User talk:Gazamp/Archive 2

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #023, 25 Nov 2018

There are now 4,180 portals.

Will we break 5,000 by the end of the year?

I know we can. But, that is up to you!

( New portals are created with {{subst:Basic portal start page}} or {{subst:bpsp}} )

Happy Holidays

Hello everyone! Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice (if it's occurring in your area of the world), and thanks for your work in maintaining, improving, and expanding portals. Cheers,    — The Transhumanist   06:51, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message

Jingling along

The following portals have been created since the last issue:

1. Advanced Micro Devices
2. Aqua Teen Hunger Force
3. Aquatic ecosystems
4. Blackberries
5. Blade
6. Blake and Mortimer
7. Climate
8. Democratic Party
9. Dua Lipa
10. Eels
11. Eggs
12. Emmy Awards
13. Fallout
14. Flutes and whistles
15. Geophysics
16. Ghost
17. Hartford Whalers
18. HBO
19. Hot sauces
20. International System of Units
21. Jawaharlal Nehru
22. Kendrick Lamar
23. KFC
24. Kingdom of England
25. M.I.A.
26. Marvel Comics
27. Marvel Entertainment
28. Minerals
29. Mixed martial arts
30. Money
31. MTV
32. Museums
33. National Hockey League
34. Natural resources
35. Nature
36. NBC
37. Nehru–Gandhi family
38. Orthoptera
39. PATH
40. Pears
41. Physiology
42. Ponds
43. Pope Francis
44. Potatoes
45. Presidents of the United States
46. Republican Party
47. Salad dressings
48. Santiago
49. Six Flags
50. Stan Lee
51. Starbucks
52. Stem cells
53. Systems of measurement
54. SZA
55. The West Wing
56. Tintin
57. Tomato sauces
58. Tove Lo
59. Viticulture
60. Waffles
61. Wendy's
62. White House
63. Will Smith
64. Winemaking

Keep 'em coming!

By the way, the above list was generated using this Petscan query. It can be easily modified by changing the date. The data page (under the Output tab) also has options for receiving the data in CSV or tabbed format, which some operating systems automatically load into a spreadsheet program for ease of use, such as copying and pasting the desired column (like page names).

In closing

We'll keep it short this issue.

Expect a flood next time. Or the one after that.

Cheerio,    — The Transhumanist   07:14, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

See the diffs

To see how I modified the portal, check out the diffs. Portals are now mostly parameter-driven. Master the parameters, and you master portals.

Parameter specifics are covered in the instructions to each template.

You'll be a master in no time!    — The Transhumanist   18:43, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

P.S.: If you have any questions, any whatsoever, please feel free to fire away!    — The Transhumanist   18:47, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

P.P.S.: I look forward to seeing what other portals you create!    — The Transhumanist   18:48, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

@The Transhumanist: Thanks! This really helps - it's just what I needed... Gazamp (talk) 18:51, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Portal tips

Portal tip #1

There are two basic approaches to creating portals of the new design:

1. Find subjects that have support in place
2. Create a portal on whatever interests you

The first approach is by far the fastest, because, with the right resources in place, it results in almost instant portals.

What support?

A like-named navbox footer template, and pictures on the portal's corresponding root article.

Try creating Portal:Convicts in Australia, to see what I mean. All it will need is the category name changed in the Subcategories section, and add the corresponding category (Category:Convictism in Australia) to the bottom of the page.

Have fun.    — The Transhumanist   19:22, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Portal tip #2: Making more Selected sections

You can have more than one Selected articles section. Here's how:

Portal:NASA would make an excellent portal.

However, the navigation footer isn't named Template:NASA, and so you'll get an error message in that section.

Checking the bottom of the NASA article, we discover 2 juicy navigation templates!

You could use them both in the same section, or better yet, make a section in the portal for each.

Like this:

Selected general NASA articles

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  Hubble Legacy Field

  
  In astronomy, a deep field is an image of a portion of the sky taken with a very long exposure time, in order to detect and study faint objects. The depth of the field refers to the apparent magnitude or the flux of the faintest objects that can be detected in the image. Deep field observations usually cover a small angular area on the sky, because of the large amounts of telescope time required to reach faint flux limits. Deep fields are used primarily to study galaxy evolution and the cosmic evolution of active galactic nuclei, and to detect faint objects at high redshift. Numerous ground-based and space-based observatories have taken deep-field observations at wavelengths spanning radio to X-rays.
  
  The first deep-field image to receive a great deal of public attention was the Hubble Deep Field, observed in 1995 with the WFPC2 camera on the Hubble Space Telescope. Other space telescopes that have obtained deep-field observations include the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the XMM-Newton Observatory, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the James Webb Space Telescope. (Full article...)
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  Project Gemini (IPA: /ˈdʒɛmɪni/) was the second United States human spaceflight program to fly. Conducted after the first American crewed space program, Project Mercury, while the Apollo program was still in early development, Gemini was conceived in 1961 and concluded in 1966. The Gemini spacecraft carried a two-astronaut crew. Ten Gemini crews and 16 individual astronauts flew low Earth orbit (LEO) missions during 1965 and 1966.
  
  Gemini's objective was the development of space travel techniques to support the Apollo mission to land astronauts on the Moon. In doing so, it allowed the United States to catch up and overcome the lead in human spaceflight capability the Soviet Union had obtained in the early years of the Space Race, by demonstrating mission endurance up to just under 14 days, longer than the eight days required for a round trip to the Moon; methods of performing extravehicular activity (EVA) without tiring; and the orbital maneuvers necessary to achieve rendezvous and docking with another spacecraft. This left Apollo free to pursue its prime mission without spending time developing these techniques. (Full article...)
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  This is a list of astronauts by year of selection: people selected to train for a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft. Until recently, astronauts were sponsored and trained exclusively by governments, either by the military or by civilian space agencies. However, with the advent of suborbital flight starting with privately funded SpaceShipOne in 2004, a new category of astronaut was created: the commercial astronaut.
  
  While the term astronaut is sometimes applied to anyone who trains for travels into space—including scientists, politicians, journalists, and tourists—this article lists only professional astronauts, those who have been selected to train as a profession. This includes national space programs and private industry programs which train and/or hire their own professional astronauts. (Full article...)
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  Logo

  
  The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a United States federal agency founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved and its assets and personnel were transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NACA is an initialism, i.e., pronounced as individual letters, rather than as a whole word (as was NASA during the early years after being established).
  
  Among other advancements, NACA research and development produced the NACA duct, a type of air intake used in modern automotive applications, the NACA cowling, and several series of NACA airfoils, which are still used in aircraft manufacturing. (Full article...)
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  Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite

  
  The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), originally known as the Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP and Explorer 80), was a NASA spacecraft operating from 2001 to 2010 which measured temperature differences across the sky in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – the radiant heat remaining from the Big Bang. Headed by Professor Charles L. Bennett of Johns Hopkins University, the mission was developed in a joint partnership between the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Princeton University. The WMAP spacecraft was launched on 30 June 2001 from Florida. The WMAP mission succeeded the COBE space mission and was the second medium-class (MIDEX) spacecraft in the NASA Explorer program. In 2003, MAP was renamed WMAP in honor of cosmologist David Todd Wilkinson (1935–2002), who had been a member of the mission's science team. After nine years of operations, WMAP was switched off in 2010, following the launch of the more advanced Planck spacecraft by European Space Agency (ESA) in 2009.
  
  WMAP's measurements played a key role in establishing the current Standard Model of Cosmology: the Lambda-CDM model. The WMAP data are very well fit by a universe that is dominated by dark energy in the form of a cosmological constant. Other cosmological data are also consistent, and together tightly constrain the Model. In the Lambda-CDM model of the universe, the age of the universe is 13.772±0.059 billion years. The WMAP mission's determination of the age of the universe is to better than 1% precision. The current expansion rate of the universe is (see Hubble constant) 69.32±0.80 km·s⁻¹·Mpc⁻¹. The content of the universe currently consists of 4.628%±0.093% ordinary baryonic matter; 24.02%+0.88%
  −0.87% cold dark matter (CDM) that neither emits nor absorbs light; and 71.35%+0.95%
  −0.96% of dark energy in the form of a cosmological constant that accelerates the expansion of the universe. Less than 1% of the current content of the universe is in neutrinos, but WMAP's measurements have found, for the first time in 2008, that the data prefer the existence of a cosmic neutrino background with an effective number of neutrino species of 3.26±0.35. The contents point to a Euclidean flat geometry, with curvature ($\Omega _{k}$) of −0.0027+0.0039
  −0.0038. The WMAP measurements also support the cosmic inflation paradigm in several ways, including the flatness measurement. (Full article...)
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  Block III Ranger spacecraft

  
  The Ranger program was a series of uncrewed space missions by the United States in the 1960s whose objective was to obtain the first close-up images of the surface of the Moon. The Ranger spacecraft were designed to take images of the lunar surface, transmitting those images to Earth until the spacecraft were destroyed upon impact. A series of mishaps, however, led to the failure of the first six flights. At one point, the program was called "shoot and hope". Congress launched an investigation into "problems of management" at NASA Headquarters and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. After two reorganizations of the agencies, Ranger 7 successfully returned images in July 1964, followed by two more successful missions.
  
  Ranger was originally designed, beginning in 1959, in three distinct phases, called "blocks". Each block had different mission objectives and progressively more advanced system design. The JPL mission designers planned multiple launches in each block, to maximize the engineering experience and scientific value of the mission and to assure at least one successful flight. Total research, development, launch, and support costs for the Ranger series of spacecraft (Rangers 1 through 9) was approximately $170 million (equivalent to $1.25 billion in 2023). (Full article...)
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  The InSight lander with solar panels deployed in a cleanroom during preflight testing

  
  The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission was a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars. It was manufactured by Lockheed Martin Space, was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and two of its three scientific instruments were built by European agencies. The mission launched on 5 May 2018 at 11:05:01 UTC aboard an Atlas V-401 launch vehicle and successfully landed at Elysium Planitia on Mars on 26 November 2018 at 19:52:59 UTC. InSight was active on Mars for 1440 sols (1480 days; 4 years, 19 days).
  
  InSight's objectives were to place a seismometer, called Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), on the surface of Mars to measure seismic activity and provide accurate 3D models of the planet's interior; and measure internal heat transfer using a heat probe called HP³ to study Mars' early geological evolution. This was intended to provide a new understanding of how the Solar System's terrestrial planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars – and Earth's Moon formed and evolved. (Full article...)
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  Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory

  
  Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, previously called the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer, is a NASA three-telescope space observatory for studying gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and monitoring the afterglow in X-ray, and UV/Visible light at the location of a burst. It was launched on 20 November 2004, aboard a Delta II launch vehicle. Headed by principal investigator Neil Gehrels until his death in February 2017, the mission was developed in a joint partnership between Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and an international consortium from the United States, United Kingdom, and Italy. The mission is operated by Pennsylvania State University as part of NASA's Medium Explorer program (MIDEX).
  
  The burst detection rate is 100 per year, with a sensitivity ~3 times fainter than the BATSE detector aboard the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. The Swift mission was launched with a nominal on-orbit lifetime of two years. Swift is a NASA MIDEX (medium-class Explorer) mission. It was the third to be launched, following IMAGE and WMAP. (Full article...)
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  Aerial view of the Operations and Checkout building at KSC, c. 2017

  
  The Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building (O&C) (previously known as the Manned Spacecraft Operations Building) is a historic building on Merritt Island, Florida, United States. The five-story structure is in the Industrial Area of NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Its has twin-block facilities that include the crew quarter dormitories for astronauts, suit-up preparations prior to their flights, and the other is a large spacecraft workshop used for manufacturing and checking activities on crewed spacecraft. On January 21, 2000, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. (Full article...)
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  A 1973 artist's conception of the docking of the two spacecraft

  
  Apollo–Soyuz was the first crewed international space mission, carried out jointly by the United States and the Soviet Union in July 1975. Millions of people around the world watched on television as an American Apollo spacecraft docked with a Soviet Soyuz capsule. The project, and its handshake in space, was a symbol of détente between the two superpowers during the Cold War.
  
  The mission was officially known as the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project (ASTP; Russian: Экспериментальный полёт «Союз» – «Аполлон» (ЭПАС), romanized: Eksperimentalniy polyot Soyuz–Apollon (EPAS), lit. 'Experimental flight Soyuz-Apollo', and commonly referred to in the Soviet Union as Soyuz–Apollo; the Soviets officially designated the mission as Soyuz 19). The unnumbered American vehicle was left over from the canceled Apollo missions, and was the last Apollo module to fly. (Full article...)
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  Seen from about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles), Earth appears as a tiny dot within deep space: the blueish-white speck almost halfway up the rightmost band of light.

  
  Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken on February 14, 1990, by the Voyager 1 space probe from an unprecedented distance of approximately 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles, 40.5 AU), as part of that day's Family Portrait series of images of the Solar System.
  
  In the photograph, Earth's apparent size is less than a pixel; the planet appears as a tiny dot against the vastness of space, among bands of sunlight reflected by the camera. Commissioned by NASA and resulting from the advocacy of astronomer and author Carl Sagan, the photograph was interpreted in Sagan's 1994 book, Pale Blue Dot, as representing humanity's minuscule and ephemeral place amidst the cosmos. (Full article...)
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  Top to bottom, left to right: Aerial view of JSC with Space Center Houston in the foreground, Space Vehicle Mockup Facility, Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center, Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, and the Space Center Houston Saturn V exhibit.

  
  The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is NASA's center for human spaceflight in Houston, Texas (originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center), where human spaceflight training, research, and flight control are conducted. It was renamed in honor of the late US president and Texas native, Lyndon B. Johnson, by an act of the United States Senate on February 19, 1973.
  
  JSC consists of a complex of 100 buildings constructed on 1,620 acres (660 ha) in the Clear Lake Area of Houston. The center is home to NASA's astronaut corps, and is responsible for training astronauts from both the US and its international partners. It also houses the Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center, which has provided the flight control function for every NASA human spaceflight since Gemini 4 (including Apollo, Skylab, Apollo–Soyuz, and Space Shuttle). It is popularly known by its radio call signs "Mission Control" and "Houston". (Full article...)
• 
  NASA spin-off technologies are commercial products and services which have been developed with the help of NASA, through research and development contracts, such as Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) or STTR awards, licensing of NASA patents, use of NASA facilities, technical assistance from NASA personnel, or data from NASA research. Information on new NASA technology that may be useful to industry is available in periodical and website form in "NASA Tech Briefs", while successful examples of commercialization are reported annually in the NASA publication Spinoffs. The publication has documented more than 2,000 technologies over time.
  
  In 1979, notable science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein helped bring awareness to the spin-offs when he was asked to appear before Congress after recovering from one of the earliest known vascular bypass operations to correct a blocked artery. In his testimony, reprinted in his 1980 book Expanded Universe, Heinlein claimed that four NASA spin-off technologies made the surgery possible, and that they were only a few from a long list of NASA spin-off technologies from space development. (Full article...)
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  President George H. W. Bush announcing the Space Exploration Initiative at the National Air and Space Museum's 20th anniversary celebration of the Apollo 11 Moon landing

  
  The Space Exploration Initiative was a 1989–1993 space public policy initiative of the George H. W. Bush administration.
  
  On July 20, 1989, the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, US President George H. W. Bush announced plans for what came to be known as the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI). In a speech on the steps of the National Air and Space Museum he described plans calling for constructing Space Station Freedom, sending humans back to the Moon "to stay" and ultimately sending astronauts to explore Mars. He proposed not a 10-year Apollo-style plan, but a long-range continuing commitment based on the three above elements, ending with "a journey into tomorrow – a journey to another planet – a manned mission to Mars." The President noted it was humanity's destiny to explore, and America's destiny to lead. He asked Vice President Dan Quayle to lead the National Space Council in determining what was needed to carry out these missions in terms of money, manpower and technology. (Full article...)
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  Artist's depiction of LADEE in lunar orbit

  
  The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE; /ˈlædi/) was a NASA lunar exploration and technology demonstration mission. It was launched on a Minotaur V rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on September 7, 2013. During its seven-month mission, LADEE orbited the Moon's equator, using its instruments to study the lunar exosphere and dust in the Moon's vicinity. Instruments included a dust detector, neutral mass spectrometer, and ultraviolet-visible spectrometer, as well as a technology demonstration consisting of a laser communications terminal. The mission ended on April 18, 2014, when the spacecraft's controllers intentionally crashed LADEE into the far side of the Moon, which, later, was determined to be near the eastern rim of Sundman V crater. (Full article...)
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  MSL cruise configuration

  
  Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is a robotic space probe mission to Mars launched by NASA on November 26, 2011, which successfully landed Curiosity, a Mars rover, in Gale Crater on August 6, 2012. The overall objectives include investigating Mars' habitability, studying its climate and geology, and collecting data for a human mission to Mars. The rover carries a variety of scientific instruments designed by an international team. (Full article...)
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  Artworks of the mission's Mars Climate Orbiter (left) and Mars Polar Lander (right) spacecraft

  
  Mars Surveyor '98 was a mission in NASA's Mars Exploration Program that launched the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander to the planet Mars. The mission was to study the Martian weather, climate, water and carbon dioxide (CO₂) budget, to understand the reservoirs, behavior, and atmospheric role of volatiles and to search for evidence of long-term and episodic climate changes. The Mars Polar Lander also carried two surface-penetrator probes for the New Millennium Program's Deep Space 2 mission. Both spacecraft were launched in 1998 and both were lost. (Full article...)
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  Header of the Discovery Program website (January 2016)

  
  The Discovery Program is a series of Solar System exploration missions funded by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through its Planetary Missions Program Office. The cost of each mission is capped at a lower level than missions from NASA's New Frontiers or Flagship Programs. As a result, Discovery missions tend to be more focused on a specific scientific goal rather than serving a general purpose.
  
  The Discovery Program was founded in 1990 to implement the policy of the then-NASA administrator Daniel S. Goldin of "faster, better, cheaper" planetary science missions. Existing NASA programs had specified mission targets and objectives in advance, then sought bidders to construct and operate them. In contrast, Discovery missions are solicited through a call for proposals on any science topic and assessed through peer review. Selected missions are led by a scientist called the principal investigator (PI) and may include contributions from industry, universities or government laboratories. (Full article...)
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  Artist illustration of the NOAA-20 Satellite

  
  
  The Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) is the latest generation of U.S. polar-orbiting, non-geosynchronous, environmental satellites. JPSS will provide the global environmental data used in numerical weather prediction models for forecasts, and scientific data used for climate monitoring. JPSS will aid in fulfilling the mission of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an agency of the Department of Commerce. Data and imagery obtained from the JPSS will increase timeliness and accuracy of public warnings and forecasts of climate and weather events, thus reducing the potential loss of human life and property and advancing the national economy. The JPSS is developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who is responsible for operation of JPSS. Three to five satellites are planned for the JPSS constellation of satellites. JPSS satellites will be flown, and the scientific data from JPSS will be processed, by the JPSS – Common Ground System (JPSS-CGS).
  
  The first satellite in the JPSS is the Suomi NPP satellite, which launched on October 28, 2011. This was followed by JPSS-1, which was launched on November 18, 2017, three years later than originally anticipated when the contract was awarded in 2010. On November 21, 2017, after reaching its final orbit, JPSS-1 was renamed NOAA-20. The third satellite has been launched on November 10, 2022 with two more satellites scheduled to be launched. (Full article...)
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  Examples of 'Moon rocks' display. To the left, part of Massachusetts lunar sample display of Apollo 11. To the right, United Kingdom lunar sample display of Apollo 17

  
  
  The Lunar sample displays are two commemorative plaques consisting of small fragments of Moon specimen brought back by the astronauts of the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 lunar missions. The plaques and Moon rocks were given as goodwill gifts in 1970 and 1973 to the people of 135 countries, the 50 states of the United States, and to U.S. overseas territories by United States President Richard Nixon. (Full article...)
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  The miniaturized Deep Space Atomic Clock was designed for precise and real-time radio navigation in deep space.

  
  The Deep Space Atomic Clock (DSAC) was a miniaturized, ultra-precise mercury-ion atomic clock for precise radio navigation in deep space. DSAC was designed to be orders of magnitude more stable than existing navigation clocks, with a drift of no more than 1 nanosecond in 10 days. It is expected that a DSAC would incur no more than 1 microsecond of error in 10 years of operations. Data from DSAC is expected to improve the precision of deep space navigation, and enable more efficient use of tracking networks. The project was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and it was deployed as part of the U.S. Air Force's Space Test Program 2 (STP-2) mission aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on 25 June 2019.
  
  The Deep Space Atomic Clock was activated on 23 August 2019. Following a mission extension in June 2020, DSAC was deactivated on 18 September 2021 after two years in operation. (Full article...)
• 
  A mission patch is a cloth reproduction of a spaceflight mission emblem worn by astronauts and other personnel affiliated with that mission. It is usually executed as an embroidered patch. The term space patch is mostly applied to an emblem designed for a crewed space mission. Traditionally, the patch is worn on the space suit that astronauts and cosmonauts wear when launched into space. Mission patches have been adopted by the crew and personnel of many other space ventures, public and private. (Full article...)
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  The Earth Observing System (EOS) is a program of NASA comprising a series of artificial satellite missions and scientific instruments in Earth orbit designed for long-term global observations of the land surface, biosphere, atmosphere, and oceans. Since the early 1970s, NASA has been developing its Earth Observing System, launching a series of Landsat satellites in the decade. Some of the first included passive microwave imaging in 1972 through the Nimbus 5 satellite. Following the launch of various satellite missions, the conception of the program began in the late 1980s and expanded rapidly through the 1990s. Since the inception of the program, it has continued to develop, including; land, sea, radiation and atmosphere. Collected in a system known as EOSDIS, NASA uses this data in order to study the progression and changes in the biosphere of Earth. The main focus of this data collection surrounds climatic science. The program is the centrepiece of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise. (Full article...)
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  Artist's rendering of the Juno spacecraft

  
  Juno is a NASA space probe orbiting the planet Jupiter. It was built by Lockheed Martin and is operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on August 5, 2011 UTC, as part of the New Frontiers program. Juno entered a polar orbit of Jupiter on July 5, 2016, UTC, to begin a scientific investigation of the planet. After completing its mission, Juno was originally planned to be intentionally deorbited into Jupiter's atmosphere, but has since been approved to continue orbiting until contact is lost with the spacecraft.
  
  Juno's mission is to measure Jupiter's composition, gravitational field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. It will also search for clues about how the planet formed, including whether it has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, mass distribution, and its deep winds, which can reach speeds up to 620 km/h (390 mph). (Full article...)
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  The Headquarters of the Space Task Group (STG) at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia

  
  The Space Task Group was a working group of NASA engineers created in 1958, tasked with managing America's human spaceflight programs. Headed by Robert Gilruth and based at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, it managed Project Mercury and follow-on plans. After President John F. Kennedy set the goal in 1961 for the Apollo Program to land a man on the Moon and bring him back safely to Earth, NASA decided a much larger organization and a new facility was required to perform the Task Group's function, and it was transformed into the Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center), located in Houston, Texas.
  
  In later years, the term Space Task Group was ambiguously reused to refer to an ad hoc committee appointed by the President to recommend human spaceflight programs, usually chaired by the Vice President. For instance, President Richard Nixon appointed such a group in February 1969 to outline a post-Apollo spaceflight strategy, chaired by Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. (Full article...)

Selected NASA facilities

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  Top to bottom, left to right: Aerial view of JSC with Space Center Houston in the foreground, Space Vehicle Mockup Facility, Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center, Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, and the Space Center Houston Saturn V exhibit.

  
  The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is NASA's center for human spaceflight in Houston, Texas (originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center), where human spaceflight training, research, and flight control are conducted. It was renamed in honor of the late US president and Texas native, Lyndon B. Johnson, by an act of the United States Senate on February 19, 1973.
  
  JSC consists of a complex of 100 buildings constructed on 1,620 acres (660 ha) in the Clear Lake Area of Houston. The center is home to NASA's astronaut corps, and is responsible for training astronauts from both the US and its international partners. It also houses the Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center, which has provided the flight control function for every NASA human spaceflight since Gemini 4 (including Apollo, Skylab, Apollo–Soyuz, and Space Shuttle). It is popularly known by its radio call signs "Mission Control" and "Houston". (Full article...)
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  Space Launch System atop LC-39B on March 18, 2022

  
  Launch Complex 39B (LC-39B) is the second of Launch Complex 39's three launch pads, located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida. The pad, along with Launch Complex 39A, was first designed for the Saturn V launch vehicle, which at the time was the United States' most powerful rocket. Typically used to launch NASA's crewed spaceflight missions since the late 1960s, the pad is currently configured for use by the agency's Space Launch System rocket, a Shuttle-derived launch vehicle which is currently used in the Artemis program and subsequent Moon to Mars campaigns. The pad had also been leased by NASA to aerospace company Northrop Grumman, for use as a launch site for their Shuttle-derived OmegA launch vehicle, for National Security Space Launch flights and commercial launches, before the OmegA program was cancelled. (Full article...)
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  The crawler-transporters, formally known as the Missile Crawler Transporter Facilities, are a pair of tracked vehicles used to transport spacecraft from NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) along the Crawlerway to Launch Complex 39. They were originally used to transport the Saturn IB and Saturn V rockets during the Apollo, Skylab and Apollo–Soyuz programs. They were then used to transport Space Shuttles from 1981 to 2011. The crawler-transporters carry vehicles on the mobile launcher platforms used by NASA, and after each launch return to the pad to take the platform back to the VAB.
  
  The two crawler-transporters were designed and built by Marion Power Shovel Company using some components designed and built by Rockwell International at a cost of US$14 million (US$128.5 million in 2022) each. Upon its construction, the crawler-transporter became the largest self-powered land vehicle in the world until it was beaten in 2013 with the production of the ultraheavy XGC88000 crawler crane. While other vehicles such as bucket-wheel excavators like Bagger 288, dragline excavators like Big Muskie and power shovels like The Captain are significantly larger, they are powered by external sources. (Full article...)
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  The Headquarters of the Space Task Group (STG) at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia

  
  The Space Task Group was a working group of NASA engineers created in 1958, tasked with managing America's human spaceflight programs. Headed by Robert Gilruth and based at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, it managed Project Mercury and follow-on plans. After President John F. Kennedy set the goal in 1961 for the Apollo Program to land a man on the Moon and bring him back safely to Earth, NASA decided a much larger organization and a new facility was required to perform the Task Group's function, and it was transformed into the Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center), located in Houston, Texas.
  
  In later years, the term Space Task Group was ambiguously reused to refer to an ad hoc committee appointed by the President to recommend human spaceflight programs, usually chaired by the Vice President. For instance, President Richard Nixon appointed such a group in February 1969 to outline a post-Apollo spaceflight strategy, chaired by Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. (Full article...)
• 
  In the 1980s, the airport was chosen as a launch site for NASA's high-altitude balloon program (see Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility). NASA spent about $100,000 to construct large insulated walls and air conditioning inside the one remaining wartime hangar so payloads could use the place in a controlled environment. Three bays with tall sliding doors that opened into the main hangar area provided a workable area for scientists and their payloads with large steel A-frames used to suspend the payloads. Other NASA buildings were constructed at the airport.
  
  Currently two operational balloon launch campaigns are conducted at the airport each year. These occur in the May–June and September–October timeframe surrounding the two stratospheric turnaround events. The NASA Ft. Sumner facility has grown in capability over the years and now includes a machine shop and still utilizes the old World War II hangar as a work area, storage area for support vehicles, and a hangar for NSBF aircraft during balloon flight operations. (Full article...)
• 

  

  
  The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), located in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama (Huntsville postal address), is the U.S. government's civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center. As the largest NASA center, MSFC's first mission was developing the Saturn launch vehicles for the Apollo program. Marshall has been the lead center for the Space Shuttle main propulsion and external tank; payloads and related crew training; International Space Station (ISS) design and assembly; computers, networks, and information management; and the Space Launch System. Located on the Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, MSFC is named in honor of General of the Army George C. Marshall.
  
  The center contains the Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC), also known as the International Space Station Payload Operations Center. This facility supports ISS launch, payload, and experiment activities at the Kennedy Space Center. The HOSC also monitors rocket launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station when a Marshall Center payload is on board. (Full article...)
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  LC-39A (foreground) and LC-39B (background) on April 6, 2022

  
  Launch Complex 39 (LC-39) is a rocket launch site at the John F. Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island in Florida, United States. The site and its collection of facilities were originally built as the Apollo program's "Moonport" and later modified for the Space Shuttle program.
  
  Launch Complex 39 consists of three launch sub-complexes or "pads"—39A, 39B, and 39C—a Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), a Crawlerway used by crawler-transporters to carry mobile launcher platforms between the VAB and the pads, Orbiter Processing Facility buildings, a Launch Control Center which contains the firing rooms, a news facility famous for the iconic countdown clock seen in television coverage and photos, and various logistical and operational support buildings. (Full article...)
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  The Langley Research Center (LaRC or NASA Langley), located in Hampton, Virginia near the Chesapeake Bay front of Langley Air Force Base, is the oldest of NASA's field centers. LaRC has focused primarily on aeronautical research but has also tested space hardware such as the Apollo Lunar Module. In addition, many of the earliest high-profile space missions were planned and designed on-site. Langley was also considered a potential site for NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center prior to the eventual selection of Houston, Texas.
  
  Established in 1917 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the research center devotes two-thirds of its programs to aeronautics and the rest to space. LaRC researchers use more than 40 wind tunnels to study and improve aircraft and spacecraft safety, performance, and efficiency. Between 1958 and 1963, when NASA (the successor agency to NACA) started Project Mercury, LaRC served as the main office of the Space Task Group. (Full article...)
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  The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (GDSCC), commonly called the Goldstone Observatory, is a satellite ground station located in Fort Irwin in the U.S. state of California. Operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), its main purpose is to track and communicate with interplanetary space missions. It is named after Goldstone, California, a nearby gold-mining ghost town.
  
  The station is one of three satellite communication stations in the NASA Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program’s Deep Space Network (DSN), whose mission is to provide the vital two-way communications link that tracks and controls interplanetary spacecraft and receives the images and scientific information they collect. The others are the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex in Spain and the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Australia. These three stations are located at separations of approximately 120° longitude so that as the Earth rotates a spacecraft will always be in sight of at least one station. (Full article...)
• 
  
  

  

  LC-39 Launch Control Center

  
  The Rocco A. Petrone Launch Control Center (commonly known as just the Launch Control Center or LCC) is a four-story building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, used to manage launches of launch vehicles from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39. Attached to the southeast corner of the Vehicle Assembly Building, the LCC contains offices; telemetry, tracking, and instrumentation equipment; and firing rooms.
  
  LCC has conducted launches since the unmanned Apollo 4 (Apollo-Saturn 501) launch on November 9, 1967. LCC's first launch with a human crew was Apollo 8 on December 21, 1968. NASA's Space Shuttle program also used LCC. NASA has renovated the center for Space Launch System (SLS) missions, which began in 2022 with Artemis 1. In February 2022, the center was renamed after former launch director Rocco A. Petrone. (Full article...)
• 
  The Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Directorate performs the physical science research at the Johnson Space Center (JSC). It serves as the JSC focus for support to the HQ Science Mission Directorate. ARES scientists and engineers also provide support to the human and robotic spaceflight programs with expertise in orbital debris modeling, analysis of micrometeoroid/orbital debris risks to spacecraft, image analysis and Earth observations. The responsibilities of ARES also include interaction with the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance and the Human Space Flight Programs. They perform research in Earth, planetary, and space sciences and have curatorial responsibility for all NASA-held extraterrestrial samples.
  
  The ARES Directorate recently added a Wordpress Blog that will allow social media Twitter updates to new research and Laboratory discoveries. Posts will also be made by the Expedition Earth and Beyond Education Program that will be adding their classroom connection events to the NASA ARES YouTube page. (Full article...)
• 
  
  

  

  The Artemis 1 Space Launch System vehicle rolling out from the VAB at Kennedy Space Center

  
  The Vehicle Assembly Building (originally the Vertical Assembly Building), or VAB, is a large building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, designed to assemble large pre-manufactured space vehicle components, such as the massive Saturn V, the Space Shuttle and the Space Launch System, and stack them vertically onto one of three mobile launcher platforms used by NASA. As of March 2022, the first Space Launch System (SLS) rocket was assembled inside in preparation for the Artemis 1 mission, launched on November 16, 2022.
  
  At 129,428,000 cu ft (3,665,000 m³), it is the eighth-largest building in the world by volume as of 2022. The building is at Launch Complex 39 at KSC, 149 miles (240 km) south of Jacksonville, 219 miles (352 km) north of Miami, and 50 miles (80 km) due east of Orlando, on Merritt Island on the Atlantic coast of Florida. (Full article...)
• 

  

  
  The John C. Stennis Space Center (SSC) is a NASA rocket testing facility in Hancock County, Mississippi, United States, on the banks of the Pearl River at the Mississippi–Louisiana border. , it is NASA's largest rocket engine test facility. There are over 50 local, state, national, international, private, and public companies and agencies using SSC for their rocket testing facilities. (Full article...)
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  Columbia University's Armstrong Hall, the building in which GISS is located.

  
  The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) is a laboratory in the Earth Sciences Division of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center affiliated with the Columbia University Earth Institute. The institute is located at Columbia University in New York City. It was named after Robert H. Goddard, American engineer, professor, physicist and inventor who is credited with creating and building the world's first liquid-fueled rocket.
  
  Research at the GISS emphasizes a broad study of global change, the natural and anthropogenic changes in our environment that affect the habitability of our planet. These effects may occur on greatly differing time scales, from one-time forcings such as volcanic explosions, to seasonal/annual effects such as El Niño, and on up to the millennia of ice ages. (Full article...)
• 

  

  
  NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field is a NASA center within the cities of Brook Park and Cleveland between Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and the Rocky River Reservation of Cleveland Metroparks, with a subsidiary facility in Sandusky, Ohio. Its director is James A. Kenyon. Glenn Research Center is one of ten major NASA facilities, whose primary mission is to develop science and technology for use in aeronautics and space. , it employed about 1,650 civil servants and 1,850 support contractors on or near its site.
  
  In 2010, the formerly on-site NASA Visitors Center moved to the Great Lakes Science Center in the North Coast Harbor area of downtown Cleveland. (Full article...)
• 
  
  

  

  Top to bottom, left to right: Aerial view of MAF in January 2020, the factory floor, Artemis 1 liquid oxygen tank in the South Vertical Assembly Building, and the entrance to the lobby and administration offices.

  
  The Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) is an 832-acre (1.3 sq mi; 3.4 km²) manufacturing complex owned by NASA in New Orleans East, a section of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the United States. Organizationally it is part of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and is currently a multi-tenant complex to allow commercial and government contractors, as well as government agencies, to use the site.
  
  MAF is one of the largest manufacturing plants in the world with 43 environmentally controlled acres—174,000 m² (1,870,000 sq ft)—under one roof, and it employs more than 4,200 people. From September 1961 to the end of the Apollo program in December 1972 the site was utilized by Chrysler Corporation to build the first stages of the Saturn I and Saturn IB, later joined by Boeing Corporation to build the first stage of the Saturn V rockets. From September 5, 1973, to September 20, 2010, the factory was used for the construction of the Space Shuttle's external fuel tanks by Martin Marietta Corporation. (Full article...)
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  The 2TV-1 Apollo spacecraft in Chamber A 1968

  
  The Space Environment Simulation Laboratory (SESL) is a facility in Building 32 at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center that can perform large-scale simulations of the vacuum and thermal environments that would be encountered in space. Built in 1965, it was initially used to test Apollo Program spacecraft and equipment in a space environment, and continues to be used by NASA for testing equipment. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985. (Full article...)
• 

  

  
  The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laboratory. That agency was dissolved and its assets and personnel transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on October 1, 1958. NASA Ames is named in honor of Joseph Sweetman Ames, a physicist and one of the founding members of NACA. At last estimate NASA Ames had over US$3 billion in capital equipment, 2,300 research personnel and a US$860 million annual budget.
  
  Ames was founded to conduct wind-tunnel research on the aerodynamics of propeller-driven aircraft; however, its role has expanded to encompass spaceflight and information technology. Ames plays a role in many NASA missions. It provides leadership in astrobiology; small satellites; robotic lunar exploration; the search for habitable planets; supercomputing; intelligent/adaptive systems; advanced thermal protection; planetary science; and airborne astronomy. Ames also develops tools for a safer, more efficient national airspace. The center's current director is Eugene Tu. (Full article...)
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  White Flight Control Room prior to STS-114 in 2005

  
  NASA's Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center (MCC-H, initially called Integrated Mission Control Center, or IMCC), also known by its radio callsign, Houston, is the facility at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, that manages flight control for the United States human space program, currently involving astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
  The center is in Building 30 at the Johnson Space Center and is named after Christopher C. Kraft Jr., a NASA engineer and manager who was instrumental in establishing the agency's Mission Control operation, and was the first Flight Director.
  
  The MCC currently houses one operational control room in Building 30 from which flight controllers command, monitor, and plan operations for the ISS. This room has many computer and data-processing resources to monitor, command and communicate with the station. The ISS control room operates continuously. A second control room in the same building, which formerly hosted the Shuttle flight control team, can be set up for ISS operations should the need arise (e.g., during repairs or hardware upgrades in the main room), and also hosts training simulations. (Full article...)
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  The Lunar Receiving Laboratory shortly after it was built.

  
  The Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL) was a facility at NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (Building 37) that was constructed to quarantine astronauts and material brought back from the Moon during the Apollo program to reduce the risk of back-contamination. After recovery at sea, crews from Apollo 11, Apollo 12, and Apollo 14 walked from their helicopter to the Mobile Quarantine Facility on the deck of an aircraft carrier and were brought to the LRL for quarantine. Samples of rock and regolith that the astronauts collected and brought back were flown directly to the LRL and initially analyzed in glovebox vacuum chambers.
  
  ::: (Full article...)
• 
  
  

  

  An astronaut training in the NBL

  
  The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) is an astronaut training facility and neutral buoyancy pool operated by NASA and located at the Sonny Carter Training Facility, near the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The NBL's main feature is a large indoor pool of water, in which astronauts may perform simulated EVA tasks in preparation for upcoming missions. Trainees wear suits designed to provide neutral buoyancy to simulate the microgravity that astronauts experience during spaceflight. (Full article...)
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  Insignia for the Deep Space Network's 50th anniversary celebrations (1963–2013)

  
  The NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) is a worldwide network of spacecraft communication ground segment facilities, located in the United States (California), Spain (Madrid), and Australia (Canberra), that supports NASA's interplanetary spacecraft missions. It also performs radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the Solar System and the universe, and supports selected Earth-orbiting missions. DSN is part of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). (Full article...)
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  Aerial view of the Operations and Checkout building at KSC, c. 2017

  
  The Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building (O&C) (previously known as the Manned Spacecraft Operations Building) is a historic building on Merritt Island, Florida, United States. The five-story structure is in the Industrial Area of NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Its has twin-block facilities that include the crew quarter dormitories for astronauts, suit-up preparations prior to their flights, and the other is a large spacecraft workshop used for manufacturing and checking activities on crewed spacecraft. On January 21, 2000, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. (Full article...)
• 

  

  
  The Central Instrumentation Facility (CIF) was a building in the Kennedy Space Center industrial area that functioned as the core of instrumentation and data processing operations during the Apollo program and the early years of the Space Shuttle program. It centralized the handling of the center's data including offices, laboratories and test stations; and housed general instrumentation activities serving more than one launch complex. The CIF also included the Central Timing Facility, where a precision clock drove countdown clocks and other timing devices at KSC that required a high degree of accuracy.
  
  The CIF also housed computers and other electronic equipment for reduction of telemetry data, analysis, and transmission to other NASA centers. The three-story structure of approximately 134,335 sq ft (12,480.1 m²) just west of the KSC Headquarters Building was one of the most distinctive buildings in the KSC Industrial Area with its rooftop array of various antennas. (Full article...)
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  Aerial view of Shuttle Landing Facility in 2012

  
  The Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF), also known as Launch and Landing Facility (LLF) (IATA: QQS, ICAO: KTTS, FAA LID: TTS), is an airport located on Merritt Island in Brevard County, Florida, United States. It is a part of the Kennedy Space Center and was used by Space Shuttle for landing until July 2011. It was also used for takeoffs and landings for NASA training jets such as the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and for civilian aircraft.
  
  Starting in 2015, Space Florida manages and operates the facility under a 30-year lease from NASA. In addition to ongoing use by NASA, private companies have been utilizing the SLF since the 2011 end of the Space Shuttle program. (Full article...)

Note that |SPAN=yes|EDIT=yes|TOC=yes are needed only when posting to non-portal pages, like talk pages.    — The Transhumanist   19:40, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Portal:Stonehenge

I really like this one you did. I've touched it up a bit.    — The Transhumanist   10:07, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 3

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited List of British postage stamps, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page CEPT (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).

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Philatety Portal

With this edit you removed a load of links and critical information and now there are just 3 big images and loads of empty space. I think it looks dreadful and sparse. If that's you best effort it's hardly worth having. ww2censor (talk) 22:49, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

@Ww2censor: I have reverted my edits to Portal:Philately. I hope this is OK. Apologies, Gazamp (talk) 18:26, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Portal:Demography

Thank you for creating this portal! You filled a blatant gap. Nice catch.

I've renamed it from Portal:Demographics, added topics to the topics section (I copy/pasted them from Category:Demography while displaying them with the userscript User:The Transhumanist/ViewAsOutline-Category.js, and filled in or changed some parameters so that the various sections auto-generated. I also added another cattree to the subcats section, and moved that section down to the one-column area because it became so big.

I hope you like the changes, and that you find these techniques useful in your own portal work.

Keep up the great work, and keep the new portals coming!

Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   03:56, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Portal tip #3: Official maintainers of portals

Some portals have dedicated maintainers who watch over and maintain them.

Maintenance status, and/or maintainers may be specified in the categories at the bottom of the portal, in the {{Portal maintenance status}} template at the top of the portal (in the wikicode), or in the project's participants list at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Portals#Specific_portal_maintainers.

It is worth checking these before converting an old-style portal.

I accidentally did the same thing to Portal:American Civil War, and got my ass chewed. Portals maintainers can be very, well, very...

...expressive.    — The Transhumanist   06:35, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Portal tip #4: refining the internal search parameters

Each portal has a search built-in that powers its Did you know and In the news sections.

Unfortunatey, the default search term isn't that great. It's the magic word {{PAGENAME}}. That just generates the subject of the portal, which is always capitalized, and in many cases, pluralized. That works great for terms that are usually capitalized, like person and place names, but not for the rest.

So, it helps to add to or replace the default search parameter with other search terms. You can put in as many as you like, separated by pipes (|).

By the way "%s" means space in Lua search notation.

And you can specify groups with "[]" square brackets. "[Aa]" means big A or little a, and apple with either would look like this: [Aa]pple

For more info on Lua search parameters, see [[]].

Some examples of portals with improved Did you know and In the news search parameters include:

• Portal:Even-toed ungulates
• Portal:Odd-toed ungulates
• Portal:Marvel Comics
• Portal:Apes
• Portal:Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths)
• Portal:Bats
• Portal:Carnivorans

Remember, the search parameters should be specified in both the Did you know and In the news sections.

I hope you liked this tip.

Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   07:58, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Portal counter: 541

It auto-updates. To keep track of where we are at.

5,000, here we come!    — The Transhumanist   08:16, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Portal titles should be plural

Just a heads up...

For items that have a plural, the portal should be named for the plural.

For example, Portal:Tigers, instead of Portal:Tiger.

I've renamed Template:Rose to Template:Roses, and Portal:Rose to Portal:Roses. Nice portal, by the way.

Portal titles generally match the corresponding category. See Category:Roses.

When renaming a navbox template, be sure to also update its name= in its wikicode (near the top of the page in the wiki editor). That controls the view and edit links displayed on the template itself.

You are doing a great job pushing the project forward into new content territory.

Keep the new portals coming!

Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   02:36, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Power search: SearchSuite.js

I wrote a userscript for making Wikipedia search results more powerful.

It's SearchSuite.

It provides several menu items on the search results page to reformat the results for ease of use.

It can show the results as a straight list, which is extremely useful when searching for templates, for example.

I hope you like it.    — The Transhumanist   10:25, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Got it, thanks! Gazamp (talk) 18:16, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Refining a portal's internal search parameters can make a big difference

Each portal has a conditional Did you know, and a conditional In the news, section that only show up when there are results to display. Unfortunately, the default search parameter is {{PAGENAME}}, which is always interpreted as the portal title capitalized.

Take a look at Portal:Suffragettes.

By changing the search parameters in this edit, the Did you know section is activated and displays 5 results. Makes quite a difference, because the lua program wasn't searching for the title with a small "s", or for its singular. Now it searches for both of those.

For subjects that are not usually capitalized or pluralized, changing the search parameters is needed in order for those 2 sections to show anything.

Keep up the good work, and keep those new portals coming!    — The Transhumanist   08:08, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Nice article you wrote (I'm a new page patroller reviewing it) DannyS712 (talk) 06:57, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

• @DannyS712: Thank you! Gazamp (talk) 19:06, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 16

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Ryan Zinke, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page John Kelly (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).

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Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #024, 26 Dec 2018

Last issue, I mentioned there would be a flood, and so, here it is...

Portals status

We now have 4,620 portals.

And the race to pass 5,000 by year's end is on...

Can we make it?

The New Year, and the 5,001st portal, await.

( New portals are created with {{subst:Basic portal start page}} or {{subst:bpsp}} )

Evad is back!

After disappearing in mid-thread, Evad37 has returned from a longer than expected wikibreak.

Be sure to welcome him back.

Improved cropping is coming to Portal image banner

User:FR30799386 is working on making {{Portal image banner}} even better by enabling it to chop the top off an image as well as the bottom.

Many pictures aren't suitable for banners because they are too tall. Therefor, User:FR30799386 added cropping to this template, so that an editor could specify part of a picture to be used rather than the whole thing.

Upgrade of flagship portals is underway

Work has begun on upgrading Wikipedia's flagship portals (those listed at the top of the Main page).

So far, Portal:Geography, Portal:History, and Portal:Technology have been revamped. Of course, you are welcome to improve them further.

Work continues on the other five. Feel free to join in on the fun.

Spotting missing portals that are redirects

In place of many missing portals, there is a redirect that leads to "the next best topic", such as a parent topic.

Most of these were created before we had the tools to easily create portals (they used to take 6 hours or more to create, because it was all done manually). Rather than leave a portal link red, some editors thought it was best that those titles led somewhere.

The subjects that have sufficient coverage should have their own portals rather than a redirect to some other subject.

Unfortunately, being blue like all other live links, redirects are harder to spot than redlinks.

To spot redirects easily, you can make them all appear green.

Keep 'em coming!

And I'll see you next issue.

Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   08:08, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

We're almost there

We just hit 4,940 portals.

We have 3 more days left in the year to make it to 5,000.

We're almost there!    — The Transhumanist   09:30, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #025, 30 Dec 2018

We can now crop the tops of pics to make banners

Before, we could only cut off the bottom of pics.

User:FR30799386 has pulled it off, and made the upgrade to {{Portal image banner}}...

So, this:

Niagara falls, from the Canadian side

Becomes this:

Niagara falls, from the Canadian side

Here's the code for the above banner:

{{Portal image banner|File:American Falls from Canadian side in winter.jpg | [[Niagara falls]], from the Canadian side |maxheight=175px |overflow=Hidden|croptop=10}}

To see it employed in a portal, check out Portal:Niagara Falls.

About that end of the year goal...

We were racing against time to create 5,000 portals by the end of the year (just for the heck of it).

We made it. We've passed the 5,000 portals mark, with time to spare!

And the 5,000th portal is Portal:Major League Baseball, by Happypillsjr.

Congratulations!

What's next?

The 10,000th portal mark. But...

...there is plenty else to do in addition to building new portals:

1. The new portals need to be linked to from the encyclopedia.
2. On those portals about subjects that are not typically capitalized, the search parameters need to be refined/expanded, to maximize the chances of Did you know and In the news items being found and displayed.
3. A Recognized content section needs to be added to each portal that has a corresponding WikiProject.
4. Addition of a category on those portals that lack a subject category.
5. Implement the portal category system, adding the appropriate categories to each portal.
6. Upgrade, and complete (as per the tasks enumerated above), the old-style portals that are not regularly maintained, which have not been converted yet (about 1,100 of them).
7. Find and fix the remaining bugs in the underlying lua modules.
8. Build portal tools (scripts) to assist in the creation, development, and maintenance of portals.
9. Build a script to help build navbox footer templates, via the harvesting of categories, amongst other methods.
10. Update the portal building instructions.
11. Update the portal guideline.
12. Refine the programming of the portals to reduce their load time.
13. Design and develop the next generation of portals and portal components.

And whatever else you can dream up.

But most of all, have a...

Happy New Year!

Gazamp, thank you for your contributions to the Portals Project, and have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year.

Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   11:54, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Help reviewing proposed edits?

Hi!

I see you are a member of the Wikipedia project for journalism. I was a journalist for 25 years so it's a topic that interests me. Anyway, I have a conflict of interest with respect to the article about the journalist Jonathan Swan as a paid consultant to his current publisher, Axios. I think the article can be massively improved and I've made a series of proposed changes here: Talk:Jonathan_Swan#Request_Edits. If you could take a look, it would be much appreciated. I don't make edits directly on the article because of the WP: COI policy. Thanks! Ed BC1278 (talk) 19:16, 1 January 2019 (UTC)BC1278

Ways to improve Donald Heflin

Hello, Gazamp,

Thanks for creating Donald Heflin! I edit here too, under the username Rosguill and it's nice to meet you :-)

I wanted to let you know that I have tagged the page as having some issues to fix, as a part of our page curation process and note that:-

The article could use citations to additional reliable sources that are independent of the US government

The tags can be removed by you or another editor once the issues they mention are addressed. If you have questions, leave a comment here and prepend it with {{Re|Rosguill}}. And, don't forget to sign your reply with ~~~~ . For broader editing help, please visit the Teahouse.

Delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.

_signed, Rosguill ^talk 23:58, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #026, 20 Jan 2019

Well, here's the first issue of the new year. Enjoy...

New participants

A hearty welcome to new arrivals to the portals department:

• Emoteplump
• Pakieditor
• CASSIOPEIA
• Venomous Sniper
• DannyS712

Harvesting categories tool prototype

DannyS712 has created a user script prototype, User:DannyS712/Cat links, that can pull members from a category, a functionality we've been after since the project's revamp last Spring. Now, it's a matter of applying this technique to scripts that will place the items where needed, such as in a section starter script and/or portal builder script.

New portals since last issue

1. Academic publishing
2. Accounting
3. Adam and Eve
4. African Great Lakes
5. Al Green
6. Alternative views
7. America's Next Top Model
8. Andaman and Nicobar Islands
9. Angles
10. Applied mathematics
11. Arabic
12. Areas of mathematics
13. Atlanta metropolitan area
14. Atlantic Ocean
15. Big Bash League
16. Bijelo Dugme
17. Bill Cosby
18. Boats
19. Bombardier Aerospace
20. Bruce Willis
21. Canadian law
22. Cannons
23. Caribbean American
24. Chinese American
25. Chinese Canadians
26. Chinese gardens
27. Chris Brown
28. City
29. Common law
30. Criminal law
31. Czechoslovakia
32. Data
33. Data warehouses
34. DC Comics
35. Deities
36. DeKalb County
37. Destiny's Child
38. Differential equations
39. Discrete geometry
40. East Asia
41. Economy of China
42. Economy of India
43. Economy of Malaysia
44. Economy of the United Kingdom
45. Ellen DeGeneres
46. Email clients
47. E
48. Equations
49. European Americans
50. Filipino Americans
51. Football in Algeria
52. Fox Corporation
53. Fractions and ratios
54. Functional analysis
55. Game theory
56. Girlguiding
57. Gloucestershire
58. Grazhdanskaya Oborona
59. Greek diaspora
60. Habsburg Monarchy
61. Hilbert's problems
62. Hoodoo Gurus
63. Hyundai Motor Company
64. Iggy Azalea
65. Indian Ocean
66. Infinity
67. Information theory
68. Integrals
69. Irish diaspora
70. Irrational numbers
71. Italian diaspora
72. Japanese diaspora
73. J. Cole
74. Jennifer Lopez
75. Jessica Lange
76. John Fogerty
77. Kehlani
78. Kiev
79. K. Michelle
80. Knot theory
81. Kool & the Gang
82. Lakes in China
83. Lake Van
84. Leonardo DiCaprio
85. Limerick
86. Literary composition
87. Long Island Rail Road
88. Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
89. Lukas Graham
90. Mathematical optimization
91. Matt Damon
92. Merchant ships
93. Metallic means
94. Metro-North Railroad
95. Microsoft Windows
96. Military of India
97. Miss America
98. Modulation
99. Moon landing
100. Mozilla
101. Music of Ireland
102. Narratives
103. Nashville
104. Nassau County
105. Norfolk
106. Nottinghamshire
107. One Life to Live
108. Overseas Chinese
109. Percentages
110. Probability distributions
111. Public Broadcasting Service
112. Quezon City
113. Raven-Symoné
114. R. Kelly
115. Rodeo
116. RuneScape
117. Sarah Silverman
118. Saturn rockets
119. Science and technology
120. Sesame Street
121. Seth MacFarlane
122. Ships
123. Shipwrecks
124. Shropshire
125. Spaceports
126. Space suits
127. Spanish diaspora
128. Steam locomotives
129. Suffolk
130. Suzuki
131. Tanks
132. Tensors
133. The CW
134. Thomas Aquinas
135. T.I.
136. TISM
137. Tom Cruise
138. Toni Braxton
139. Toyota
140. Transportation in the Philippines
141. True Blood
142. Violin
143. Virgin Group
144. Vladimir Putin
145. Volkswagen
146. Volume
147. Warner Bros.
148. Warships
149. Warwickshire
150. Washington D.C.
151. [[Portal:Watercraft|
152. Web syndication
153. Wikis
154. Witchcraft
155. Women's sports
156. World of Warcraft

What else is going on

There have been some discussions at Wikipedia talk:Portal guidelines.

DreamyJazz is working on a bot to place links to portals on root articles, category pages, and navigation footer templates.

Portal bugs are getting dealt with soon after they are reported.

Lots of wikignome activity (using Hotcat, etc.).

Keep up the good work.    — The Transhumanist   08:16, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

An invitation to discussion

I kindly invite you to the discussion on Template talk:Infobox election#The Bolding issue to decide whether to bold the winner in the election infobox. Lmmnhn (talk) 19:23, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #027, 28 Jan 2019

Portal styles

For a visually intensive portal, see Portal:Hummingbirds.

If you find any other portals that stand out, please send me the links so I can include them in the next issue. Thank you.

Conversion continues

There are about 1100 portals left in the old style, with subpages and static excerpts. As those are very labor intensive to maintain (because their maintenance is manual), all those except the ones with active maintainers (about 100) are slated for upgrade = approximately 1000. We started with 1500, and so over a quarter of them have been processed so far. That's good, but at this rate, conversion will take another 3 years. So, some automation (AWB?) is in order. We just need to keep at it, and push down on the gas pedal a bit harder.

You can find the old-style portals with an insource search of "box portal skeleton".

Flagship portals: the portals on the Main Page

Speaking of upgrades...

The following portals are listed in the header at the top of Wikipedia's Main Page, and get far more traffic than all other portals:

1. Portal:Arts
2. Portal:Biography
3. Portal:Geography
4. Portal:History
5. Portal:Mathematics
6. Portal:Science
7. Portal:Society
8. Portal:Technology

Of those, all but one have been revamped to an automated self-updating single-page design.

The remaining one, Portal:Mathematics has manual maintainers, and has been partially upgraded.

As these are our flagship fleet, they need to be kept in top-notch condition.

Check 'em out, and improve them if you can.

And be sure they are on your watchlist.

New portals since last issue

• Accomack County
• Adair County
• Adair County
• Adams County
• Adidas
• Airbus
• Americas
• Bangladesh Armed Forces
• Bedfordshire
• Bicycles
• Boeing
• Chester County
• Conspiracy theories
• Corals
• County Durham
• Culture of the United States
• DC Universe
• Dragons
• Economy of Pakistan
• Electricity
• Ethnic groups
• European Union law
• Fatimid Caliphate
• Flanders
• Frederick County
• Fujian
• German language
• Global issues
• Greek mathematics
• Grisons
• Guangxi
• Hebei
• Henan
• Herefordshire
• History of North America
• Hollywood
• Hubei
• Hunan
• Hybrid
• Inner Mongolia
• Jet engines
• Jiangsu
• Johor
• Johor Bahru
• Julius Caesar
• Kuala Lumpur
• Lake Constance
• Lee Kuan Yew
• Lufthansa
• Lunar eclipses
• Magnetism
• Menstrual cycle
• Mustelids
• Mutations
• New York University
• Nord-du-Québec
• North Africa
• PepsiCo
• Pitcairn Islands
• Podcasting
• Quantum electrodynamics
• Quantum mechanics
• Rawalpindi
• Réunion
• Roads in Pakistan
• Rockefeller Center
• Sichuan
• St. Gallen
• State University of New York
• Temperature
• Tsunamis
• Veterinary medicine
• Vorarlberg
• Walgreens
• Walmart
• Weasels
• Xinjiang
• Yunnan

Keep 'em coming!

Deorphanizing the new portals

As you know, thousands of the new portals are orphans, that is, having no links to them from article space. For all practical purposes, that means they are not part of the encyclopedia yet, and readers will be unlikely to find them.

What is needed are links to these portals from the See also sections of the corresponding root articles.

Dreamy Jazz to the rescue...

Dreamy Jazz has created a bot to place the corresponding category link to the end of each portal (if it is missing), and place a link to each portal in the See also section of the corresponding root articles.

That bot, named User:Dreamy Jazz Bot, is currently in its trial period performing the above described edits!

To take a look at the edits it has made so far, see Special:Contributions/Dreamy_Jazz_Bot.

It shouldn't be long before the bot is processing the entire set of new portals.

Good news indeed.

Way to go, Dreamy Jazz!

And, that's a wrap

That's all I have to report this time around.

No doubt there will be more to tell soon.

Until then,    — The Transhumanist   13:12, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #028, 04 Feb 2019

Here's a quicky status report:

Old-style portals: 1,018

Single-page portals: 4,367

Total portals: 5,385

But of course, there has been more going on than just that...

Dreamy Jazz Bot is up and running!

Dreamy Jazz Bot has been approved and is now up and running.

What it does is places missing links to orphaned portals. It places a link in the See also section of the corresponding root article, and it puts one at the top of the corresponding category page.

We have thousands of new portals that have yet to be added to the encyclopedia proper, just waiting to go live.

When they do go live, over the coming days or weeks, due to Dreamy Jazz Bot, it will be like an explosion of new portals on the scene. We should expect an increase in awareness and interest in the portals project. Perhaps even new participants.

Get ready...

Get set...

Go!

Another sockpuppet infiltrator has been discovered

User:Emoteplump, a recent contributor to the portals project, was discovered to be a sockpuppet account of an indefinitely blocked user.

When that happens, admins endeavor to eradicate everything the editor contributed. This aftermath has left a wake of destruction throughout the portals department, again.

The following portals which have been speedy deleted, are in the process of being re-created. Please feel free to help to turn these blue again:

• Portal:Adidas
• Portal:AFC Asian Cup
• Portal:Airbus
• Portal:Anhui
• Portal:Bicycles
• Portal:Blue Cheese
• Portal:Boeing
• Portal:British Airways
• Portal:Carcinogen
• Portal:ComfortDelGro
• Portal:Construction
• Portal:Corals
• Portal:Cross-Strait relations
• Portal:Derry
• Portal:Duke University
• Portal:Electricity
• Portal:Ethnic groups
• Portal:Extraterrestrial life
• Portal:Flanders
• Portal:Fujian
• Portal:Gansu
• Portal:German language
• Portal:Gordon Ramsay
• Portal:Government of Australia
• Portal:Government of Canada
• Portal:Government of Hong Kong
• Portal:Government of Indonesia
• Portal:Government of Ireland
• Portal:Government of Japan
• Portal:Government of Malaysia
• Portal:Government of Russia
• Portal:Government of Singapore
• Portal:Government of Spain
• Portal:Government of Thailand
• Portal:Government of the United Kingdom
• Portal:Government of Ukraine
• Portal:Grapes
• Portal:Guangxi
• Portal:Guizhou
• Portal:Hasbro
• Portal:Hebei
• Portal:Heilongjiang
• Portal:Henan
• Portal:Hillary Clinton
• Portal:History of art
• Portal:History of North America
• Portal:History of Thailand
• Portal:Hollywood
• Portal:Hubei
• Portal:Hunan
• Portal:Hybrid (biology)
• Portal:Hydrogen
• Portal:Imperial College London
• Portal:Inner Mongolia
• Portal:Japan Airlines
• Portal:Jet engines
• Portal:Jet Engines
• Portal:Jiangsu
• Portal:Jiangxi
• Portal:Jilin
• Portal:Johor Bahru
• Portal:Julius Caesar
• Portal:JYP Entertainment
• Portal:Kedah
• Portal:Kelantan
• Portal:Kuala Lumpur
• Portal:Labuan
• Portal:Lee Kuan Yew
• Portal:Liaoning
• Portal:Lufthansa
• Portal:Magnetism
• Portal:McLaren
• Portal:Menstrual cycle
• Portal:Monash University
• Portal:Mutations
• Portal:Nanyang Technological University
• Portal:National University of Singapore
• Portal:Negeri Sembilan
• Portal:Nestlé
• Portal:Nike, Inc.
• Portal:Ningxia
• Portal:Nissan
• Portal:North Africa
• Portal:North Pole
• Portal:Pahang
• Portal:Penang
• Portal:PepsiCo
• Portal:Perak
• Portal:Perlis
• Portal:Qinghai
• Portal:Quantum electrodynamics
• Portal:Quantum mechanics
• Portal:S.H.I.E.L.D.
• Portal:Selangor
• Portal:Shanxi
• Portal:Sichuan
• Portal:SM Entertainment
• Portal:South Pole
• Portal:Subway (restaurant)
• Portal:Temperature
• Portal:Terengganu
• Portal:Uber
• Portal:Veterinary medicine
• Portal:Volvo Buses
• Portal:Walgreens
• Portal:Walmart
• Portal:Xinjiang
• Portal:Yahoo!
• Portal:Yale University
• Portal:YG Entertainment
• Portal:Yunnan
• Portal:Zhejiang

And the corresponding talk pages:

• Portal talk:Adidas
• Portal talk:Airbus
• Portal talk:Bicycles
• Portal talk:Boeing
• Portal talk:Carcinogen
• Portal talk:Corals
• Portal talk:Duke University
• Portal talk:Electricity
• Portal talk:Ethnic groups
• Portal talk:Flanders
• Portal talk:Fujian
• Portal talk:German language
• Portal talk:Girls' Generation
• Portal talk:Government of Australia
• Portal talk:Government of Canada
• Portal talk:Government of Hong Kong
• Portal talk:Government of Indonesia
• Portal talk:Government of Ireland
• Portal talk:Government of Japan
• Portal talk:Government of Malaysia
• Portal talk:Government of Russia
• Portal talk:Government of Singapore
• Portal talk:Government of Spain
• Portal talk:Government of Thailand
• Portal talk:Government of the United Kingdom
• Portal talk:Government of Ukraine
• Portal talk:Grapes
• Portal talk:Guangxi
• Portal talk:Hebei
• Portal talk:Henan
• Portal talk:Hillary Clinton
• Portal talk:History of art
• Portal talk:Hollywood
• Portal talk:Hubei
• Portal talk:Hunan
• Portal talk:Hybrid (biology)
• Portal talk:Imperial College London
• Portal talk:Inner Mongolia
• Portal talk:Jet engines
• Portal talk:Jet Engines
• Portal talk:Jiangsu
• Portal talk:Johor Bahru
• Portal talk:Julius Caesar
• Portal talk:JYP Entertainment
• Portal talk:Kuala Lumpur
• Portal talk:Lee Kuan Yew
• Portal talk:Lufthansa
• Portal talk:Magnetism
• Portal talk:Menstrual cycle
• Portal talk:Monash University
• Portal talk:Mutations
• Portal talk:Nanyang Technological University
• Portal talk:National University of Singapore
• Portal talk:Nike, Inc.
• Portal talk:North Africa
• Portal talk:PepsiCo
• Portal talk:Quantum electrodynamics
• Portal talk:Quantum mechanics
• Portal talk:Sichuan
• Portal talk:SM Entertainment
• Portal talk:Subway (restaurant)
• Portal talk:Temperature
• Portal talk:Veterinary medicine
• Portal talk:Walgreens
• Portal talk:Walmart
• Portal talk:Xinjiang
• Portal talk:Yale University
• Portal talk:YG Entertainment
• Portal talk:Yunnan

New portals since the last issue

• Portal:American_Horror_Story
• Portal:Bad_Religion
• Portal:Bicycles
• Portal:British_Airways
• Portal:Campania
• Portal:Ciara
• Portal:Derry
• Portal:Extraterrestrial_life
• Portal:Fujian
• Portal:Guangxi
• Portal:Imperial_College_London
• Portal:Islamic_Golden_Age
• Portal:Ivy_Queen
• Portal:Japan_Airlines
• Portal:Japanese_language
• Portal:Kate_Ceberano
• Portal:Labuan
• Portal:LL_Cool_J
• Portal:New_York_City_Police_Department
• Portal:Penang
• Portal:PepsiCo
• Portal:Perak
• Portal:Perlis
• Portal:Politics_of_Ukraine
• Portal:Quantum_mechanics
• Portal:Salads
• Portal:Selangor
• Portal:Shaquille_O'Neal
• Portal:South_Pole
• Portal:Supermarket
• Portal:Temperature
• Portal:Terengganu
• Portal:The_Fairly_OddParents
• Portal:The_Incredibles
• Portal:Vassar_College
• Portal:Voivod_(band)
• Portal:Yu-Gi-Oh!

Keep up the great work

Until next time,    — The Transhumanist   09:00, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #029, 13 Feb 2019

Where we are at:

Single-page portals: 4,704

Total portals: 5,705

The Ref desks survived the proposal to shut them down

You might be familiar with the Ref desks, by their link on every new portal. They are a place you can go to ask volunteers almost any knowledge-related question, and have been a feature of Wikipedia since August of 2005 (or perhaps earlier). They were linked to from portals in an effort to improve their visibility, and to provide a bridge from the encyclopedia proper to project space (the Wikipedia community).

Well, somebody proposed that we get rid of them, and the community decided that that was not going to happen. Thank you for defending the Ref desks!

Here's a link to the dramatic discussion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Indefinitely_semiprotecting_the_refdesk#Proposal_II:_Shut_down_the_Ref_Desks

The cleanup after sockpuppet Emoteplump continues...

The wake of disruption left by Emoteplump and the admins who reverted many (but not all) of his/her edits is still undergoing cleanup. We could use all the help we can get on this task...

Almost all of the speedy deleted portals have been rebuilt from scratch.

For the portals he/she restarted (many of which were done mistakenly, overwriting restarts and further development that had already been done), and/or tagged as the maintainer, see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Emoteplump&oldid=881568794#Additional_Portals_under_my_watch

10,000 portals, here we come...

We're at 5,705 portals and counting.

New portals since issue #28

1. Portal:Abitibi-Témiscamingue
2. Portal:Ahold Delhaize
3. Portal:AKB48
4. Portal:Åland Islands
5. Portal:Alaska Airlines
6. Portal:Albanian Civil War
7. Portal:Albertsons
8. Portal:Alevism
9. Portal:All in the Family
10. Portal:Alternative metal
11. Portal:Ambient music
12. Portal:Ancient Near East mythology
13. Portal:Ancient Roman religion
14. Portal:Andrew Cuomo
15. Portal:Anti-consumerism
16. Portal:Antimatter
17. Portal:Arameans
18. Portal:Arianism
19. Portal:Australian Crawl
20. Portal:Bali
21. Portal:Banten
22. Portal:Bengkulu
23. Portal:Black Lives Matter
24. Portal:Bluegrass music
25. Portal:Bonnie Tyler
26. Portal:Breakbeat
27. Portal:Calypso music
28. Portal:Cambridgeshire
29. Portal:Camila Cabello
30. Portal:Capcom
31. Portal:Capsicum
32. Portal:Celtic music
33. Portal:Central American music
34. Portal:Central Java
35. Portal:Central Kalimantan
36. Portal:Central Sulawesi
37. Portal:Chanel
38. Portal:Cinema of Australia
39. Portal:Cognitive psychology
40. Portal:Communication studies
41. Portal:Conservatism in the United States
42. Portal:Cortina d'Ampezzo
43. Portal:Cross-Strait relations
44. Portal:Cryptozoology
45. Portal:Danish folk music
46. Portal:Disco
47. Portal:Dyslexia
48. Portal:East Java
49. Portal:East Kalimantan
50. Portal:East Nusa Tenggara
51. Portal:Easy listening
52. Portal:Ed Sheeran
53. Portal:Ehime
54. Portal:Electricity
55. Portal:Electronica
56. Portal:Electronic rock
57. Portal:English folk music
58. Portal:Environmental technology
59. Portal:Experimental music
60. Portal:Extreme metal
61. Portal:Fall Out Boy
62. Portal:Finnish Defence Forces
63. Portal:Finnish folk music
64. Portal:Football in Croatia
65. Portal:Football in Jordan
66. Portal:Funk
67. Portal:Gamelan
68. Portal:General Mills
69. Portal:Germanic languages
70. Portal:German language
71. Portal:Government of Canada
72. Portal:Government of Hong Kong
73. Portal:Government of Indonesia
74. Portal:Government of Ireland
75. Portal:Government of Malaysia
76. Portal:Government of Russia
77. Portal:Government of Singapore
78. Portal:Government of Spain
79. Portal:Government of Thailand
80. Portal:Grapes
81. Portal:Green Party of the United States
82. Portal:Grinspoon
83. Portal:Gwen Stefani
84. Portal:Hardcore punk
85. Portal:Hardcore techno
86. Portal:Haskell (programming language)
87. Portal:History of art
88. Portal:History of North America
89. Portal:History of Thailand
90. Portal:Hollywood
91. Portal:Hotels
92. Portal:House music
93. Portal:Hungarian folk music
94. Portal:Hunters & Collectors
95. Portal:Hydrogen
96. Portal:Icelandic folk music
97. Portal:Indigenous music of North America
98. Portal:Insomniac Games
99. Portal:International field hockey
100. Portal:International trade
101. Portal:Iranian music
102. Portal:Islamophobia
103. Portal:Jambi
104. Portal:Jet engines
105. Portal:Jordin Sparks
106. Portal:Julius Caesar
107. Portal:Kannur
108. Portal:Kansas City Spurs
109. Portal:Kelly Rowland
110. Portal:Kirby
111. Portal:Kraft Heinz
112. Portal:Krasnoyarsk Krai
113. Portal:Kroger
114. Portal:Kuala Lumpur
115. Portal:Lampung
116. Portal:Larry Kramer
117. Portal:LeBron James
118. Portal:Lehigh Valley
119. Portal:Leicestershire
120. Portal:Liège
121. Portal:Liguria
122. Portal:Los Angeles Aztecs
123. Portal:Los Angeles Wolves
124. Portal:Macedonian language
125. Portal:Magnetism
126. Portal:Maithripala Sirisena
127. Portal:Maluku (province)
128. Portal:Mangoes
129. Portal:Marco Pierre White
130. Portal:McLaren
131. Portal:Menstrual cycle
132. Portal:Metalcore
133. Portal:Miami FC
134. Portal:Microblogging
135. Portal:Microtonal music
136. Portal:Midnight Oil
137. Portal:Minnesota Kicks
138. Portal:Mission: Impossible
139. Portal:Modernism (music)
140. Portal:Moheener Ghoraguli
141. Portal:Mondelez International
142. Portal:Music genres
143. Portal:Music of Bangladesh
144. Portal:Music of India
145. Portal:Music of Italy
146. Portal:Music of Japan
147. Portal:Music of Korea
148. Portal:Music of Latin America
149. Portal:Music of Micronesia
150. Portal:Music of North Africa
151. Portal:Music of Pakistan
152. Portal:Music of Serbia
153. Portal:Music of the Philippines
154. Portal:Music of the United States
155. Portal:Mutations
156. Portal:National Rugby League
157. Portal:Neoclassicism (music)
158. Portal:Netball
159. Portal:New York City Fire Department
160. Portal:Nick Jr.
161. Portal:Nobility
162. Portal:Nordic countries
163. Portal:North Africa
164. Portal:North Kalimantan
165. Portal:North Maluku
166. Portal:North Pole
167. Portal:North Queensland
168. Portal:North Sulawesi
169. Portal:North Sumatra
170. Portal:Norwegian folk music
171. Portal:Papua (province)
172. Portal:Peaches
173. Portal:Politics of Abkhazia
174. Portal:Politics of Afghanistan
175. Portal:Politics of Albania
176. Portal:Politics of Algeria
177. Portal:Politics of Andorra
178. Portal:Politics of Angola
179. Portal:Politics of Antigua and Barbuda
180. Portal:Politics of Argentina
181. Portal:Politics of Artsakh
182. Portal:Politics of Bahrain
183. Portal:Politics of Bangladesh
184. Portal:Politics of Bavaria
185. Portal:Politics of Belarus
186. Portal:Politics of Belgium
187. Portal:Politics of Belize
188. Portal:Politics of Benin
189. Portal:Politics of Bhutan
190. Portal:Politics of Bosnia and Herzegovina
191. Portal:Politics of Botswana
192. Portal:Politics of Brazil
193. Portal:Politics of Brunei
194. Portal:Politics of Bulgaria
195. Portal:Politics of Burkina Faso
196. Portal:Politics of Burundi
197. Portal:Politics of Cambodia
198. Portal:Politics of Cameroon
199. Portal:Politics of China
200. Portal:Politics of São Tomé and Príncipe
201. Portal:Politics of South Sudan
202. Portal:Politics of Sudan
203. Portal:Politics of Tanzania
204. Portal:Politics of the Republic of the Congo
205. Portal:Politics of Togo
206. Portal:Politics of Tunisia
207. Portal:Politics of Uganda
208. Portal:Pop rock
209. Portal:Rap rock
210. Portal:Ras Al Khaimah
211. Portal:Riau
212. Portal:Riau Islands
213. Portal:Ricky Martin
214. Portal:Royal Canadian Air Force
215. Portal:Rutland
216. Portal:Saxophones
217. Portal:Semiotics
218. Portal:Ska
219. Portal:Soca music
220. Portal:Soul music
221. Portal:Sound sculptures
222. Portal:Southeast Sulawesi
223. Portal:South Kalimantan
224. Portal:South Sulawesi
225. Portal:South Sumatra
226. Portal:Space: 1999
227. Portal:Special Region of Yogyakarta
228. Portal:Swedish folk music
229. Portal:Tamil language
230. Portal:Techno
231. Portal:Terry Brooks
232. Portal:The Living End
233. Portal:Thrissur
234. Portal:Trance music
235. Portal:Tyrant flycatchers
236. Portal:Veterinary medicine
237. Portal:Wayanad
238. Portal:Welsh folk music
239. Portal:West Champaran district
240. Portal:Western dress codes
241. Portal:West Flanders
242. Portal:West Java
243. Portal:West Kalimantan
244. Portal:West Nusa Tenggara
245. Portal:West Papua (province)
246. Portal:West Sulawesi
247. Portal:West Sumatra
248. Portal:Wildlife of India
249. Portal:Wildlife of Nepal
250. Portal:Windows 10
251. Portal:Winter War
252. Portal:Woodpeckers
253. Portal:Worcestershire
254. Portal:World economy
255. Portal:World Ocean
256. Portal:World Rally Championship
257. Portal:World views
258. Portal:XTC
259. Portal:Yahoo!
260. Portal:Yoruba people
261. Portal:You Am I
262. Portal:Young Wizards
263. Portal:Yugoslavs

Prior to 2018, for the previous 14 years, portal creation was at about 80 portals per year on average. We did over 3 times that in just the past 9 days. At this rate, we'll hit the 10,000 portal mark in 5 months. But, I'm sure we can do it sooner than that.

What's next for portal pages?

There are 5 drives for portal development:

1. Create new portals
2. Expand existing portals, such as with new sections like Recognized content
3. Convert or restart old-style portals into automated single-page portals
4. Link to new portals from the encyclopedia
5. Pageless portals

Let's take a closer look at these...

1: Creating new portals

Portal creation, for subjects that happen to have the necessary support structures already in place, is down to about a minute per portal. The creation part, which is automated, takes about 10 seconds. The other 50 seconds is taken up by manual activities, such as finding candidate subjects, inspecting generated portals, and selecting the portal creation template to be used according to the resources available. Tools are under development to automate these activities as much as possible, to pare portal creation time down even more. Ten seconds each is the goal.

Eventually, we are going to run out of navigation templates to base portals off of. Though there are still thousands to go. But, when they do run out, we'll need an easy way to create more. A nav footer creation script.

Meanwhile, other resources are being explored and developed, such as categories, and methods to harvest the links they contain.

2: Expanding existing portals

The portal collection is growing, not only by the addition of new portals, but by further developing the ones we already have, by...

• Improving and/or adding search parameters to better power the Did you know and In the news sections.
• Adding more selected content sections, like Selected biographies.
• Adding and maintaining Recognized content sections, via JL-Bot.
• Adding pictures to the image slideshow.
• Adding panoramic pics.
• Categorizing portals.

More features will be added as we dream them up and design them. So, don't be shy, make a wish.

3: Converting old portals

By far the hardest and most time-consuming task we have been working on is updating the old portals, the very reason we revamped this WikiProject in the first place.

There are two approaches here:

A) Restart a portal from scratch, using our automated tools. For basic no-frills portals, that works find. But, for more elaborate portals, as that tends to lose content and features, the following approach is being tried...

B) Upgrade a portal section by section, so little to nothing is lost in the process.

4: Linking to new portals

Or "portal deorphanization"...

Dreamy Jazz Bot is purring along.

And a tool in the form of a script is under development for linking to portals at the time they are created, or shortly thereafter.

5...

See below...

New WikiProject for the post-saved-portal phase of operations...

Saved portals, are portals with a saved page.

What is the next stage in the evolutionary progression?

Quantum portals.

What are quantum portals?

Portals that come into existence when you click on the portal button, and which disappear when you leave the page.

Or, as Pbsouthwood put it:

...portals that exist only as a probability function (algorithm) until you collapse the wave form by observing through the portal button (run the script), and disappear again after use...

Introducing...

Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals (see it's talk page).

Keep on keepin' on

...'til next time,    — The Transhumanist   10:22, 14 February 2019 (UTC)