OODA WIKI:WikiProject Portals

OODA WIKI collaboration to create and maintain portal pages
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Welcome to WikiProject Portals, dedicated to developing and maintaining portals and portal tools. New participants are welcome; please feel free to join.

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

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

Portals WikiProject-related news

Portals status report


  • 1,485 The number of portals when we started the project reboot (April 2018)
  • 4,220 Added portals (at least) April 2018-Feb 13, 2019 (many of these were subsequently deleted at MfD)
  • 5,705 Approximate peak number of portals from Newsletter #29 on Feb 13, 2019 (many of these were subsequently deleted at MfD)

Project tasks

OODA WIKI:WikiProject Portals/Tasks

Focus: Portals

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

What is a portal?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Purposes of portals

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

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

Discussion announcements

Article alerts: portals for deletion at MfD

Manual listing

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

Automated alerts

OODA WIKI:WikiProject Portals/Article alerts

Tools

Watchlist

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

OODA WIKI:WikiProject Portal/List of all portals

SearchSuite

Most older portals have subpages. Search is kind of cludgy for looking at these. you can use PrefixIndex for extracting subpages (WIKI.org/wiki/Special:PrefixIndex?prefix=portal%3AAnatomy&namespace=0 Example).

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

Templates

Navigation

Markers

These markers control how a portal is edited.

Portal components

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

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

For a full list of portal templates, see {{Portal templates navbox}}:

Userboxes and WikiAd

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

Template:User WikiProject Portals

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Project participants

If you'd like to receive task requests and project-related updates on your talk page, please add your name below. Also, please indicate if you are a user of AWB or JWB, and if you know Lua, JS, perl, and/or PHP. An asterisk following a name indicates they receive updates in the form of a link instead of the whole newsletter. Follow your name with two asterisks if you do not wish to receive any project-wide updates, not even a link. Those marked with 3 asterisks have not been confirmed as wishing updates due to unreachability.

WikiGnomes

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

Specific portal maintainers

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

Other

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

Support pages

Guidance

Newsletter archive

Navigation

General topical lists of portals

Project Subpages


Discover OODA WIKI using portals