Portal talk:United States

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United States Portal
This article is within the scope of the United States WikiProject. This project provides a central approach to United States-related subjects on Wikipedia. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards.
NA This page is not an article and does not require a rating on the quality scale.
Former featured portal This article is a former featured portal. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page and why it was removed.
To-do list for Portal:United States: edit · history · watch · refresh

Purpose: to get this portal featured again

  • add and populate a Selected biography section Y Done.
  • add and populate a Selected anniversary section
  • added - needs to be populated encompassed by "On this day" section
  • add "On this day" calendar Y Done.
  • create all monthly and daily pages Y Done.
  • populate all daily pages Doing...
  • create at least one month lead time while populating pages Y Done
  • add and populate a Selected location section Y Done
  • add and populate a Lists section Y Done
  • use the random portal element template to rotate content for:
  • Selected article Y Done.
  • Selected picture Y Done.
  • Selected culture biography Y Done.
  • Selected society biography Y Done.
  • Selected location Y Done
  • DYK section Y Done.
  • Minor things:
  • separate the Category section from the Topics section using a category tree. Y Done.

As a guideline, let's stick to using Featured, A or Good content to populate each 'Selected' section where possible. The main exception would be for Top or High Importance articles of B quality.

Archives: 1

Contents

[edit] Selected article quality

The following selected articles are no longer GA or better: 1964 New York World's Fair, Galveston Hurricane of 1900, Space Race, September 11, 2001 attacks. — Zaui (talk) 22:56, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Although "Importance" is not explicitly mentioned in the above nominations suggestions, the Space Race and 9-11 articles are rated as "Top" importance by the projects that rated them. The other two are "Mid." I support keeping the top-rated articles and switching out the other two. Maybe exposure here will help get them back up to FA quality. RichardF (talk) 23:27, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I've replaced the other two (and moved this discussion to the talk page). — Zaui (talk) 23:36, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

How's this for the rule-of-thumb from the to-do list? "As a guideline, let's stick to using Featured, A or Good content to populate each 'Selected' section where possible. The main exception would be for Top or High Importance articles of B quality." Since the United States project only rates a fraction of the relevant articles (see FA-Class biography articles about Americans for example), I would accept ratings from any project that reviews articles about some aspect of the United States and/or Americans. RichardF (talk) 21:06, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm OK with this. — Zaui (talk) 22:47, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Selected location possibilities

Looking through the geography and places FAs, here are US-related:

Looks good to me. There's no reason they all can't be added eventually. RichardF (talk) 00:04, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Here's a usage question. Should Plymouth Colony and Manzanar be replaced and moved from Selected articles to Selected locations and no other location articles be added to the more general section? Since there are so many featured US articles, that would be fine with me. RichardF (talk) 18:42, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cities and states

[edit] Protected areas

[edit] Others - for articles if needed

[edit] Selected panorama location

I do not feel that the selected panorama is situated in the best location. I think the page looks a bit too uniform and box-like with the panorama box following the main US box at the top, and feel that the panorama should be moved down, under the "In the news" and "selected location" sections (similar to the main page where the main photo is closer to the bottom). I feel that a GA or FA level biography and a US-related article are more important than a photo, however nice it is. Any thoughts? Happyme22 (talk) 23:31, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I was just trying it out at the top to get a reaction. Moving it below the news box would require breaking the variable length columns into two groups. I don't mind trying it, but keep in mind it will cause two areas (three total) of "white space" when the column heights (randomly) don't match up. If folks don't like that, my next recommendation is to put it just above the Featured content box. RichardF (talk) 02:56, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
I think it looks better, but it does cause that big white space. Why not just add more events to the "In the news" section to draw out the box? Is that permitted? OR we can create a "selected anniversary" section, as recommended in the To do list above, and place that below the news section in the hopes of covering up most of the space. --Happyme22 (talk) 04:10, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
The "causes" of the white space are all the "Selected..." sections. They randomly display content of different lengths. It's very difficult to get several selections to be of similar sizes and meaningful content for any given section. The issue is compounded by having multiple randomized sections. That's what happens when you have lots of content. The number of news items can be whatever we decide it should be. The "On this day section" actually encompasses anniversaries. I'm going to comment on that. RichardF (talk) 04:44, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
I liked it where it was, below the intro. Give the portal a little wow factor, IMO. — Zaui (talk) 05:20, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
Er, I disagree. None of the others are like that. But since I'm not a regular visitor or editor to the portal, I suppose you can do whichever you please. Happyme22 (talk) 05:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
Actually, Portal:Photography is like that. It was the inspiration (and still my personal preference) for where I originally put the panoramas here. I'll let someone else make the next move. :-) RichardF (talk) 13:16, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I've put it back. The layout works better - fewer gaps between sections - and it makes the portal stand out. Whether any other portals do this or not shouldn't matter, it's not like we're dealing with legal precedent. — Zaui (talk) 18:30, 3 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Featured Portal nomination for U.S. portal

(copied from my talk page)

Zaui, I finally got over a month's lead time for the 'On this day' section of the U.S. portal! >;-o) What else would you like to see before you re-nominate it for featured portal status? :-) RichardF (talk) 21:00, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I really don't like that all but one bio is politician-related. I'd rename the current section something like 'government biographies', start a new biography section, move Rosa Parks there, and populate it with non-politician bios. If you're ok with that, I'll get that started. There's only a couple more articles to add to the 'Selected location' section for it to be complete. — Zaui (talk) 15:57, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
The politicians thing was just an arbitrary starting point on my part. If we're going to divide up bios, maybe we should select some groupings first. I found several FA-Class biography articles about Americans that were classified into seven distinct categories (8 counting "core"). If we used two groupings, one might be "Entertainment" bios: Actors and filmmakers, Arts and entertainment, Musicians, and Sports and games. The other might be "Government & Academia" bios: Military, Politics and government, and Science and academia. Rosa is listed under Politics and government. RichardF (talk) 21:55, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I like this idea. Let's give it a try. Doesn't the Rosa Parks classification seems off? But looking at the available categories, I'm not sure where she should be classified - there should be a 'society' category. — Zaui (talk) 22:48, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay! As a civil rights figure, Rosa had quite an impact on politics and government, so that seems like a good fit to me. We could call that group "Society bios." Looking at Portal:Contents/Portals, two of the highest level topics are "Culture" and "Society." The two groupings above would still hold together the same way under these broader and shorter headings. I'll add another section to get it started. RichardF (talk) 01:52, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

To get the ball rolling, I added the Portal:United States/Selected culture biography section with two core entries. Now, we can add more bios and figure out how to balance out the main page again! >;-o) RichardF (talk) 02:37, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I also added all the featured bios to the Featured content section to show them all in one accessible place, and help show readers and editors what "Selected culture bios" and "Selected society bios" mean. RichardF (talk) 20:27, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok, good idea. I've started to add bios to the society section. — Zaui (talk) 21:46, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

After the bio sections, we need to clean up the 'selected article' and 'selected article picture' sections - there needs to be more in each section and we need to check the quality of each. — Zaui (talk) 21:46, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

"we need to clean up the 'selected article' and 'selected article' sections" (?) :-) Ten is the sentimental minumum needed for selected sections. I still like the to-do rule of thumb, "As a guideline, let's stick to using Featured, A or Good content to populate each 'Selected' section where possible. The main exception would be for Top or High Importance articles of B quality." RichardF (talk) 23:07, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Whoops - sorry, I mean 'selected article' and 'selected picture' sections. Space Race doesn't meet the quality standards anymore - there may be more, I'll have to check. — Zaui (talk) 04:48, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay. :-) RichardF (talk) 11:54, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Selected article article/bio/location screen height

See Wikipedia talk:Featured portal criteria#Word count in summaries / blurbs for a discussion of box screen heights. I would say the selected article/bio/location screen heights here are pushing the limits, particularly the right column. Perhaps we should strive to keep these display heights within a ballpark 100% view for a 1024X768 display. RichardF (talk) 11:55, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I'll work on trimming. — Zaui (talk) 17:48, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
I've pared down the location entries to meet the guideline. — Zaui (talk) 16:29, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Just FYI

The USA portal in Persian (Iranian) Wikipedia is now up and running: [1]

Took me a lot of work. But it's getting lots of positive feedback there.

Just to let u folks know:)--زرشک (talk) 22:42, 12 June 2008 (UTC)