Looks like there is a question (down near the bottom of the discussion) regarding redlinks. If you (Cirt) and OhanaUnited could come offer your thoughts, that would be great. Also, once that issue is resolved, the discussion is pretty much over, so if you can make a determination regarding whether the portal has passed the requirements, that would also be appreciated. Thanks for your time! ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 20:41, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It may have been noticed that I closed the Speculative Fiction discussion as "promote", on the basis of (1) multiple comments in support (including one today saying "This has been going on for waay too long", (2) Cirt's comment on 27th July that he would be likely to close it within a week, and (3) Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Archival instructions, where the very first sentence is "Any editor in good standing is welcome to analyse consensus in a nomination, and close it accordingly", i.e. promotion of a candidacy is therefore not limited to the two "directors". OhanaUnited (talk·contribs) has reverted my closure. Comments welcome. BencherliteTalk21:54, 30 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've proposed a simple solution: remove the image and re-close the nomination. At a later date, I think we can trust Nihonjoe to return the image to the portal subpage if things have been sorted out. Otherwise, the image stays removed. Imzadi1979→22:08, 30 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Volcanoes and US Roads - why I closed one as "promote" but left the other open
I have closed the Volcanoes nomination as "promote", based on the clear consensus reached. I have not closed the US Roads nomination because, although there are no objections, there are fewer expressions of support and one of them is mine; so as it would be less than ideal for me to promote, perhaps someone else will take a look? It doesn't have to be a FPo director: the archival instructions say that any editor in good standing can do so, and the archives of this talk page give plenty of examples of non-directors closing nominations as promote (including Cirt before he was added to the list of directors). BencherliteTalk10:43, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm looking through the oldest featured portals to see which if any meet current standards particularly in relation to frequency of updating. My thoughts are located at User:Bencherlite/Portals check 2010 for now, but feel free to join in and add any observations you have. I suggested to Cirt that a trawl of older portals might be a good idea as a spot check of three featured portals at random found two that were out of date, and Cirt agreed. I've nominated Portal:Portugal for defeaturing at featured portal review, and there may be more joining between now and Christmas unless improvements are made to e.g. Portal:Politics and Portal:France. Comments at the review page welcome. BencherliteTalk17:50, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The only part of the de-listing process that I just hate doing, is updating Portal:Featured content/Portals by removing the formerly-featured-portal from that list page. If someone else wishes to do that, I am all for closing the rest of those types of discussions. ;) -- Cirt (talk) 17:57, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This portal is no longer featured, but the effort required to remove it is disproportionate to the number of people who look at this page
From looking at the featured portal logs, I can tell you that the list is not in order of promotion (Biography, listed 1st, was July 2006 but Constructed Languages, listed 10th, was December 2005). I assume that life's too short to put them into a correct order. So, if Portal X is defeatured, move the highest-numbered portal (currently Obama) to its place, and leave a note at the top saying that the portals are not in order of promotion, importance or alphabet. BencherliteTalk18:12, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Appeal for reviewers for a FPo nomination with zero feedback
My FPo nomination of Portal:Law of England and Wales has been up for 2 weeks with no comments at all. I hope I've done my fair share in recent months of reviewing here and at PoPR, so I'd appreciate reviews in return (positive or negative – at least then I'd have something to work on!) It's not a complicated portal and virtually all the articles highlighted are of featured or good quality already. I left messages at related WikiProjects at the start of the nomination, but in reality reviews only tend to come from people already involved with portals. Help! BencherliteTalk14:22, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have now; not sure I knew about that page before. I will leave reminder messages at WP:Law, WP:England and WP:Wales, for whatever good that'll do... At what point will it become acceptable to approach individuals who've nominated FPo candidates, or commented on nominations? I tried that for the portal peer review and got a grand total of one response, incidentally... BencherliteTalk15:44, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(Looks above, sees the transcluded template - it appears to be for peer review volunteers, not FPoC review volunteers, although it may be a distinction without a difference in practice, subject to canvassing issues). Not for the peer review, I just went back through some recent nominations to see who'd been active here recently. I've not approached any individuals for this FPoC to avoid appearing to be canvassing. I'll happily take guidance on whether / when it'd be OK to do so. BencherliteTalk15:59, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Without objection. It'd be okay to leave a neutrally-worded, matter-of-fact notice. X is ongoing, at page Y. Something like that. -- Cirt (talk) 16:01, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Some questions based on development at Portal:Somerset
Over the last few days I've been working on Portal:Somerset and hope it will be ready for nomination here soon, but I've come across a few things I'd like to ask for advice on & I couldn't find a more suitable place:
I have already asked about the lack of references on Portals and been reassured that, like WP:TFA, linking to the article which contains the references is sufficient.
I also have a few queries which I haven't raised elsewhere yet:
At the bottom of the Somerset Portal I have linked the (? standard) set of Wikimedia links. Apart from Commons & Wiktionary these don't have suitable categories - should I take these out or are they mandatory?
I'm using Template:Numbered subpages for the changing sections, however the largest number this seems to be able to handle is 75 entries & Somerset has more than 75 relevant DYK entries. Is there an alternative template that can handle more entries?
I believe the MOS expects images of people to the facing the text about them, however Template:Selected DYK doesn't seem to allow setting left or right for the image - any ideas?
In topics I have put 3 relevant collapsible navboxes - however their border colours are set to make them consistent with other applications which use them & are therefore (in two cases) a different colour from the borders on the portal page - will this be a problem?
I have still to sort the "suggest" function, and may have other queries, but any thoughts on any of the above would be helpful.— Rodtalk15:31, 6 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Re Wikimedia links: I think you've got a few options. E.g. with Wikiquote, you could carry out a quick search there for quotations with "Somerset" etc in them and then create a page called "Somerset" to link them together; then you can link there from the portal. I did something similar with P:OXFORD, but the other way round - finding quotes to use on the portal, then adding them as a page on Wikiquote. E.g. with Wikisource, you could search for Somerset in existing texts and add "Category:Somerset" for the most appropriate pages (not every trivial mention). (The same thing for Wikinews, although you'd have to add {{editprotected}} requests to the talk pages as old news stories are archived by full protection.) Another option is to use the Wikimedia for portals template, but subst and then tweak it to point to better locations or even to search (i.e. "Special:Search/Somerset") pages, so that if anyone creates a category or target page in the future, the link is pre-formed. Finally, if you can't conceive of a particular project ever having anything relevant, I don't think you'd be criticised for removing the link from the box. E.g. I can't think that Wikiversity would ever have a course on the University of Oxford, so the UofO Portal doesn't have a link to there.
Not just reviews, but the whole portal system hasn't been upgraded since a long time. Thus the number of viewers decreased from 300,000 per month in 2008 to about half of that last month. In contrast, better maintained Portal systems on wikis with much lower readership attract higher number of viewers (ex: the French Wiki Portal page attracts 200k viewers).
Maybe one of the problems is that "Consensus is ... determined by the portal directors: Cirt and OhanaUnited" and not by any admin or editor. Neither is very active recently, and this slows down the process. Many ridiculously low quality and unmaintained portals have stayed "featured" for over a year, discrediting the whole system. --Elekhh (talk) 05:33, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
IOW, the en wiki portal system is broken big time. New directors that are active and know what they're doing should just step in. I see low participation rates all over en wiki; but this portal thing is the worst so far. There are many reason of course but I think wiki's model has many flaws. PumpkinSkytalk11:58, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Cirt is on indefinitely leave at the moment but I'll step in and close everything that needs to be closed within the next few days. A bigger concern is site-wide. Are you guys aware of the overall decline in editing across the entire English Wikipedia? My watchlist from 2010 and 2011 have a lot less activity than when it was 2007 or 2008. OhanaUnitedTalk page16:27, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OhanaUnited has promoted Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Renewable energy with no-one unconnected with the portal explicitly supporting its promotion, and certainly nothing like the consensus that would be required at any other featured content process. Is this the way forward? Or should nominations that lack supports / oppose be archived without prejudice to renomination, as would happen elsewhere? Comments or other ideas welcome. BencherliteTalk15:16, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I certainly would have liked to hear more opinions on the merits of the portal. If you think nominating it for a review, I will welcome further scrutiny. The main issue I see is however the general lack of participation, and as I suggested above I think the whole project would benefit from becoming more open. Another thing which I believe might help is improving the design of the main Portal:Contents/Portals. While I did some minor improvements in the past, I still think it lags behind its German or French equivalent. --Elekhh (talk) 01:51, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There seems to be a lot of FPs that are being maintainted, easily seen by looking at them. Then there are the less obvious ones, which are okay to the eye, but really not being maintained as they are living on recycled content.PumpkinSkytalk22:56, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion on whether to deprecate the portal namespace
I'm just dropping a note to let you all know that the 2012 WikiCup will be beginning tomorrow. The WikiCup is a fun competition open to anyone which awards the production of quality audited content on Wikipedia; points are awarded for working on featured content, good articles and topics, did you know and in the news, as well as for performing good article reviews. Signups are still open, and will remain open until February; if you're interested in participating, please sign up. Over 70 Wikipedians have already signed up to participate in 2012's competition, while last year's saw over double that number taking part. If you're interested in following the WikiCup, but not participating, feel free to sign up at Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send to receive our monthly newsletters. If you have any questions, please contact me on my talk page, or ask away at Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, where a judge, competitor or watcher will be able to help you. Thanks! J Milburn (talk) 00:43, 31 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Listen to me, Cirt. Because finally someone answers I'll take. ;-) I have given a lot to do to fix all the things I had asked Bencherlite. I think I did them all and that at present, the portal does not have anything less than many other FP. I think as a matter of respect, at least I was due for an answer. --Kasper2006 (talk) 16:51, 19 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'll re-re-review when I get a chance. I still see significant problems with it just at a glance, though. Kasper2006, the Featured Portal Candidates process runs significantly more slowly than the candidate processes for other featured content, because fewer people participate, so you'll just have to learn to be patient because, as Cirt says, you need multiple supports to gain the star. BencherliteTalk08:25, 20 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
2013 WikiCup
Hi, this is just a note to say that the 2013 WikiCup will be starting soon, with signups remaining open throughout January. The WikiCup is an annual competition in which competitors are awarded points for contributions to the encyclopedia, focussing on audited content (such as good articles, featured articles, featured pictures and such) and high importance articles. It is open to new and old Wikipedians and WikiCup participants alike. Even if you don't want to take part, you can sign up to receive the monthly newsletters. Rules can be found here. Any questions can be directed to the WikiCup talk page. Thanks! J Milburn (talk) 18:55, 30 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think there's a consensus to keep the number of steps in the closing instructions to an absolute minimum to keep it less tedious.
Portal:Contents/Portals is linked to from the top right of the Main Page; that's why it still gets so much traffic no matter how it is or is not maintained.
Not sure what the next step is, just bringing the discussion here to a central location instead of disparate user talk pages.
I know that the solution to keeping GA promotion simple was to create a bot that would do a lot of the steps. I think that, while portal promotions aren't nearly as frequent, commissioning a bot would be worthwhile. That being said, right now there are two people that are 'authorized' to close FPOCs, OhanaUnited and Cirt. I don't see the point to an RfC when it's just two people that have to figure something out together. Sven ManguardWha?07:13, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think there is also a problem with such closures being limited to two 'authorized' editors, one of them barely active. Instead the process should be opened-up as per the rest of Wikipedia, to all editors. --ELEKHHT07:35, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Elekhh, I'm not sure how I'm "barely active" in the Portal mainsapce has a lot of relevance in this discussion. Do you suggest that my activeness (or lack thereof) makes me inferior or incompetent in judging consensus and closing nominations? What you're implying is that a user's ability to gauge consensus is directly correlated with the user's activity level. Really?! OhanaUnitedTalk page18:57, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't implying any of that. I was only suggesting that more openness in all Featured Portal pages would be beneficial. Mea culpa for linking to your portal namespace edits, did not realise that the WP namespace is the relevent one here. --ELEKHHT02:46, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Two things. (1) it is not just the FPo directors who can close nominations: the instructions say "Consensus may be determined by any editor in good standing who is not materially involved in the portal's development or maintenance, or any related WikiProjects." The major problem is the lack of editor activity at FPo-related pages generally - see the current state of Featured portal review, for instance (review open since January, no activity for three months on an obviously unmaintained portal). Update: I've now delisted Portal:Literature, it was the obvious result. (2) I suggested streamlining the process, but stopping updating Portal:Contents/Portals was not one of my suggestions. Having said that, I see various links on that page to FPo pages already - how many times do we need to put bronze stars in front of portal names to advertise their status? Portal:Contents/Lists, for example, doesn't mark up featured lists. BencherliteTalk12:51, 3 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I was confusing this with WP:FPR which states: "One of the featured portal directors, Cirt and OhanaUnited, determines whether there is consensus". --ELEKHHT02:46, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
GimmeBot steps for Featured Portal Candidates closure
The Triple Crown's 2013 Steeplechase Event is here! Get your horses ready and participate the race of the year All featured content nominated from October 1, and all content promoted from November 1, is eligible.
Hi there; this is just a quick note to let you all know that the 2014 WikiCup will begin in January. The WikiCup is an annual competition to encourage high-quality contributions to Wikipedia by adding a little friendly competition to editing. At the time of writing, 106 users have signed up to take part in the competition; interested parties, no matter their level of experience or their editing interests, are warmly invited to sign up. Questions are welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Thanks! J Milburn (talk) 20:39, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Old nominations
@Cirt and OhanaUnited: How long does a nomination stay at WP:FPOC and how many supports are needed. For example normally WP:FLC require 3 supports while for WP:FAC, often 6 is needed. My summary of current FPOCs;
Portal:Paleozoic - (Newest FPOC) - 4 month old nomination - (3 comments, 1 supports (only nominator) , 0 opposes) - No activity in approximately 4 months
Portal:Featured content - (2nd newest nom) - 4 months, 1 week old nomination - (0 comments, 1 supports (only nominator) , 1 opposes (Bencherlite) - No activity in approximately 4 months
Portal:Children's literature - (3rd newest nom) - 5 months old nomination - (1 comments, 2 supports (nominator and Lotje) , 0 opposes) - No activity in approximately 5 months
Portal:New York City - (oldest nom) - 6 months, 3 weeks old nomination - (2 comments, 2 supports (nominator and Sven Manguard) , 0 opposes) - No activity in approximately 5 months
Summary: 4 nominations (oldest 6.75 months, newest 4 months) - 2 noms with 2 supports, 2 with 1 - No activity in approximately 4 months
The chronic inactivity of editors and directors at featured portal candidates is a long-standing problem. The decline since 2008 shown at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Featured log tells its own story. It reflects the low esteem that portals and featured portals have within the wider community. Thanks for pinging me, but I don't have the time or inclination to review any other nominations at present. I did my bit to review nominations and promote/archive nominations in the absence of the directors a few years ago, and I have other, more interesting things to do these days. You could also have mentioned Featured portal review, where the last nomination Wikipedia:Featured portal review/Basque took nearly 10 months to demote a portal that hadn't been updated since 2007! Frankly, tagging the whole set-up as {{historical}}, as happened with WP:Featured Sounds in 2011, would simply be a recognition of reality. BencherliteTalk09:10, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: In reply to NickGibson3900, generally at least two Supports with no actionable objections ideally with some comments that have been addressed, is sufficient to promote Featured Portal Candidates. — Cirt (talk) 15:48, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The instructions for re-nominating a portal do not work, and cannot be made to work as written unless you are an admin.
Even if you are an admin, {{FPOC|Archive 1}} does nothing that is not done by {{FPOC}}. The code for Template:FPOC does not make use of any parameters.
Frankly, I'm at a loss to figure out how the instructions ever worked in the first place, and can only presume regulars are working off some mutually-developed conventions. In short, the instructions - and likely Template:FPOC - need a complete overhaul. Adam Cuerden(talk)14:31, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think an easier solution may be to borrow some of the coding from FAC. Namely, the first nomination should be at /Archive 1, the second at /Archive 2, etc, and the templates involved can be recoded to look for, or create, the highest number necessary. That's how FAC does it and it works well. Imzadi 1979→18:18, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
