Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Featured log/July 2009

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 promoted by OhanaUnited 02:57, 5 July 2009 [1].

Co-nomination: (Shoemaker's Holiday, Cirt, and Voceditenore). After a previous, failed nomination, this has been redone top to bottom. Notably, dozens of articles have been brought up to GA or better, we've gained about 10 additional featured pictures through a picture drive, and the layout has had a complete going-over by Cirt. We believe that this now meets all the criteria, and serves as an excellent introduction to high-quality content on opera.

It has an active WikiProject behind it, so the numbers of articles, biographies, pictures, and sounds will continue to increase over time. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 13:30, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Contemporary music, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Arts, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Theatre, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Richard Wagner, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Gilbert and Sullivan. Cirt (talk) 20:28, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. Very well built portal (meets FPC) with excellent content and rotation. Maybe revamp Portal:Arts next? Only "Associated Wikimedia" needs to be redone as several links go nowhere useful. feydey (talk) 11:31, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hmm. I could try... Would you be interested in joining me? There's literally hundreds of FPs, FSes, and so on we really ought to include in it. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 17:49, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't think feydey means categorizing all the stuff on Commons. That link's OK. The problem is with these links: Opera on Wikinews, Opera on Wikibooks, and Opera on Wikiversity. They default to an assumed page on those media projects titled "Opera" when in fact there is none. Opera on Wikiquote is OK (it has a page) and Opera on Wikisource is OK because it already links to the search results on "opera". Opera on Wiktionary is sort of OK - it links to a redirect page to a definition of er... Opera. I'd suggest replacing the default links for the 3 "go nowhere" with ones to search results, e.g.

Opera on Wikinews: http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=Opera&fulltext=Search

Opera on Wikibooks: http://en.wikibooks.orgview.php?sq=crain_ford&lang=en&q=Special:Search/Opera

Opera on Wikiversity: http://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=Opera&fulltext=Search

- Voceditenore (talk) 04:53, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I thought he was talking about Portal:Arts (which is what I was talking about =). Took a little ingenuity, but I've implemented your suggested links. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 06:43, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I made the coding a little cleaner, it's all fixed now [2]. Cirt (talk) 19:51, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Support - well built and beautiful portal. Great work guys. weburiedoursecretsinthegarden 09:57, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Support A great and lovely portal which is coherent in nature. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 16:12, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - This is just a suggestion, but you may want to standardize some of the entries under Selected article and Selected biography so that they are of similar length. Some of the more extreme examples: Portal:Opera/Selected biography/3 & Portal:Opera/Selected biography/6, Portal:Opera/Selected article/13 & Portal:Opera/Selected article/12. --Jh12 (talk) 18:51, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Response: Generally the issues are with the shorter ones, the other longer ones are okay. As I generally take the text from the WP:LEADs of the articles themselves, the issue is with those articles themselves to be improved upon hopefully. Cirt (talk) 18:59, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree; it's a lot easier to expand the really short ones. Adding one or two more lines to the shortest ones should do it. It just looks glaring when there are length differences of 2x or greater. --Jh12 (talk) 19:25, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Generally I don't think that's such a big deal - again I go by the WP:LEADs, of those articles at present, and also sometimes it is nice to have that bit of extra dynamism in the portal. Cirt (talk) 19:29, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Response: I've now slightly expanded Portal:Opera/Selected biography/3 and Portal:Opera/Selected article/13 to redress the balance. I could also easily trim slightly the rather long and wordy ones, e.g. Portal:Opera/Selected article/12, and especially Portal:Opera/Selected biography/6 and Portal:Opera/Selected biography/4. It would probably improve their readability in the confined space of a portal. I would agree with Cirt, though, that a bit of variation in "shape" can add dynamism. Voceditenore (talk) 06:53, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the help Voceditenore (talk · contribs)! Cirt (talk) 06:56, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've trimmed Portal:Opera/Selected biography/4, Portal:Opera/Selected biography/6, and Portal:Opera/Selected article/12. I tried to keep all the basic facts, but reduced the amount of commentary on them. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 07:01, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support It's a personal preference more than anything. Two reasons I like standardized entries are 1. For technical reasons, the boxes will align better and there's less chance of large white spaces 2. Extremely short leads may not introduce an article adequately. Anyway, fantastic work! I appreciate the effort. --Jh12 (talk) 07:34, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Support with a few suggestions from [sd] 19:55, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Add {{Browsebar}} at the beginning, e.g. the Internet portal.
  • Selected biography: Update I and XIII with the dates of birth and death.
  • Introduction: Can you find a better photograph for II? The current one is good but unclear, in my opinion.
  • Opera topics: In my opinion, the word Opera is not needed; instead, I'd suggest Main topics or Major topics. Also, I think the link to the opera article should be removed, because (i) it's been linked to several times above and (ii) it is centered but doesn't line up correctly with the box title (Opera topics).

    Done. Addressed all of these above points by Sd31415 (talk · contribs), thanks, they were all good suggestions. :) Cirt (talk) 21:08, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.

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 promoted by OhanaUnited 02:57, 5 July 2009 [3].

Co-nomination: (Cirt and Mitchazenia). See archived peer review (notified relevant WikiProjects, but only got one comment, oh well). Stats: 15 selected articles, 10 selected biographies, 11 selected pictures, 14 selected lakes (the Finger Lakes), 13 selected attractions, 40 featured pictures, 37 additional selected pictures, 12 sets of rotating DYK hooks, and an automatically rotating In this month section. I believe the portal meets the standards for Featured Portal status. Cirt (talk) 15:38, 5 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Notified: Talk:Finger Lakes, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lakes, and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New York. Cirt (talk) 20:23, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. Support after review, needs some work with captions. feydey (talk) 11:52, 26 May 2009 (UTC) In summary: fails FPC 1a. The content is very remotely connected to the topic, having a bird's picture with the caption: "The Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) is the only mockingbird commonly found in North America" used on the portal misses the the portal's core. Why 2 picture boxes? While well built it is not FP useful, to get FP it needs to focus on the core topics on the issue. feydey (talk) 10:22, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Comments by Jh12

Due to the nature of this portal, I can understand using sub-GA articles but you're going to want to change the Instructions under Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected attraction, Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected article, and Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected biography to reflect that. For example the article under Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected article/8 is rated Start-class, Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected attraction/1 is rated Stub, and Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected biography/10 is B even though the Instructions say the articles listed are GA or FA. --Jh12 (talk) 08:01, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Response: Fixed. Cirt (talk) 08:08, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

All the articles you mention are pretty clear B's, and one's actually a GA. Are you sure you got the links right? Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 20:26, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That is because I have fixed it, as I noted, above. :P Cirt (talk) 21:37, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Like Shoemaker's comment above, I think the portal "Would benefit greatly from lengthier, more detailed captions." In particular, it could use expansion of the captions to further explain significance to the Finger Lakes region and/or something interesting about the selections. For example, Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected picture/21 says "A tower of 600 bowls on [sic?] glass at the Corning Museum of Glass." That doesn't seem very interesting to me; more compelling is that the article says the museum "is home to the world’s most comprehensive collection of glass" and that it's in "one of the most prominent glassmaking towns in America." --Jh12 (talk) 03:19, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, that info is not really sourced to secondary sources in the article, which is why we went with simply descriptive of the image itself, as opposed to the subject in the article. Cirt (talk) 03:47, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not going to oppose based on this aspect of the portal, but I still think it is something that can be worked on. If the more outstanding facts can't be sourced, the captions could include basic information such as location, population, or other context. Going back to Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected picture/21, it could read "A tower of 600 glass bowls at the Corning Museum of Glass. Founded in 1950 by Corning Glass Works (now Corning Incorporated), the museum is located in the Finger Lakes region of New York and houses a research library devoted to glass." I just think some of the captions are still weak compared to some of the recently promoted portals Portal:Peru/Selected picture, Portal:Brazil/Selected picture/Archives, and Portal:Japan/Selected picture --Jh12 (talk) 10:26, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I fixed that one per your suggestion [7]. As for the others, as I said already, above, I believe that Shoemaker's Holiday (talk · contribs) had gone through and improved the captions on those, but I will go through and have another look. Cirt (talk) 10:35, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Support, looks good. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 02:36, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Support: Good job. I have a few minor suggestions that I'd like to see addressed. [sd] 15:50, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Introduction: The fourteen lakes located in the Finger Lakes region include: The word include suggests there are more lakes than the fourteen you list.
  • Related Portals: Portals should be portals to follow the rules of capitalization you used in the rest of the portal.
  • Things you can do: You use both WikiProject Lakes and Lakes WikiProject. I'd recommend using sticking to WikiProject Lakes, since you use that wording for another box.
  • Topics: Is this section necessary? You list all of these articles in the introduction and again have the county names in the box for categories, which brings me to…
  • Categories: Shouldn't this category also be there?
  • In this month: e.g. June 2007 - Change the hyphens to en dashes (–), which the featured Germany portal use as well.
  • Selected picture: Two of the pictures, namely Ithaca Falls and Glenora Wine Cellars, don't have articles, so I can't read more about them. I'd recommend either you or members of WikiProject New York to start articles on them.

    Everything addressed except for the last one, as I don't have the experience for those two. I will request them for you though :) - 3 1/2 years of Mitch32 16:10, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

    Great. Thanks, [sd] 19:16, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

    Thank you to Mitchazenia (talk · contribs) for addressing those points. :) Cirt (talk) 21:02, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.