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Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Failed log/November 2009

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured portal candidate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the portal's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured portal candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The portal was not promoted by Cirt 09:54, 29 November 2009 [1].

Portal:London Transport

[edit]

Previously nominated in October 2006, when it was Portal:Tube, the scope of the Portal now covers all transport in the Greater London area. The associated Wikiproject, WP:London Transport, has 12 featured articles/lists and 12 Good articles and the portal currently receives around 3,000 visitors a month, making it more popular than some existing featured portals.--DavidCane (talk) 01:26, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose for now. Good work overall but a series of issues that need to be worked on.
  • First and foremost, I strongly suggest converting this to a more dynamic format where selections are randomly displayed using various MediaWiki tools. See Portal:Connecticut for an example. Way too often, portals requiring timely updates end up outdated by months.
    • We prefer to have a single article for each month rather than a random one from a set. The portal now uses a queue to set-up a number of these in advance for automatic display. Selected images will employ the same method shortly. --DavidCane (talk) 02:27, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • The icons in the London Transport News section aren't really needed, and they make the whole side bloated.
  • The "Vote for next month's selected article" should be removed and instead linked from its respected /Archive.
  • Why is Superior Content in title case but the rest of the section titles in sentence case?
  • No news, biographies, et cetera?
    • There is a news section. If you mean a link to wikinews - there isn't one because it wouldn't generate sufficient variety.
    • Whilst there are some articles on notable personalities linked to the topic, there is no biography section because there are not really enough good ones to provide sufficient variety. --DavidCane (talk) 02:27, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

–Juliancolton | Talk 01:51, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose per Juliancolton. A couple of suggestions: File:Clapham Common Tube Station Platforms - Oct 2007.jpg, File:London , Kodachrome by Chalmers Butterfield edit.jpg, File:Tower bridge London Twilight - November 2006.jpg. Durova366 06:40, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Using rotating contents is unwritten rule because too many portals are being neglected after promotion. To prevent gaming the system, this is why we want to see rotating contents. OhanaUnitedTalk page 04:09, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • The featured portal criteria, which has not changed significantly for three years, simply says "well maintained" and "updated regularly" not using automatic rotating content. If rotating content is required it should say so specifically.
    • To my mind a portal set to rotate content automatically is less likely to be regularly maintained than one where changes are made monthly. For example, the Connecticut Portal offered as an example above, is an excellent portal, but it is fully automatic and hasn't had any new content added since September.
    • While there is nothing wrong with automatic randomly generated portal content, there is nothing to encourage the maintainers to make updates and add new content. Such a portal could become stagnant with time, whereas a manually updated featured portal requires greater commitment from its maintainers to retain its status.
    • With regards to failure to maintain a portal after promotion, the solution is simple: the guidance states that if a featured portal is in need of maintenance and has not been updated for three months it will be summarily de-listed. I would say that automation of the sort you propose to avoid the need to update regularly is "gaming the system" not the use of manual updating.
    • Automatic portals are also less likely to encourage users to return to the portal to see the latest new article or new picture on a regular basis, because, if it is part of a random set, they are unlikely to see that it has been added or to know that it will be updated at a specific time.
    • There are plenty of existing featured portals which do not use automation, for example, Architecture, Constructed languages, Biography, Weather, London and Trains.--DavidCane (talk) 22:54, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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