Wikinews:Category Portals

This page is no longer current and/or valid. It is kept for historical record or interest. Do not assume content on this page is still technically correct. If the information contained on this page becomes timely again, please remove this tag.

The following is a new style of Wikinews reporting or Wikinews development. It is still in the process of being created. Feel free to pitch in and help develop this idea or comment about it on the discussion page. (Please remove this tag once this page is sufficiently developed)

Portal portal

Wikinews portals are Wikinews pages intended to be the main pages for contributors and readers that are interested in specific topics or regions, providing them with a means of viewing news stories related to the specific topic and (in some cases) a means of submitting such articles. Content of portals are of two types: region portals and topic portals. Both rely upon individual articles' use of categories and templates in order to function.

Only create a portal if you intend to maintain it.

You can follow the example of the Portal:Environment.

To create a new portal on the topic "Topic" follow these steps:

1. Create a new portal at [[Portal:Topic]] (where "Topic" is the subject of your portal) and enter the following text

{{subst:box portal skeleton| topic=Topic}}

Save.

2. Create two subpages: a) Portal:Topic/box-header with the following text

{{Wikipedia:Wikiportal/box-header | title={{{1}}} 
|editpage={{{2}}} 
|border=#aaaaaa           <!-- This is the color of the borders around  Box Sections -->
|titleforeground=white    <!-- This is the color of the Box Section Title Bar text-->
|titlebackground=#aaccff  <!-- This is the color of the Box Section Title Bar -->
|background=#f9f9ff       <!-- This is the color of the Box Section background -->
|foreground=black}}       <!-- This is the color of the Box Section text -->

Save.

and b) Portal:Topic/box-footer with the text

{{Wikipedia:Wikiportal/box-footer | {{{1}}} }}

Save.

3. Return to your portal page Portal:Topic and begin editing (general instructions on editing a portal are below). Basically follow the red links to create sub-pages that will fill the boxes.

4. Place a link to your portal at the top of the appropriate article (of the same name) by placing a {{portal}} there, or place {{portalpar}} at other various pages. List your portal at {{portals}} and {{main portals}}

For an explanation of how and why this format works go here.

The box portal allows you to edit the portal without editing the main portal page. Simply follow the red links to the sub pages and enter the information there. These sub-pages will be displayed on the main page.

If you wish to add a section (box) using the regular codes, go to your portal page (e.g. [1]) and simply type in:

 {{/box-header| 1 | 2 }}
 {{   3   }}
 {{/box-footer| 4 }}

where

• "1" is the box title
• "2" is the article to be linked to via Template:Ed2. This will appear right under the title bar. You may omit this parameter if you don't want an edit link to appear, but you must not omit the pipe, for example:
  • {{/box-header | Featured article | Portal:Computer and video games/Featured}}
  • {{/box-header | Featured article | }} (no edit link param, note pipe still in place)
• "3" is again the article to be linked to (this will appear as a red link until first edited), for example:
  • {{/Featured}}
• "4" is a link that you'd like to display at the bottom-right corner of the box. You may omit this parameter if you don't want an edit link to appear, but you must not omit the pipe, for example:
  • {{/box-footer | [[Computer and video games|More about Computer and video games...]]}}
  • {{/box-footer | }} (no bottom-right param, note pipe still in place)

The following code:

<div style="float:right; width:50%;">
{{/box-header|A random title|Portal:Computer and video games/Featured}}
{{/Featured}}
{{/box-footer|[[Computer and video games|More about Computer and video games...]]}}
</div>

results in -->

The following code:

<div style="float:right; width:50%;">
{{/box-header|A random title|Wikipedia talk:Wikiportal/box-header}}
   The following text will appear in the [[box]]. This text can be placed on 
    the [[Wikipedia:Wikiportal|portals]] main page and edited there.Or, 
    alternatly placed on a sub-page of the portal, which is explained below.
{{/box-footer|[[Computer and video games|More about Computer and video games...]]}}
</div>

...when used at the computer and video games portal, will result in what is displayed to the immediate right. -->

The exact same code, used at other portals, will create a box with the exact same content, but the colors may be completely different. This is because each portal has templates at:

1. "[portal url]/box-header" (e.g. [2])
2. "[portal url]/box-footer" (e.g. [3])

that add color information, and the pass all the work along to the Wikipedia:Wikiportal/box-header and Wikipedia:Wikiportal/box-footer templates, which compose everything into a standards-compliant and cross-browser box.

Region portals provide a view of Wikinews that is restricted to stories that are of interest (although not necessarily occurring in) a specific geographic area. Wikinews provides region portals for regions of the world, individual countries, states, provinces, or regions of those countries (such as the individual states with in the United States or the individual Länder in Germany), counties, cities within a county, and eventually neighborhoods within each city.

A region portal comprises six things:

• A portal (e.g. Portal:United States)
• A redirect to the portal page from the main namespace (e.g. United States redirecting to Portal:United States)
• A template for the lead article to go on the portal page (e.g. Template:United States/Lead article)
• A template for a navigational menu, including the subdivisions of the region (e.g. Template:United States menu)
• A new article template (e.g. Template:United States/New page)
• A new article introductory text template (e.g. Template:United States/New article intro)

The actual portal is in the Portal namespace. It uses the <DynamicPageList> mechanism to automatically generate lists of all of the latest articles of interest in the region under various conventional topic headings (Politics and conflicts, Economy and business, Disasters and accidents, Science and technology, Crime and law, Culture and entertainment, Obituaries, Sports, and Wackynews) as well as a list of the latest articles of interest to the region across all topics.

It also transcludes the template for the lead article, providing an edit link to edit that lead, and transcludes any templates to link to enclosing or enclosed regions, allowing readers to zoom out to larger regions, to zoom in to smaller regions, and to navigate to neighbouring regions. (For example: Template:United States menu transcludes both a list of the states in the U.S., for the links to the portals for the states of the U.S., and Template:North America menu, for the links to the North America portal and to the portals for the other countries in North America, as well as the contintents, for which Template:North America menu in turn displays the content of Template:Continents menu).

You must copy the Wiki code fom another portal (United States is standard) into the new region you want to create, and then replace all instances of United States with that of the region you are creating the portal for.

Using the United States, as a subdivision of North America, as an example:

1. Edit the portal page for the region and substitute in the geo-portal template: {{subst:geo-portal|India|Asia}}
2. The portal page you are creating will be found at the bottom of the region page you just editted. In this example, it will say Template:India/Lead article. Click on the redlink and substitute in the geo-portal-lead template: {{subst:geo-portal-lead|India}}
3. At the bottom of the portal page you are editting, the will be a redlink to Wikinews India portal — India WikiBureau in this example case. Click on the redlink and substitute in the geo-portal-sub template: {{subst:geo-portal-lead|India}}
4. Edit the new article template, Template:India/New page, and substitute in the generic new article template: {{subst:New page}}
5. Edit the new article template, Template:India/New page, again and add all of the appropriate geographic region categories: [[Category:India]] [[Category:Asia]]
6. Edit the new article introduction template, Template:India/New article intro, and substitute in the generic new article introduction template: {{subst:New article intro}}

In the event of name conflicts, the following rules are to be applied:

• If there is likely confusion, all the confusable names should be given disambiguating qualifiers.
• Countries and states when disambiguated use a parenthetical qualifier. Thus, Georgia (U.S. state) and Georgia (country).
• Cities are named along with their country or state. Thus, New York, New York (but the state is just New York).
• Other subdivisions are similarly named along with their country or state. Thus, Orange County, California.

Topic portals provide a view of Wikinews that is restricted to stories that relate to a specific topic, from anywhere in the world. Wikinews provides a set of topic portals for the 9 primary topics that occur on all of the geographic portals, and for more specialised topics.

A topic portal comprises three things:

• A Portal (e.g. Portal:Politics and conflicts)
• A redirect to the portal page from the main namespace (e.g. Politics and conflicts redirecting to Portal:Politics and conflicts)

The actual portal uses the <DynamicPageList> mechanism to automatically generate lists of all of the latest articles of interest for the topic under the top-level gobal regions (North America, Central America, South America, Europe, Asia, Oceania, and Middle East) as well as a list of the latest articles of interest for the topic across all regions.

Some editors prefer portals that don't include the alphabetical list of all news stories at the bottom. (And, conversely, some editors prefer portals that do.) The redirect in the main namespace satisfies such editors. Because of a quirk of the MediaWiki software, redirects to category pages display the category pages themselves but do not include the list of articles in the category at the bottom. The redirect in the main namespace takes advantage of this quirk to provide portals without the article lists for those editors that like them.

The main namespace article must be a redirect, and must not be a portal itself, in order to exclude it from any dynamic page list selection that selects developing stories from the main namespace. Redirects are excluded from dynamic page lists. The actual portals themselves should always be created at the category pages.

Note: this list does not yet follow the edited guidelines, following community support for Category pages to display all stories and not be a portal themselves. When creating new portals, please place them in the portal namespace and create a DPL on the category page to display all stories on the category (rather than the automatic a-z list). Please change the links below for those portals that have been created.

• Main Page

• Asia, subdivisions:
  • Pakistan, subdivisions:
    • North-West Frontier Province, subdivisions:
      • Peshawar
    • Punjab, subdivisions:
      • Lahore
    • Sindh, subdivisions:
      • Karachi
  • India
  • Hong Kong
  • Singapore
  • Malaysia
• Europe, subdivisions:
  • United Kingdom, subdivisions:
    • England, subdivisions:
      • London
      • Birmingham
      • Manchester
      • Liverpool
    • Northern Ireland
  • Hungary
    • Budapest
  • Italy
  • Poland
• North America, subdivisions:
  • Canada, subdivisions:
    • Ontario, subdivisions:
      • Brampton, Ontario
  • Mexico
  • Bermuda
  • United States, subdivisions:
  • Category:California, subdivisions:
    • • Santa Ana, California
    • New York, subdivisions:
      • New York, New York
    • Massachusetts, subdivisions:
      • Boston, Massachusetts
      • Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Oceania, subdivisions:
  • Australia
• Middle East, subdivisions:
• Africa, subdivisions:
  • Burundi
• South America, subdivisions:
  • Brazil
  • Chile
  • Argentina
  • Colombia

(Other geographic portals exist. They do not yet follow the scheme described here, however.)

• Politics and conflicts
• Economy and business
• Disasters and accidents
• Science and technology
• Crime and law
• Culture and entertainment
• Obituaries
• Sports
• Wackynews

In alphabetical order:

• Delhi, as a subdivision of India
• Kerala, as a subdivision of India
• Tamil Nadu, as a subdivision of India

The portal scheme using a Portal: namespace has been implemented as of 01:48, August 12, 2005 (UTC).