Portal talk:Spaceflight: Difference between revisions

Spaceflight: Timeline of spaceflight Portal‑class

	Spaceflight portal This page is within the scope of WikiProject Spaceflight, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of spaceflight on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SpaceflightWikipedia:WikiProject SpaceflightTemplate:WikiProject Spaceflightspaceflight
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Status
Selected article	Critical
Selected picture	Critical
Selected biography	Critical
Did you know	Critical

Static content for featured sections when dynamic content is not provided

I suggest updating the portal page so that when featured material has not been provided through the content rotation mechanism a plea is inserted using the #ifexist mechanism and content from a static sub-page is appended as well. Then whenever anyone gets motivated they can over-ride the static sub-page by providing material through the current content rotation mechanism. (sdsds - talk) 15:53, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting idea; it's not immediately clear to me how easy that would be to implement. I assume you mean that if there is a static subpage, say for November 2010, then that subpage would appear on the portal for all of November. One of the advantages of having the random portal component is that every time you reload the page there is something new. I think this probably exposes readers to more content (which is the main purpose of portals anyway), and I think this is why so many portals use random portal components, not just because it's less work. Mlm42 (talk) 19:53, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Upon rereading your suggestion, maybe I have misinterpreted it.. Mlm42 (talk) 19:55, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I gather this template may be of use, according to Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates: {{Random portal component with nominate}} Colds7ream (talk) 19:58, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sdsds' proposal would be very easy to implement. I would be inclined to say that while in the short term random components would be helpful for providing a greater variety of content, in the long term they would probably result in less exposure since there would be a finite number of articles in rotation, and it is unlikely that these would be frequently changed. My suggestion would be to have a selected article for each month, and use random content if an article is not provided. This should be fairly simple to implement, and omissions could intentionally be made in the monthly rotation in order to showcase the random content once or twice a year. --G W… 22:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a plan - would anyone know the correct way to code that? As an aside, can we move the components already in place on the HSF portal over directly? I also suggest we rewrite the blurbs so they all meet the Featured Portal Criteria, just for forward planning purposes. :-) Colds7ream (talk) 17:10, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I could code that. --G W… 17:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent! :-D Colds7ream (talk) 17:48, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, oops, I didn't read this until just now; I just started setting up the random portal components, but I'll stop, because I'm not exactly clear what GW has in mind in terms of coding this. Mlm42 (talk) 01:32, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I'd prefer random components all the time anyway; If {{75 Numbered subpages}} were used and filled in, then we could have 75 rotating subpages.. I see this as preferable to a monthly article that doesn't change. What is the motivation behind having a static Selected Article? Mlm42 (talk) 01:39, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Appropriate ones can be chosen depending on whether they're related to the date, have recently been improved, and so on. Also keeps more people active in maintaining the portal, as if it simply runs on automatic people needn't do anything to it. Makes it stale. Colds7ream (talk) 16:00, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I see; and maybe what sdsds was suggesting is a static page, but with a "show new selections" option, which would then show random content. Yes, that's a great idea, if it could be implemented. Mlm42 (talk) 17:28, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've set up selected article, picture, biography and did you know, as random portal components, with all the content copied from either the archives or the HSF portal. I didn't code the optional static content, but it shouldn't be too hard to add. Mlm42 (talk) 21:35, 7 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Portal merge

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result was to merge the portals. -- Colds7ream (talk) 14:13, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to suggest that the Human spaceflight portal be merged into the Spaceflight portal and the resultant portal operated by all five Spaceflight-related WikiProjects, instead of just one per portal. Given the state of both portals, with out-of-date news sections, several empty boxes and a non-maintained to-do list, I feel that merging the portals in this way would assist in finally achieving the critical mass of editors needed to properly maintain a spaceflight portal, and hopefully achieve a featured portal, which would be an excellent advertisement for all involved projects. I am hoping to get as many editors as possible involved with this, and look forward to reading everyone's feedback and suggestions. Thanks, Colds7ream (talk) 21:33, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: I like the idea. And as you said, it helps achieving the critical mass of editors needed to properly maintain a spaceflight portal. Rehman 08:59, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: Nice idea. This would also keep the portal updated.Rishabh Tatiraju (talk) 10:16, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: Would it be possible, or is it the plan, to keep all individual portals as sub-portals? Either way I agree that a merge is needed to keep it maintained.--NavyBlue84 10:41, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean by sub-portal, exactly? Isn't this just a different, yet more specific portal, like the current situation: Portal:Human spaceflight is like a subportal of Portal:Spaceflight, which is a subportal of Portal:Space? I think the proposal is to remove Portal:Human spaceflight, and redirect it to Portal:Spaceflight. Mlm42 (talk) 19:45, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support I like the idea of rolling the projects together. While this doesn't work with all similar projects, these are similar enough that it should work. There sufficient overlap between Space and Human Spaceflight in particular. The Star and Astronomy portals have a lot of overlap and I never understood why the Mars and Solar System portals were separate While many editors focus on specific topics, the topics are interrelated enough that many editors contribute accross these many projects. Makes sense to bring them together. Of these, I could see maintaining human spaceflight as a sub portal but not the others. The resulting portal should be called "space".--RadioFan (talk) 12:25, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is already a Portal:Space, and I don't think that's part of Colds7ream's proposal; but it's not being maintained either.. I did a bunch of work on Portal:Space about 4 years ago, but haven't really done anything since. Maybe Space=Spaceflight + Astronomy, and the astronomy editors seems quite distinct from the spaceflight editors. Mlm42 (talk) 17:16, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's definitely a distinction between Astronomy and Spaceflight, in terms of the editors involved. Spaceflight tends to attract more engineering types, while astronomy tends to attract the physicists and other "pure science" types. Still, for a portal specifically, the one page might be enough. I know that's not exactly the proposal here and now, but condensing everything to one page might be worth considering.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 14:24, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Unfortunately we have too many unmaintained spaces. In general I would like to see news sections removed as they seem to never be up-to-date on any project. Rmhermen (talk) 14:33, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: Good plan. Canada Jack (talk) 15:06, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. The distinction between human and robotic missions will slowly blur anyway, as robots become ever more important in human missions. Yakushima (talk) 15:14, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: I agree. There is currently a high degree of dispersion on documenting spaceflight efforts in wikipedia. Tom Paine (talk) 15:23, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: I agree with RadioFan. ke4roh (talk) 15:29, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: I support any plan that could create a more active editor base for the human spaceflight portal. aremisasling (talk) 15:40, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: There is considerable overlap between "spaceflight" and "human spaceflight". I'd also support the use of random portal components (as currently in Portal:Human spaceflight, and Portal:Space), as well as the use of the Wikinews bot to import some news headlines automatically (see Portal:Space/News/Current, for example). This would mean only a minimal amount of effort would be needed to maintain the portal anyway. Mlm42 (talk) 17:16, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: The above arguments seem convincing to me. I think robotic and human spaceflight are essential (and really inseparable) components of our expansion off the Earth, and the practical virtues of combining and focusing our limited editorial resources are compelling. Unnecessary fragmentation can make meaningless labor for us, and create confusion. Wwheaton (talk) 17:28, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Well, it's nice to see some enthusiastic support for my proposal! Just a few comments I'd like to make - first, that I also support the use of random portal components (but with a manual override available, as suggested in the section above), second that I would resist any move to remove the news sections from these portals, and third that I feel personally that merging everything into Portal:Space would be inadvisable - maybe HSF-->Spaceflight, Mars-->Solar System and Star-->Astronomy to begin with? If this were done, I see little reason for there to be an overarching space portal at all, to be honest. Colds7ream (talk) 18:14, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As I recall there was some discussions regarding mergers on portals on the Astronomy side as well; but we'd have to bring it up there. I'm personally fine with merging portals as you suggest, but I don't think the Spaceflight wikiprojects should be able to decide what happens with the Astronomy portals! :) Mlm42 (talk) 18:39, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, quite obviously - that was just a suggestion. I'd want to stick just to dealing with the spaceflight portals myself. Colds7ream (talk) 18:42, 9 November 2010 (UTC

Good thinking, here.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 14:27, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: Seems less confusing, and will add to the several projects out there.Abebenjoe (talk) 19:17, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: There's great value in using portal "elements" in multiple portals. Note for example how the "next scheduled launch" element maintained for Portal:Spaceflight is transcluded into the Portal:Space "upcoming spaceflights" element. I certainly think it would be a great idea for Portal:Spaceflight to transclude some elements maintained by Portal:Human spaceflight. (sdsds - talk) 23:01, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: Good idea to focus our efforts.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 00:56, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: I have found too much duplication under the current set-up. RadioBroadcast (talk) 03:19, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: Fewer, higher quality portals = good.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 14:28, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: Agree per the comments above. A single portal would be more maintainable. --Jatkins ^{(talk - contribs)} 21:37, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: I think portals should be split or re-joint depending on their size, and a non-used portal is not very useful.RubenGarciaHernandez (talk) 21:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, neither portal is well maintained, hopefully if resources are spread less thinly then the situation will improve for this one, which has the broader subject. --G W… 22:44, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Well, this continues to be a unanimously supported proposal - again, nice to see some enthusiasm! I suggest we run this proposal for a while longer before beginning implementation (which I suspect will take a while anyway), both to see if any dissenting views appear, and also to get a rough gauge of how many active editors we actually have between the projects. Colds7ream (talk) 17:13, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Implementation could easily be done within an hour of closure. --G W… 18:48, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What, all the components and sufficient content to fill them? Colds7ream (talk) 19:02, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In Portal:Spaceflight I just set up the Selected Article and Selected Picture with random portal components, as they are in Portal:Human spaceflight (with remaining content to be filled in). It's easy to now add more Article and Picture subpages, by copying from Portal:Human spaceflight (then almost nothing has to be changed), or from the archived ones at Portal:Spaceflight. I could do this for the "Selected biography" and "Did you know.." boxes as well, if that's what is desired. Mlm42 (talk) 01:29, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: Hopefully with more editors on one portal we'll be able to keep it up to date. --DizFreak ^{talk Contributions} 10:11, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, this has been running for a week, and we've got naught but supports for the idea, so I'm going to go ahead and close this discussion as a merge. I think its clear that there is a general agreement that merging various parts of the spaceflight projects is a good idea, and, given that of the 150 unique editors theoretically signed up to these projects only 20 responded, that we are vastly overestimating our editor base. I will be suggesting further merges in the not-too-distant future, I feel, and would like to try an experiment with regards to the editor lists - keep an eye on your talk pages, folks! With regards to this particular proposal, now its closed, we have to ensure we're all happy with what the resulting portal will be - please comment on the other discussions ongoing on this page regarding the way the new portal will be operated. Thanks, Colds7ream (talk) 14:13, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

ideas for portal improvement

While we're making big changes, maybe we should rethink which Portal boxes we use. I'd suggest some more specific ones to give the portal a more unique feel. For example: "Selected mission", "Selected spacecraft", and "Selected astronaut", could replace the generic "article", "picture", and "biography" components, respectively. The "Spaceflight news", "Next scheduled launch", and "On this day..", components all seem great. "Did you know.." could be made to produce random content, much like the Human spaceflight portal. It might be best to remove most other boxes, to clean things up.

Another idea could be to add a few tabs, including a tab that goes directly to Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight. I got this idea from the French wikipedia's Spaceflight portal; they have a tab which links to the WikiProject's talk page, and the title of the tab is: "Café des astronautes". After seeing that, I kinda wished we had an astronaut cafe.. anyway, those are just some ideas. Mlm42 (talk) 21:06, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Selected mission", "Selected spacecraft", and "Selected astronaut" would not work. Selected Article and Picture cover more than simply missions and spacecraft, for example rockets have been featured in them in the past. Equally, the biography isn't necessarily going to be an astronaut (or a cosmonaut for that matter), engineers and scientists should also be covered. When the merger occurs, it is important that the manned content does not overrun the unmanned content. Both should still be featured. --G W… 21:23, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, well, you're the boss I guess. Welcome back, by the way. Mlm42 (talk) 22:49, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Given that it looks like "merging" is mostly done we probably should move forward with improving the portal. For a start I wonder what is happening with Portal:Space because personally I think that layout is better than the current Spaceflight one, it also fits with the new Wikiproject's style, so perhaps we can commandeer it? ChiZeroOne (talk) 04:24, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It'd be nice if we could have the same colour scheme across everything the project does! :-) In other news, we need to get updating the news & next launches sections. Colds7ream (talk) 13:56, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, maybe we should add another tab to the WP:Spaceflight header called "Portal". Mlm42 (talk) 18:46, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've started to implement the changes and have a general clean-up but there's more to do. I have begun a Featured Content page in my userspace, User:ChiZeroOne/Portal:Spaceflight/Featured. As you can see it currently uses the Portal:Space layout and information but hopefully we can migrate over our own content.

On that point, really if we want to get the portal to featured status we probably need to be fairly strict in having mostly (if not only) Featured or Good Article content on the portal. ChiZeroOne (talk) 19:45, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's looking gorgeous! :-D Colds7ream (talk) 20:03, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it looks very nice. Regarding my suggestion to add a "portal" tab to the WikiProject header, I was thinking we could always use the WikiProject header on the portal itself. At the moment the transition from one header to another seems a little unnatural. I got the idea from the French Wikipedia, which uses a tab system to smoothly switch between Portal: and Wikipedia: namespaces (actually "Portail:" and "Project:" namespaces!). This seems like a good idea to strengthen the "bond" between portal and project.. but may be hard to implement well, I'm not sure. Mlm42 (talk) 01:25, 12 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I noticed that they have effectively merged the project and portal on the French version but I'm not so so sure we should do that. The portals are supposed to be an access point for general Wikipedia readers to Spaceflight-related content. I'm not sure that the portal should effectively become part of behind-the-scenes editing, and may jeopardise attaining featured status. Also, as with the featured content page above I was intending for the portal to be extended over a number of pages itself which would make the WikiProject banner very messy. I tried to make the headers as close as possible, though I'm sure there's room for improvement. ChiZeroOne (talk) 02:08, 12 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Portal merge progress?

So what's happening with the portal merge? What still need to be merged? Anything? Mlm42 (talk) 04:17, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Past a few pieces of random content that haven't been transferred over to Spaceflight I can't see much difference between the two now. ChiZeroOne (talk) 04:16, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh and on a related note I forgot to mention we have another portal well within Spaceflight's scope, Portal:European Space Agency. Don't know what we want to do with this? ChiZeroOne (talk) 07:19, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Aye - we just need to move over the last of the content from HSF and we can redirect it, as far as I'm aware. Colds7ream (talk) 13:55, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Have we got any further on this in the last year? The merger seems to be taking a while... --W. D. Graham _{(previously GW)} 22:41, 2 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Human Health and Performance in Space

Somebody has created Portal:Human Health and Performance in Space. I've proposed merging it here, since we have enough difficulty keeping this one active I strongly doubt that another portal would remain active long. --W. D. Graham 23:13, 21 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Folks in NASA's Human Research Program are intending to populate this portal with content. It has started with four risks of interest to human spaceflight and the plan is to expand to about 30. The content within the four risks is just a start. There is more to be added in each of the four. The hope is that NASA researchers, researcher in other space agencies, and terrestrial researchers will all be making contributions. So I propose we what a few months and then evaluate the merger again. CraigKundrot (talk) 21:51, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We, project members of RaheQamar, a privately funded space education and research related project in Pakistan, would like to have mentors from this Spaceflight Portal for our own learning and improvement. Can some one please provide us further guidelines. I am pretty new on Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mohdify (talk • contribs) 10:07, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

SpaceX Photos

Just a shout out: Spacex has created a flickr account fith some of their more recent photos released under CC-BY-NC 2.0 generic: https://www.flickr.com/photos/spacexphotos Tought maybe you want to look at them, see if you can't use some of them. --2A02:8108:1A80:16C:C9C9:59F2:C003:1419 (talk) 10:51, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Finally cracked the featured template code!

After months of boggling, I finally figured out how to add to the featured archive queue. I will now be editing the featured items. I've already added two pictures (The transit of the Moon over the Earth by DSCOVR, and the scale photo of Pluto and Charon from New Horizons), and I plan to add and edit biographies and articles. --Kitch ^{(Talk : Contrib)} 18:37, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

EDIT: I have also added a biography for Chris Hadfield. --Kitch ^{(Talk : Contrib)} 18:46, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

PROGRESS! We now have 14 featured pictures, 17 features articles, and 13 featured biographies.
- I have added pictures for New Horizons, DSCOVR, Falcon 9 v1.1, and Sea Launch. I also replaced the Shenzhou 5 picture blurb, since that photo is now gone, with one for Voyager 2.
- I have added featured articles for all the Commercial Resupply Services spacecraft, CST-100 Starliner (I'm debating adding a Dragon V2 blurb separate from the Dragon one for CRS), New Horizons, and SpaceX. I also updated the blurbs for the ISRO Orbital Vehicle and Proton, and added a photo for Salyut 6.
- In addition to the Chris Hadfield biography, I added a new photo for Yuri Gagarin.

More planned this long weekend! --Kitch ^{(Talk : Contrib)} 12:04, 15 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 114: / Line 114: @@
 * '''PROGRESS!''' We now have 14 featured pictures, 17 features articles, and 13 featured biographies.
 ** I have added pictures for ''[[New Horizons]]'', [[Deep Space Climate Observatory|DSCOVR]], [[Falcon 9 v1.1]], and [[Sea Launch]]. I also replaced the [[Shenzhou 5]] picture blurb, since that photo is now gone, with one for ''[[Voyager 2]]''.
-** I have added featured articles for all the [[Commercial Resupply Services]] spacecraft, ''[[New Horizons]]'', and [[SpaceX]]. I also updated the blurbs for the [[ISRO Orbital Vehicle]] and [[Proton]], and added a photo for [[Salyut 6]].
+** I have added featured articles for all the [[Commercial Resupply Services]] spacecraft, [[CST-100 Starliner]] (I'm debating adding a [[Dragon V2]] blurb separate from the [[Dragon]] one for CRS), ''[[New Horizons]]'', and [[SpaceX]]. I also updated the blurbs for the [[ISRO Orbital Vehicle]] and [[Proton]], and added a photo for [[Salyut 6]].
 ** In addition to the [[Chris Hadfield]] biography, I added a new photo for [[Yuri Gagarin]].

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