Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Scouting

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[edit] Portal:Scouting

Self nomination as member of Scouting Wikiproject This portal has a very active WikiProject maintaining it (our Project membership doubled two weeks after creating it in Jan), is informative, and nicely laid out. The articles are updated regularly; with "Selected" items rotated bi-weekly. It is great starting point for those interested in Scouting.Rlevse 16:48, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Support - I believe it meets all the criteria at Wikipedia:What is a featured portal?, and as already stated, it dose have a very active community constantly maintaining it in an effort to even further improve the articles related to Scouting. --Naha|^(talk) 17:15, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

• Object; a good start, but still much to be done:

1. The multiple levels of nested table markup make the ordinary width calculation fail. Notice that the 100% boxes—the introduction and Wikimedia links—overflow the inner border.
2. Several of the Wikimedia links take the reader to a blank page.
3. The "Selected anniversaries" box should be changed to make clear that it includes (I assume) the entire month.
4. Using an asterisk to separate categories may not be the most visually clear idea.

Finally, on a more general note, I would like to see either the addition of auto-rotating content or a history of active maintenance somewhat longer than a week. The empty candidate pages are not particularly reassuring in this regard. —Kirill Lokshin 17:35, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I fixed 2, 3, and 4. I see what you mean by the first comment, but don't know how to fix it. Any tips? For content, the portal is only a week or so old, so we don't have a history yet. How do I set up auto-rotating content?Rlevse 18:07, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll take a look at it later, but I suspect the easiest thing to do would be to remove the innermost of the two boxes that form the "shell" of the portal. As for auto-rotating content, there are a variety of examples on the existing featured portals (I think all of them use it at this point). The basic idea is to make use of things like {{CURRENTWEEK}} and {{CURRENTMONTH}} by setting up subpages like Portal:Scouting/Selected article/Week 7, 2006 and then linking to them by using {{Portal:Scouting/Selected article/Week {{CURRENTWEEK}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}}}} in the portal page. —Kirill Lokshin 18:23, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I fixed item 1 by "borrowing" code from your War Portal. I changed colors too.Rlevse 21:37, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I looked at the auto-rotating. Cricket and London do not appear to auto-rotate, so this does not appear to be a requirement. One does it monthly. One seems to do it weekly. I was interested in weekly or bi-weekly, so let me work on this as it seems to be a neat feature.Rlevse 21:37, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Update In addition to having fixed item 1, I have now completed setting up auto rotation for the requisite boxes. I did this on a monthly basis because I thought weekly was too often. Is there a way to do it bi-weekly? I believe this now addresses all your concerns. Thank you for the help. Rlevse 23:32, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Great work! Support now that there is some content queued up. —Kirill Lokshin 01:13, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Support: Reinforces Earth Science upgrades like Oceanography. — RJBurkhart 13:58, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

• Support. Sahasrahla 02:15, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support - Pureblade | ^Θ 18:01, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support- many have worked hard on these articles and this portal. Well done. (this unsigned vote was by user Darthgriz98)18:56, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support. --Myles Long/cDc 18:10, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support. A great contribution for the Scouting project. --Bduke 23:02, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support Siva1979^{Talk to me} 15:44, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support. --L1AM (talk - 'tribs.) 06:57, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support --Terence Ong 08:42, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support. NThurston 03:11, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support Griz 05:30, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tobyk777 (talk • contribs) 16:21, 3 March 2006.
• Comment: Looking at it, it would seem that Wikipedia's coverage of Scouting is too sparce and too under-developed for this portal to be of a standard similar to those already featured. I wonder then if the best format has been employed. Specifically, the limited nature of Scouting content is detrimental to both the portal's usefulness and attractiveness in this format (it's bland). I think that more access-oriented portal might be a better option given the circumstances - something along the lines of Portal:Constructed languages but probably closer to Portal:Europe. As it stands presently, there are some issues apart from that above that would lead me to object. Firstly, the green background is near-fluorescent and should be softened somewhat. Secondly, thumb mark-up should be avoided in portals because it conflicts with box background colours. Thirdly, the "Distinguished articles" box seems a little self-referential. Moreover, I don't think that DYK articles are necessarily distinguished. Finally, the portal overall doesn't seem comprehensive enough. For example, categories, lists, and DYK are all lacking. Though I acknowledge the difficultly with regards to extent of content available, I still think more effort could be made in these areas (you may like to cut DYK altogether). Also, "Scouting news" could follow the format used by Portal:New Zealand, Portal:Australia and Portal:Oceania. Overall, I think the Scouts have made a great effort, but I can't yet support and am not ready to object. Hopefully, fruitful discussion can follow.--cj | talk 02:10, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

1. I'll look over the Europe/ContLang portals for comparison
2. Many people like the colors (colors are very POV-;), I'll look into other colors put softer color up
3. I don't know what you mean by thumb mark up fixed by CJ, thanks!
4. FA/DYK can be removed, I'll get to it soon removed
5. Comprehensive...cats, but would you like it expanded some? WAR is a FP, and it's only got 13 cats listed. listed another tier of cats, that's about all of them (before I confused cats with articles)
6. Lists...we only have 2 lists, well, this week a 3rd one arrivedadded our 3rd list, nothing more to add here
7. News...it's very hard to find news on Scouting, esp outside the USA, but I can change the format fixed format, added news

Rlevse 16:48, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

• Support I've done some reformating to the portal that I hope you agree with. I think you might want to consider beefing up the DYK section - one fact makes the box seem a little frivolous. Other than that, good work. --cj | talk 04:44, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
• Support I still remember opposing BSA merit badge collecting, only to support it later after a brilliant rewrite by Rlvese. This portal is yet another example of the good work the Scouting project here on WP can do. Staxringold 13:49, 8 March 2006 (UTC)