![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
This archive page covers approximately the dates between September 2005 and November 2005.
Post replies to the main talk page, copying the section you are replying to if necessary.
Archived discussions:
I have a few questions, now that we have the division in portals.
1. What exactly is the the difference between a reader and a user-aid portal? I know its says that"If your Wikiportal is designed as a reader-aid, such as Portal:Cricket, please place it in the portal namespace. If it is an editor-aid, keep it at Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Subject.", but all of them have been moved to the Portal namespace, except the most recently created ones. For an average Wikipedia user, how do you tell the difference, and why differentiate to begin with?
2. Having a seperate namespace suggests that portals are an important and different section of the Wikipedia world. How are we exposing average readers to portals? Having the links on Wikipedia:Browse is alright, but not very visable. I suggested (above and at Talk:Main_Page#Portals_link) a link on the main page to a page I created ( Portal:Browse) be placed in the Template:Categorybrowsebar, since it seems to me that Portals are a different form of browsing Wikipedia. This is a task for an admin since the template is protected.
3. Who is going to go around cleaning up all the redirects created by moving the Wikiportals over? I know that moving the aviation portal created probably close to 100 new redirect pages that (I hope) have no links to them other than the odd talk page. Also a task for an admin.
A few concerns that I hope we can clear up before portals get so big that changes are overwhelmingly (sp?) difficult. - Trevor MacInnis( Talk | Contribs) 21:08, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
I've just gone through all the Portals in the browser bar and just realised how many sub-standard Portals there are. In particular, Portal:Zelda seems like vandalism. Others could barely be designated "under-construction" and yet are within the browser as completed Portals. That there are Portals that shouldn't exist was an issue raised before the archive, but one that recieved little attention. If Portals are to gain credibility with the community at large, we need to ensure that those sub-standard are eliminated. I'm not entirely sure through what process Portals may be deleted, but it seems clear to me that some must meet that end. Thoughts? -- Cyberjunkie | Talk 16:30, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
The following is a list of some Portals that I deemed sub-standard, whether because of formatting issues or because they are incomplete or inappropriate. I mean no offence to their creators and/or maintainers. There are others not listed that need work, also. Those bolded have been removed from {{ portals}}.
I realise I have faulted in my expression. I have been using the term "sub-standard" incorrectly: this would imply we have a standard; we do not, and this is perhaps a problem. Another is that there remains confusion between the terms "Wikiportal" and "Portal"; we need a resolute definition to work by so we can determine what is and isn't a portal. I don't think we should allow categories to pass themselves off a portals, as with Category:Mathematics. And portals should be obligated to feature the {{ portal}} template. I hope these points generate discussion.-- Cyberjunkie | Talk 08:31, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Just briefly, I've created {{ portaltalk}} in effort to centralise discussion and create commonality between portals. It's essentially an equivalent to a WikiProject "project notice". Please feel free to work on the wording, and to place them on Portal talk pages. I'm working on some other things also, but have run out of time. I agree the above proposals for "status tags": we proably need "under construction", "inactive/unmaintained/static", "help requested" or some such. In that sense, they'll probably work as stubs. Portal:Zelda has been nominated for deletion.-- Cyberjunkie | Talk 06:09, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
I've stated here before my belief that we are getting many portals constructed which are dedicated to very narrow topic areas, such as Doctor Who, Ancient Germanic Culture, Stargate, Eastern Christianity and others. Should we try to set out some kind of criteria for what portals should be? I believe they should be created for high-level topic areas, and the ones I've listed above are too specific. Or, are people theoretically happy for a portal to be created on any topic, no matter how narrow? Worldtraveller 16:51, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I think we have to be more specific. duplicating, beneficial are still subjective and surely not helping. -- Svest 18:35, 14 October 2005 (UTC) Wiki me up™
First suggestion is to elect a committee of wikipedians managing the portals.
The best thing to do is
. Examples (please feel free to add or trim stuff to and from the list/skeleton):
I am wondering why we should have country and city portals at all. City portals seem way too specific to me, and country portals express systemic bias unless there is one created and maintained for every single country. In addition, they can very easily become strongly POV, because those who maintain them will inevitably be from, or have some strong connection with, the country concerned. Continents seem ideal for portals, countries much less so to me. Worldtraveller 02:40, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
I just removed Portal:Tel-Aviv from {{ Template:portals}} because it is non-existent and shouldn't exist generally. There is not enough information about a city such as Tel Aviv, or Bucharest for that matter (see Portal:Bucharest) to justify having a portal for it. Or at least to justify having the portal come under the {{ Template:portals}} list.
The {{ Template:portals}} list should be kept ONLY for portals that satisfy set criteria and quality, and have reasonable justification for their existence on the list. If people want to create pointless portals then it doesn't really matter, so long as they don't claim them to be good enough to be on the {{ Template:portals}} list.
My 2 pennies. Deano 16:42, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Okay well based on the fact that all portals should be in WP:P regardless of their status/quality, I'm going to act unilaterally and just remove the crap ones from the {{ portals}} namespace template. Any objections... well I guess we'll have to sort that out later, because I'm going to do it now. Crap portals on the namespace dilutes the impression of the good ones. Deano 17:54, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
??? I'm fairly sure everything you've just said agrees with what I said anyway... Deano 19:28, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Obviously I'm gonna say Portal:London, but I took inspiration from Portal:Australia and Portal:New Zealand - both of which were excellent. I originally based it on Portal:NYC, but in my humble opinion P:L has superceeded that already. Deano 19:39, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
I suppose a crude way of doing it would be stick the good ones in bold on the namespace... Although it would need major policing, it would work! Deano 10:38, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
"London takes forever to load :)" - well what can I say! A high quality city needs high quality imagery!!! Perhaps consider investing in Broadband!!! Deano 18:27, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
I really don't think this portal is / has the potential to be up to standard. And it is even more ridiculous in the new template format when it is put on a par with NYC and London - both of whom have a multitude of information already, leave alone potential for the future. I reckon Bucharest should be taken off the namespace... any thoughts? I'll give it a day or two before I do it if I don't hear anything to the contrary... Deano 21:53, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
The portals in Wikipedia namespace have been nominated for deletion because the nominator believes all portals should now be in the portal namespace. Hiding talk 13:59, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
In line with the above, I agree we should settle on some standards for portals in the Portal namespace.
I suggest:
In particular, let's list out the portals we just think are good (for whatever reason) and see what links them. So far the following have been suggested as good portals (I list them here without further comment):
But let's decide on what are good portals - keep those in the portal namespace as examples as what is good, and move substandard ones back to the Wikipedia namespance until they improve, jguk 19:29, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
To improve the quality of Portalspace, I propose a portal improvement drive. Let's take 10 portals (in order per Template:Portals) and either improve them so that they look good and put the emphasis on helping the reader (but with links to relevant WP projects, how to contribute, etc.) - or, if that would require too much work for now, remove them from Portalspace (by moving them to Wikipedia:Wikiportals/X and deleting the redirect in the Portalspace). The first 10 for consideration, together with my own comments, are as follows:
What do others think? jguk 19:05, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
The Main categories of Wikipedia (which are in the Template:Eight portals links on the main page) as well as many major Categories such as Category:Philosophy have a layout similar to that of Portals and are reader-oriented. The namespace "Portals" was created recently and is meant exactly for that kind of cases: The "Portal" part of those categories should be made actual Portals on the appropriate namespace.
I think it should now be made a policy that Categories stay categories (pretty much like disambiguation pages should have no other material than the links to the things it disambiguates to) and the Portal material be moved to an appropriate Portal page on the good namespace. Jules LT 00:13, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Furthermore, there is no appropriate template to signal to people that a Portal-like category should be made into a normal plain category and an actual portal: Template:Split refers to pages that should be replaced by disambiguation and the content split elsewhere and Template:Move appears as if it meant that the article named like the category should be moved, instead of the Portal material in the Category. Do you know of a template that would be appropriate? Otherwise, I suggest we create a Template:Portalized-Category explaining that this should be transforned into a proper portal and the category should be left alone. Jules LT 17:50, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I was going to wait until I had fully formulated my ideas, but I think we need to get the ball rolling. So I'll float a few points to get discussion going.
Well, that's all for now. Thoughts? Agreement? Outrage? ;-)-- cj | talk 23:11, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Recently, I've been getting rather confused as to the actual difinition of a Portal. I've always though it was the layout, yet the links on the main page (culture, geography, etc.) point to categories rather than portals, even though they seem to resemble many Portals. This leads me to wonder what exactly sets prtals apart from categories like the ones I mentioned
This is further reinforced by the fact that Category:Portals is an alphabetical listing, and when I click a letter, just shows me a list of various categories, no Portals. I've also noticed that this page actually has 2 lists of Portals, which are inconsistent (presumably neither are complete) and full of dead links.
I hope that explains why I've tagged these 3 pages as confusing, and why I find portals in general confusing. - 82.7.125.142 19:35, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
I totally agree. We tried to do something to solve this issue but there was a lack of consistency and a lack of volunteers somehow --> Wikipedia talk:Wikiportal/Archive 1#Issues.2C proposals and votes. -- Svest 00:06, 2 December 2005 (UTC) Wiki me up™
Why do we need Category:Portals and Category:Wikiportals, anyway? I think they should both be merged into Wikipedia:Portal. - 82.7.125.142 17:25, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
Hi all. I set up the basic infrastructure for a Wikipedia:Featured portals process. See that page for more detail. An area needing immediate attention is Wikipedia:What is a featured portal?; this would be a good page to articulate what we expect of portals. Thanks, -- cj | talk 17:40, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
This archive page covers approximately the dates between September 2005 and November 2005.
Post replies to the main talk page, copying the section you are replying to if necessary.
Archived discussions:
I have a few questions, now that we have the division in portals.
1. What exactly is the the difference between a reader and a user-aid portal? I know its says that"If your Wikiportal is designed as a reader-aid, such as Portal:Cricket, please place it in the portal namespace. If it is an editor-aid, keep it at Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Subject.", but all of them have been moved to the Portal namespace, except the most recently created ones. For an average Wikipedia user, how do you tell the difference, and why differentiate to begin with?
2. Having a seperate namespace suggests that portals are an important and different section of the Wikipedia world. How are we exposing average readers to portals? Having the links on Wikipedia:Browse is alright, but not very visable. I suggested (above and at Talk:Main_Page#Portals_link) a link on the main page to a page I created ( Portal:Browse) be placed in the Template:Categorybrowsebar, since it seems to me that Portals are a different form of browsing Wikipedia. This is a task for an admin since the template is protected.
3. Who is going to go around cleaning up all the redirects created by moving the Wikiportals over? I know that moving the aviation portal created probably close to 100 new redirect pages that (I hope) have no links to them other than the odd talk page. Also a task for an admin.
A few concerns that I hope we can clear up before portals get so big that changes are overwhelmingly (sp?) difficult. - Trevor MacInnis( Talk | Contribs) 21:08, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
I've just gone through all the Portals in the browser bar and just realised how many sub-standard Portals there are. In particular, Portal:Zelda seems like vandalism. Others could barely be designated "under-construction" and yet are within the browser as completed Portals. That there are Portals that shouldn't exist was an issue raised before the archive, but one that recieved little attention. If Portals are to gain credibility with the community at large, we need to ensure that those sub-standard are eliminated. I'm not entirely sure through what process Portals may be deleted, but it seems clear to me that some must meet that end. Thoughts? -- Cyberjunkie | Talk 16:30, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
The following is a list of some Portals that I deemed sub-standard, whether because of formatting issues or because they are incomplete or inappropriate. I mean no offence to their creators and/or maintainers. There are others not listed that need work, also. Those bolded have been removed from {{ portals}}.
I realise I have faulted in my expression. I have been using the term "sub-standard" incorrectly: this would imply we have a standard; we do not, and this is perhaps a problem. Another is that there remains confusion between the terms "Wikiportal" and "Portal"; we need a resolute definition to work by so we can determine what is and isn't a portal. I don't think we should allow categories to pass themselves off a portals, as with Category:Mathematics. And portals should be obligated to feature the {{ portal}} template. I hope these points generate discussion.-- Cyberjunkie | Talk 08:31, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Just briefly, I've created {{ portaltalk}} in effort to centralise discussion and create commonality between portals. It's essentially an equivalent to a WikiProject "project notice". Please feel free to work on the wording, and to place them on Portal talk pages. I'm working on some other things also, but have run out of time. I agree the above proposals for "status tags": we proably need "under construction", "inactive/unmaintained/static", "help requested" or some such. In that sense, they'll probably work as stubs. Portal:Zelda has been nominated for deletion.-- Cyberjunkie | Talk 06:09, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
I've stated here before my belief that we are getting many portals constructed which are dedicated to very narrow topic areas, such as Doctor Who, Ancient Germanic Culture, Stargate, Eastern Christianity and others. Should we try to set out some kind of criteria for what portals should be? I believe they should be created for high-level topic areas, and the ones I've listed above are too specific. Or, are people theoretically happy for a portal to be created on any topic, no matter how narrow? Worldtraveller 16:51, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I think we have to be more specific. duplicating, beneficial are still subjective and surely not helping. -- Svest 18:35, 14 October 2005 (UTC) Wiki me up™
First suggestion is to elect a committee of wikipedians managing the portals.
The best thing to do is
. Examples (please feel free to add or trim stuff to and from the list/skeleton):
I am wondering why we should have country and city portals at all. City portals seem way too specific to me, and country portals express systemic bias unless there is one created and maintained for every single country. In addition, they can very easily become strongly POV, because those who maintain them will inevitably be from, or have some strong connection with, the country concerned. Continents seem ideal for portals, countries much less so to me. Worldtraveller 02:40, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
I just removed Portal:Tel-Aviv from {{ Template:portals}} because it is non-existent and shouldn't exist generally. There is not enough information about a city such as Tel Aviv, or Bucharest for that matter (see Portal:Bucharest) to justify having a portal for it. Or at least to justify having the portal come under the {{ Template:portals}} list.
The {{ Template:portals}} list should be kept ONLY for portals that satisfy set criteria and quality, and have reasonable justification for their existence on the list. If people want to create pointless portals then it doesn't really matter, so long as they don't claim them to be good enough to be on the {{ Template:portals}} list.
My 2 pennies. Deano 16:42, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Okay well based on the fact that all portals should be in WP:P regardless of their status/quality, I'm going to act unilaterally and just remove the crap ones from the {{ portals}} namespace template. Any objections... well I guess we'll have to sort that out later, because I'm going to do it now. Crap portals on the namespace dilutes the impression of the good ones. Deano 17:54, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
??? I'm fairly sure everything you've just said agrees with what I said anyway... Deano 19:28, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Obviously I'm gonna say Portal:London, but I took inspiration from Portal:Australia and Portal:New Zealand - both of which were excellent. I originally based it on Portal:NYC, but in my humble opinion P:L has superceeded that already. Deano 19:39, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
I suppose a crude way of doing it would be stick the good ones in bold on the namespace... Although it would need major policing, it would work! Deano 10:38, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
"London takes forever to load :)" - well what can I say! A high quality city needs high quality imagery!!! Perhaps consider investing in Broadband!!! Deano 18:27, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
I really don't think this portal is / has the potential to be up to standard. And it is even more ridiculous in the new template format when it is put on a par with NYC and London - both of whom have a multitude of information already, leave alone potential for the future. I reckon Bucharest should be taken off the namespace... any thoughts? I'll give it a day or two before I do it if I don't hear anything to the contrary... Deano 21:53, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
The portals in Wikipedia namespace have been nominated for deletion because the nominator believes all portals should now be in the portal namespace. Hiding talk 13:59, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
In line with the above, I agree we should settle on some standards for portals in the Portal namespace.
I suggest:
In particular, let's list out the portals we just think are good (for whatever reason) and see what links them. So far the following have been suggested as good portals (I list them here without further comment):
But let's decide on what are good portals - keep those in the portal namespace as examples as what is good, and move substandard ones back to the Wikipedia namespance until they improve, jguk 19:29, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
To improve the quality of Portalspace, I propose a portal improvement drive. Let's take 10 portals (in order per Template:Portals) and either improve them so that they look good and put the emphasis on helping the reader (but with links to relevant WP projects, how to contribute, etc.) - or, if that would require too much work for now, remove them from Portalspace (by moving them to Wikipedia:Wikiportals/X and deleting the redirect in the Portalspace). The first 10 for consideration, together with my own comments, are as follows:
What do others think? jguk 19:05, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
The Main categories of Wikipedia (which are in the Template:Eight portals links on the main page) as well as many major Categories such as Category:Philosophy have a layout similar to that of Portals and are reader-oriented. The namespace "Portals" was created recently and is meant exactly for that kind of cases: The "Portal" part of those categories should be made actual Portals on the appropriate namespace.
I think it should now be made a policy that Categories stay categories (pretty much like disambiguation pages should have no other material than the links to the things it disambiguates to) and the Portal material be moved to an appropriate Portal page on the good namespace. Jules LT 00:13, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Furthermore, there is no appropriate template to signal to people that a Portal-like category should be made into a normal plain category and an actual portal: Template:Split refers to pages that should be replaced by disambiguation and the content split elsewhere and Template:Move appears as if it meant that the article named like the category should be moved, instead of the Portal material in the Category. Do you know of a template that would be appropriate? Otherwise, I suggest we create a Template:Portalized-Category explaining that this should be transforned into a proper portal and the category should be left alone. Jules LT 17:50, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I was going to wait until I had fully formulated my ideas, but I think we need to get the ball rolling. So I'll float a few points to get discussion going.
Well, that's all for now. Thoughts? Agreement? Outrage? ;-)-- cj | talk 23:11, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Recently, I've been getting rather confused as to the actual difinition of a Portal. I've always though it was the layout, yet the links on the main page (culture, geography, etc.) point to categories rather than portals, even though they seem to resemble many Portals. This leads me to wonder what exactly sets prtals apart from categories like the ones I mentioned
This is further reinforced by the fact that Category:Portals is an alphabetical listing, and when I click a letter, just shows me a list of various categories, no Portals. I've also noticed that this page actually has 2 lists of Portals, which are inconsistent (presumably neither are complete) and full of dead links.
I hope that explains why I've tagged these 3 pages as confusing, and why I find portals in general confusing. - 82.7.125.142 19:35, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
I totally agree. We tried to do something to solve this issue but there was a lack of consistency and a lack of volunteers somehow --> Wikipedia talk:Wikiportal/Archive 1#Issues.2C proposals and votes. -- Svest 00:06, 2 December 2005 (UTC) Wiki me up™
Why do we need Category:Portals and Category:Wikiportals, anyway? I think they should both be merged into Wikipedia:Portal. - 82.7.125.142 17:25, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
Hi all. I set up the basic infrastructure for a Wikipedia:Featured portals process. See that page for more detail. An area needing immediate attention is Wikipedia:What is a featured portal?; this would be a good page to articulate what we expect of portals. Thanks, -- cj | talk 17:40, 7 December 2005 (UTC)