Wikipedia:Portal peer review/Ancient Near East/archive1

Portal:Ancient Near East
Hi, I'm looking for feedback on a new portal for the Ancient Near East. Any comments or suggestions would be welcome!

Categorystuff (talk) 17:57, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe should we create specific portals about mesopotamia, phenicia, ancient Anatolia, etc… Therefore the Ancient Near East portal wouldn't be saturated by too large an amount of articles. Alexander Doria (talk) 13:50, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * There was so much interaction between all the groups in this area, that I think even if there were different portals for each geographic area, there would still be a need to have a central point to put it all together. IansAwesomePizza (talk) 00:40, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * But I don't want to dismantle the Ancient Near east portal. We should keep it as an introduction to the other portals. Besides even if there were a lot of interaction in this area, the hitites, the sumeriian, the phénicians and the Elamites were such different people, that they could claim for a portal each. Alexander Doria (talk) 09:47, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I do agree, but I'll probably leave the other portals to other editors. One of the problems is that this area attracts so much Fringe and Nationalism that there are very few articles that can be used in the "selected articles" section. The editors who make nonsense of so many of these articles are very agressive, so that it is nearly impossible to make the articles presentable without getting burned by a cabal of extremists and/or entrenched wiki-lawyers. IansAwesomePizza (talk) 18:47, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Giggy comments
 * The portal is currently really wide on my screen, as in I have a left-right scrollbar at the bottom. My resolution is 1024x768, which is pretty standard.
 * ✅ formatted the portal on a smaller screen


 * I'm not a fan of shortcut portal links (though others are... your call).


 * The map image on the Ancient Near East article would be good for the intro of the portal.
 * ✅ I was thinking of using an icon for the intro, but the map makes good sense too.


 * Can the topic box be made smaller.... it's massive and takes up so much of the portal. Ideally you'll have most of the main content (once you've scrolled down past the intro) on the one page... see Portal:Music of Australia for a random featured example.
 * The ANE covers a *lot* of different groups and people all interacting with each other, and the chart is a way to show all the key topics in context with each other, in one central place. I really don't want to reduce the size of the chart just for the sake of its size, because I think it's a useful tool for the ground it covers.
 * ✅ put topic box on a separate tab

giggy (O) 09:53, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, work on these things, expand (as in, get more) selected content... looking good for me!


 * Thanks, IansAwesomePizza (talk) 21:14, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Comments by John Carter
 * Agreed that the width is a bit much, as I have the option of scrolling to the side as well, which I generally don't have, and it could be a bit offputting to some viewers. If there would be any way to reduce the width, it would probably help a lot.


 * Currently, the portal only seems to use one selected article. I think it would be at least possible to split that into two articles. The standard break-down is between biographical and other kinds of articles, but other options could be used as well.
 * There really aren't enough substantial biographies in the ANE for a biography section. Even for people who've done something notable, little else is known about them (e.g. En-hedu-ana the earliest known author, Mursili I the conquerer of Babylon)


 * The size of the timeline is also a question. It is very long. I'm not myself entirely sure how to reduce the size, but if it would be possible it would probably help.
 * I think the timeline chart has to be sizable to accommodate all the (otherwise confusing) interacting groups. I suppose I could reduce the text size, but I'm not sure how small I can make it and still be readable on most screens.
 * ✅ put topic box on a separate tab


 * No other real reservations, though. John Carter (talk) 13:02, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, IansAwesomePizza (talk) 21:14, 17 June 2008 (UTC)