Wikipedia:Portal peer review/France/archive1

France
After two years of upkeep, it's time for the France portal to go through peer review... on the road -- one hopes-- to eventually becoming a featured portal candidate. Comments/suggestions/advice and technical assistance to make the portal "feature portal worthy" would be greatly appreciated. Thanks -- NYArtsnWords 00:04, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The pic of the M. is too big (500px) - make it smaller (at least fitting a 800x600 screen). feydey 14:25, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. (Actually, I have been putting the pic of the month at 350 px, but the picture looked small this month in my browser, so I had increased it to 500 - guess it doesn't work for all browsers). NYArtsnWords 15:16, 4 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I was bold and moved topics up to the top, but I must wonder if geography and administrative districts and provinces really are all necessary. They make the portal incredibly long, and give unbalanced weight to the geography of France; even language is somewhat geographical in nature. There's not one for history or government or culture or anything of the sort, though I don't necessarily think there needs to be. I would suggest shortening and combining them into one, and then maybe alternating Province/Département of the Month to give a more personal look at a region of France. Atropos 18:22, 4 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Scroll length needs to be shortened. See other FPs. Perhaps rm. Geography, Administrative divisions, Provinces etc.? feydey 09:29, 8 July 2007 (UTC)


 * It is true that the various geography-related Featured Portals are pretty streamed-down affairs. I have removed the "language" and "geography" sections, added a couple of sentences to the main intro, and added the map to the topics section. NYArtsnWords 21:51, 9 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Please don't use thumb mark-up for image formatting, as it causes faults with the box backgrounds. If possible add external links (sources) to "Recent events in France" news items in the box. Replace the title "Personality of the Month" with "Person of the month" or "Biography of the month". Not mandatory: in the intro add a link: "The French Republic or France..." same goes for the other boxes' main articles. feydey 11:35, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I have changed it to "Person of the month", removed thumb mark-ups throughout and added the France link in the intro. As a rule, "recent events" items have always had links to wikinews, except for items that wikinews did not cover.  In the person/article of the month, the "read more" links lead to the articles. -- NYArtsnWords 16:38, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Perhaps a "Related portals" box - it could include Portal:Belgium, Portal:French and Francophone literature etc. feydey 19:13, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * There is already a "related portals" section. Do you think a separate box is necessary? -- NYArtsnWords 02:11, 16 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I missed it completely :| a separate box is not necessary, but could help to bring more people to those portals perhaps. In a separate box with icons they are easier to be found than a line at the bottom of the page. Otherwise the Portal looks good. Best, feydey 07:59, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

A few observations:
 * Since the large sections on related topics are overwhelming the portal, this portal is an ideal candidate for converting into a 3-tab style like Portal:Australia or Portal:Christianity.
 * Current events section doesn't seem to be regularly updated. It's not likely that nothing notable happened in France in the entire month of Sep 2007!
 * Something wrong in the Selected picture archive? Several images are not appearing and showing a copy-vio tag instead. Portals must not use any fair-use image - that could be the issue.

Overall this seems to be a very rich portal and should have been a featured portal by now. Arman Aziz 10:24, 10 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Arman - Thanks for the comments.
 * I try (alone) to keep the current events section relatively up to date (depending on my own non-wiki work load). Compounding matters, there are few updates to the wikinews:Portal:France site.  More contributors would remedy the problem.
 * There is nothing wrong with the selected images archive: mistakes were made with fair-use vs. free-use on a few months, so the archive reflects that.
 * I will think about the 3-tab style. I worry however that the majority of visitors to the Portal are looking for category/related topics, and that the 3-tab style wuld be less practical for the uninitiated.
 * Cheers- NYArtsnWords 11:32, 10 September 2007 (UTC)