Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals

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Current featured portal candidates:	edit · history · watch · refresh
AC/DC • Cuba • Current events/Canada • Holidays • Library and information science • Visual arts
Current portal peer review requests:	edit · history · watch · refresh
Baseball • Energy • Epitaph Records • Graffiti • Maharashtra • Rapid transit • Robotics • Space exploration • UK Railways • World War II

List of portal peer review volunteers:

edit · history · watch · refresh

Wesborland (talk • contribs) Absolutely. This helps to improve the content and the quality of the portals. Michaelas10 (talk • contribs) I would love to volunteer, I've been recently going through portals to find better designs and positions, and I will have no trouble reviewing one. riana_dzasta (talk • contribs) Sure, why not? :) Always glad to help. Gphoto (talk • contribs) (Inactive) Badbilltucker (talk • contribs) Portals are of vital importance to wikipedia: my opinions of them, happily, significantly less so, but will be willing to help look over new candidates. Nishkid64 (talk • contribs) I <3 portals! Arjun01 (talk • contribs) What Nish said! I will love to help. Sd31415 (talk • contribs): This is a great idea! Searchme (talk • contribs) Hit me up. Shyam Bihari (talk • contribs) I will be happy to do any help for that. Wilsbadkarma (talk • contribs) This is a really good idea. Hossen27 (talk • contribs) Have become a portal junkie so why not Richiar (talk • contribs) Count me in. I have trouble understanding them, so surly I can review them! Sbandrews (talk • contribs) Beam me up ;-)

Archives Archive 1

Contents 1 Medicine portal 2 Latin America Portal 3 Portal:Books 4 Projects, Portals and People 5 Reveiws and critiqes 6 Portals status and evaluation 7 Countries of Latin America 8 Featured portal candidates 9 Philadelphia portal 10 Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion#Portal:Orkney 11 American Civil War Portal 12 Randomized portal component 13 Amendment for Fair use images in Portal 14 Space portals 15 Project directory 16 Straw Poll and Discussion 17 Request for Work 18 Cats 'n Dogs living together! 19 portal tabs 20 Automatic rotation of selected article and such 21 Portal:Chemistry 22 Hide/Show boxes in portal sections? 23 'In the News' sections 24 Collaborations on Portals? 25 New template 26 Wikipedia Day Awards 27 WikiCharts: Portal 28 {{click}} on portals and alternatives 29 Poor portals 30 Portal:New Zealand 31 Proposal to delete portal redirects 32 Time to semi-protect all portals?

[edit] Medicine portal

I'm the maintainer of that portal which is a featured candidate now. I've changed to currentyear-currentweek system in featured articles, pictures. But the edit button of the box (obviously) points to the original template (portal:medicine/selected article for example). How should I solve it to point to portal:medicine/selected article/22/ 2006? Thanks. NCurse _work 10:49, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

The edit link in the template needed to use the same currentweek-currentyear syntax as the content transclusion itself. I've fixed it for you. Hope that helps! Kirill Lokshin 13:57, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. :) Great! NCurse _work 16:43, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Latin America Portal

Hi. I am trying to make the Latin America portal better, and so wanted the related portals to be a band all the way across the bottom of the page. Instead, the box seems to be stuck on the right side, causing a serious problem in formatting. Does anyone have any suggestions of how to make my idea work? Estrellador* 21:43, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

One of the earlier subpages (Portal:Latin America/Things you can do) was missing a </div> tag. I've added it.-gadfium 23:14, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks very much. I was trying to fix that for quite a while. :) Estrellador* 08:00, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portal:Books

Input on the future of Portal:Books would be appreciated at Portal talk:Books.--cj | talk 07:50, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Projects, Portals and People

I made a little table for coordinating WikiProjects, Portals and People for 50 U.S. states. It is here:

 Wikipedia:WikiProject_U.S._states/PPP. 

WP:CBTF -- CQ

[edit] Reveiws and critiqes

Hey, need a few people to review and critiqe 2 portals for me, please. I would like to put Numismatics up for Wikipedia:Featured portals soon.

Texas is newer and slower going, but would like opions.

[edit] Portals status and evaluation

Related to the discussion of the proposal process, I think an effort is needed to go through what's currently in the portal namespace, evaluate the portals (similar to Wikipedia:Version 0.5), identify what portals are in need of major attention, and develop a course of action. In some cases, portals are in such bad shape ("D-Class") with the topics too narrow, that they should be put up for WP:MFD. In other cases, the topic is sufficiently broad that a call could be made to relevant WikiProjects and editors to help. I see other portals that fit "A-Class" (almost featured status), "B-Class" (regularly/periodically maintained), and "C-Class" (needs significant work). To that end, I have created Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals/Status to begin doing this. I originally planned to visit each portal, personally, but find it's daunting and think this would work better with many people helping. The decision of assigning a particular class is quite subjective, but generally fits the characteristics I have listed at the top of the page. I also think portals should be revisited periodically and by different users. If anyone has suggestions, ideas, or thoughts about this, please weigh in. --Aude (talk contribs) 18:15, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

One outcome of this effort could be an outreach campaign to Wikipedians, to attract more people to help with the various portals. This could include writing something for Signpost. --Aude (talk contribs) 18:20, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Countries of Latin America

Hi again. Sorry to be a pain, but could someone tell me where I went wrong with that section's syntax? The box doesn't line up with the others properly. Portal:Latin America -Estrellador* 08:46, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Featured portal candidates

If anyone has a bit of free time, the featured portal candidates (particularly the Biography one) could really use some more reviewers. Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 21:28, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Philadelphia portal

It looks like some contributors from Philadelphia have been a bit overenthusiastic in their application of Template:Portal. The consensus of the discussion above seemed to be that the template should only be placed on a handful of articles and categories. Portal:Philadelphia, on the other hand, currently has over 350 links (including Pretzel, Hoagie, and Fat Albert) pointing to it. If you'd like to voice your opinion, I've started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philadelphia#Portal template. - EurekaLott 02:36, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• I disagree. First, the discussion above was vague, non-binding, and very exclusive. The Philadelphia wikiproject people have been active in trying to promote Philadelphia-realted articles. I think the little cabal on this page should sit on their hands and let people work on the articles.

Pretzel, Hoagie, and Fat Albert all are categorized with Phaildelphia related cat's and mention Philadelphia in their articles. EurekaLott, I always assume good faith, otherwise I would think you're being retaliatory because your edits to those three articles were reversed.

Oh, by the way, I know of four or five other portals that have tagged way many more articles. --South Philly 03:50, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• • This whole thing smacks of over-bureaucratization and instruction creep--South Philly 00:48, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
• I spent a fair amount of time looking at the guidelines this morning. There are no guidelines as to the use of {{portalpar}}. Did I miss it? When I looked at Template:Portalpar I saw the following, "Use: This template is used to link an article to its related portal." Could you please cite what policy you ar referencing? --evrik 16:15, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion#Portal:Orkney

A Portal created recently by Mallimak (talk • contribs) - the Orkney Portal - has been nominated for deletion. If you wish to take part in the discussion please contribute at:

• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion#Portal:Orkney

Thanks. --Mais oui! 08:27, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, please do attend to the discussion. It has been sidetracked from the fact Portal:Orkney ought not to exist by a dispute between users. Please assess the portal on its merits (which I venture to suggest are non-existant) and contribute your position. Thanks, --cj | talk 14:01, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] American Civil War Portal

The American Civil War Portal is fixing to take shape whether anyone approves of it or not. E Pluribus Unum. Deal with it. • CQ 14:01, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Randomized portal component

Randomized portal component

I've seen a few "pseudo" randomized portal component at Portal:Military of the United States, Portal:Numismatics, Portal:War, and Portal:Texas. (By "component, I meant things like "Selected article" or "Selected biography"). The randomness is actually based on the current time, which IMHO is good enough for this application. The code looks like

{{/box-header|''Selected pictures''|Portal:Military of the United States/Selected picture/{{#ifexpr:({{CURRENTTIMESTAMP}} mod 22) >= 0 | {{#expr:({{CURRENTTIMESTAMP}} mod 22) + 1}} | {{#expr:-({{CURRENTTIMESTAMP}} mod 22) + 1}} }}|}} {{Portal:Military of the United States/Selected picture/{{#ifexpr:({{CURRENTTIMESTAMP}} mod 22) >= 0 | {{#expr:({{CURRENTTIMESTAMP}} mod 22) + 1}} | {{#expr:-({{CURRENTTIMESTAMP}} mod 22) + 1}} }}}} {{/box-footer|[[Portal:Military of the United States/Selected picture|More pictures...]]}}

I am thinking about turning that into a template. Something like

 {{aNewTemplate|PortalRoot|ComponentSubpage|ComponentHeader|maxNumberOfInstances}}

But before being bold, I'd like to ask you if you have seen anything like this or any talk about that. I just want to avoid duplication of effort or having two or more competing templates that do the same thing. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 10:13, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I've not noticed any relevant discussion elsewhere. I think it would be a worthwhile contribution.--cj | talk 04:23, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I've added the type of randomization CBDunkerson has at Wikipedia:Featured content/Portals to Cats, Dogs, Psychology, and the List. The one "drawback" I've noticed is that when two or more sections are "randomized," they stay in sync, so I used combination sets for the low frequency sections to mix things up a bit more. A template with a "seed" parameter would be nice for situations like that. Rfrisbie^talk 20:54, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I created {{Random portal component}}. Converted with Portal:Military of the United States, Portal:Numismatics, Portal:War, and Portal:Texas! It can be easily exported to Cats portal or any others. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 12:30, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

It works great, thanks! To give it more flexibility for different portal designs, I made the footer text optional. I also added an option to change the seed value to allow different results on the same page. Rfrisbie^talk 18:16, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I've implemented the template using the new options at Cats, Dogs, and Psychology. Rfrisbie^talk 18:51, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Amendment for Fair use images in Portal

An amendment has been suggested to the Fair Use criteria to allow fair use images in Portals. Please visit Wikipedia:Fair use/Amendment/Fair use images in portals and voice your opinion. Thanks! -- ReyBrujo 19:13, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Since enabling the use of fair use images in portalspace is one of the goals of this project, I also encourage members to consider the amendment.--cj | talk 00:42, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Just to let you know, the amendment is still open to any opinions. Ddcc 20:38, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Space portals

hi, there's been some discussion lately about what how the content in Portal:Space exploration and Portal:Spaceflight should be divided and organized (see their talk pages). It's been suggested that Portal:Space technology be created, but it is far from clear how do divide content between the three, and whether or not all three should exist. If anyone has ideas, your comments would be welcome (here). Mlm42 16:18, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm of the opinion that portals with broader scope are more useful than specialised portals. Thusly, I would suggest that the discussion should be ultimately geared towards converging the three existing portals.--cj | talk 03:58, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, they should definintely be merged. One really great portal with a lot of content is much better than three average (or in the case of Space, below average) portals. "Space" sort of implies spaceflight and exploration, as opposed to astronomy, so I think Space would be a good choice for the final destination of the content from the other two.--ragesoss 13:51, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm.. i think one of the reasons they were created separately may have been so that they nicely fit as subportals to Portal:Transport and Portal:Technology.. a portal titled Space hardly seems appropriate as a subportal of either of those.. Mlm42 16:59, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

If nobody else has anything to add, it seems that a merge into a single Portal:Space is what people are suggesting. Any other input? Awolf002 00:59, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 14:12, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Straw Poll and Discussion

There is a straw poll and discussion under way at Wikipedia talk:Fair use/Amendment/Fair use images in portals to consider whether fair use images should be allowed in Portals. Please come by if you would like to discuss, the poll is scheduled to close soon. Johntex\^talk 14:17, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Just to let you know, the amendment is still open to any opinions. Ddcc 20:38, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for Work

Hello, I'm Dfrg.msc, and I want to make some constructive edits to Wikipedia. It's not that I am unable to, I would just like some guidance. So, if you have any specific tasks related to this topic, please inform me on my talk page, be specific and include links and I'll help out as soon as I can. Thanks, Dfrg.msc ^{1 . 2 . 3} 07:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cats 'n Dogs living together!

If anyone can offer some tips on the respective portal talk pages about how to improve Cats 'n Dogs up to "featured" quality, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Rfrisbie^talk 00:44, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] portal tabs

Has any portal tried using Tabs at the top of the portal for easy navigation, as in de:Portal:Raumfahrt (German Spaceflight portal), or de:Portal:Bahn (German Trains portal)? it seems like a useful idea.. but would it break too much from the seemly standardized style of most portals here? Mlm42 15:43, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I've seen the tabs on Portal:Bahn as I look into translating items from it for Portal:Trains. I haven't tried implementing them on P:T yet mostly because I haven't seen as much of a need for information that isn't already covered on the current portal. Slambo (Speak) 19:56, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

You can see other tabs implementations at Wikipedia:Introduction/Header and Wikipedia:Tutorial/Header. Rfrisbie^talk 20:26, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The United States Military Portal and Science Portal now use tabs. Rfrisbie^talk 20:00, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Automatic rotation of selected article and such

Its possible to have a system so that every week or every month a new article is selected from a pre-determined list (as it were) but is there a way so that the article will stay there for two weeks. A month seems a bit too long and week might be a bit short, it is all down to the variables like CURRENTMONTH and such but is there something like CURRENTFORTNIGHT or something along those lines. I just don't want to run out of good articles too soon. Chris_huh^talk 15:13, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

You could use the modulo function of {{#expr:}} to see if the current week number is even and rotate based on that. For example, the code could go something like this:

{{Portal:Foo/Selected article/{{#ifexpr:{{{CURRENTWEEK}}}%2=1
   |{{#expr:({{{CURRENTWEEK}}}+1)/2}}
   |{{#expr:{{{CURRENTWEEK}}}/2}}}}, {{{CURRENTYEAR}}}}}

(note, I haven't tried this out in my sb yet...). This would transclude Portal:Foo/Selected article/1, 2006 through Portal:Foo/Selected article/26, 2006 for this year. Slambo (Speak) 16:08, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

And removing the CURRENTYEAR would help maintain the list if you have no more than 26ish items to work with. Rfrisbie^talk 18:53, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

---

More simply, for pages named Portal:Foo/Selected article/2006-0 through Portal:Foo/Selected article/2006-25 you can do:

{{Portal:Foo/Selected article/{{{CURRENTYEAR}}}-{{#expr:{{{CURRENTWEEK}}}/2 round 0}}}}

—Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 12:00, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. I think that second will work well, so might implement that in a bit. Thanks again. Chris_huh^talk 13:16, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 05:55, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portal:Chemistry

I've recently made some major changes to the above portal, and I don't think it would take much work to get it to featured status. If anyone could offer us some pointers and check if we're going in the right direction, that'd be great. I'm watching Portal talk:Chemistry. Cheers, riana_dzasta 05:21, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

The portal is now OK. --Meno25 16:07, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hide/Show boxes in portal sections?

Here's a question. Are hide/show boxes in portal sections "okay"? In particular, would they be okay for a "featured" portal? Rfrisbie^talk 17:28, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

It would depend on which sections are being hidden (ie, content should always be visible), but in general I would say it's a Bad Idea. I think there's a potential with nifty features like this to confuse visitors, some of whom may not be tech-savvy.--cj | talk 03:00, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 'In the News' sections

I have a question - is it OK to provide links to news on external sites, or should links be limited to Wikipedia and/or sister projects? Feel free to tell me if this is a really daft question :) Thanks, riana_dzasta 07:06, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

On Portal:Trains, I've only used external links as cited references. Links within the news items are only to internal pages. Slambo (Speak) 17:03, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Great, thanks for letting me know! riana_dzasta 11:27, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

With In The News sections, I find it best to followed a slightly modified version of the format used on the Main Page. This requires that all stories are first posted on related Current events pages, and removes the need for external links in the portal section – which can often be unsightly. I've introduced this standard to Portal:Australia, Portal:New Zealand, Portal:Oceania, Portal:United States and Portal:Indonesia (though the links have found their way back on to the latter two). The advantage of this approach is that it retains focus on our own articles, instead of directing the readership away from Wikipedia.--cj | talk 09:22, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Collaborations on Portals?

Given that there are a lot of portals which deal with the same basic subject areas (Science, Religion, some countries, some sports, what have you), what would the people here think of trying to maybe get a collaborative effort together to have a group of people collectively maintain the portals for a given subject area? It would probably be more work for those individuals, but it would probably also increase the quality of a lot of the portals involved. Badbilltucker 20:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New template

I just checked in {{PortalPastSel}}. This template can be used to create the "Recently selected" links at the bottom of a portal's "Selected foo" sections. For example, the code:

{{PortalPastSel|portalname=Trains|type=article|week=52|year=2006}}

produces:

Recently selected: SkyTrain (Vancouver) - Beeching Axe - Scott Special

The template expects the link code to be located at [[Portal:portalname/Selected type/Week week, year/link]].

I initially started developing it to simplify the links on the Selected article and Selected picture sections of Portal:Trains, but thought other portals might find it useful too so I generalized the portal name parameter too. I'm currently using this template in the new 2007 image archive pages for P:Trains, and I plan to go back through the portal archives to simplify the code on those pages too. Slambo (Speak) 14:58, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 19:13, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiCharts: Portal

Check out this WikiCharts: Portal tool. As the data matures, this could be an interesting way to help focus any improvement efforts, e.g., featured portal collaborations, on high traffic/impact portals. Rfrisbie^talk 03:35, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] {{click}} on portals and alternatives

Someone has created Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability/Clickable images, in effort to remove {{click}}. This is with good intention, but think wider discussion of this and possible alternatives available is needed. This user is now going through all the portal pages and doing mass removal of {{click}}. It's not being discussed on Portal talk pages, nor is any alternative being implemented in place of {{click}}. One alternative is the new ImageMap extension, which can be used on portal pages for "Related portals". (see Portal:Criminal justice) It doesn't yet work in templates, so can't be built into {{click}} itself at this point. Such mass removal of the template without discussion and putting in place an alternative is not okay with me. This is being discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Usability/Clickable images. --Aude (talk) 14:50, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Poor portals

I forget how/where to report/delete unfinished portals. These 2 were added to WP:CBB recently. Portal:Tenacious D and Portal:Windows Skins. The topics don't seem broad enough to warrant portals, and they're just shells currently. Can they be speedied? --Quiddity 19:12, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

To avoid any complaints, it's probably better to just take it them to Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion. If nothing is done with Window Skins by tomorrow, I'll probably ignore process and just delete it.--cj | talk 20:49, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Portal:New Zealand

Portal:New Zealand currently needs to be updated. And it is a featured portal! What happened to it? I've set up (but cannot create as I refuse to sign up) Wikipedia:Featured portal removal candidates/Portal:New Zealand as the selected picture is non-existent, the ITN section has not been updated and has a red-link image on it. This is not the first week in which this has happened this year. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 222.155.132.249 (talk) 21:03, 29 January 2007 (UTC).

I deleted this. I won't accept reviews lodged on a whim; if there were legitimate issues, raise them at the portal first before nominating it for demotion.--cj | talk 20:17, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal to delete portal redirects

Note that a proposal has been made to bulk-delete some 140 redirects to portals. Seems mad to me, but please add your comments at Portal–related redirects to the Portal: namespace. Gralo 12:48, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Time to semi-protect all portals?

I think all portals should be semi-protected. Because of the nature of the actual portal--all markup, no content--newbies have no reason to be editing them. The actual content, which they might want to edit, is on subpages. I have never seen a constructive edit by an IP to a portal page, and what constructive edits there have been (if any) are more than likely the work of Wikipedians who are not logged in. Anyone see a downside to this?--ragesoss 22:27, 22 March 2007 (UTC)