User:Stephen Gilbert/Portal page survey

This was my survey of the state of our main topic pages around 2003.

This is my personal survey of the current state of the portal pages. Jump in if you like.

The portal pages are those big, general topics we link to from the Main Page, such as biology and history. They're meant to be good entry points into the database, but because writing a decent article on such large topics is a lot of work, most of them are not very good. Improving Portal Pages has a very old essay on the topic, and all of the points still apply.

A good portal page should be an article providing a general overview of the topic, with links to articles that treat the subtopics in greater detail. Link lists alone should be avoided; links should be embedded in prose paragraphs whenever possible. -

Philosophy and Mathematical and Natural Sciences
Astronomy and astrophysics - medium-length, fairly good quality writing. Should be divided into two articles, Astronomy and Astrophysics, with the former being the portal page. Still has a list of links.

Biology - medium-length, good organization.

Chemistry - definition plus a list of links.

Computer science - two short paragraphs, list of links.

Earth science - definition, list of links.

Mathematics - medium-length article, not bad but could use a little organization. Well-organized links to subtopics. Philosophy - Larry Sanger did some major work on this one. Long, lots of information. Needs more organizing. Focuses on Western philosophy, Eastern is left as a link to Eastern philosophy (Larry wasn't happy about that).

Physics - Quite good. Introduction, broad topic links well organized, conise history, "further directions" sectiong.

Statistics - Short article, no list of links. Could use expansion and more connections to the database.

Applied Arts and Sciences
Agriculture - Quite good, lots of introductory information. Could use some polishing.

Architecture - a few short introductory paragraphs and a long quote, short list of topical links.

Business and industry - redirects to business: short intro and list o' links.

Communication - a mess. I'm working on a decent article for this space, but it's slow going.

Education -

Engineering -

Family and consumer science -

Health science -

Law -

Library and information science -

Public affairs -

Software engineering -

Technology -

Transport -

Social Sciences
Anthropology -

Archaeology -

Economics -

Geography -

History -

History of science and technology -

Language -

Linguistics -

Mythology -

Political science -

Psychology -

Sociology -

Culture
Classics -

Cooking -

Dance -

Entertainment -

Film -

Games -

Handicraft -

Hobbies -

Literature -

Music -

Opera -

Painting -

Poetry -

Recreation -

Religion -

Sculpture -

Sports -

Television -

Theater -

Tourism -

Visual arts and design -