Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Featured log/February 2011

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 promoted by Cirt 03:30, 11 February 2011 [1].

Portal:Law of England and Wales

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Notified: WP:LAW, WP:ENGLAND and WP:WALES on 19 Oct. Renotified all three, plus UK Wikipedians' notice board, on 2 Nov.

Peer review: here, with no outstanding issues (as far as I can see).

Statistics for the {{Random portal component with nominate}} sections: NB I have been adding further articles whilst this nomination has been running as new GAs have been written; the original totals are in brackets)

  • Selected article: 29 (was 20) articles (8 FAs, 3 FLs, 17 GAs; 1 B-class (Welsh law, included despite its lack of GA status because of its importance to the topic as a whole))
  • Selected biography: 12 (was 8) articles (3 FAs, 9 GAs)
  • Selected case: 11 (was 10) articles (1 FA, 10 GAs)
  • Selected legislation: 14 (was 10) articles (1 FA, 12 GAs)
  • Selected picture: 15 (1 is an FP)
  • Selected quotation - 19, all sourced
  • DYKs – 10 sets of 5, all from the DYK archives

In addition:

  • Three random images in the intro: the Houses of Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Supreme Court
  • News – bot-imported from Wikinews, as well as some manually added stories
  • The usual links to related portals / WikiProjects / other Wikimedia / relevant topics / relevant categories / "quality content"

Thoughts / comments / recommendations / praise welcome! BencherliteTalk 11:32, 19 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment Support I've never reviewed a portal before so I'm not quite sure what I'm looking for, but I wondered why the images in the first introductory box is not aligned at the top of the text? It seems to leave unnecessary white space at the end of that section on my screen. I visited several times and each time was presented with relevant, well written text and suitable images, however the differing sizes of these components (particularly the selected picture) changed the layout each time - I'm not sure if this can be overcome? It's not an area I know much about, therefore I found sections interesting, but means I can't comment on whether it is broad and comprehensive in coverage. Just one minor thought - would it be possible to indicate on the selected legislation whether it is still current - I saw this on some but not others. Also from my ignorant viewpoit could "extant" in the lead paragraph be wikilinked or explained?— Rod talk 17:23, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for dropping by, much appreciated. In no particular order:
      1. I've changed "extant" to "still in force" in the intro
      2. I've moved the introductory image to the top of the intro page to see how that works for people - it transcludes a random subpage image, rather than having a direct image placement as in a standard article, and on different browsers there are "issues" with unnecessary white space in various places as a result. For example, on my browser here at work running Internet Explorer, the top of the text is now one line below the top of the image (which I think was why I moved the image down originally); I'll check on my Firefox home computer later and see how it looks there.
      3. On the same topic, I've also reduced the captions for each of the three intro pictures to omit links to the buildings and just give links to the institutions they house.
      4. I've added a few words here and there in most of the "selected legislation" blurbs to clarify the current status of the statute.
      5. As for making the size of the components standard, I'm not sure that I can do much more with the blurbs, which I've tried to keep at a standard length - some take up slightly more space because of a picture, which I've included where possible, but the impact of that upon the page layout will depend on a user's brower settings (particularly width and font size). The "selected picture" size variations are mainly because some are in landscape and others in portrait format; if there's a way to set the layout parameter for the section in such a way that the box size is the same regardless, that would certainly be useful. However, I think that some minor variation in layout depending on the random choice of subpages is inevitable, and is to be found in most featured portals.
    • Thanks once again. BencherliteTalk 18:54, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Thanks - the top images works better for me (firefox on large screen etc). As far as the selected image goes Ken Clarke 2010.jpg, Royal-courts-of-justice.jpg etc are obviously much taller than UK Supreme Court badge.svg, Old Bailey Microcosm edited.jpg etc. Have you tried setting 200px or similar? For the portrait ones you could try the "|upright" parameter but I don't know if these work in portal set up pages. All your excellent systems for selecting random images, text etc has made me think about returning to Portal:Somerset which I set up years ago but have never really done anything with.— Rod talk 19:34, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Meets the basic criteria, has a full catalogue of content, and gets bonus points for having useful content. Not a huge fan of the colour scheme, but these days most of the good themes have been taken by other featured portals so I won't count that against this nomination. Excellent work, all in. Support. AGK 20:52, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support agree that the existing color scheme is sort of, well, bland, and wouldn't mind one with a bit sharper color contrast, but that's just a matter of personal opinion, and it seems to meet all the requirements quite well. John Carter (talk) 22:06, 5 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you both for your supports. I've changed the colour to a darker one (a sort of dark lilac on my monitor) which I hope is less insipid... BencherliteTalk 10:11, 6 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment: I am seeing three editors commenting in support, with no opposes. Without objection, will likely close and promote, after leaving it open a little while longer. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 18:46, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's a shame that this is still open, more than three months since nomination, more than seven weeks since the last comment, and more than one month since promotion was said to be likely after "a little while longer". What's the problem here? BencherliteTalk 15:00, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OhanaUnited (talk · contribs) is free to promote. Otherwise, I will close as promoted in one week. ;) Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 13:29, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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 promoted by Cirt 03:38, 11 February 2011 [2].

Portal:Somerset

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Peer review: here, with no outstanding issues (as far as I can see).

Statistics for the {{Random portal component with nominate}} sections: NB I have been adding further articles whilst this nomination has been running as new GAs have been written; the original totals are in brackets)

  • 36 (was 34) Selected articles, all FA or GA
  • 13 (was 12) Selected biographies, all FA, GA or B
  • 9 Selected pictures
  • 96 (was 89) DYK hooks, most with free-use images, all from the DYK archives
  • 22 Selected Settlements all FA or GA

I believe this portal meets the FP criteria and am therefore nominating it, but would welcome comments on areas to be improved as there was little discussion at peer review.— Rod talk 11:38, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Looking very good, and most of my suggestions were implemented before peer review, of course. Just a couple of suggestions:
  • Articles 27 and 30 on the history and geology of Somerset - perhaps tweak the blurb to make it clearer that the articles are about the history or geology, rather than include basic material about the county that will already have been stated at the top of the portal page for readers.
  • The blurb lengths are a little uneven e.g. Portal:Somerset/Selected article/11 (94 words) compared to Portal:Somerset/Selected article/9 (over 500). The criteria say that "Article and biography summaries should not significantly exceed 200 words in length", but consistency is probably more important than word counts
  • The John Cleese bio Portal:Somerset/Selected biography/5 - seems odd to mention his father's original surname and his expulsion from school, but nothing else.
  • Get rid of the DYK list - whilst it's handy to have it when generating "possibles" for the DYK section, they're not quality articles or "recognized" in the same way as FA/FL/GA are.
  • In the Wikimedia box, linking to a Wikinews search page for "Somerset" would be good (not so useful for Wikiquote where "Somerset" is mainly followed by "Maugham"...)
  • Is the "Related Portals" subheading there for ACCESS reasons? Looks odd otherwise. Perhaps stick to either "Related portals" or "Related Portals" but not both(!)
  • No more relevant Wikiprojects? Perhaps include a "What are WikiProjects?" link anyway.
  • You win a prize for including my photo of Yeovil County Court!

Minor nitpicks, really - an excellent piece of work overall. BencherliteTalk 12:08, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Response Thanks for the helpful comments. I have tried to address most of them. I revised several selected articles as suggested shortening some & expanding others for more consistency of length. Should the selected settlements also be shortened? The one outstanding issue is about wikinews. A quick search there does find some relevant articles (although it does find Bristol news related to Avon and Somerset Constabulary), but I have no idea how to create the relevant category & or page and link to it.— Rod talk 22:20, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • A pleasure to assist. I have created Category:Somerset at Wikinews, added some {{editprotected}} requests to add the category to Somerset-related stories, and linked to the category from this portal. The length of the settlement blurbs wasn't so much of an issue for me, but if you now thought any were a bit long or a bit short, I wouldn't complain if you tweaked them. All looks good now, so I can say:

Support. BencherliteTalk 12:01, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm not sure that the content of this portal is engaging and expansive enough to warrant featured status. We expect our featured portals to be a useful resource that will further our readers' exploration of Wikipedia; but, with respect to the editors who have worked hard on it, I don't think this one is quite there. That might be because the subject of the portal is arguable more narrow than most; but on balance I remain underwhelmed. AGK 20:57, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm sorry you are underwhelmed, but perhaps you could expand on what you are looking for in a portal? I've just taken a look at some of the geography portals which have already got featured status & several have less that the 2,000+ articles within Somerset or are smaller in terms of area or population. Examples include: Portal:Gibraltar, Portal:Iceland & there are also several US states included. I would hope it would encourage readers' exploration of the county on Wikipedia - do you have any ideas about how I could change it to make you overwhelmed?— Rod talk 22:01, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree with Rod and John Carter about the range here. Somerset is a natural portal choice, as a significant sub-national area with centuries of history. Portals are meant to serve as introductions to Wikipedia's best content, and a look at the variety let alone the number of featured/good material used on this portal shows how well it does that. John Carter makes a good point about portals for cities with more limited geographical scope. I'd add my own comparison: if Portal:The Simpsons, about one TV show, can be featured and isn't too narrow in scope, why can't this one? BencherliteTalk 08:18, 7 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support - I see at least four portals for cities are already included as featured portals, and don't see how it fails to meet the requirements in any way. I might not ever really look at the portal myself, but I probably am not likely to actively seek out the Featured Portals for Indianapolis, Chicago, Louisville, or Houston anytime soon for the same reasons. It does seem to meet the requirements for those who would have use for such a portal, and that is probably the main thing. John Carter (talk) 22:12, 5 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support - This portal may be the best for an English county. It deserves to be much imitated by the others, most of which are far, far behind. Moonraker2 (talk) 23:18, 16 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment: It appears this portal has support as featured quality from three editors, above, with no significant oppose. Will likely close as promote, after a little while longer. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 21:39, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support - Per Moonraker, this may as well have been one of the best portals I have ever seen. It looks more than eligable for a Featured Portal canditade. Jaguar (talk) 20:01, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I will close as promote, in one week. -- Cirt (talk) 13:30, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.