Wikipedia:WikiProject portal dynamics

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Portal dynamics are a way to make portals more interesting for readers and challenging for editors. WikiProjects formed around various topics often have portal crews dedicated to portal maintenance.

This taskforce is being assembled to help portal crews that have expressed interest in queuing portal content for automated update using standardized periodic queues, listings and templates to make the job easier.

WikiProject | Portal | Portal guidelines | WikiProject Portals

Contents

[edit] WikiProject portal crew

A WikiProject portal crew maintains a Portal for a specific major subject or topic area. The WikiProject template {{WikiProject}}, is being visited by this taskforce and collaborators from the WikiProject Council. A section, [[{{FULLPAGENAME}}#Portal crew]] may soon be added to the template.

Wikipedia:Portal/Instructions will be given a new section to help focus on develping standardized tools for a new List of WikiProject portal crews. These tools will exist in the form of queues, listings and templates

[edit] Queues

Wikipedia contains some system variables (see Help:Variables), such as {{CURRENTWEEK}}, and {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}. These can be incorporated into wikilinks for listings and templates.

Wikipedia:Portal/Instructions is the current method for building a portal. The Portal updates section below is the starting point for developing a template for a standard queue – [[Portal:{{PAGENAME}}/Q]].

[edit] Listings

Exhaustive listings for topics, categories, pictures, and articles of vairious types are probably already compiled in your project pages. The List of reference tables is likely the most exhautive listing on Wikipedia. If you have a script coder or database manager on your team, you'll have an edge. See Wikipedia:Scripts for more information.

Lists are the building blocks for queing content. The queue simply traverses a list of prepared templates. Timelines are good for preparing anniversary items, biographies and other chronologically tempered dynamics.

[edit] Templates

The current {{box portal skeleton}} contains a section, Box portal skeleton/WikiProjects. This will allow WikiProject Portal crews to juxtapose WikiProject and Portal efforts for their topic area. WikiProject template {{WikiProject}} will make things easier and more uniform. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Council

The Portal updates section below is the starting point for developing a template for a standard queue – [[Portal:{{PAGENAME}}/Q]].

Templates:

  1. Template talk:Box portal skeleton • {{box portal skeleton}}
  2. WikiProject Portal section • {{box portal skeleton/WikiProject}} new
  3. Portal shortcut • {{portal}}
  4. WikiProject template {{WikiProject}}

See Wikipedia:Templates for more about templates.

[edit] WikiProjects with portals

WikiProject Portals is compiling a Template, {{WikiProjectPortals}}. This table will be a juxtaposition of Wikipedia:List of WikiProjects and Wikipedia:Portal/Directory. Developing the table is this task force's initial task.

[edit] Pilot projects

The American Civil War portal is under construction at Portal talk:American Civil War by the WP:ACW taskforce, which was the impetus for starting this project page and serves as a prototype for developing standards.

We need a few other (preferably more global) portals to join this effort. If you are involved in such a portal project, especially with an associated WikiProject, please enlist on our talk page.

[edit] Portal updates

Today:Sunday, 15 June 2008

Updates can occur:

  1. Daily
  2. Weekly
  3. Montly
  4. Quarterly

For example [[Selected picture/{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTYEAR}}]] would link to [[Selected picture/May 2006]] during May 2006. This link would automatically update to [[Selected picture/June 2006]] in June.

[edit] Daily

Portal sections such as news, announcements and anniversiaries may be updated daily in a number of ways:

  1. {{CURRENTDOW}} (0..6) • today: 0
  2. {{CURRENTDAY}} (0..31) • today: 15
  3. {{CURRENTDAYNAME}} (Sunday..Saturday) • today: Sunday

[edit] Weekly

Portal sections for weekly features such as articles and picures can be updated weekly using:

  • {{CURRENTWEEK}} (0..53) • this week: 24

[edit] Monthly

Portal sections such as biographies, maps, or topic areas can be updated monthly using:

  1. {{CURRENTMONTH}} (01..12) • this month: 06
  2. {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} (0..31) • this month: June

[edit] Quarterly

Your crew can actually build quarterly versions:

  1. [[Portal:{{PAGENAME}}/Q1]]
  2. [[Portal:{{PAGENAME}}/Q2]]
  3. [[Portal:{{PAGENAME}}/Q3]]
  4. [[Portal:{{PAGENAME}}/Q4]]

This queues up an entirely new portal in advance of the upcoming quarter. At the time this page was opened, we were quickly approaching Q4 of 2006.

[edit] Putting it all together

We'll be working on a few portal versions for Q1 of 2007. We need a few other (preferably more global) portals to join this effort. If you are involved in such a portal project, especially with an associated WikiProject, please enlist on our talk page. See also WikiProject Portals.