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: Perhaps "terrorize" was too strong a word, but I was not using it in the context of terrorist activity, rather, that she drove people away. I've striked the term and have added "creating a toxic editing/discussion environment". <span class="nowrap"> — ''[[User talk:The Transhumanist|The Transhumanist]]'' </span> 16:16, 26 January 2020 (UTC) |
: Perhaps "terrorize" was too strong a word, but I was not using it in the context of terrorist activity, rather, that she drove people away. I've striked the term and have added "creating a toxic editing/discussion environment". <span class="nowrap"> — ''[[User talk:The Transhumanist|The Transhumanist]]'' </span> 16:16, 26 January 2020 (UTC) |
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::TT, I don't know if you recall this, but you were one of the first Wikipedians to talk to me, and I've always thought of you as one of the most civil, helpful Wikipedians around, even when I've disagreed with your other actions. This kind of post, piling on to kick someone when they're down, isn't the you that I've known in the past. If you wanted to make your case against BHG, the arbcom case was the place to do it. This accomplishes nothing except to make you look petty and nasty. [[User:Beeblebrox|Beeblebrox]] ([[User talk:Beeblebrox|talk]]) 19:20, 26 January 2020 (UTC) |
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Bug collection
This section is only for tracking bugs and feature requests, in the MediaWiki software itself, which affect portals. For general technical help with portals or portal-related templates, create a new section on this talk page.
- T196722: Gallery slideshow controls take up more than one line on narrow displays
- T196723: Gallery slideshow flickers when changing images
- T194887: Mode slideshow of gallery tag is not working in phone screens
- T199126: Scribunto/Lua should have a built-in method for retrieving category members
Discussions about possible cool new features
Discussions about technical issues
This section is for technical issues with specific portals, templates, or modules.
Display all selectable excerpts
It is now possible to display all excerpts from a selection simultaneously by passing a new |showall=
parameter to the Transclude...excerpt templates. This feature is designed for use in subpages and produces a display more suited to editors than to readers. To display all excerpts on the subpage but only one on the main portal page, transclude the subpage as normal and add <noinclude>|showall=</noinclude>
to the template. Thanks to Kusma for the idea, previously discussed here. Certes (talk) 15:40, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
Request for comment
- – North America1000 03:47, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
Here's the updated link to the now archived discussion:
Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 14:15, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
Indefinite hiatus on portal program development?
@ToThAc: posted this comment at the BHG arbcom case:
As for me, the reason for my hiatus on portal editing (as per FoF #10) was to let this case run its course, though I don't know if it's the same for others.
Thank you @ToThAc:, for the explanation or your reaction to BHG. Mine is similar, but probably more permanent...
It wasn't just that BHG was terrorizing the neighborhood creating a toxic editng/discussion environment], but that other admins weren't stopping her (who ya gonna call?). The portal project listed 16 admins at the time, and yet they did nothing, until she attacked one of them. Her behavior, combined with the admin community's reluctance to enforce the rules on a historically respected admin, created a toxic editing environment that lasted for many months.
An editor could have stood up to BHG and effectively pushed back in the deletion discussions and portal project talk pages, at the cost of a great deal of time, while enduring being smeared and other forms of abuse. Not worth it for pages that were temporary from early on -- pending zero-page portals. Once zero-page ("quantum") portals, or similar technology, is developed, it will render the single-page portal concept, and likely all other portals, obsolete. BHG wasted nearly a year of her time deleting pages that were going to be deleted in due course anyways.
Taking a step back to look at the scope of her involvement, it appears as if BHG made a strategic sacrifice: a fait-accompli-mass-portal-deletion via WP:POVRAILROAD and WP:BULLY in exchange for being (temporarily?) penalized by arbcom. And I say "as if", because who knows what her actual motive was for using unethical tactics like smear campaigning to drive away opposition in order to impose her own agenda more easily. She's smart, so she must have known that the way she was going about it was wrongful and against the rules, but she continued to do it anyways, which means very likely that she consciously accepted the risks/price. It looks like an entirely calculated fait accompli. Then again, she was acting mean, and perhaps at the core, she is. But it is hard to reason with bullies, as all they understand is force.
What were the costs to Wikipedia? BHG stopped a very talented programming team's development project. Note, that no new program components or major script developments have been made by the portal project since she began her anti-portal crusade. Note, by BHG's analysis of the inner workings of portals, you can see that she was treating the single-page portals as content pages rather than what they were in essence: scripts (programs) under development.
She basically attacked version 1.0 of a browsing interface and general content surveying tool, and stopped development in its tracks. If she hadn't, the development team would probably be up to version 4 or 5 by now. Now that BHG is out of the way, will the programming effort pick up where it left off? Probably not. At least, not by the portal project. I for one have moved on to the Web-at-large. The development environment out there in the big wide web turned out to be much more conducive to creativity than what WP became under BHG. With commitments made elsewhere, I will unlikely be free to work on WP anytime soon.
What about evolution? Where is the technology heading? To article pages themselves. That's where the bulk of the traffic is, and so, that's the best place for innovations on Wikipedia: where the most people will benefit from them. Articles are the only portals you need -- in that they can be enhanced via scripts (or universal gadgets or MediaWiki features/extensions) to provide everything portals have provided. And then some. With the benefit of traffic. While there are good arguments for developing prototypes in an out-of-the-way area like portal space, scripts applied directly to articles offer another route to adoption of portal-like features: user-by-user installation of scripts →→ promotion to gadgets →→ promotion to universal gadgets. If a gadget or universal gadget becomes popular enough, it may catch the attention of the developers of MediaWiki itself, and become a feature of the very program that displays English Wikipedia (and many other wikis).
A good place to start would be navigation footers that correspond to an article's title. In portals, they are the basis of content slideshows, which are great for surveying a subject's coverage quickly. Now, all that is needed is a toggle-activated slideshow that doesn't have to load all the slideshow excerpts all at once (that makes for a very painful wait on slow bandwidth connections). Then, a navigation footer becomes a slideshow at the push of a button. The beauty part is that the itinerary of the show is already included in the nav footer.
Good luck, everyone, and happy editing / program developing.
Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 14:15, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
- Regardless of whether BHG is allowed to comment on portal development, the development you are suggesting is evil. It hides the structure of portals in obtuse templates, making it impossible for an non-expert editor to determine what the characteristics of a portal or portal-like template are. Slideshows, like collapsed lists, are considered inappropriate in articles by consensus at en.Wikipedia (although forced on IP editors by MediaWiki developers). Unless you revisit that consensus, development of portal-like navbars should stop. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:34, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
- It is important to separate portal improvement from the development of in-article navigation.
- One positive idea from the recent heated debate has been to increase transparency in portals, and this is reflected in the available templates. A simple example is Portal:Speculative fiction/Selected biography. The page shows all eligible excerpts but, when transcluded, shows one at random. This format has been welcomed, the only dissenting voice being the editor who has left the arena. With many of our disagreements now resolved, I hope that we can resume work, applying this technique more widely and making similar improvements elsewhere in the portal infrastructure.
- In-article navigation would be a major new step, and as far as I am aware there is as yet no consensus for it. Certes (talk) 11:33, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Arthur Rubin: Toggling a navbox into slideshow mode would hide nothing. The user would already be looking at the navfooter before clicking on the button to go into slideshow mode, and presumably, the same button would still be available to return back to navfooter viewing mode. The big challenge would be saving bandwidth, by not requiring the user's browser from downloading all the excerpts before the user has read even one of them. — The Transhumanist 16:27, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
I suggest to stop any consideration of "software development" in this area until the cleanup of the portal namespace is concluded (it would take probably 6 more months at the rate of MfD and portal rewriting seen until a couple months ago) and/or a very strong consensus on a new guideline for portals is achieved (this might take years). Nemo 12:40, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
- The only software development taking place is that another editor is adapting a Lua module to also support some non-portal applications. As two thirds of the namespace has been deleted in less than a year, I agree that the MfDs will be over in six months. Even that estimate relies on the very dubious maxim that "cleanup" requires every portal to go to MfD just for daring to exist, and I doubt that we have consensus for such an unprecedented presumption of poor quality. Certes (talk) 13:37, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
The Transhumanist, no matter what you think of BHG, it is nor appropriate or acceptable to compare her to a terrorist, which is what you have done above, along with numerous other unnecessary personal comments. Please remove this material. EdChem (talk) 13:36, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
- Perhaps "terrorize" was too strong a word, but I was not using it in the context of terrorist activity, rather, that she drove people away. I've striked the term and have added "creating a toxic editing/discussion environment". — The Transhumanist 16:16, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
- TT, I don't know if you recall this, but you were one of the first Wikipedians to talk to me, and I've always thought of you as one of the most civil, helpful Wikipedians around, even when I've disagreed with your other actions. This kind of post, piling on to kick someone when they're down, isn't the you that I've known in the past. If you wanted to make your case against BHG, the arbcom case was the place to do it. This accomplishes nothing except to make you look petty and nasty. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:20, 26 January 2020 (UTC)