Self-nom. I created this portal on January 7, 2006 and have been the primary maintainer since then.
This portal displays a 'picture of the day' and 'article of the day' from the archives. These 'featured' materials automatically update every sixty seconds to show materials from a randomized list of past dates. When I periodically update the list of dates to include newer content I also re-randomize the order... helping to keep the featured article and picture set displayed every time the page is visited effectively 'random'. I consider this the primary strength of the portal, leveraging the archive of older 'featured' materials to provide a page which constantly updates with a wide variety of the best Wikipedia has to offer.
The portal also displays regularly updated links to all of the existing featured lists and featured portals, a list of recently 'promoted' featured content, and information on things to do and places to go for information on Wikipedia's 'featured' content. Currently it just links to background on featured 'topics' and 'sounds', but once some of those are promoted they will also be accessible from this portal. --CBDunkerson 23:20, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Very clever idea! A few minor quibbles, though:
- The introduction could stand to be a bit longer, particularly as the portal is prominently linked in places where newcomers might chance upon it. Perhaps some comments about how and why featured content is chosen?
- The POTD inner box should be centered within the outer box enclosing it.
- There's some extra whitespace above the "Featured content info" box that should be removed. I'm not sure what's causing it, though.
- The "Featured content info" box should be renamed to something more meaningful, like "Featured content selection" or "Featured content process". Why do some fields use "N/A" while others use "-", incidentally?
- Other than that, my only real complaint is that the featured list box isn't very organized, but I don't see how to avoid that if you want to show all of them. Maybe make it full-width and have the portal and process boxes in one column and the recent features box in the other? —Kirill Lokshin 23:53, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- The 'N/A' vs '-' is probably not that important a distinction, but 'N/A' is applied to things which will probably never exist and '-' to things which are just not used currently. For example, there are no pages / processes for 'de-featuring' pictures... because they aren't edited. Unless a picture is found to be a copyvio and deleted it remains 'featured' forever and we need no removal process... hence 'N/A'. We don't have a removal process for 'topics' either, but that's just because we don't have any featured topics yet... hence '-'.
- Spacing issues have been a continual problem because the large lists and image box cause the page to display very differently at different screen resolutions. Making it more nicely organized for one resolution invariably makes it worse for another. I'll take another look at that. --CBDunkerson 01:55, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment I don't think this qualifies as a portal. Moreover, I find it odd to feature something about other featured somethings. Although I originally supported the concept of a featured content portal, I now understand portals as being for Wikipedia proper - topic areas of Wikipedia coverage. The function it seeks to fulfil is necessary I think, and a single location is useful (rather than it being being met across several differant pages). I propose it be moved to Wikipedia namespace.--cj | talk 10:19, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- The Community Portal is in Wikipedia space so it might make sense to move this one there as well, but I think they still remain 'portals'... pages to present a variety of information on a single topic. I think I understand the basis of your concern though: arguably the 'Main page' is itself a portal, but no one would consider it for 'featured' status. Likewise, the Community Portal is very well constructed and maintained, but has never been considered for 'featured' status that I know of. These are 'fundamentals' of the site and thus not generally considered for 'featured' recognition despite their quality. Since the 'Featured content portal' is relatively new, little known, and largely maintained by me I tend to think of it as 'just another portal', but you are apparently looking at the function as something which ought to be more fully integrated into Wikipedia... a central page for all the 'featured' work. That'd be fine with me. I nominated it here because I think it is a 'good thing' <tm> which ought to be used/expanded by more than just me. --CBDunkerson 12:09, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- I also believe it's a Good Thing. Although the Main Page also provides access to featured content, it is impractical to expect it to do so fully. That's why I see this page as necessary. How about moving it to Wikipedia:Showcase?--cj | talk 00:22, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- I'd like to keep the name somewhat similar so that it remains consistent with Category:Wikipedia featured content, all the 'Featured Article/Picture/Portal/Et cetera' pages it links to, and so forth. There is a Wikipedia:Featured content page which was meant to fill the same function, but then abandoned when the creator found the portal. That might be a good spot for it. --CBDunkerson 01:06, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Would you mind me doing so? We could link to it from the Main Page too.--cj | talk 07:14, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Okay, I've moved it into Wikipedia space. It's no longer a portal.--cj | talk 07:34, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Oppose this portal doesn't link to any important featured content pages. for example this one. Tobyk777 06:53, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]