Wikipedia:Portal peer review/Environment/archive1

Environment
I would like to request for a portal peer review for this portal. OhanaUnited   Talk page   15:22, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Thoughts for peer review
Thoughts:
 * It looks great! Fantastic work.
 * The central question for me is, what differentiates an environment portal from a water, weather, earth sciences, or atmospheric sciences portal? In my mind it can only be that these other portals organize articles about wind or weather as objects of study, whereas the environment portal organizes articles about them as objects of conservation, objects under threat. For this reason I think it is not only acceptable, but necessary that the portal make this explicit. The most important way to do this is to establish the existence of these threats in the portal text. At present, the portal text works mostly to define "environment"--I think it needs to


 * 1) Define "Environment" (maybe from an ecological angle i.e. "space in which living things grow and interact" etc...
 * 2) Define key ecological threats. It'll be difficult to be concise about these. What, in just a few words, are the key threats? Climate change, Land use, pollution?
 * 3) Define the portal's purpose, which is not only to better understand what is meant by "environment," but especially to understand what issues arise from our impact on the environment.

Let me know if any of this makes sense? I think the portal is a great idea that will substantially improve accessibility to the facts about environmental issues. Keep up the great work. Cyrusc 18:17, 26 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi, Cyrusc. Here are some thoughts I had in response to your comments. Besides looking at which articles, pictures, quotes, etc., that are "Selected," the "Categories," "Topics," "Projects" and "Things you can do" sections usually are used to identify the scope, and emphasis of a portal. Writing "about the portal" in the portal would be a "self-reference," which isn't acceptable form, since portals are considered to be a portion of the encyclopedia, rather than a portion of the project. Expanding the Categories and Topics sections (with subheadings as appropriate) to cover the issues considered central to this portal would be a good way clarify the points you bring up. RichardF 20:27, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
 * p.s. What you're suggesting sounds more like "The Environmentalism and Conservation Portal" to me. If that's what you all really want, why don't you just go ahead and change the name. Then reorganize the content accordingly?  The current portal is "brand new" anyway, no one will mind...too much. :-) RichardF 20:36, 26 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, its a great looking portal - the related portals section is very comprehensive, important as the increasing number of portals is leading to some overlap betwen them as your reviewers have already pointed out. I don't think this is a big problem, what differentiates this portal is its focus, and the focus of a portal to some extent reflects the interests of the people editing it as much as its title, so I agree with RichardF, there is scpoe for a name change if you want it, good work sbandrews (t) 12:09, 27 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Yah, I noticed there's some overlap to other portals such as Portal:Sustainable development. I created this portal basically for WikiProject Environment but technically sustainable development is within the scope of WikiProject Environment as well so most likely I will keep the current name.  OhanaUnited    Talk page   10:50, 28 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Sustainable development's scope goes beyond the scope of environment. It's not a subset. They simply overlap.  The question then becomes, how do you plan on addressing the concerns raised by Cyrusc? RichardF 19:42, 28 June 2007


 * The following is a comment left on OhanaUnited's talk page regarding the portal.

I reviewed the portal. I think its very good: one of the best I've seen. I have to spend more time to see if I can find any problems with it, such as navigation, but so far, I'm impressed. Richiar 13:26, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I know, and I admit, that this portal overlaps at least 2 other portals (ecology and sustainable development). In fact, this topic is so broad that if you stretch things a bit, it falls into multiple disciplines (science, philosophy, business, laws & politics, etc.) I will be using the Scope of WikiProject Environment to answer Cyrusc's questions.

A) Define "Environment" (maybe from an ecological angle i.e. "space in which living things grow and interact" etc...
 * Topics that are covered in this portal include


 * 1) Conservation movement
 * 2) Environmentalism
 * 3) Environmental Science
 * 4) Sustainability
 * 5) Renewable Energy
 * 6) Waste & Waste management

B)Define key ecological threats. It'll be difficult to be concise about these. What, in just a few words, are the key threats? Climate change, Land use, pollution?
 * I will pick more selected articles to identify other key threats in addition to global warming and climate change.

C)Define the portal's purpose, which is not only to better understand what is meant by "environment," but especially to understand what issues arise from our impact on the environment.
 * The purpose of this portal is (almost reciting what Cyrusc said) to raise more awareness on the destruction of the natural environment, and also how people can do in their daily lives (such as changing some of their habits) to minimize the impacts on the environment. I will add more selected biographies within a couple of days.

And final few words. I want to thank everyone for their time in participating this portal peer review. When the enhancements are done, I will submit this portal to review to become a featured portal. I hope to see you guys casting your votes to support that nomination when the day comes. OhanaUnited   Talk page   17:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)


 * OhanaUnited, you are making great progress on this portal, but I have a word of caution that might sound like a broken record. Be careful you don't turn the portal into an advocacy platform.  The scope of a portal primarily is defined by the content of its articles. Inclusion of project work is secondary, and promotion of any advocacy agendas is prohibited. I know it's a fine line to walk, but if you stick with what's actually contained in the encyclopedia, you should be fine. :-) RichardF 18:43, 28 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, what I meant was I hope more people will read more articles and information on the environment, that's all.  OhanaUnited    Talk page   05:36, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Archiving
This portal peer review is now archived as the portal is promoted to featured status. OhanaUnited   Talk page   16:37, 28 August 2007 (UTC)