alternating display.
    • Template:Tlx – shows a specific lead of an article for a specific time.
    • Quotes
  • Right column
  • Bottom of portal
    • Template:Tlx – creates icon tables of related portals for portal pages. Friendly to wide and narrow screens, including mobile, and does not require hardcoding icons.
    • Template:Tlx – creates a table of interwiki links related to the current portal.
    • Template:Tlx – creates the "View new selections (purge)" link.
    • Template:Tlx – explanatory and browsing links
  • Layout
    • {{Box-header/#}} – start of a layout box. The "#" is the number of a configuration subpage, each with a different pre-defined configuration.
    • Template:Tlx as an alternative to the above, with automatic WP:WCAG compliant color selection.
    • Template:Tlx – end of a layout box

For a full list of portal templates, see Template:Tl:

Template:Portal templates navbox

Userboxes and WikiAd

Show these off on your profile to let everyone know you contribute to the sustainment of the Portal namespace. Or you could just add Template:Cl directly.

Template:User WikiProject Portals

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Project participants

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  • Script error: No such module "user". Use neither AWB or JWB. Has experience with Javascript and PHP.
  • Script error: No such module "user". Delighted to use my free time to improve WP
  • Script error: No such module "user". * (Admin) Used to maintain Portal:Scotland. Don't use AWB or JWB, but am delighted this initiative is underway. have now pretty much updated the Portal to self maintain/update.
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  • Script error: No such module "user". * (AWB) - busy working on a new approach to make portals mobile-friendly.
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  • Script error: No such module "user". - Limited time means I am not sure if I can be of much help, but I have edited a few portals from time to time and happy to keep doing so. Do not use any of the above.
  • Script error: No such module "user". – Lua (also AWB, but have not used it for a while)
  • Script error: No such module "user". I can use AWB, but usually I don't.
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  • Script error: No such module "user". I want to learn how to make portals, maintain portals, etc.
  • Script error: No such module "user". - Very little experience with portals but willing to help and learn!
  • Script error: No such module "user". - I use neither, happy to take on small to mid-sized tasks to help
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  • Script error: No such module "user". - I know the background importance of portals to the site.
  • Script error: No such module "user". - use none of them .
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  • Script error: No such module "user". - use none of them. already heavily edited a number of portals, so member by default
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  • Script error: No such module "user". - I am learning Lua
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  • Script error: No such module "user". (Admin) – I am registered for AWB, but have hardly started to learn how to use it.
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  • Script error: No such module "user". * No AWB, no JWB, no Lua, some JavaScript but been a while. Plan on being a maintainer of Portal:Oklahoma
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  • Script error: No such module "user". Adding portal navigation bars and links to various areas consistently around encyclopedia, esp on annual timeline entries for specific countries.
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  • Script error: No such module "user". **, no AWB, JWB, Lua Help to get the automatic update function in would be great, the main point why portals are considered "dead"; not automatically updated for Featured, DYK and Pictures.
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  • Script error: No such module "user". * No knowledge of AWB, JWB, or Lua but wouldn't mind learning it
  • Script error: No such module "user"., mostly working on making things accessible and mobile-friendly
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  • Script error: No such module "user". Not AWB,JWB No lua. But would like to learn it!
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WikiGnomes

If you prefer WikiGnome tasks and would like to receive WikiGnome-oriented updates on your talk page, please add your name below. Also let us know if you are an AWB or JWB user. Template:Div col

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Specific portal maintainers

This is a list of editors who work on specific portal(s) or in specific areas, in case you need to contact someone about those. Template:Div col

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Other

  • SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  – Primarily interested for now in working on the draft WP:Manual of Style/Portals. I'm one of the longest-term MoS shepherds. Please consider me basically an ombudsman for how to craft that in a way to get it passed as an actual guideline. (Also AWB-approved and a Template Editor and Page Mover, if such geekery is needed, though I suck at Lua.) PS: I don't directly co-maintain any portals right now but have worked on several, including Portal:Snooker; would like to see a more general Portal:Cue sports.

Support pages

Guidance

Newsletter archive

Navigation

General topical lists of portals

Project Subpages

The given page title was invalid or had an inter-language or inter-wiki prefix. It may contain one or more characters that cannot be used in titles.

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