Portal talk:Scotland

Historical Figure
Hello, I am trying to work in a page on this noteworthy artist from Scottland, and have just made this page. Sir William Fettes Douglas Perhaps you could help keep it up and put it in the proper place within the Scottish portals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Watches-Crows (talk • contribs) 20:37, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Top Menu
"Culture . Geography . Health . etc...", should also include a link to the Education in Scotland page given it's such a significant part of what makes the Scots/Scotland distinct. Tartanperil (talk) 05:34, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Scotland, a nation?
Is Scotland really a nation or are only the scottish people a nation? --Camaeron (talk) 17:35, 14 March 2008 (UTC) Perhaps someone should make sure it conforms to the actuall Scotland page... --Camaeron (talk) 17:36, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Scottish National Antarctic Expedition 1902–1904
I'm doing a lot of work on this article, developing a former stub. I'm not finished yet, but maybe the portal would like to consider it as a geographical project? I also intend to complete the abandoned biographical article on William Speirs Bruce. Brianboulton (talk) 09:18, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Culture de l'Écosse
The article on the Culture of Scotland in the francophone Wikipedia was recently labelled a featured article (article de qualité). If anyone reads French and cares to check it out:


 * fr:Culture de l'Écosse

Most of the sources used to write the article appear to be in English, so it might be a candidate for translation, at least some portions of it could. -- Mathieugp (talk) 03:02, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Edinburgh Meetup - This Saturday
A meetup will be held in Edinburgh this Saturday, October 1st. Currently just an informal meet in a pub, but hopefully we can make an event of it. This social is being set-up to coincide with Fæ's finalization of the recruitment of a for Wikimedia in Scotland coordinator (6 months full time). So this meetup will be of great interest to anyone interested in this post. Details here; please sign up if you are interested. All welcome. Sorry about the short notice. --James B 15:58, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Working link: here. Jonathan Oldenbuck (talk) 11:51, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Clans of Scotland project layout change
I have radically changed the Wikipedia:WikiProject Clans of Scotland layout. The blueprint I used was that of WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology. As you can see the project has a neat set of tags that link the project into different sections. I added an extra tab to link its talk page as I felt the tabs could lose some inexperienced users who just enter the project to ask questions (tabs rather annoyingly have separate talk pages). It looks rather nice in my view, and somewhat more professional. Any thoughts? (if so, please post at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Clans of Scotland). Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 09:16, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Andy Murray
I notice there's no mention of Andy Murray in the news section, just the usual litany of stabbings a la Reporting Scotland. To quote John McEnroe "you cannot be serious!!!"--MacRùsgail (talk) 15:11, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

New Edinburgh Meetup
Since there were two fantastic meetups in Glasgow this past year, attendees at the last meetup agreed would be a good idea to host the next Wikimedia meetup in Edinburgh. Details are now available on the event page - the meetup will take place on 27 October at the Malt Shovel Inn, which is very near Waverley station so we hope will attract some Wikimedians from Glasgow and elsewhere nearby! Very much hope to see some new and old faces there. ACrockford (talk) 19:03, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

ScotWiki Mailing List
Wikimedia UK have launched a ScotWiki mailing list to help encourage more Wikimedia events in Scotland and hopefully to establish greater contact between Wikimedians throughout the country. You can sign up here - join if you want to learn more about Wikimedia events or projects in Scotland, to promote or organise your own, or to join in general discussion! ACrockford (talk) 18:14, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Red links
Is this portal still being maintained? Selected article & quotes are both currently redlinked. Additionally the news has not been updated since February. Espresso Addict (talk) 09:12, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
 * No, no articles have been selected all this year. It would be better to switch this to Random portal component, I think. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:41, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I used to maintain it regularly but have been quite inactive for a while now. I've just started to upgrade it to auto-update with random content selection etc.So far I've completed selective introduction transclusion for the main intro box so that will remain accurate to the current page content. Got to get my head round the various templates involved before I proceed much further -- Cactus.man  &#9997;  18:23, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Notice from the Portals WikiProject
WikiProject Portals is back!

The project was rebooted and completely overhauled on April 17th, 2018. Its goals are to revitalize the entire portal system, make building and maintaining portals easier, support the ongoing improvement of portals and the editors dedicated to this, and design the portals of the future.

As of May 2nd, 2018, membership is at 60 editors, and growing. You are welcome to join us.

There are design initiatives for revitalizing the portals system as a whole, and for improving each component of portals. So far, 2 new dynamic components have been developed: Template:Transclude lead excerpt and Template:Transclude random excerpt.

Tools are provided for building and maintaining portals, including automated portals that update themselves in various ways.

And, if you are bored and would like something to occupy your mind, we have a wonderful task list.

From your friendly neighborhood Portals WikiProject. Hope to see you there. Sincerely,    &mdash; The Transhumanist   07:44, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Suggested change to portal box-header colour
Template:Box-header/28W appears to be WCAG 2 AAA accessibility compliant, but is a little darker than the blue currently in use in this portal. Would you consider checking whether is is suitable for your purposes, and using it directly instead of as a subpage if it is OK? Cheers, &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 19:11, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi Peter, I think the original intention was to approximate the colour used in the Flag of Scotland (the Saltire), which I think is entirely appropriate for this Portal. The exact colour used in the saltire has never been formally defined and has varied significantly through different shades of blue over the years. Historically, the blue used in fabric dyes for the union flag tended towards "navy blue", probably for durability reasons, and this spread into use for the Saltire. More recently, public opinion tended to favour a lighter blue, resulting in a petition to a Committee of the Scottish Parliament in 2003. This led to a committee recommendation of Pantone 300 as the optimum shade of blue for the Saltire. (The Union Flag is Pantone 280 - see: Flag of Scotland). Since then Pantone 300 has become widely adopted, so I think it's use for the box header colour is appropriate. The blue in Template:Box-header/28W is too dark, almost navy blue, and would not be appropriate I feel. Also, the existing blue in Portal:Scotland/box-header is a good approximation of Pantone 300 but not quite accurate. A more accurate Hex conversion is #005EB8, so I will update that in due course. Cactus.man   &#9997;  17:43, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
 * That seems likely to have been the reason behind the choice. I am just slightly concerned that a large number of portals are using colour combinations that are poorly accessible for people with visual problems. Scotlend portal is far from the worst, but it was one of the closest to what may heve been an acceptable alternative. No matter, lets see how it goes. It may meet the slightly less stringent AA criteria. Cheers, &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 18:30, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Peter, I've just run it through a web based accessibility checker for colour contrast compliance. The revised colurs of #005EB8 (background) and #FFFFFFF (foreground) give a contrast ratio of 6.38:1 which is WCAG AAA compliant for fonts above 18 point and AA compliant for fonts above and below 18 point. Hopefully, that's still an acceptable result for use in the portal. Cactus.man   &#9997;  23:44, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Update: One of the web based checking sites has an option for suggesting colour adjustments to achieve better compliance. It suggested #0058AD for the background colour to achieve a contrast ratio of 7:1 and full AAA compliance. This is virtually indistinguishable from the preferred Saltire colour of #005EB8 (to my eyes at least), so seems to me to be a good compromise. Barring objections, I'll change the local box-header accordingly. Cactus.man   &#9997;  00:08, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Iona subdivisions
Modern Hy (Iona) by John Bartholomy 1874.jpg be? They are smaller than civil parishes, since the whole island does not even constitute one civil parish, but belongs to one. The order of magnitude would be like townlands, but those seem to exist in Ireland only, not Scotland?
 * Ceann Tsear *Sliabh Meanach *Machar *Sliginach *Sliabh Siar *Staonaig]]
 * After reading the headings of this discussion page, I withdraw this question here and take it elsewhere. Thank you.--Ratzer (talk) 20:07, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Proposal to delete all portals
The discussion is at Village pump (proposals). Voceditenore (talk) 13:11, 22 September 2019 (UTC)