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There's discussion on the usefulness of the above template on the talk page there. Hiding talk 11:11, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I suggest we trawl through Portal space and list all portals and their related sub-pages here. Sub pages which have no incoming links should be so noted. Pages should be categorised in the appropriate portal category, for example pages related to Portal:Comics should be placed in Category:Comics portal. Where a category doesn't exist, I'd say create it and we can always list it for deletion later if so decided. Hiding talk 11:15, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Rather than manually maintain a list, it seems easier to use Special:Allpages. For example, to list all subpages of Portal:Trains, put "Trains" in the "Display pages starting at" field and "Portal" in the "Namespace" field. Slambo (Speak) 11:53, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
In my experience, the stub sorting project maintains fairly rigid guidelines for stub templates/categories/creation/etc., and tends to remove anything they don't like in short order. Is it the intent of this project to enforce a particular structure on portals themselves? Or merely to keep them organized, with the traditional wide latitude given to individual portal maintainers? Kirill Lok s hin 13:06, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
There are quite a few portals in Category:Portals and some of the subcategories that are not ready for general viewing. It's hard to sort them out other than by using Portal:Browse. I suggest adding a Category:Portals under construction subcategory to Category:Portals and recategorizing the incomplete portals there. Also, Template:box portal skeleton should categorize templates to Category:Portals under construction instead of Category:Portals and instructions should be added at Wikipedia:Portal#How to create a new portal for recategorizing a portal once it is ready. Also, these instructions should be expanded to discuss adding completed and polished portals to Portal:Browse.
I'm willing to do this, but would like some consensus first. — Doug Bell talk• contrib 11:05, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
In the interest of being bold I'm going to take these two encouraging replies with no cautionary replies as consensus. Basically, I think it's needed, so I was mostly looking to see if there were objections. — Doug Bell talk• contrib 22:40, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I finished the above recommendations and recategorized all of the portals except those in the Category:Portal:Geography subcategory (I'll do that tomorrow).
My criteria for recatergorizing a portal was:
Some portals had empty section content, but since they didn't meet the above criteria, I left them in Category:Portals. These portals should perhaps also be moved to Category:Portals under construction:
Other portals simply had very minimal content, but were well-formed:
And finally, Portal:Classical Civilisation seemed to have all the content, but the formatting was so corrupted that it was unusable, so I moved it to Portals under construction. (If I have time, which isn't looking good the next few days, I will try to fix it.)
— Doug Bell talk• contrib 09:22, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, with some help, the Category:Portal:Geography portals are done also. This also completes a pass through all of the portals to fix formatting problems—I think I fixed problems on over 100 portals. — Doug Bell talk• contrib 21:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
I've refactored {{ portaltalk}} to direct users here rather than Wikipedia talk:Portal.-- cj | talk 04:37, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
Just discovered Category:Portals needing attention. What do people think, make this a sub-cat of Category:Portals under construction or merge it into that and delete. Hiding talk 21:43, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't see why individual portals need categories. All subpages should be accessible from the portal, and if not, from What links here.-- cj | talk 06:34, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm working up a list of pages in the portal namespace which I think might warrant a listing at MfD. So far I have:
Thoughts? Hiding talk 13:30, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
I've listed the above for deletion, just dropping a note here. See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Malaysian expressway system for my reasoning. Hiding talk 09:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
This is an extremely bad precedent. Should this go direct to MFD?-- cj | talk 05:38, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I started discussing this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket, but someone suggested it had wider implications, so I've moved the discussion over here. Stephen Turner ( Talk) 12:06, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I've been looking at the links from cricket articles to the cricket portal. It seems we have no consistency about how to do this. I count several different styles:
Some articles have more than one of these. 12
Is there a standard for this? Myself, I don't like the dab link. I may be influenced by the fact that I'm not a big fan of portals (dare I admit such heresy here? I accept I'm probably in the minority on that), but it feels a bit spammy to me. Do we really need to trumpet the portal at the top of the article? I also don't like " overloading" the space used for dab links: it's confusing to use the space for different purposes, and it causes problems when we need a dab link as well. 13, 14. So that's my least favourite way.
Any other views? Or any citations of a standard?
Stephen Turner ( Talk) 10:38, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
The dab link option is thoroughly inappropriate. That was an option undertaken only by Portal:Cricket (principally by jguk) prior to the creation of the portalpar templates, and has unfortunately stuck and recently extended. I have been removing them where I come across it. Text links in see also are also a bad option (and one I had not encountered). Both {{ portalpar}} and {{ portal}} are the standard format, but they are inconsistently implemented. A discussion earlier this year at Wikipedia talk:Portal established a consensus that they should be located at article ends, preferably in the See also section. Linking from navigational templates and infoboxes seems okay so long as it is done discreetly; in fact, someone has suggested that country portals be linked to from the Infobox Country.
I think that a better way to integrate portals with articles needs to be found. Also, which articles should link to particular portals needs to be addressed. I am open to the idea of an icon in the title bar, similar to {{ featured article}}, as a way to access portals. The only problem with this is that the title bar is increasingly occupied by other things including co-ordinates. -- cj | talk 12:52, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm more inclined to use {{ portal}}/{{ portalpar}} near the top of the portal's main topic article (and not on other articles that are related to the portal's main topic) and a See also type text link on appropriate WikiProject pages. The portals are already linked from the main page and through Portal:Browse; I don't see as much of a need to advertise them around on all related articles. Slambo (Speak) 13:59, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
...(copied from above) The portals are already linked from the main page and through Portal:Browse; I don't see as much of a need to advertise them around on all related articles. Slambo (Speak) 13:59, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I asked Ianbrown about why some articles have this or not, and he said ( [1]) that showcase articles on the portal should link to this portal - I was wondering whether I should spam articles with the portal links to two that I had created, ( Portal:Eurovision and Portal:Swimming) because it could possibly considered bad form wrt vanispamcruftadvertising portals which I had created. So I proceeeded to advertise the portal on the showcase articles. I'm fine with whatever is decided - formatting, obtrusiveness, etc. ßlηguγɛη | Have your say!!! 01:12, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Thoughts, additions or subtractions? Hiding talk 08:30, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I wasn't thinking about talk page links, just links in the main article space. For items that I put in the
Portal:Trains#Did you know section, I put {{
Trains portal/DYK date|(the date it appeared there)}}
on the talk page, so I guess putting a link on the talk page for portal features is appropriate. However, I think putting such a link on the article itself isn't appropriate, especially when you consider that many of the Did you know features are stubs.
Slambo
(Speak)
15:20, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
In my opinion, selected articles for a portal should not link to the portal. Only one significant article in the article namespace should link to any given portal (there are probably exceptions where two or three articles might link). I think it's also acceptable for "Current events in xxx" to link to a related portal, and maybe some redirects. All links from the article namespace are only valid if the portal will contain relevant material to the original article indefinitely. As an example, Portal:Oceania covers more than two dozen countries, but Oceania is the only mainspace article other than current events articles, "Oceania portal", and "P:O" to link to it, and I think the archives of Current events in Oceania might benefit from having the link removed.- gadfium 05:57, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
There doesn't seem to be a policy on this and the official policy doesn't even mention portals. I've seen some editors not allow any fair use images while otheres let any image go on the portal. Thats why I propose that this project make a policy on it. Aren't portals the same thing as the main Wikipedia page. If so shouldn't portals follow that policy of allowing fair use images only in news articles/selected images only if their is corresponding text and an article and only if their is no other image to be used. Jedi6 -(need help?) 00:17, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
A bunch of subpages of Portal:Trains were edited today by Ed g2s ( talk · contribs) to remove all the company logos reasoning that fair use is strictly forbidden outside of the main article space. I don't entirely agree with this but I'm not going to start reverting things yet. Slambo (Speak) 13:27, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
I do think it is ridiculous to straight-out prohibit fair use images in portalspace. Should we make it an aim of this project to ammend the fair use policy to allow fair use images in portalspace where appropriate; the convention the Main Page goes by seems valid.-- cj | talk 04:53, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
There are some image formatting issues that I just discovered on Portal:History of science as well a number the main portals. In Internet Explorer, many images don't show up, while other appear at the bottom of the page or misplaced in some other way. Any help sorting this out would be appreciated.-- ragesoss 21:27, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
It would be good if we can use Wikipedia:Portal/Guidelines to articulate best-practice for portals. Please add your thoughts.-- cj | talk 07:08, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
In working through some updates to the anniversaries section of Portal:Trains, the thought struck me that there really isn't any reason that I can think of to hide the references on the portal page. Using the <ref> structure and including such tags within the transcluded pages, it's trivial to create a section at the bottom of the page with <references /> where they are displayed. What are other editors' thoughts on including a References section at the bottom of a portal to list all the refs for facts currently on the portal? Slambo (Speak) 13:35, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
The talk page for Portal:Music does not allow for editing specific sections. Is there a way to fix this issue, so that there is an alternative method of responding to a given section without using the 'edit this page' feature? -- Folajimi 23:55, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
Input on the future of Portal:Books would be appreciated at Portal talk:Books.-- cj | talk 07:50, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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:
Thanks. -- Mais oui! 08:27, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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.m s c 1 . 2 . 3 07:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
You can see other tabs implementations at Wikipedia:Introduction/Header and Wikipedia:Tutorial/Header. Rfrisbie talk 20:26, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
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. C hris_huh talk 15:13, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
{{Portal:Foo/Selected article/{{#ifexpr:{{{CURRENTWEEK}}}%2=1 |{{#expr:({{{CURRENTWEEK}}}+1)/2}} |{{#expr:{{{CURRENTWEEK}}}/2}}}}, {{{CURRENTYEAR}}}}}
{{Portal:Foo/Selected article/{{{CURRENTYEAR}}}-{{#expr:{{{CURRENTWEEK}}}/2 round 0}}}}
— Doug Bell talk• contrib 12:00, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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).
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)
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)
What do people think about this new portal created by someone the other day. I have major reservations and would like to hear other editors opinions (preferably on the talk page of the portal).-- Zleitzen (talk) 01:15, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
I am trying to start Portal:Ghana and would appreciate all the help and advice I can get. Thanks-- Natsubee 08:45, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
As above...I am doing an initial startup of Portal:Saskatchewan and also would appreciate any guidance available. Thank you. SriMesh | talk 01:37, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
How do you put images in a portal link? I'd like to substitute the puzzle piece in the Portal:Evangelion link for Wikipe-tan's head, but I have no idea as to what to do. Willbyr ( talk | contribs) 15:39, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
{{Portal|name=Evangelion|image=Wikipe-tan without body.png}}
. Remember to place it in the see also section only.--
cj |
talk
02:51, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Is there any policy on the notability of portals? Or do we create them indiscriminately? I have found this Portal:SAARC that makes little sense at all. The SAARC is an almost non-functional international organization (unlike the European Union, which has Portal:European Union), and the portal seems to be bent on repeating stuff from Portal:India, Portal:Pakistan, Portal:Bangladesh, Portal:Sri Lanka and Portal:Himalaya region. With the existence of all these portals it is hard to see the reason for even a South Asia portal, let alone this portal on SAARC. I have posted a comment to that end to the portal's talk page. But the creator of the portal seems disinterested to answer. Aditya( talk • contribs) 23:58, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi I am interested in a portal that links together many articles that eventually form an alternative Encyclopedia of Careers and Vocational Guidance. Its way to big of a project for me to be the sole portal editor and I'm not even sure portals are the way to kick such a thing off. Please help me brain storm how such a thing can be started since it is exactly the sort of quickly changing, massive undertaking that is better left to Wikipedia then traditional print. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DodgeTheBullet ( talk • contribs) 14:05, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
I expanded the scope of Portal:U.S. Roads yesterday by moving it to Portal:North American Roads. I realize that this may not have been a good move, but what's done is done, and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads#November 1, 2007 needs opinions on what should be done now. Thank you. -- NE2 23:21, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
A group of English-language students have made a proposal to revive or improve the Latin America Portal at Portal talk:Latin America#FROM THE SOUTH WANTS TO HELP. I'm not sure if many editors watch that page, so I'm drawing attention to the proposal here. Please go there to see the proposal and discuss it.- gadfium 01:40, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
On the 5th and 6th a whole slew of Portal MfDs were posted at WP:MFD. I don't see any of them listed on this page or discussed here. Are most portal nominations coming from here in the first place or is someone (or a bot) actively posting them here?-- Doug.( talk • contribs) 02:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Can someone take a look at the bottom of Portal:Sony PlayStation. To parts intersect at the bottom.-- Playstationdude 23:15, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Could someone help set this portal for automatic rotation on the selected article, selected image and did you know sections please? Unisouth 15:48, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
There appears to be some confusion about the purpose of a Portal on Wikipedia. I recently proposed creating a Portal about the 2008 Summer Olympics, see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Olympics on the Main Page and Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Portal proposal. Several editors have stated that "that's not the point of portals." I would like to ask the members of this WikiProject to shed their light on this. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with my proposal itself, is it consistent with what is outlined in WP:PORTAL? A ecis Brievenbus 15:29, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Please see Template talk:Browsebar# for a suggested update to this navbar template, which appears at the top of most portals. Thanks. -- Quiddity ( talk) 20:09, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Index Lists, a complex issue which I've tried to summarize. It concerns unsourced pages in mainspace like List of timelines, List of basic mathematics topics, and List of film topics. Moving some of them to Portal: space is one of the options to consider. Its scope is currently a few hundred pages, and potentially a few thousand pages. Feedback would be appreciated. -- Quiddity ( talk) 03:34, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I want to make a portal of NFL football teams of their history links and important people in their team. -- Woaddude ( talk) 14:51, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
A group of editors is working on coordinating Portal:Contents and all of its subpages. This activity has two basic parts. The simplest part is to coordinate their presentation, such as page layouts. Most of the discussions about how to accomplish this are at Portal talk:Contents. The more involved part is to coordinate their substance, such as what gets linked from the pages and their classifications. Most of the discussions about how to accomplish this are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Contents and related projects such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists of basic topics, Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists of topics, Wikipedia:WikiProject Glossaries, Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals and Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories. Please feel free to join in on these activities. RichardF ( talk) 12:52, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
This is a proposal to start The portal namespace improvement drive: Contents and megaportals. It is the outgrowth of many discussions at Portal talk:Contents and elsewhere, including one about megaportals – comprehensive portals that cover the landscape on high-level topics like those listed on the Main Page. It is motivated by the widely held view that the portals currently listed on the Main Page do not live up to established standards of quality for such portals. In addition, the portal namespace contents pages are only one of many partially overlapping ways editors have organized Wikipedia's articles. Moreover, the navigation schemes for each set of pages, between each set, and among the rest of the encyclopedia pages, present a number of issues as well.
The following chart represents the four key namespaces related to this improvement drive. Portals are the doorways to the encyclopedia's articles. The categories form the network of how pages are tied together; and the Wikipedia namespace provides the project's workspace. The scope of the improvement drive will consider anything that is or consensually should be in portal namespace as fair game.
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Archive 1/KeyNamespaces
Likely tasks for the improvement drive may include but likely won't be limited to the following.
Main topics classification systems – Update as changes are made | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Topics | Wikipedia:Contents | Megaportals | Wikipedia:Core topics, inner levels | Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Core topics | Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Core topics/Supplement | Wikipedia:1,000 core topics |
Arts and culture | Arts and culture | Arts, Culture | Humanities, 15 | Culture; Humanities, 24 | Cultural topics (120) | Culture; Humanities, 162 |
Geography and places | Geography and places | Geography | Geography, 65; Countries | |||
Health and fitness | Health and fitness | Health | Medicine | |||
History and events | History and events | History, Current events | ||||
Mathematics and logic | Mathematics and logic | Mathematics, Logic | Mathematics | Mathematics, 5 | Math | |
Natural and physical sciences | Natural and physical sciences | Science | Natural Science | Earth, 16; Life science; Physical science, 29 | Science; Chemical elements, 118 | |
People and self | People and self | Biography, Personal life | Everyday life, 9 | Biographies, 201 | ||
Philosophy and thinking | Philosophy and thinking | Philosophy, Thinking | Philosophy | |||
Religion and belief systems | Religion | Religion | ||||
Reference | Reference | Library and information science | ||||
Social sciences and society | Social sciences and society | Science, Society | Social Sciences, 10 | Social science, 22; society, 15 | Social sciences, 173 | |
Technology and applied sciences | Technology and applied sciences | Technology and applied sciences | Applied Arts and Sciences, 14 | Technology, 18 | Technical topics (135) | Technology |
Topics | Wikipedia:Version 0.5 | Wikipedia:Vital articles | Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded | Wikipedia:Featured articles | ||
Arts and culture | Arts, Language and literature | Arts | Arts | Art; Awards, decorations and vexillology; Culture; Food and drink; Language and linguistics; Literature and theatre; Music | ||
Geography and places | Geography | Geography | Geography | Geography and places | ||
Health and fitness | Health, Medicine | Health, Medicine | Medicine | |||
History and events | History | History | History | Archaeology, History, Heraldry | ||
Mathematics and logic | Mathematics | Mathematics, Measurement | Mathematics, Measurement | Mathematics | ||
Natural and physical sciences | Natural sciences | Science | Science | Biology; Chemistry and mineralogy; Geology, geophysics and meteorology; Physics and astronomy | ||
People and self | Everyday life | People, Everyday life | People, Everyday life | Royalty and nobility; Sport and recreation, Video games | ||
Philosophy and thinking | Philosophy | Philosophy | Philosophy | Philosophy | ||
Religion and belief systems | Religion | Religion | Religion | Religion, mysticism and mythology | ||
Reference | ||||||
Social sciences and society | Society and social sciences | Society and social sciences | Society and social sciences | Business and finance, Economics, Education, Law, Media, Politics and government, Psychology, Society, Warfare | ||
Technology and applied sciences | Applied sciences and technology | Technology | Technology | Architecture, Computing, Engineering and technology, Transport | ||
Category:Fundamental categories | Topics | Category:Main topic classifications | Category:Wikipedia core topics | Category:Top-importance articles | ||
Information | ||||||
Nature | Mathematics and logic | Mathematics | Math | |||
Natural and physical sciences | Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Earth sciences, Environment, Geology, Nature, Physics, Science | Ecology, Science | ||||
Reference | ||||||
Technology and applied sciences | Agriculture, Applied sciences, Architecture, Computing, Technology | Construction, Technology | ||||
Society | Arts and culture | Arts, Crafts, Culture, Film, Language, Literature, Music, Visual arts | Culture, Film | |||
Geography and places | Geography | |||||
Health and fitness | Health, Medicine | Health sciences, Nutrition | ||||
History and events | Archaeology, Events, History | |||||
People and self | Entertainment, People, Radio | Biography | ||||
Social sciences and society | Business, Economics, Education, Law, Military, Politics, Psychology, Society | Society | ||||
Structure | ||||||
Thought | Philosophy and thinking | Philosophy, Thought | ||||
Religion and belief systems | Religion |
The following chart organizes the above main topics TOC systems by the group of Fundamental categories. It demonstrates the twelve current topical sections for Contents subpage TOCs can be used to organize all main TOC topics. It also highlights the value of futher discussions about what names to use for some of the TOC section headers. RichardF ( talk) 22:20, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
Comparison of contents & portal page designs – Update as changes are made | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Design | Contents PAGES & Portal SECTIONS | |||||
Contents | Overviews | Topics | Basic topics | Glossaries | Portals | Categories |
Portals | Topics | in Topics, Lists | in Topics | Related portals | Categories | |
Design | Contents SECTIONS & Portal PAGES | |||||
Contents | Reference | Arts and culture | Geography and places | Health and fitness | History and events | Mathematics and logic |
Portals | Library and information science | Arts, Culture | Geography | Health | History, Current events | Mathematics, Logic |
Contents | Natural and physical sciences | People and self | Philosophy and thinking | Religion and belief systems | Social sciences and society | Technology and applied sciences |
Portals | Science | Biography, Personal life | Philosophy, Thinking | Religion | Science, Society | Technology and applied sciences |
Most of the higher-level discussions probably will take place at pages such as the following.
Many of the described tasks already are underway or are about to begin. This improvement drive is just another way to help communicate what can be accomplished and enlist broad-based participation. Feel free to post your comments here, or anywhere else you like. Happy editing! :-) RichardF ( talk) 04:32, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
The Contents and megaportals portal peer review is underway. RichardF ( talk) 08:27, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This 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. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | → | Archive 5 |
There's discussion on the usefulness of the above template on the talk page there. Hiding talk 11:11, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I suggest we trawl through Portal space and list all portals and their related sub-pages here. Sub pages which have no incoming links should be so noted. Pages should be categorised in the appropriate portal category, for example pages related to Portal:Comics should be placed in Category:Comics portal. Where a category doesn't exist, I'd say create it and we can always list it for deletion later if so decided. Hiding talk 11:15, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Rather than manually maintain a list, it seems easier to use Special:Allpages. For example, to list all subpages of Portal:Trains, put "Trains" in the "Display pages starting at" field and "Portal" in the "Namespace" field. Slambo (Speak) 11:53, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
In my experience, the stub sorting project maintains fairly rigid guidelines for stub templates/categories/creation/etc., and tends to remove anything they don't like in short order. Is it the intent of this project to enforce a particular structure on portals themselves? Or merely to keep them organized, with the traditional wide latitude given to individual portal maintainers? Kirill Lok s hin 13:06, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
There are quite a few portals in Category:Portals and some of the subcategories that are not ready for general viewing. It's hard to sort them out other than by using Portal:Browse. I suggest adding a Category:Portals under construction subcategory to Category:Portals and recategorizing the incomplete portals there. Also, Template:box portal skeleton should categorize templates to Category:Portals under construction instead of Category:Portals and instructions should be added at Wikipedia:Portal#How to create a new portal for recategorizing a portal once it is ready. Also, these instructions should be expanded to discuss adding completed and polished portals to Portal:Browse.
I'm willing to do this, but would like some consensus first. — Doug Bell talk• contrib 11:05, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
In the interest of being bold I'm going to take these two encouraging replies with no cautionary replies as consensus. Basically, I think it's needed, so I was mostly looking to see if there were objections. — Doug Bell talk• contrib 22:40, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I finished the above recommendations and recategorized all of the portals except those in the Category:Portal:Geography subcategory (I'll do that tomorrow).
My criteria for recatergorizing a portal was:
Some portals had empty section content, but since they didn't meet the above criteria, I left them in Category:Portals. These portals should perhaps also be moved to Category:Portals under construction:
Other portals simply had very minimal content, but were well-formed:
And finally, Portal:Classical Civilisation seemed to have all the content, but the formatting was so corrupted that it was unusable, so I moved it to Portals under construction. (If I have time, which isn't looking good the next few days, I will try to fix it.)
— Doug Bell talk• contrib 09:22, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, with some help, the Category:Portal:Geography portals are done also. This also completes a pass through all of the portals to fix formatting problems—I think I fixed problems on over 100 portals. — Doug Bell talk• contrib 21:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
I've refactored {{ portaltalk}} to direct users here rather than Wikipedia talk:Portal.-- cj | talk 04:37, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
Just discovered Category:Portals needing attention. What do people think, make this a sub-cat of Category:Portals under construction or merge it into that and delete. Hiding talk 21:43, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't see why individual portals need categories. All subpages should be accessible from the portal, and if not, from What links here.-- cj | talk 06:34, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm working up a list of pages in the portal namespace which I think might warrant a listing at MfD. So far I have:
Thoughts? Hiding talk 13:30, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
I've listed the above for deletion, just dropping a note here. See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Malaysian expressway system for my reasoning. Hiding talk 09:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
This is an extremely bad precedent. Should this go direct to MFD?-- cj | talk 05:38, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I started discussing this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket, but someone suggested it had wider implications, so I've moved the discussion over here. Stephen Turner ( Talk) 12:06, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I've been looking at the links from cricket articles to the cricket portal. It seems we have no consistency about how to do this. I count several different styles:
Some articles have more than one of these. 12
Is there a standard for this? Myself, I don't like the dab link. I may be influenced by the fact that I'm not a big fan of portals (dare I admit such heresy here? I accept I'm probably in the minority on that), but it feels a bit spammy to me. Do we really need to trumpet the portal at the top of the article? I also don't like " overloading" the space used for dab links: it's confusing to use the space for different purposes, and it causes problems when we need a dab link as well. 13, 14. So that's my least favourite way.
Any other views? Or any citations of a standard?
Stephen Turner ( Talk) 10:38, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
The dab link option is thoroughly inappropriate. That was an option undertaken only by Portal:Cricket (principally by jguk) prior to the creation of the portalpar templates, and has unfortunately stuck and recently extended. I have been removing them where I come across it. Text links in see also are also a bad option (and one I had not encountered). Both {{ portalpar}} and {{ portal}} are the standard format, but they are inconsistently implemented. A discussion earlier this year at Wikipedia talk:Portal established a consensus that they should be located at article ends, preferably in the See also section. Linking from navigational templates and infoboxes seems okay so long as it is done discreetly; in fact, someone has suggested that country portals be linked to from the Infobox Country.
I think that a better way to integrate portals with articles needs to be found. Also, which articles should link to particular portals needs to be addressed. I am open to the idea of an icon in the title bar, similar to {{ featured article}}, as a way to access portals. The only problem with this is that the title bar is increasingly occupied by other things including co-ordinates. -- cj | talk 12:52, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm more inclined to use {{ portal}}/{{ portalpar}} near the top of the portal's main topic article (and not on other articles that are related to the portal's main topic) and a See also type text link on appropriate WikiProject pages. The portals are already linked from the main page and through Portal:Browse; I don't see as much of a need to advertise them around on all related articles. Slambo (Speak) 13:59, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
...(copied from above) The portals are already linked from the main page and through Portal:Browse; I don't see as much of a need to advertise them around on all related articles. Slambo (Speak) 13:59, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I asked Ianbrown about why some articles have this or not, and he said ( [1]) that showcase articles on the portal should link to this portal - I was wondering whether I should spam articles with the portal links to two that I had created, ( Portal:Eurovision and Portal:Swimming) because it could possibly considered bad form wrt vanispamcruftadvertising portals which I had created. So I proceeeded to advertise the portal on the showcase articles. I'm fine with whatever is decided - formatting, obtrusiveness, etc. ßlηguγɛη | Have your say!!! 01:12, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Thoughts, additions or subtractions? Hiding talk 08:30, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I wasn't thinking about talk page links, just links in the main article space. For items that I put in the
Portal:Trains#Did you know section, I put {{
Trains portal/DYK date|(the date it appeared there)}}
on the talk page, so I guess putting a link on the talk page for portal features is appropriate. However, I think putting such a link on the article itself isn't appropriate, especially when you consider that many of the Did you know features are stubs.
Slambo
(Speak)
15:20, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
In my opinion, selected articles for a portal should not link to the portal. Only one significant article in the article namespace should link to any given portal (there are probably exceptions where two or three articles might link). I think it's also acceptable for "Current events in xxx" to link to a related portal, and maybe some redirects. All links from the article namespace are only valid if the portal will contain relevant material to the original article indefinitely. As an example, Portal:Oceania covers more than two dozen countries, but Oceania is the only mainspace article other than current events articles, "Oceania portal", and "P:O" to link to it, and I think the archives of Current events in Oceania might benefit from having the link removed.- gadfium 05:57, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
There doesn't seem to be a policy on this and the official policy doesn't even mention portals. I've seen some editors not allow any fair use images while otheres let any image go on the portal. Thats why I propose that this project make a policy on it. Aren't portals the same thing as the main Wikipedia page. If so shouldn't portals follow that policy of allowing fair use images only in news articles/selected images only if their is corresponding text and an article and only if their is no other image to be used. Jedi6 -(need help?) 00:17, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
A bunch of subpages of Portal:Trains were edited today by Ed g2s ( talk · contribs) to remove all the company logos reasoning that fair use is strictly forbidden outside of the main article space. I don't entirely agree with this but I'm not going to start reverting things yet. Slambo (Speak) 13:27, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
I do think it is ridiculous to straight-out prohibit fair use images in portalspace. Should we make it an aim of this project to ammend the fair use policy to allow fair use images in portalspace where appropriate; the convention the Main Page goes by seems valid.-- cj | talk 04:53, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
There are some image formatting issues that I just discovered on Portal:History of science as well a number the main portals. In Internet Explorer, many images don't show up, while other appear at the bottom of the page or misplaced in some other way. Any help sorting this out would be appreciated.-- ragesoss 21:27, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
It would be good if we can use Wikipedia:Portal/Guidelines to articulate best-practice for portals. Please add your thoughts.-- cj | talk 07:08, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
In working through some updates to the anniversaries section of Portal:Trains, the thought struck me that there really isn't any reason that I can think of to hide the references on the portal page. Using the <ref> structure and including such tags within the transcluded pages, it's trivial to create a section at the bottom of the page with <references /> where they are displayed. What are other editors' thoughts on including a References section at the bottom of a portal to list all the refs for facts currently on the portal? Slambo (Speak) 13:35, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
The talk page for Portal:Music does not allow for editing specific sections. Is there a way to fix this issue, so that there is an alternative method of responding to a given section without using the 'edit this page' feature? -- Folajimi 23:55, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
Input on the future of Portal:Books would be appreciated at Portal talk:Books.-- cj | talk 07:50, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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:
Thanks. -- Mais oui! 08:27, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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.m s c 1 . 2 . 3 07:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
You can see other tabs implementations at Wikipedia:Introduction/Header and Wikipedia:Tutorial/Header. Rfrisbie talk 20:26, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
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. C hris_huh talk 15:13, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
{{Portal:Foo/Selected article/{{#ifexpr:{{{CURRENTWEEK}}}%2=1 |{{#expr:({{{CURRENTWEEK}}}+1)/2}} |{{#expr:{{{CURRENTWEEK}}}/2}}}}, {{{CURRENTYEAR}}}}}
{{Portal:Foo/Selected article/{{{CURRENTYEAR}}}-{{#expr:{{{CURRENTWEEK}}}/2 round 0}}}}
— Doug Bell talk• contrib 12:00, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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).
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)
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)
What do people think about this new portal created by someone the other day. I have major reservations and would like to hear other editors opinions (preferably on the talk page of the portal).-- Zleitzen (talk) 01:15, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
I am trying to start Portal:Ghana and would appreciate all the help and advice I can get. Thanks-- Natsubee 08:45, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
As above...I am doing an initial startup of Portal:Saskatchewan and also would appreciate any guidance available. Thank you. SriMesh | talk 01:37, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
How do you put images in a portal link? I'd like to substitute the puzzle piece in the Portal:Evangelion link for Wikipe-tan's head, but I have no idea as to what to do. Willbyr ( talk | contribs) 15:39, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
{{Portal|name=Evangelion|image=Wikipe-tan without body.png}}
. Remember to place it in the see also section only.--
cj |
talk
02:51, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Is there any policy on the notability of portals? Or do we create them indiscriminately? I have found this Portal:SAARC that makes little sense at all. The SAARC is an almost non-functional international organization (unlike the European Union, which has Portal:European Union), and the portal seems to be bent on repeating stuff from Portal:India, Portal:Pakistan, Portal:Bangladesh, Portal:Sri Lanka and Portal:Himalaya region. With the existence of all these portals it is hard to see the reason for even a South Asia portal, let alone this portal on SAARC. I have posted a comment to that end to the portal's talk page. But the creator of the portal seems disinterested to answer. Aditya( talk • contribs) 23:58, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi I am interested in a portal that links together many articles that eventually form an alternative Encyclopedia of Careers and Vocational Guidance. Its way to big of a project for me to be the sole portal editor and I'm not even sure portals are the way to kick such a thing off. Please help me brain storm how such a thing can be started since it is exactly the sort of quickly changing, massive undertaking that is better left to Wikipedia then traditional print. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DodgeTheBullet ( talk • contribs) 14:05, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
I expanded the scope of Portal:U.S. Roads yesterday by moving it to Portal:North American Roads. I realize that this may not have been a good move, but what's done is done, and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads#November 1, 2007 needs opinions on what should be done now. Thank you. -- NE2 23:21, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
A group of English-language students have made a proposal to revive or improve the Latin America Portal at Portal talk:Latin America#FROM THE SOUTH WANTS TO HELP. I'm not sure if many editors watch that page, so I'm drawing attention to the proposal here. Please go there to see the proposal and discuss it.- gadfium 01:40, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
On the 5th and 6th a whole slew of Portal MfDs were posted at WP:MFD. I don't see any of them listed on this page or discussed here. Are most portal nominations coming from here in the first place or is someone (or a bot) actively posting them here?-- Doug.( talk • contribs) 02:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Can someone take a look at the bottom of Portal:Sony PlayStation. To parts intersect at the bottom.-- Playstationdude 23:15, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Could someone help set this portal for automatic rotation on the selected article, selected image and did you know sections please? Unisouth 15:48, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
There appears to be some confusion about the purpose of a Portal on Wikipedia. I recently proposed creating a Portal about the 2008 Summer Olympics, see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Olympics on the Main Page and Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Portal proposal. Several editors have stated that "that's not the point of portals." I would like to ask the members of this WikiProject to shed their light on this. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with my proposal itself, is it consistent with what is outlined in WP:PORTAL? A ecis Brievenbus 15:29, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Please see Template talk:Browsebar# for a suggested update to this navbar template, which appears at the top of most portals. Thanks. -- Quiddity ( talk) 20:09, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Index Lists, a complex issue which I've tried to summarize. It concerns unsourced pages in mainspace like List of timelines, List of basic mathematics topics, and List of film topics. Moving some of them to Portal: space is one of the options to consider. Its scope is currently a few hundred pages, and potentially a few thousand pages. Feedback would be appreciated. -- Quiddity ( talk) 03:34, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I want to make a portal of NFL football teams of their history links and important people in their team. -- Woaddude ( talk) 14:51, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
A group of editors is working on coordinating Portal:Contents and all of its subpages. This activity has two basic parts. The simplest part is to coordinate their presentation, such as page layouts. Most of the discussions about how to accomplish this are at Portal talk:Contents. The more involved part is to coordinate their substance, such as what gets linked from the pages and their classifications. Most of the discussions about how to accomplish this are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Contents and related projects such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists of basic topics, Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists of topics, Wikipedia:WikiProject Glossaries, Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals and Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories. Please feel free to join in on these activities. RichardF ( talk) 12:52, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
This is a proposal to start The portal namespace improvement drive: Contents and megaportals. It is the outgrowth of many discussions at Portal talk:Contents and elsewhere, including one about megaportals – comprehensive portals that cover the landscape on high-level topics like those listed on the Main Page. It is motivated by the widely held view that the portals currently listed on the Main Page do not live up to established standards of quality for such portals. In addition, the portal namespace contents pages are only one of many partially overlapping ways editors have organized Wikipedia's articles. Moreover, the navigation schemes for each set of pages, between each set, and among the rest of the encyclopedia pages, present a number of issues as well.
The following chart represents the four key namespaces related to this improvement drive. Portals are the doorways to the encyclopedia's articles. The categories form the network of how pages are tied together; and the Wikipedia namespace provides the project's workspace. The scope of the improvement drive will consider anything that is or consensually should be in portal namespace as fair game.
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Archive 1/KeyNamespaces
Likely tasks for the improvement drive may include but likely won't be limited to the following.
Main topics classification systems – Update as changes are made | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Topics | Wikipedia:Contents | Megaportals | Wikipedia:Core topics, inner levels | Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Core topics | Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Core topics/Supplement | Wikipedia:1,000 core topics |
Arts and culture | Arts and culture | Arts, Culture | Humanities, 15 | Culture; Humanities, 24 | Cultural topics (120) | Culture; Humanities, 162 |
Geography and places | Geography and places | Geography | Geography, 65; Countries | |||
Health and fitness | Health and fitness | Health | Medicine | |||
History and events | History and events | History, Current events | ||||
Mathematics and logic | Mathematics and logic | Mathematics, Logic | Mathematics | Mathematics, 5 | Math | |
Natural and physical sciences | Natural and physical sciences | Science | Natural Science | Earth, 16; Life science; Physical science, 29 | Science; Chemical elements, 118 | |
People and self | People and self | Biography, Personal life | Everyday life, 9 | Biographies, 201 | ||
Philosophy and thinking | Philosophy and thinking | Philosophy, Thinking | Philosophy | |||
Religion and belief systems | Religion | Religion | ||||
Reference | Reference | Library and information science | ||||
Social sciences and society | Social sciences and society | Science, Society | Social Sciences, 10 | Social science, 22; society, 15 | Social sciences, 173 | |
Technology and applied sciences | Technology and applied sciences | Technology and applied sciences | Applied Arts and Sciences, 14 | Technology, 18 | Technical topics (135) | Technology |
Topics | Wikipedia:Version 0.5 | Wikipedia:Vital articles | Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded | Wikipedia:Featured articles | ||
Arts and culture | Arts, Language and literature | Arts | Arts | Art; Awards, decorations and vexillology; Culture; Food and drink; Language and linguistics; Literature and theatre; Music | ||
Geography and places | Geography | Geography | Geography | Geography and places | ||
Health and fitness | Health, Medicine | Health, Medicine | Medicine | |||
History and events | History | History | History | Archaeology, History, Heraldry | ||
Mathematics and logic | Mathematics | Mathematics, Measurement | Mathematics, Measurement | Mathematics | ||
Natural and physical sciences | Natural sciences | Science | Science | Biology; Chemistry and mineralogy; Geology, geophysics and meteorology; Physics and astronomy | ||
People and self | Everyday life | People, Everyday life | People, Everyday life | Royalty and nobility; Sport and recreation, Video games | ||
Philosophy and thinking | Philosophy | Philosophy | Philosophy | Philosophy | ||
Religion and belief systems | Religion | Religion | Religion | Religion, mysticism and mythology | ||
Reference | ||||||
Social sciences and society | Society and social sciences | Society and social sciences | Society and social sciences | Business and finance, Economics, Education, Law, Media, Politics and government, Psychology, Society, Warfare | ||
Technology and applied sciences | Applied sciences and technology | Technology | Technology | Architecture, Computing, Engineering and technology, Transport | ||
Category:Fundamental categories | Topics | Category:Main topic classifications | Category:Wikipedia core topics | Category:Top-importance articles | ||
Information | ||||||
Nature | Mathematics and logic | Mathematics | Math | |||
Natural and physical sciences | Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Earth sciences, Environment, Geology, Nature, Physics, Science | Ecology, Science | ||||
Reference | ||||||
Technology and applied sciences | Agriculture, Applied sciences, Architecture, Computing, Technology | Construction, Technology | ||||
Society | Arts and culture | Arts, Crafts, Culture, Film, Language, Literature, Music, Visual arts | Culture, Film | |||
Geography and places | Geography | |||||
Health and fitness | Health, Medicine | Health sciences, Nutrition | ||||
History and events | Archaeology, Events, History | |||||
People and self | Entertainment, People, Radio | Biography | ||||
Social sciences and society | Business, Economics, Education, Law, Military, Politics, Psychology, Society | Society | ||||
Structure | ||||||
Thought | Philosophy and thinking | Philosophy, Thought | ||||
Religion and belief systems | Religion |
The following chart organizes the above main topics TOC systems by the group of Fundamental categories. It demonstrates the twelve current topical sections for Contents subpage TOCs can be used to organize all main TOC topics. It also highlights the value of futher discussions about what names to use for some of the TOC section headers. RichardF ( talk) 22:20, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
Comparison of contents & portal page designs – Update as changes are made | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Design | Contents PAGES & Portal SECTIONS | |||||
Contents | Overviews | Topics | Basic topics | Glossaries | Portals | Categories |
Portals | Topics | in Topics, Lists | in Topics | Related portals | Categories | |
Design | Contents SECTIONS & Portal PAGES | |||||
Contents | Reference | Arts and culture | Geography and places | Health and fitness | History and events | Mathematics and logic |
Portals | Library and information science | Arts, Culture | Geography | Health | History, Current events | Mathematics, Logic |
Contents | Natural and physical sciences | People and self | Philosophy and thinking | Religion and belief systems | Social sciences and society | Technology and applied sciences |
Portals | Science | Biography, Personal life | Philosophy, Thinking | Religion | Science, Society | Technology and applied sciences |
Most of the higher-level discussions probably will take place at pages such as the following.
Many of the described tasks already are underway or are about to begin. This improvement drive is just another way to help communicate what can be accomplished and enlist broad-based participation. Feel free to post your comments here, or anywhere else you like. Happy editing! :-) RichardF ( talk) 04:32, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
The Contents and megaportals portal peer review is underway. RichardF ( talk) 08:27, 16 December 2007 (UTC)