Wikipedia:Portal peer review/Archive/March 2008

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This archive contains the peer review requests that are older than one month, have received no response in the last two weeks, are not signed, have become featured portal candidates, or did not follow the "How to use this page" principles in some way. If one of your requests has been moved here by mistake, please accept our apologies and copy it back to the main peer review page with your signature (~~~~).

Contents 1 Portal:English football 2 Portal:Massachusetts 3 Portal:Doctor Who 4 Portal:Kentucky 5 Portal:Vermont 6 Portal:Ice hockey 7 Portal:Ancient Greece 8 Portal:Norway 9 Portal:Organized Labour 10 Portal:Minnesota

[edit] Portal:English football

I'm looking to achieve featured status in the near future, and I'd like some input as to improvements or corrections in the portal. _{WEBURIEDOURSECRETSINTHEGARDEN}^{play it cool.} 18:33, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Right, I'm getting no input here so how about I give some numbers about the portal.

• 21 Selected articles (all FA)
• 18 Selected pictures (all free-use)
• News display
• 9 Selected competitions at the moment

Hopefully you can give some insight on improving this. _{WEBURIEDOURSECRETSINTHEGARDEN} ^{that one guy who buried stuff} 21:12, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the birthday feature as it will take too long to update and maintain. _{WEBURIEDOURSECRETSINTHEGARDEN} ^{aka john lennon} 21:36, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Portal:Massachusetts

I just recently created this and would like to know what is needed for this to become featured-portal status. STORMTRACKER 94 ^{Go Sox!} 01:36, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

• Fix the display to get rid of the horizontal scroll. RichardF (talk) 02:26, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  • The problem was in the intro formatting. I fixed it. RichardF (talk) 13:08, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
• For some good examples of possible sections and design features for states, check out Portal:Texas, Portal:Indiana and Portal:Oregon. RichardF (talk) 20:04, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Portal:Doctor Who

I've been working on Doctor Who pages on Wikipedia, this is no exception. I've been basing this upon The Simpsons portal. I'd like some help polishing up this portal, and also I would like to know if having all of Doctor Who's episode pages is fine in the "selected stories" (none of them are stubs) due to the related project only having a dozen of FA/Gas right now. Will ^(talk) 21:06, 28 January 2008

[edit] Portal:Kentucky

I think Portal:Kentucky is ready to be peer reviewed. I took the critiques given for Portal:Louisville's peer review and applied them to this portal as well, so presumably things should be much cleaner.--Bedford 05:41, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

• The graphic strip of images looks professional. Nice idea! -Susanlesch (talk) 18:58, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Portal:Vermont

I have done extreme updates to this page, see the original (it uses templates on the page today), and the current version. As you can see, it has had some major improvements, and I would like to know what could be done ot make it a featured portal. Soxred93 | talk count bot 20:06, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

We've been waiting for ANY critique for the Kentucky and Indianapolis; some advice for you

1) More pictures, and remove red links on said pictures

Y Done Soxred93 | talk count bot 23:53, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

2) Reduce blank space between sections on Portal

Y Done Soxred93 | talk count bot 23:53, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

3) Darken color of "Show New Selection"; copying code from Portal:Louisville

Y Done Soxred93 | talk count bot 23:53, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

4) Bold a link in each DYK question, IF they were actually a featured DYK on the main page.

N Not done - None of the DYK's have been featured on the main page, as of yet. Soxred93 | talk count bot 23:53, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Hope that helps.--Bedford 18:49, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Portal:Ice hockey

I've never nominated a portal to be featured, and I've decide to pay attention to this portal, working on in on and off since August, but restructured it again earlier this month. I'd appreciate some comments on hockey to improve this portal. Maxim_(talk) 21:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Comments by Chris.B

• It is looking good to me. A few suggestions —
  • Shorten the introduction somewhat. It's a little overwhelming at the moment.
    • Y Done.
  • Consider using {{cquote}} for the quotes. It has convenient parameters for citation.
    • Y Done.
  • Headlines in the news section should be linked to the news story and mention the date. kinda Y Done, Wikinews Importer Bot set up.
  • You need archives for the news section and it needs to be updated more frequently. You may wish to use the Wikinews Importer Bot for the latter. tentatively Y Done, see above. However, I think archives is pushing it, why do we need archives of stuff that happened a year ago? Maxim_(talk) 13:45, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  • It is unclear how the selections are going to be updated. If there are enogh materials to rotate through each section, please establish random rotation.
    • Right now, it's going to update every month, but when there is enough material, I will add random rotation.
      • Random rotation for DYK now exists, at present four items, but will expand when the news section is up to par. Maxim_(talk) 01:52, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Otherwise it's very nice, good work. Chris.B 21:47, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

There are some suggestions here. Maxim_(talk) 15:26, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Comment by Rjd0060

I didn't think it was too bad, but I guess every little thing helps. Good work, Maxim. - Rjd0060 (talk) 20:16, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Portal:Ancient Greece

This portal hadn't been edited for along time. I did my best and want to know what I can do to improve it more or is it fine the way it is? Bewareofdog (talk) 19:59, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Review by Seaserpent85

• Overall, good work - only a few issues that I can see from a first glance:
  • Font colour in the title bars could do with being changed as it's quite hard to read.Y Done
  • The introduction section could benefit from another paragraph and maybe the addition a relevant image if possible.Y Done
  • The images in all the randomised content sections would benefit from captions, see Portal:Iceland for an example.Y Done
  • Selected pictures should provide credit to the author, see Portal:Amusement parks as an example.Y Done
  • Consider expanding the categories section, maybe make use of <categorytree> to produce an automatic category tree.Y Done
  • No need for the "purge selections" link at the bottom, there's already a "show new selections" link further up the page.Y Done
  • Perhaps you could add a few of the tasks from the to do list to the "things to do" section.

Other than those, the portal looks great. Once you've expanded the randomised sections a bit further and made a final few adjustments, you could consider nominating it for Featured Portal status. Many thanks, Seaserpent⁸⁵ 15:05, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Portal:Organized Labour

This portal is nearing its first birthday and could probably benefit from some criticism from outside the group of frequent contributors. Here are some of the features:

• 366 rotating "Article of the Day" articles
• 12 heavily-populated "This Month in Labor History" features
• 50 random quotes
• 48 featured photos
• 105 DYK's from the front page

Thanks in advance! Haus^Talk 02:18, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

1.The background colour doesn't work with the default link colour and needs to be changed (the links are very hard to read on my LCD monitor, even if they look OK on a CRT). Try something lighter. --Msanford (talk) 01:58, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Y Done I think this was the result of some brittle html on the page -- code that rendered differently on diferent browsers. I scrapped and re-wrote all the formatting using a different approach. I'm curious: does a legibility issue remain? Haus^Talk 07:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

2.There should be prose introductory text at the top (see Portal:Math, IMHO one of the best portals on Wikipedia). --Msanford (talk) 01:58, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Very good point. Thanks for pointing this out. Haus^Talk 07:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Y Done It looks much less clunky to these eyes now. Haus^Talk 09:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

3.You should change the Selected Article to reference an excerpt, and not to include the entire article (see what Portal:Math has done with the excerpt of e versus the length of the entire article). This also means that the formatting of that section will improve on the portal page. --Msanford (talk) 01:58, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Question. I wonder if there's room for a different philosophy as regards selected content. The portal manual of style states that exceptional content in the subject area should be highlighted. That's dandy. However mightn't it be useful to also highlight non-exceptional content that is topical? The idea being, of course, that the more eyes that land on an article, the more likely it is to be visited by wiki-gnomes, or even adopted. Haus^Talk 07:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I think you have a point that non-exceptional but relevant content be included; I was merely suggesting that it should be physically shorter. --Msanford (talk) 15:52, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

• As someone who worked heavily on the AOTD section, I wanted to mention that my philosophy was to find articles for the date in question. Thus, if it was June 1, the AOTD should be something that happened on June 1. Organized Labour has a real problem in that a very large proportion of labo(u)r related articles are stubs, and few new lab(u)r-related articles seem to be created by Project participants. I often struggled to find date-related content which was not a stub. Finding non-date-related content which was not a stub was a similar challenge. Additionally, a great deal of the labo(u)r-related content is America-centric, creating an additional problem. However, I would estimate that about a third of the ATOD articles are Stub or Start class articles. For example, see William Green, which is an AOTD. Unfortunately, I do not see that making these articles AOTD articles has helped to draw attention to them, and get contributors to improve them. - Tim1965 (talk) 02:22, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

4.I'm not qualified to judge the appropriateness of the image used at the top, but if you can find something that well represents the idea of organized labour, other than that clipart, that might be good. This is only because it seems generic to me, but I could always be wrong. If it's a recognized logo, you might consider adding a caption to that effect, mentioning it in the introduction, or adding a section explaining it. --Msanford (talk) 01:58, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Like (2), thanks for pointing this out. This had fallen into a blind spot! Haus^Talk 07:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Y Done I made a banner graphic consisting of a sepia-print collage of some representative public domain photos. Considering that I'm no artist, I don't think it looks bad. Any comments? Haus^Talk 09:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I noticed that there is an associated userbox with the "old" image, you may wish to have a look at that, it's hosted in User:UBX, I believe (sorry, can't find it easily). Msanford (talk) 15:48, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Erm, there's no article for today. _{WEBURIEDOURSECRETSINTHEPARK} ^talk 17:47, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that! Fortunately, today is A.L. Lloyd's birthday. Haus^Talk 18:57, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, there was an AOTD for February 29, but I don't think the code picked up the date to display that article. I know, because I filled out the February AOTD dates in January, and put something in for Feb. 29. - Tim1965 (talk) 02:22, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Looking good, Haus! I love the new colour scheme and banner graphic. --Msanford (talk) 15:52, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

You can add two more random quotes now.  :) I want to say: it was a struggle to get the Random Quotes and the Featured Photos sections up and running. For a long time, they languished with only a few entries. Very, very few images on Wikipedia Commons were categorized for labo(u)r, and I spent weeks tagging images. Hundreds of images still remain uncategorized, or poorly categorized. Quotes were also difficult to come by. However, since I was working on the AOTD section, I was able to stumble across many quotes and add them. (I don't want to sound like I'm trolling for compliments here... sorry.) Updating these sections over time may prove difficult, now that AOTD is done. I'd ask Project participants to help by keeping a watchful eye out for images and quotes. - Tim1965 (talk) 02:22, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Portal:Minnesota

Hi. Recently brought up to portal guidelines. Do you think this is ready for a featured portal review? Thanks. -Susanlesch (talk) 00:28, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

After reading here about automated portals I added random content. I think when the documentation is done, maybe tomorrow I will nominate this and see if it is up to snuff. The work at several portals influenced what is in Minnesota now. It is a low priority page for the WikiProject at this time so the random bits might help. Thanks very much for the ideas. -Susanlesch (talk) 01:39, 19 February 2008 (UTC)