User:Bermicourt/Portal/Overview and Relevance


 * This is a translation of the German Wiki equivalent of WP:Portals. Of interest are the relevance ("suitability" or "validity") criteria and the vetting process that portals must go through if they don't meet that.

The role of a portal in Wikipedia is to systematically open up a larger complex of topics. The focus of a portal should be to present the contents of its subject area in an well-structured manner. There will always be interdisciplinary overlaps between portals. In many cases, portals are looked after and maintained by WikiProjects and are used by them to expand the subject area by creating and improving articles related to the topic.
 * Wikipedia portals offers an overview of portals by area.
 * The main page of the WikiProject responsible for all portals is WikiProject Portals with two central discussion pages for general portal questions and questions about individual portals.
 * The portal management page is the central coordination page at which the establishment and suitability (relevance) of new portals, name changes, restructuring or deletion of existing portals are discussed.
 * The portal review process is used to assess and fine-tune new or revised portals.

Relevance criteria
Portals should only be created for broader topics where incorporating all relevant links into a main article would be impractical. The broader the topic of a portal, the more potential editors there are to maintain it. Suitable topics for a portal include:
 * Continents and countries
 * Federal states, counties or cantons within a country
 * Capital cities of any country
 * Cities with at least 200,000 inhabitants in major countries or 100,000 in smaller countries
 * Established branches of science (i.e. those offered at many universities as a separate subject)
 * Major periods of history (prehistory, early history, antiquity, medieval history, etc.)
 * Empires in history (British Empire, Holy Roman Empire)
 * International organizations (e.g. EU, UN, NATO)
 * Larger art styles or music styles (e.g. Metal: yes, Death Metal: no)
 * Recognised sports (major international competitions, e.g. Asian Games, major international sports, e.g. Golf, or groups of similar sports, e.g. water sports, martial arts)
 * Large or well-known geographical or cultural regions of a country if a well maintained portal of the country already exists (e.g. Tuscany, if Portal:Italy exists; Normandy, if Portal:France exists, Black Forest and Lüneburg Heath if Portal:Germany exists)

Creating a portal
Any user who is able to format portals can build one. For cooperating and coordinating articles relating to a single topic, it makes sense to first create a WikiProject. However, portals are a useful tool in assisting project teams to have an instant overview of the coverage of their topic as well as flagging up wanted articles and articles for improvement, as well as achieving their primary purpose of 'presenting' the topic in a reader-friendly way. You can always ask for help in setting up and designing your portal at WikiProject Portals here.

Step 1 – Topic
 * Does your topic meet the suitability (relevance) criteria? If so, go to Step 2.
 * Are you unsure? Then pose a question on the talk page.
 * Is your topic not included in the suitability criteria above? Then gather interested editors and submit your topic proposal to portal management for discussion. To do this, submit a draft or structured article overview of the subject area the portal is to cover and demonstrate that the topic is large and important enough for its own portal. Such proposals need three committed editors ('overseers') who will oversee the portal and a majority of at least ten supporters.

Step 2 – Creation Phase
 * Create the portal in your user space (i.e. User:Name/Portal:XY) or at the construction area of the WikiProject Portals (Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals/Management/Portal:XY). Take note of the guidance for creation of portals below. As a small starting help there is a template. Further help may be obtained at WikiProject Portals.
 * Please enter it at the portal management page under "Portals being created" as well.

Step 3 – Go Live

Once all defects noted during the creation and review have been addressed, your portal can "go live".


 * Move it to portal space
 * Create the subpage Portal:Portalname/Info and enter all necessary information (see instructions).
 * Link it in the relevant section to Wikipedia Portals and on related portals.
 * Add a portal link to the main article for the topic using Template:Portal or it's sister templates in accordance with the guidance at How to add portal links to articles. There are no rules about adding portal links to other articles.
 * Categorize the new portal in accordance with How to categorize a portal.
 * Submit a short piece about the new portal to The Signpost.

Step 4 - Check For the final polish, put the finished portal into the article review process. Once the review is satisfactorily completed, the portal should receive a "Green" rating at the portal info page.

Portals which are considered to be of outstanding quality may be run for featured portals.

Content

 * Familiarise yourself with portal design by looking at related portals.
 * Keep the portal short - nobody wants to browse more than two screen pages.
 * A portal is not a collection of links for all articles on the topic, but should offer a well-structured overview.
 * If there are many featured articles in the topic area, select one, together with an image, to display in its own box, like that on Wikipedia's main page.
 * Boxes for "News", "New articles" or "Missing articles" need to be regularly maintained - if no one can be found for it, better to omit them. Sometimes this is also possible with a bot.

Useful basics

 * Elements of the portal that have to be regularly updated should be created as a subpage with an edit link in order to make it easier for editors to maintain them (e.g.   ).
 * In maintaining articles in the topic area of the portal it is recommended that the template   is used. See also: CatScan
 * A shortcut of the form P: (c.f. Shortcuts) makes the portal readily accessible.
 * To refer to a suitable topic portal, the link   can be inserted in the "See also" section of the corresponding article.
 * To facilitate reference to the overview pages Portal:Contents/Portals there is the text block  </tt>, which should be placed at the bottom of every portal.