Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Featured log/May 2013

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 OhanaUnited 14:42, 1 May 2013‎ [1].

Portal:Sports

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Informed all 59 active sports related WikiProjects

Alright, so what I've done is broken Portal:Sports and games into Portal:Sports and Portal:Games because the previous format didn't really work, and it I was going to rebuild a major portal from scratch, it had better damned work. So this is the first of the two. It has:

  • 23 Selected articles, all FAs or GAs
  • 22 Selected biographies, all FAs or GAs
  • 20 Selected teams (like biographies, but for teams), all FAs or GAs
  • 32 Selected pictures, all FPs either on English Wikipedia, Commons, or (in most cases) both
  • 23 sets of five DKYs
  • 12 sets of selected anniversaries (one per month)
  • The standard suite of portal items (related content, categories, associated Wikimedia, things you can do)

My selection methodology is heavily based off of "not too much of one sport, not too much of one country". While I could add more teams to the selected teams, for example, the overwhelming majority of the ones I haven't tapped yet are association football related, and I would rather not have it seem like it's just a portal for association football and baseball (which has a few untapped biographies and a few untapped pictures).

I gave it a peer review, and added in a section. Having worked with Portal:Massachusetts recently, I think I'm a bit more experienced with the process. My sections are, while not 200 words a piece, shorter than last time, and I think all of the proportions are good. I know that this isn't going to happen, but if at all possible I'd like to be able to get any feedback ASAP, because I've got a very narrow slot (March 9th and some of the 10th) in which I am going to have several hours of editing time, and after that I'm not sure when I'm going to have another opening. Sven Manguard Wha? 18:26, 4 March 2013 (UTC) [reply]

Comments by AGK (addressed)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
This Portal looks good, and Sven has clearly spent a lot of time on it. I have a few suggestions and comments:
Initial impressions
  • The faint sky-blue outer background colouring does not have a top-border (above the lead section), but there is a left- and right-border of a deeper blue. This makes the page look strange, at least to this reader, and probably needs to be fixed.
  • If sport is already plural (except in North America), why is this portal named Sports? This seems particularly strange given that the mainspace article is called Sport.
Selected articles
  • Portal:Sports/Selected article/24 and onwards are not created. This isn't a problem (20 is probably enough), but 24–28 have had their pages created but no content added. The article overviews should either exist or not exist, in my view; it might confuse a contributor who tries to add some selected articles in the future. Update: By Sven's request here, I've deleted the unused selected article subpages.
  • Your selected articles are of good quality and the selection is properly balanced (not too many games from any one continent, although if pressed I'd say North America gets a few too many).
Other selections
  • Pictures have appropriate credits. All selections contain a good balance between the popular sports on different continents, making this Portal admirably pan-national.
  • It occurs to me that a parser function could very easily be designed for the DYK section, making the DYK subpages obsolete and meaning we could use the "From WP:DYK" section as the basis for the Portal's content. However, the DYK page as structured is packed with content and will certainly do the job.
  • Portal:Sports/Selected anniversaries may need more content. Five entries a month is not terribly many, though it is adequate for such a minor component of the Portal.
General

Thanks for the review. It's difficult to describe how frustrating it was to have had no one review this for so long, so I really do appreciate it. I've fixed the top border issue. As to your other concerns:

  • The reason it's called sports is twofold: First, it's a holdover from when the portal was called Portal:Sports and Games (the two were split), and second, as an American, it never would have occurred to me to name it Portal:Sport, because in American English Sport is not a plural. Theoretically it could be changed, however the logistics of moving a portal are immensely complicated, as I found out when I broke Portal:Sports and Games in two. Since I've rewritten all of the content in this portal essentially from scratch, the entire portal is in American English right now, so it might just be easier to modify the lead from Sport (Sports in North America) to Sports (Sport outside North America).
  • I don't like the idea of the parser function for DYK because I selected the entries for diversity of sport (it's how I could fit in Lacrosse and some other sports with lower coverage levels) and also for length of prompt (for left column right column balance).
  • Selected anniversaries is incredibly difficult to populate. I don't have a book of dates to work with and surprisingly there aren't any really good websites to draw from. The only easy way to make it longer would be to include athlete birthdays, which I avoided because I don't think birthdays are as important as other types of anniversaries.
  • I'm really glad that you notices the diversity in region. I tried to pull as many countries and as many sports in as possible, and included women's sports when I could. The reason that it's slightly North America heavy is that there is a disproportionate amount of FA/GA content from North American, and I can only mitigate that so much through the selection process.

Please let me know your thoughts on these matters and whether or not you support this portal's promotion. Sven Manguard Wha? 16:22, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • That's all very reasonable. Thanks very much for your prompt response, and again for your efforts in improving the portal. With your follow up, I cannot say I've found any way in which this portal falls short of the FPO requirements, so I am firmly in support. AGK [•] 19:27, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Recommendations by Cirt (addressed)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
  • Comment: Looks pretty good, there's only a few things I'd recommend:
  1. Might be nice to have 5 rotating images for the intro sect, like at Portal:Iceland/Intro.
  2. Did you know and In this month — these are better off balanced up top in the 50 percent columns sections.
  3. Categories — reformat categories to 2 columns, like at Portal:Society.
  4. Things you can do — reformat this sect, with icon on left side and standardized links, like at Portal:Dogs.
  5. Selected quote - Would be nice to add this sect to the portal, with 10 or 20 selected quotes, like at Portal:Theatre.
That's about all I can think of for now, but those improvements would really do nicely for this portal. — Cirt (talk) 16:15, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the review. I will respond to each point in the order you raised them.
1) I chose to have one image rather than a rotation because I wanted to make sure that I could represent as many sports in the lead image as possible. I purpose built that collage for the lead for this reason. I could build more collages of the same size, but I'm not sure if I could come up with four more of them, and I really don't want to have something that only represents one sport in that section. I will give this some thought over the next few days.
2) I originally had them in the columns, but the "Did you know..." section tended to come out longer than the "In this month" section, but not consistently enough that I could just add one more item to "In this month" and fix it. Sometimes it was several lines longer, sometimes just one. By doing them horizontally, I circumvented that problem. I also think that once I add in the quotes, having the three sections stacked like that will look quite nice.
3) Is there something wrong with three columns? With that many categories, I bumped it from two to three so that the section wouldn't dominate the page.
4) Will do shortly.
5) Will do shortly.
Thanks again. I'll ping you once I've done everything. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:04, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've done the last two, and explained the first three. What are your thoughts? Sven Manguard Wha? 18:40, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Much better! I'd suggest adding ten more quotes, and then reformat categories to 2 columns, like at Portal:Society. After that, it's pretty much done, IMHO. — Cirt (talk) 19:34, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Done and done. Sven Manguard Wha? 15:17, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Good enough for me. :) Categories still shows up in only one column in some browsers. That's why it's better to format it like at Portal:Society. But that's a personal preference on the part of the nominator, IMHO. — Cirt (talk) 16:02, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Close as promoted. OhanaUnitedTalk page 14:42, 1 May 2013‎ (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 OhanaUnited 18:43, 1 May 2013 [2].

Portal:Geography

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Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mountains , Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Science ‎, Portal talk:Geography, Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject South America, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geology, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Europe , Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Oceans, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography, User talk:Cirt , Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Antarctica, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Asia, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject North America , Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Africa. — Cirt (talk) 21:28, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Self-nomination. See archived peer review. I believe the portal meets the standards for Featured Portal status. Thank you for your time, — Cirt (talk) 21:22, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies in advance:

  • Selected articles should all be roughly the same size as each other, give or take a half line or so, in order to make sure that the random selection does not overly effect the shape of the portal itself. Therefore:
    • Selected articles 1, 5, 7, 21 through 25, 27, and 30 are all too short
    • Selected articles 8, 11, 16, and 16 are too long.
  • Selected biographies should also all roughly be the same size as each other. Selected biographes 2, 10, 14, and (to a lesser degree) 17 are all too short.
  • Selected quotes 1, 3, 19, 20, 21, 26, 28, 29, and 30 are all primarily focused on things other than geography. Of those listed, perhaps only 21 is passable.
  • The DYKs for PlumpJack Winery, Lympstone Commando railway station, Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, Craigiehall, Yorkshire Museum, opt-outs， John Grant's， Douglas County Courthouse， Schuster Building, beer museum, Ballard Carnegie Library, and Altes Stadthaus all strike me as being too distantly related to Geography to warrant inclusion.
  • Portal:Geography/DYK/23 is incomplete

That's quite a bit to do, but I think that it all needs doing before this can be called an FPO. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:04, 11 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to comments by Sven Manguard

Thanks very much for the specific suggestions, I'll get on some of these recommendations soon, and address it back here. — Cirt (talk) 05:44, 11 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  1. Selected articles = swapped out some where I could, elsewhere expanded text of others.
  2. Selected bios = swapped out the shorter ones.
  3. Selected quotes = swapped out those that were complained about, above.
  4. DYKs = swapped out those that were not up to the satisfaction of the reviewer, above.

Hopefully this is satisfactory, — Cirt (talk) 19:59, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still seeing a very large variance between the largest and smallest selections in some of the randomized sections. Take a look at this screenshot from Portal:Massachusetts. All of the items are, when the image and everything is factored in, almost the same size. This allows for a very consistent layout for the portal itself. The selected article on Karnataka is almost twice the size as the selected article Mount Tambora when it appears in the Portal:Geography main view, and that throws things out of alignment. I really don't care what size you choose, as I am notorious for using larger than traditional sizes for my article blurbs, what's important is that you keep all of the selections that are in the same "Selected ____" roughly the same size. If you give me a few days, I'll be able to update you as to if I can get more hands on in fixing it, but I can't make any promises now. I haven't looked at the other sections yet, I can do that later. Sven Manguard Wha? 19:34, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for offering to help fix this, I really appreciate that. I'll look into it a bit more as well and make some more fixes. Keep me posted here, — Cirt (talk) 19:42, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

On an unrelated note, would it be possible to use template:wide image for the panoramas? We'd need two separate format templates, but I don't think any of the portal syntax would have an issue with that. Thoughts? Sven Manguard Wha? 01:47, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you can try it out and update here with a link, as an example? — Cirt (talk) 02:01, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You're asking me to do something that requires actual knowledge of templates. I can't do that; all I can do is "borrow" existing code. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:11, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, there's an example at Portal:Oregon/Selected panorama. — Cirt (talk) 02:18, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Would you be willing to credit me as a co-nominator if I go in and even out all of the articles, and do some miscellaneous other repairs? Sven Manguard Wha? 05:47, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, that would be lovely, thank you for the help! — Cirt (talk) 22:09, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Huzzah! Now I can work extensively on it without feeling like I have a conflict of interest when I cast a support vote. Weird, entirely self imposed ethical quandary avoided! Sven Manguard Wha? 23:28, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, sounds great. — Cirt (talk) 04:50, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Standardize selected article lengths  not yet done
Standardize selected biography lengths  Done
Bring selected biography entries to 20  Done
Standardize citation style for quotes  Done
Fix image sizes  Done

The four bios I am thinking of adding are Richard Hakluyt, James Tod, Shen Kuo, and George Cressey. The first three are FAs, the fourth a GA (I'd prefer an FA if one can be found though.) Sven Manguard Wha? 05:09, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

All looks great, as long as we stay quality of WP:GA or above. :) — Cirt (talk) 22:20, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The image at George Cressey's article is non-free, and I can't think of either a good free replacement or a good replacement person. I've done the other three, and I'm going to punt the 20th bio down the road until the rest is done. Sven Manguard Wha? 00:06, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe we could find a different bio instead of George Cressey, one that happens to have an available free use image? — Cirt (talk) 01:51, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Changed the sizes of all of the images. Selections 25 and especially 26 and 27 really don't have good dimensions, but I did what I could. 3/5ths of the tasks I wanted completed are done. This is also Sven Manguard 22:17, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
With the addition of Fridtjof Nansen, we now have 20 biographes, all FA quality, and all within a third of a line in size from each other (on the smaller screen I'm using to do this). This is also Sven Manguard 22:42, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and while I origonally had no intention of claiming Wikicup points for this, after spending six hours reading through every FA quality bio I could find before getting to Nansen (why couldn't his name have been Fridtjof Ansen?!), I sure as hell am going to claim points now. :S This is also Sven Manguard 22:45, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

THANK YOU very much, things are looking a lot better, major quality improvements. Thanks again, — Cirt (talk) 23:51, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't (formally) have OCD, but I have enough of the tendencies that it makes portalcraft a natural fit for me. I only wish that I had more time to do it. Alas, RL commitments keep me away too often... Sven Manguard Wha? 05:21, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, agreed that portal quality improvement is fun stuff. — Cirt (talk) 14:54, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.