Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Conservatism/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured portal candidate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the portal's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured portal candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The portal was not promoted by Cirt 16:08, 12 July 2011.

Portal:Conservatism
The Conservatism Portal utilizes bold and novel concepts in portal design:
 * It is integrated into the Conservatism Wikiproject. This allows members easy access to the portal, and visitors will be able to access Wikiproject content such as Recognized content, To-do, categories, etc. This also allows the portal page to be streamlined and clutter-free. The portal layout closely mimics that of the German Wiki, and the Wikiproject integration is inspired by German portals. Custom box- templates facilitate the look.
 * The portal is actually 2 portals in 1. During the month of February, which is Ronald Reagan's birthday, the portal automatically transforms into the Reagan Portal and displays exclusively Reagan content.

The portal is fully automated and requires minimal maintenance. It is documented to assist future changes. Content display is randomized and includes:
 * 21 selected articles, all FA or GA
 * 21 DYKs
 * 18 media: 14 pictures, 3 audio files, 1 video. 4 of these are Featured media.
 * Bot-delivered daily news
 * 12 months of selected anniversaries

The portal has been checked against the Featured portal criteria and is ready for your consideration. Lionel (talk) 10:07, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

--DavidCane (talk) 22:07, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Comments
 * The portal page seems to be a bit lacking in content.
 * The page itself minics the German wiki main page, and was designed to be extremely streamlined. The desired effect is to highlight the very best content and not clutter the page. Actually there is a wealth of content as accessed through the tabs. This design was inspired by discussion at the portal talk page. I know it's unconventional... only page hits will tell if it's a success.
 * The explanation of conservatism needs to be more in depth. I recommend you don't state the number of articles as it will become quickly out of date (in fact it already is).
 * There seems to be a problem with the counter then. Currently the portal page says that there are 2,400 articles but the total at the bottom right of the assessment table is 2,434. It may be that some of the assessments are incorrectly formatted so they are not be picked up in the category. -DavidCane (talk) 12:35, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * (Were the portal & table numbers swapped?) As I understand it, when an article is tagged it is immediately placed in the project category. However, the ass. table displays complex data and relies on a bot to supply it's data. The bot, I believe, runs daily. So, the number in the portal is real time, and the table has a slight delay. As it happens, currently the numbers are equal. Lionel (talk) 18:15, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I suggest you move the showcase tab before the main tab as it is more directly related to the Portal tab.
 * I recommend that you reduce/eliminate the large number of articles in the assessment table which have not been assessed for importance or quality - especially the FA and GA articles.
 * That is more a function of the wikiproject. A bot just finished a taggng run, so it may be a while before they're assessed. As with any wikiproject it all depends on the motivation of the members. I'm personally working on the FAs & GAs.
 * The current events link in the news section goes to http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Portal:Conservatism (which is empty) rather than http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Portal:Conservatism/Wikipedia
 * The wikinews link goes to http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/En (also empty) rather than http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page
 * The script for the selected article is poorly drafted. If you click on the edit button in that box it goes to the empty page Portal:Conservatism / Selected article / 13 (note the unwanted spaces) rather than Portal:Conservatism/Selected article/13
 * The same problem applies to the selected media box's edit link
 * Why does the read more... link in the selected media box go to Tear down this wall! rather than the article on the inauguration.
 * Thank you David for your comments. The portal will be that much better because of them. Lionel (talk) 01:58, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm.... I can't say that I like the fact that a visitor to the portal can slip into project-space so easily, without knowing they're doing so, just by clicking a tab. Articles and portals are for readers, Wikipedia space is for editors, and any change between the two areas should be made clear. Other portals use tabs at the top e.g. Portal:Speculative fiction to move between different aspects of a portal, to save having too much on one page, but all the pages are in portal space. By all means have a section showing off the featured/good articles within the portal's scope, and have it on a tabbed page if it keeps things clear, but in portal space.
 * Comments from Bencherlite

Incidentally, you say "This design was inspired by discussion at the portal talk page" but it obviously wasn't, because there's no history of any discussions there, nor could I find portal-related discussions at the WikiProject's talk pages. Where should I look to find such discussion?
 * The discussion is here. Portals are facing obsolescence. This configuration gives readers access to the project, where they can become more engaged in editing and collaboration, and it promotes the portal to members who may want to improve it. Yes the integration of the portal & project is unconventional, but if it creates a renewed interest in portals then all the better. – Lionel (talk) 03:11, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Nor do I like the fact that this is "two portals in one". If you want to have a portal exclusively about Reagan, to match Portal:Barack Obama, then make him his own portal. Deliberately narrowing the scope of the random pages in one month every year so that they are only about Reagan is not doing readers of this portal any service, and makes it appear very US-centric. Why Reagan and no-one else?
 * Why Reagan? Because there are 656 articles related to Reagan. This subject by a wide, wide margin has more articles than any other in conservatism. A Reagan portal might make sense.  – Lionel (talk) 03:11, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Which brings me to my next point - the portal is very US-centric. Only 1 of the 21 DYK entries is not about the US. Only 3 out of 18 pictures are not related to the US. By far the majority of the anniversaries are US-based; in fact, more of them should say "American" so that people know e.g. where the Moral Majority was founded, for example (June - I have tweaked this to show what I mean). Is the only possible thing to say about March that on 7th March 1962 "Young Americans for Freedom sponsor a rally which draws 18,000 people and has been described as the "birthday of the conservative movement"? Of the 22 selected articles, only 7 are not about US politicians or institutions, and the US politicians/institutions are largely drawn from the closing years of the 20th century onwards.  According to Conservatism, the term itself is much older than this, and is found in many other countries than just US/UK/Canada.  Why no place for Honório Carneiro Leão, Marquis of Paraná, a Brazilian Conservative and an FA article?  I found it with just a few clicks, so what else could be added to redress the balance?  What about articles describing different aspects of conservative thought and philosophy?  I think that the portal is seriously over-reliant on contemporary US conservatism and does not provide a balanced, worldwide view of the topic. It's essentially the "US Republican Party Portal".
 * The President should definitely be part of the portal. He was mis-assessed as "low" importance, and I was excluding low articles. I changed to "high" and added to the portal. Regarding US-centricity, the portal presents the highest quality content. Most of the FAs, GAs, DYKs and all of the Featured pics & sounds are US-related. The Annivs section could be globalized. Note that there is no List of conservatism dates so working on that area is arduous. The main goal of the Conservatism project is to promote articles: hopefully more non-US articles will get to FA and GA. The reality is that the best quality articles are US-related, and this is the pool that the portal has to work with. – Lionel (talk) 03:11, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Other minor matters as I'm here: (1) the news section is very hit and miss. Why are n:South Korean troops mistakenly attack passenger jet, n:Wikinews interviews U.S. Libertarian Party potential presidential candidate R.J. Harris (!!!) and n:Soviet human rights activist Yelena Bonner dies aged 88 Conservatism news stories? If people want general politics news, then they can go to Portal:Politics. I suggest just removing it. (2) The "Conservatism resources" section icons ought to be centered instead of left-aligned, for appearance's sake. (3) There ought to be a box linking to related Wikiprojects (which would mean that the Conservatism WikiProject comes out of the "resources" box), and another for related portals. (4) Portals often have a "topics box" giving a neat list of links to articles on people/institutions within the portal's scope e.g. P:ENGLAW. (5) Standard operating procedure in the blurbs at WP:TFA is not to give full names or full dates of birth / death. I might have other nitpicks if I went into more detail, but that's probably enough for now. Oh, two more things then... (6) "Irish" in the intro is a dablink and (7) DYK about Ronald Reagan Day: the 100th anniversary of his birth has passed, so the DYK needs to be reworded (actually the article needs to be updated too).

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on these points. I cannot support promotion of a portal in this state, although I'll give you a chance to reply before I decide whether to oppose. BencherliteTalk 17:48, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Oppose (1) Too US-biased; (2) too biased towards contemporary politicians; (3) too biased towards Ronald Reagan in February for no good reason; (4) too many articles about people, not enough articles about ideas; (5) portal layout is not designed to help readers (and, frankly, so what if that's how it's done in de.wiki, because you can't really compare the two; and it's not as though there's great popular support at that discussion for the German model); (6) more work needed in certain specific areas, as mentioned above and as yet unaddressed. Etc, etc. "This subject by a wide, wide margin has more articles than any other in conservatism. A Reagan portal might make sense." Then make a Reagan portal, and don't make out that Conservatism=Reagan. Saying that you have a pseudo-Reagan portal because of the number of articles about him rather makes my point about the over-dominance of contemporary US politicians in this portal. I strongly suggest that the project works on improving a better selection of conservative political articles, then presents a better balanced selection next time at FPoC. Improve the pool, then improve the portal - that's how to get a featured portal where the existing material is unevenly spread. BencherliteTalk 22:43, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose per, this portal is too US-biased, like WikiProject Conservatism which is also US-biased. JJ98 (Talk / Contributions)  01:16, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.