Portal talk:Organized Labour/Archive 2

Archive
Hi folks. I archived some threads that seemed closed to me. If I archived something that you feel should still be here, please feel free to move it back here. Cheers. H aus  Talk  15:07, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Max number
I think we need to be careful about the "max" parameters. My understanding is that it can't be larger than the number of sub-sub-pages. But let's say that we have 15 "DYKs." Max should be set to 15, and seed should be a prime number (but not 3 or 5, because those are primes which go into 15) to help keep things randomized. But if someone adds two new "Did You Knows", then the max needs to be re-set to 17. I may be wrong on this, and if so please—someone correct me. Perhaps part of the instructions for adding to Featured Picture, Featured Quote and Did You Know sections should include instructions on editing the main portal page as well. If not, then we need to set up some sort of monthly or bimonthly or semi-annual check of the main portal page to make sure the "max" and "seed" variables are set properly for our ever-expanding list of sub-sub-pages. - Tim1965 02:54, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
 * You're right about the "max" number matching the number of articles. It's a good idea to add a note about updating the number when you add a sub-page. The only thing that happens if it isn't updated is that the number generated never gets high enough to reach the new entries. I also like your 'scheduled troll-through' idea, but would be skeptical about the implementation...--Bookandcoffee 03:43, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree: I don't want to rely on human beings to update things. Dead portals litter Wikipedia, and the whole point of the labour movement is to free people from work so they can do other things. :) I'll keep thinking. - Tim1965 13:43, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

"This Month in Labour History" suggestions
Feel free to edit the page, or leave a comment here.

Instructions
Just thought I'd give people the code here. If you have a labor quote to add, click on the "Add * More" link in the "Featured Quote" box. When you are taken to the Featured Quote page, click on the next blank portal link. You'll be taken to an editing page. Insert this code:

"And here in the quotation marks goes your quote."

-- Firstname Lastname. You don't have to add the code if there is no image to add. But it's nice to visit the Wikipedia page for the person being quoted or the event being cited, and grab the image from there. To keep things looking the same and fitting in the box on the Portal's front page, I suggest keeping the 120px code so that images stay 120 pixels wide.

There are lots of good labor quotes out there! Go grab 'em! - 1965Tim 02:03, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Discussion
How does the Featured Quote rotate? It is automatic, or does it have to be changed manually? If manually, who can change it? - Tim1965 14:58, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Topics
Feel free to edit the page, or leave a comment here.

The color red
Question (raised by User:Carabinieri): is the use of the color red too POV? Haus42 15:09, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I like red, but I've used it before (Labor unions in the United States), and it was exactly 18 minutes before the red was "drop glaring red that seriously distracts" :) So, any color is OK with me. I think people might be more surprised if the color wasn't red. --Bookandcoffee 17:01, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
 * My thinking is that it may be appropriate in a portal, though it may not be on an article page. Haus42 17:42, 25 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Congratulations on the new layout. Just one comment. Is it just me or do I need new glasses? I find having black text against a brown/maroon background is really difficult to read and the colour for the hyperlinks is exceptionally difficult I find. But don't change the red - it's the colour of the labour movement in much of the world. Dave Smith 21:20, 26 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi Dave, thanks for the feedback! I've looked at the portal now in six  browsers on four computers and haven't seen what you're talking about.  Is it the whole page or just part?  Also, it might help to know what kind of browser are you using.  Cheers.  Haus42 18:40, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi Haus42. I was talking about the background colour and the text in the introduction headed 'ORGANIZED LABOUR'. The background colour for me is dark maroon and the text is black with the hyperlinks in a pale shade of blue. I am using Firfox 1.5.0.1. Have I described this well enough? Dave Smith 00:26, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Did you know?
Up till now we have only been using "DYK" entries that were featured on the main page at some point. Do we want to make this a more formal requirement? Or do we want to set up a small review process here? I'm asking because Portal:Organized Labour/Did You Know?/47 was just added, and I think we would be better off talking about this now rather than after more DYKs from the general article space start appearing.--Bookandcoffee 01:46, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I thought DYK was for items which had made it onto the "Did You Know...?" section on the front page of Wikipedia. My assumption was that our DYK section had a three-fold goal:  1) Make people visiting the Organized Labor Portal aware of content which Wikipedia had recognized, and 2) Encourage authors to write high-quality articles which could get recognized by Wikipedia and hence make it onto the Portal as well, and 3) Encourage more authors to participate in "behind the scenes" Wiki stuff (like submitting articles to DYK) rather than just authoring them. I would argue against "just any fact" making it into DYK.  First, the labor movement has trillions of great facts, but few of them are in well-written articles or were added to an article which has been significantly expanded (one of the DYK rules).  Second, if DYK were open to any fact, current events which have not yet fully played out (such as #47) would make it onto the Portal. But they might not come off, leaving readers with the impression that the current event is current when it is not.  Third, submitting to the "DYK" Wiki gods helps ensure that the article and DYK hook are of high quality (e.g., well-written, citations, in-line citation for the hook itself, NPOV, etc.).  This helps ensure that the content of this Portal remains high-quality as well.  Fourth, the best way to keep a Portal fresh is to automate it as much as possible. There are solutions to the three aforementioned problems, but they all involved real people actively looking at content on the Portal. If one of us gets a life, then the Portal goes stale and content quality suffers. Shifting responsibility for ensuring quality content to the DYK Gods alleviates Organized Labour participants from that burden. So, therefore, I'd argue against "just any content" going into this Portal's DYK section. - Tim1965 14:07, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I see advantages to both approaches, but, for me at least, Tim's seems better because it requires less work (at least less thought) on our part. Cheers.    H aus  Talk   14:21, 1 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I will play devil's advocate against myself, and say that admitting anything to DYK has certain advantages. First, a great labor-related fact may be added to an article which otherwise gets no expansion.  Opening the Portal's DYK section to such facts is the only way to get such items noticed.  Second, the Portal can and will act as a site for all labor people, and as such current event DYKs can serve to alert the larger labor community to emerging issues or ongoing campaigns, negotiations, etc.  Third, Organized Labour is a developing Wiki community, and doesn't have a lot of high-quality articles yet.  Why deprive the Portal of interesting (even vital) information because of the "youth" of this Wiki community?  Fourth, a DYK hook can be as much a goad to others (so that they might help improve an article) as "Article of the Day," and yet the Portal has put no restrictions on what can make it into AOTD. - Tim1965 17:58, 1 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm of a similar mind in that running our own DYK vetting program has merit - however, I agree with Haus, and I think Tim's point about it requiring live bodies to look at content is the pivotal issue. The project has a good number of people involved, but only a handful af active WP/Portal space editors and I think the DYK would end up languishing the same as Internationalisation and a few other sub-projects. And I really like the fact that the review done at the DYK project has no vested interest in LaboUr, and so avoids conflicts that we would have difficulty avoiding. As for current event DYK, I'd be more tempted to have an "In the news" or "Current Events" section separate from the DYK, but again, that's even more editing intense. (Only partly related - could a current tidbit be preset with an expiry date?)--Bookandcoffee 20:47, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Tied into this is the worry we have about inviting labo(u)r unions to write Wiki articles about themselves. That concern is that unions may end up violating NPOV and engaging in hagiography about their leaders. I would suggest that allowing "just anything" into DYK means that not-so-level-headed contributors might treat DYK as a "message board" for union issues—pushing the campaign-du-jour, some leader's political agenda, or the gripes of out-of-power individuals. How many of us have seen unions issue press releases about issues, and never follow up? How many of us have seen unions announce organizing campaigns, which never get mentioned ever again or produce membership? How many of us have seen unions announced "campaigns" on this issue or that, and the effort appears only on paper? You get the point. I worry that DYK would turn into a politicized aspect of the Portal. Some Portals have an "In the News" section, or a section which lists recent updates (which tend to be newsworthy). I would be much more willing to support that. - Tim1965 17:15, 2 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, unless there's more to discuss, I'm going to remove #47 and reset the counter. I'll also put a bit of a notice on the Portal:Organized Labour/Did You Know? page about the relationship with the main page DYK; and copy this section to the talk page - in case someone wants to pick up the conversation down the road.--Bookandcoffee 15:41, 5 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Done.--Bookandcoffee 04:45, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

"On This Day"
Wow! The Cripple Creek miners' strike of 1894 made the "On This Day" feature on the front page of Wikipedia for June 6. Pretty cool! - Tim1965 00:57, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Floating pictures on the portal -- again
I see that there's something wrong with coding again, so that images are floating all over the place. Is this something that article authors are somehow causing, and can help alleviate? Or is it something else? - Tim1965 12:51, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Looking at Portal:Organized Labour/Featured Picture it appears that some of the photos are "centered" and others are not. I'd hazard a guess that this is the culprit. I converted a couple of them, but wasn't sure how to proceed with some that are images from the commons. Changing them there might have other ramifications unrelated to us.--Bookandcoffee 16:55, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

AOTD problems
I see the I.W. Abel article is playing havoc with the AOTD code again. Is it the images which do this, or some other aspect of the article? - Tim1965 17:39, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Weird. I changed the AOTD to trade union, just to test, and it appears that the Abel article is indeed the culprit. No idea why, but maybe your guess is right, maybe the image partway down the page breaks the formatting. I'll tinker a bit more.. maybe I can break something else while I'm here. :)--Bookandcoffee 20:09, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

More troubles with the AOTD
Albert Shanker is the causing the trouble today. (I guess Woody Allen was right: He would cause the end of the world!) When I look at the portal main page today, everything—picture of the day, quote of the day, etc.—is dumped into the AOTD section. - Tim1965 13:12, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Something amiss on the portal page
There's something amiss on the Portal entry page. I don't think it's the AOTD throwing it off, since that article has no infoboxes or pictures. Could it be the Picture o' the Day?? - Tim1965 13:07, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It was a common error -- a start box template without an accompanying end box. Cheers.    H aus  Talk   17:04, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Portal change?
Did the coding for the portal change? All I see now is the header and the main article, no "DYKs," no feature quote or featured image. Bummer. - Tim1965 17:22, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Good catch -- there was a problem in the Philip Murray article that threw everything out of whack. Should be all better now.  Cheers.   H aus  Talk   17:44, 29 May 2007 (UTC)


 * It's happening again, this time with the Walter Reuther article. - Tim1965


 * Got it. For future reference, the cause, both times, was a start box without a corresponding end box.  A {| without a |} or  would do the same thing.  Cheers.   H aus  Talk   01:13, 31 May 2007 (UTC)


 * So XHTML standards are being used? - Dave Smith 03:30, 31 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, yes and no. I don't think there's a single page on Wikipedia that verifies as strictly HTML or XHTML compliant.  That said, the only feature of the portal that's not widely used at Wikipedia is the "overflow:automatic;" style which makes the article of the day scrollable.  If I've missed your point, let's try again.  Cheers.   H aus  Talk   14:18, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

RSS Feed
I was wondering if there was anyway of developing an RSS feed so that unions could include this feed on their web sites. I was thinking, in particular, of having a link to key events "on this day" so that there could be a constantly changing list of historical events. Just food for thought ... - Dave Smith 23:04, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
 * It's a cool idea, and I would think fresh content would be welcome at some of those sites. You know, the ones where they were keeners for a while, and now the latest news is April 17, 2005.


 * I sometimes use RSS feeds for some of the pages here, like this one and the project page - but I wonder about two things. First, I haven't been able to find any current functionality that would feed from the Portal page. The only RSS feeds I see are found on the history pages; and really, even though the items on the portal page change everyday, it's just the links that change, and even those changes don't show up anywhere. So I think we'd need to wander over to ask the coding people/gods about this.


 * My second thought is that it opens up a really interesting channel for vandals and other crackpots. One could envision all sorts of odd/vicious things leaking through onto the union websites that piped in this "anyone can edit" info!


 * There is some (only some) discussion about RSS at WP:RSS--Bookandcoffee 17:51, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Your point about potential vandalism and oddball entries is important. I wonder if there is some way around that bearing in mind the nature of Wikipedia. I guess some tight overview of what was included in any RSS feed might have to be necessary. - Dave Smith 20:48, 4 September 2007 (UTC)


 * There is a somewhat related discussion going on at Flagged revisions/Sighted versions about providing a overview system so we can have versions of articles that are "sighted", that is, have been reviewed to at least be free of vandalism, and other such things.--Bookandcoffee 08:04, 5 September 2007 (UTC)