Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Featured log/June 2007

Portal:Dinosaurs

I've read the criteria & I'm confident the Dinosaur Portal meets the standard. Considering the difficult subject matter, it is pretty comprehensive. It has a featured article section (The Wikiproject Dinosaur team has managed to write 14 Featured Dinosaur Articles so far with more to come), a selected picture section which showcases the best free use dinosaur images (Again, there's more pictures in the pipeline as artists make new pictures) & a DYK section which gives short facts about lesser known dinosaurs. In addition to that, the portal has a dinosaur topic section & to do section, which gives ideas on how to help Wikipedia's dinosaur articles (links are being added to this all the time). It uses randomisation, so is in no danger of being inactive or poorly updated, but just in case, both I & another member update the page regularly. There are no graphic faults & it encourages collaboration by providing links to topics, requested articles & wikiprojects as well as providing numerous links to dinosaurs that may interest other people.

In case you were wondering why there was no in the news section, this is because there is little information or findings in the dinosaur world that are easily accessable & the ones that are are few & far between. This would also increase maintainence & may cause the portal to be at risk of not being updated sufficiantly. However, we're always open to suggestions & it may be installed in the future. Anyway, see for yourself. Cheers, Spawn Man 05:28, 5 June 2007 (UTC).

• Support - As nom of course! :) Spawn Man 09:59, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
• Support, looks very good.-gadfium 06:13, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Thank you. :) Spawn Man 06:28, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
• Moral support as a contributor and a WP:DINO member; I'm also available to discuss any suggested changes. J. Spencer 02:50, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
• Support: The portal looks great, contains a lot of information, and meets the criteria. I made a few changes, but feel free to undo them to your likings. Cheers, [sd] 00:09, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
• Moral support as a WP:DINO member. Spawn Man has done a great job in organizing and preparing this portal. I didn't know that portals could become featured, so this is my first time commenting on one. I took a look at the other portals listed at the Featured Portal Candidates page, and this one is one of the few which renders correctly in my browser (the Israel and China portals look fine, but the Brazil portal comes out a page and a half wide on my browser; the Basque, Sustainable development, and Graffiti portals have boxes scattered all over).

Featured portals are supposed to be "Useful [...] cover[ing] a topic that is broad and interesting." The 1,000 genera which comprise Dinosauria, along with related topics, make this about as broad a topic as I can think of. I also think dinosaurs are extraordinarily interesting, but I may be biased, here. FPs are also supposed to be "Attractive", "Ergonomic", and "showcase [...] the best of Wikipedia's content in an area and encourages contributions to that area." I think it does this quite well. FPs are supposed to be "Well-maintained"; my understanding is that the portal is randomized so parts are automatically changed on each viewing. I think it meets all the criteria, but I'll only give moral support, as I'm an active participant of the WikiProject to which the portal belongs. Great job, guys! Firsfron of Ronchester 02:17, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Thansk guys! :) I've reverted a couple of your portal changes sd as they left a wide gap, but other than that, thanks for the support. Spawn Man 05:59, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

It could be a browser problem (I use Firefox). Anyway, happy editing, [sd] 12:46, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

• (Moral) Support as WP dino member, the portal looks great and thoroughly polished. cheers, Cas Liber | talk | contribs 04:57, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
• Effective Support as a non-WP dino member ;) Seriously, I believe this Portal perfectly complies with all the requirements to attain Featured status. Nicely designed, informative, helpful and allows a smooth perusal of related topics that are unknown to someone without expertise in the subject, like me. Fantastic work! Phaedriel - 09:45, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
• Moral Support - I feel it is a very effective and well-designed gateway into the subject matter of our beloved WP:DINO!

I wrote the above statement last night if anyone was wondering. Sheep81 06:06, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

• Comment The contents of the Related content section need to be separated, as it is mixing separate concepts. Consider moving WikiProjects into its on section and merging Collaborations with Things you can do.--cj | talk 03:20, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I've tried that, but it looked out of place in the To do section, hence the move to the related content section. IMHO, I think it classifies as related content. Will see what I can do, but I think it's probably fine we're it is... Thanks, Spawn Man 06:13, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - Looks great, but somehow it doesn't feel right.. maybe it's just a different style of approach. There doesn't seem to be a streamlined criteria on the inclusion of the contents. But it's nothing as long it's well maintained (which it is). I would do something like putting a note somewhere that says "To suggest a rotating article/picture, visit the discussion page or the WP:DINO project page" for the sake "encourage participation", because right now as a outsider, I feel hard to contribute to the content of the portal.
  • I think the "encourage participation" statement was to do with contributing to the articles & places featured in the portal, not the portal itself. Right now, there is no need for a suggestion page for selected articles, as we're only putting featured article on the portal, so unless we get a new featured article, it's pretty pointless. I wouldn't want to mislead any new users into thinking they'd be able to nominate an article, because technically they wouldn't really unless it's featured (and we pretty much simply add new FAs as we go.) Not sure about your "...doesn't feel right..." comment, but thanks for the suggestions. I'd prefer to have a suggestion page, but as I said, it's just not practical at the moment. People can always suggest new additions on the talk page, as they have in the past (IE, with the DYK section). Spawn Man 05:13, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
• Don't know if it's just me, but there's a big gap of space below "Selected Article" whenever the image in "Selected Picture" is too big. I would recommend to include another section below "Selected Article" (preferably "Dinosaur News"). It's very easy to balance (reduce Selected article to maybe one or two shorter paragraph, or maybe add one more DYK). Just a suggestion. Let's wait a couple more days to see if there are any other comments outside of the Dinosaur Wikiproject community. Aquarius • talk 16:21, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I viewed the largest picture we've currently got, the Ultrasaurus picture, and nothing unusual occured, even with the smallest FA article entry there as well, which is currently Albertosaurus. It's funny, because I'm using Internet Explorer! ;) What have you set your text size to? In regard to the "In the news" section; believe me, I've thought long & hard about adding that section in, but I don't think it's feasible. The most action the Dinosaur have gotten in the news recently was two new dinosaurs getting named a few weeks ago. Other than that, dinosaurs aren't featured very often in news reports, and when they are, to get the full story you usually have to belong to the journal which publishes it in order to write about it. This section would also take away the whole "self-maintained" aspect of the page, and if your basing its inclusion on the mysterious space you can see, then it may set the format off whack as well if you're the only one seeing it so far. As for other comments; CJ promised he would close the discussion if the week passed & no opposition had been gained. That week was two weeks ago & numerous members outside the dino team have commented as well. It's just getting boring now waiting for CJ to finally close this. If he's not closing, then indeed, this page should be declared inactive. Spawn Man 05:13, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Sustainable development

I propose this candidate meets the featured portal criteria. The portal peer review has been addressed. RichardF 02:22, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Even though it meets all the criterias, I suggest that it should be put on hold until more people contribute to the portal to represent different perspectives. OhanaUnited 06:10, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

How does this suggestion relate to the featured portal criteria? The portal already contains Wikipedia content from the full range of sustainable development topics. RichardF 14:18, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

• Support: I've made a few changes. The portal is informative, uses randomization, and fulfills the criteria. Happy editing, [sd] 22:39, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the support, although I'm not a big fan of the changes. The "More..." → "Read more..." changes break to two lines at 800X600. The browsebar inside the frame looks "yucky" to me. But hey, it's a wiki. ;-) RichardF 02:11, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• I changed it back. Here's a couple changes that I didn't undo:

  More quotes... → More...

  ...Archive/Noms → ...Archive/Nominations

Feel free to keep or remove these changes. Happy editing! [sd] 02:41, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I suppose at some point it would be nice for the criteria to come down one way or another on 800X600 displays – they should be supported or not. ;-) RichardF 02:54, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• Support This looks like an excellent portal. I like the randomization idea, and it looks like there are twenty of each section of the portal, which is great. Nishkid64 (talk) 14:46, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
• Support. Thoroughly excellent work, as always, from RichardF. I hope you continue to work on existing/new portals; they're incredibly useful when created as well as this. --Quiddity 17:22, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
• Support: I'm not particularly experienced at reviewing these, but I must say that it looks slick. From the testing that I saw set up for it, I am sure that everything was thoroughly considered. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 03:04, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Basque

I am proud to have created Portal:Basque last year. Quite a few users have demonstrated interested in it and contributed for its expansion and content selection. It has been through a peer review which proved positive and brought some good changes to it. I believe that it currently meets the criteria for featured status thus I'm giving it a try. Even if not promoted, I expect further valuable feedback that'll contribute for the its improvement. Thank you. :-) Húsönd 03:03, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Oppose: The portal appears not to have been updated recently. The selected article was last updated over a month ago, the selected picture in March, and the news last year. I think monthly updates are a minimum for featured status.-gadfium 06:15, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. I was hoping that a promotion would bring more users to collaborate with it. We have a selected content rotation system that requires that a few users must work together in order to select content (selection can't be unilateral).--Húsönd 13:26, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I think your selected content system may be too ambitious for the number of contributors to the portal. I suggest you make a list of the next half-dozen selections, and invite people to add more or rearrange the order. Most likely, your selections will not be controversial. You can then set up a queue for the next six months (maybe just set up the next month in advance).-gadfium 19:51, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

It is proving ambitious at the moment. When it was discussed and created, there was always a sufficient number of participants and the content rotation system ran very smoothly. But currently it's preventing things to go on. I'll come up with a solution.--Húsönd 02:37, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

• Support—interesting content, and an attractive colour scheme to boot; one minor point: why is "stubs" (in things you can do) red linked ... shouldn't it be "Creation Requests" or something ~ Anthony 10:52, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that. That template was created for WikiProject Basque, but I'll have a look at that minor issue later.--Húsönd 13:26, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

• Support Very nice, good desgin coupled with good content. Dfrg.msc 11:07, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support - Great portal! However, I'd like to see the "related portals" & "wikiprojects" sections moved below the "Things you can do" section so that all the associated related pages sections are together. Is there any chance of swapping this around? Cheers, Spawn Man 06:06, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
• (+) Beautiful work, Husond - informative and good looking. Might suggest moving the Wikiprojects section to where the Related Portals section currently is, and moving Related Portals above Associated Wikimedia. Just my opinion though :) Riana ⁂ 09:20, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Following yours and Spawn Man's suggestions, I have moved the "wikiprojects" and "related portals" sections to between "things you can do" and "associated wikimedia". Comments? :-) --Húsönd 22:54, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
    • Very nice - looks even better now... The "Wikiprojects" section looks a little bit lonely now though because it's not as profound as the "related portals" section - it might look a bit better if you moved it above the "related portals" section, but still below the "to do" section. If not, would still look lovely... :) Spawn Man 03:01, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
      • Yes, per Spawn Man, I think the wikiprojects section would look better above the related portals section - also, since the to-do box and the projects box are both about collaboration, they fit well together. Riana ⁂ 14:35, 14 June 2007 (UTC)