Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:United States

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[edit] Portal:United States

I've been working on Portal:United States since mid-May, and think it now meets the criteria of "useful, attractive, ergonomic, and well-maintained".

• The portal now has a news section, which is updated often (usually daily, sometimes more than daily) and coordinated with Current events in the United States.
• Two topics templates {{US_topics}} and the list of U.S. states and dependencies are now included, along with relevant categories.
• The "Selected article" and "Selected picture" are on a weekly, automated schedule. These are set up so that others can nominate articles and pictures.
• DYK is manually updated several times a month.

--Aude (talk contribs) 18:54, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

• Great portal overall, but minor object on two counts:
  • There should be a separate, portal-specific "Did you know" archive. Pointing to the Wikipedia-wide one is insufficient, since most of the material there has nothing to do with the US.
  • If the articles and pictures used are actually featured (and you have no plans to move away from that design), the boxes should be labeled "Featured article" and "Featured picture", respectively.

Other than that, looks very nice! Kirill Lokshin 00:13, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Good idea to have a DYK archive specific to the portal. I'll go ahead and set it up. As for featured articles/pictures, thus far all have had official featured status (my preference). However, I'd like to get broader participation in choosing articles. It might help to broaden criteria to include good article. --Aude (talk contribs) 00:21, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Support now that the changes have been made. Two minor suggestions, though:

• My experience suggests that sectioning off the DYK archive by month will make it easier to maintain in the long run.
• Maybe link to the United States military history task force? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 22:48, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Link to U.S. military history task for has been added. And, I'll try organizing the DYK archive by month. Sounds like a good idea. Thanks. --Aude (talk contribs) 23:32, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I would really like to see the related portals have icons.--ragesoss 22:59, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll try experimenting with icons, but think maybe it would be too crowded (17 icons, thusfar with potential for many more). I'll see what I can do, maybe make them small. --Aude (talk contribs) 23:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

You're probably right that the normal format would make that section a little bulky, but the links to other portals are very important, especially because for the geographical subportals, there probably aren't any other portals linking to them. Some way to better highlight them is a must, IMO. Maybe they could be split between two or three boxes: one for states, one for US-related topics, and once for cities and other geographical units (or with two, topics and geographical units, as is done implicitly within the current subportals box).--ragesoss 01:11, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

• Support - I would really like to see a bio section, the US has to many good ones not to. But as it stands still good. Joe I 18:52, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
• Support --Shane ^{(talk/contrib)} 20:06, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
• SupportRlevse 18:24, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
• Support. See Portal:India and Portal:Europe for neater ways to format Related portals. The WikiProjects section could also be tidied up. Good portal nonetheless.--cj | talk 08:05, 1 August 2006 (UTC)