My Portal Insure The Box

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photo src: my.ardenhills.club

Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews

A list of portals

As part of some work I've been doing to clean up the Portal namespace, I've generated a nifty sortable list of all portals (including broken, incomplete, and redirected portals) at User:Zetawoof/PortalList. Zetawoof_(?) 04:53, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

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Related templates for portal creation

Hello all, I was working on the food and drink related portals and have come across or created several templates that are all used in creating portal pages. The thing is that while they are all related, they were never linked. So what I have done is link them all together under their "See also" sections. I have also improved the documentation a little because most info on usage was sparse at best.

These are them:

Main portal creation templates:

• {{Box portal skeleton}} - used to create portal main pages
• {{Random portal component}} - used on the portal main page to randomly displayed articles on portal sub-pages
• {{Numbered subpages}} - used to create article links on portal sub-pages

These templates are used to create the articles on the sub-pages:

• {{Selected article}}
• {{Selected biography}}
• {{Selected business}}
• {{Selected DYK}}
• {{Selected ingredient}}
• {{Selected quote}}
• {{Selected picture}}
• {{Selected product}}

--Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 00:35, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Done. I also made a simple list template to put on the see also pages so we will not have to change the see also section on dozens of pages every time another is added. {{Portal template list}} --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 20:24, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

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Items on portals

For anyone who is interested, Derek Andrews has created Template:No selected item which can be used as a warning for selecting items such as selected article and selected picture not being displayed the next month. Simply south is this a buffet? 21:55, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

photo src: vanishingsouthgeorgia.com

Portal placement in articles

I have found something a bit confusing regarding the placement of portals. In most cases the portal should go under the See also section however someone recently pointed out to me that the Biography portal says to put it above the categories so they placed said portal between the defaultsort and the categories. I think this is probably wrong but according to the letter of the law that is where its supposed to go. Could I get some clarification on this? --Kumioko (talk) 19:18, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Biography Portal placement

1) Per the biography instructions at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography#Templates

Biography Portal - Add this to the bottom of a page, right before the categories listing, to show a standardized link to the Biography portal.

General portal placement

2) Per the Wikipedia Layout instructions under the See also section at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ALSO#.22See_also.22_section

"See also" is the best place to link a Portal with the {portal} template.

3) Per the Template:Portal instructions at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Portal

Location - Within articles, this template is meant to be placed at the bottom of the article in the "See also" section.

Which portal instructions do we follow? Jrcrin001 (talk) 15:44, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

photo src: www.youtube.com

Energy portal news template

Could anybody help with adding the date parameter to the Template:Energy portal news? Beagel (talk) 15:40, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

photo src: www.pinterest.com

Does a portal need to be actively edited in order to be useful?

I'm curious what thoughts are on this. IMO, a well-developed portal, even if not being actively updated, still provides a useful launching pad for interested parties to find related articles. Such portals seem to generate a modest amount of hits per month and there is no need to delete or redirect them to the WikiProjects as has been proposed in several MFDs currently open and was carried out in a recently closed MFD. -xeno^talk 14:34, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Let me first clear 1-2 things:

• I opened again MfD for Futurama. You are welcome to raise your voice there
• I would never XfD something just to make my WP:POINT

• What exactly is a "well-developed portal"? All the portal I nominated, apart from Lost and MASH, where created by a single editor years ago and were never developed.
• If you check Portal:Contents/Portals you 'll see that most of the sciences don't tend to create narrow portals. Check for example Portal:Psychology.
• Wikiprojects seem to be more active from these portals in janitorial sections such as "articles that need cleanup".
• I don't agree with the idea that anyone can create a portal for any subject he likes. The result would be thousands of portals for every category of Wikipedia which most of them would hardly be updated.
• The fact that about 15 people where visiting Portal:Lost per day doesn't mean that is what they were actually looking for. I guess (just guess. I have no evidence) that many of them were looking for the Wikiproject Lost and some others for alternative to Lostpedia.
• I don't exactly get the idea ot mark as "historical" something that was hardly used and created without consensus.

• It's common sense. Portals are designed so that they can run by themselves even when we go on vacation. That's why there are random components. A portal can go on by itself for long periods of time without update requirements (unless there are sections like news that have no bots associated with Wikinews). Inactivity and construction do not bother me and I don't judge portals that way. It is the topics that are chosen that do not bring interest to the public (or even editors) that are associated with one small, narrow, or low class article. They aren't just disambiguation to a group of articles. They are suppose to offer a wide variety of topics that some even have their own WikiProjects. Are we really going to create portals for every band or group on Wikipedia and create redundancy? A completely agree with Magioladitis, and this ain't no point. ZooFari 21:45, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

photo src: krissyvenosdale.com

Dragon Ball portal

Can someone who is experienced with handling new portals take a gander at Portal:Dragon Ball? Firstly, I'm not sure how to format it correctly, that and those red links need fixing. I guess I'm too tired now to resume, but I'd greated appreciate if anyone can help me. Lord Sesshomaru -- Preceding undated comment added 04:06, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

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how to add a portal in edit box?

I recently tried to add a portal in the edit box, but did not know the formatting code. I've looked at different Wiki user-editor articles, but can't seem to find anything on how to add a portal. Perhaps I haven't found the right article. If anyone has the time to help me, it would be appreciated.

Also, may I suggest adding a section to this page, re how to add a portal in the edit box. For example: "Go to the directory of portals. Pick the portal you want. Then go to the page to which you wish to add that portal. In the edit box, type the following: 'two open braces, the name of the portal, the word portal, two close braces.' " -- or whatever the exact formatting code should be. This would be a great help to new editors like me. Thank you all for all you do for Wikipedia and new editors. Eagle4000 (talk) 16:00, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

photo src: krissyvenosdale.com

Capitalization

Most portals seem to be named after proper nouns or noun phrases, but those that aren't are completely inconsistent in capitalization. Viz.--

I propose, as with all Wikipedia articles (see WP:CAPS), that portals should always use lowercase after the first word, and not capitalize second and subsequent words, unless the title is a proper noun. -- the Man in Question (in question) 05:08, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

photo src: portal.xsede.org

Preponderance of portal templates

Please comment Several weeks ago, while editing Taoism, I noticed {{Taoism portal}}, which seemed redundant of {{Portal}}, so I nominated it for deletion on those grounds and it was deleted per consensus. I happened across a similar template--{{EnergyPortal}}--and nominated it for deletion as well. At this time, I discovered that there are 200 such templates all seemingly serving the same function as {{Portal}} (except lacking several of its features, such as the requirement for alt text.) Is there some reason for hundreds of templates that apparently do the same thing as {{Portal}}? Why do these exist? --Justin (koavf)?T?C?M? 00:22, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

photo src: my.ardenhills.club

Desperate need

I am in a desperate need of an auto-confirmed user to improve Portal:Star. --Extra999 (Contact ^me) 04:36, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

photo src: portal.xsede.org

Question relating to portals

Perhaps this is not the best place for these question but I will pose them here anyway. I will also link this to a couple other locations for additional input. I have had some issues with portals for some time know and this seems as good a time as any to begin addressing them. I personally think that the way we deal with portals in WP is a bit clunky and needs to be rethought/restructured.

• On the portal template and in the MOS it states that portals should be placed in the See also section. I have 2 questions regarding this point:
  • What if there is no see also section? Should a see also section be created to solely house the portal links? IF the answer is no, then were do they go?
  • What occasions would constitute putting the portal link on the left rather than right side? This isn't clear on the portal instructions and whenever I have seen a portal on the left, it was quickly changed to the right within a few edits stating conformity.
• Portalbox
  • Some articles could belong to multiple portals, for example War, World War I, World War II, United States Army, United States Navy, United States Marine Corps (I have several examples of people hitting multiple services like this), biography and potentially more. Obviously that exceeds the 5 portal limitation of the portalbox. So in regards to the portalbox template:
  • Why is it limited to 5 portals?
  • Should an article be linked to all applicable portals? or just certain ones?
• Recommendation
  • As a recommendation I think we should look at making these portal links more like the banners on the talk pages were they can be nested into a box similar to the banner nesting function on the talk pages. I think that would allow for a much cleaner look.
  • I personally don't like the portals streaming down the left hand side of the page, especially with large amounts of white space to the left or spilling into later sections. So I recommend changing this so they run horizontally rather than vertically with the portals being at the top of the see also section with links below them. This way if there are no links in the see also section you don't get multiple portals scrolling down or spilling into later sections. I could look something like this:
    • Portal1 | Portal2 | Portal3 | etc.
    • Link1
    • Link2
    • Etc.
  • I also think rather than linking multitudes of portals we should link them like we do the task forces on the talk page banners. I admit that maybe we don't want to just limit the hundreds of portals to just portal with hundreds of task forces but we could reduce them into the applicable wikiproject groups so the Military History might have Portal:War with all the portals pertaining to War as subportals within it, again, similar to the banner/taskforce structure on the talk pages.
  • I have looked through a number of portals and some appear to have been forgotten or have been overcome by events. I recommend that we do some sort of a portal audit to determine which ones are still valid and which ones could/should be eliminated.--Kumioko (talk) 16:28, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

photo src: my.ardenhills.club

Categories

Since they're all over the map, I'm attempting to standardize the subcategories of Category:Portals to lowercase-p "portals." About 20% of the categories are uppercase-p, and the rest are lowercase. Feel free to comment on Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2010_October_8#Uppercase_Portals if you have thoughts.--Mike Selinker (talk) 04:55, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

photo src: www.mywestamerica.com

Guidelines

Portals boxes have become part of the internal marketing infrastructure for projects impacting non-user space, along with project banners and edit summaries. The latter two are less of a problem, because they don't appear on articles - but portal boxes are being pushed too hard, IMHO. A link to the US Marines portal, for example, is fine on the page of a unit within the marines, a commander or notable marine, a key raining facility or battle, maybe. But not on the page of everyone who was a marine. Similarly US Army portal doesn't belong on every US Civil War page. Anyone up to starting some guidelines? Rich Farmbrough, 14:37, 19 October 2010 (UTC).

Portal:Energy

There is something wrong with the layout of the Portal:Energy header. Also, text of all sections is centrefied instead of alignment to left. I appreciate if some more experienced editor in this field could fix it. Thank you. Beagel (talk) 11:15, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Portals should go with the text that that conforms to the portal

I disagree with placing portals in the See also area. They should accompany the text that highlights what the portal is all about. For example, in an article about France, an "agriculture" portal should be placed in the section dealing with French agriculture. Yours, GeorgeLouis (talk) 07:01, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

That is a real bummer. GeorgeLouis (talk) 13:29, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, I don't. I think it is silly. GeorgeLouis (talk) 03:08, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Portals are vandalism targets

This is only loosely related to the above discussion, so it's under a separate header.

The main portals are only one click away from the main page, but they are not protected by any anti-vandalism bot and don't have enough watchers. Just this morning, I see that this offensive blanking lasted for 50 minutes, and this swearword lasted seven hours. I get the impression that I may be the only editor who systematically reviews the recent changes in this namespace - my apologies, of course, to anyone I've overlooked.

Compare this with the articles linked from the main page, watched over by ClueBot NG. Today's featured article has 45 watchers; so far it's been vandalised once, and that lasted 3 minutes.

I raised this at User_talk:ClueBot_Commons/Archives/2011/February#Portal_namespace, and was told that I'd be welcome to get the old Cluebot's pattern-matching code running in the Portal namespace. That's well outside my skill set!

But if portals are to be an effective "main page" for their topic areas, we need to take more care of them. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:32, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Cartoon Network

Portal:Cartoon Network is up for deletion at WP:MFD. Please comment here for any concerns. Thank you for time, regards. JJ98 (Talk) 02:22, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Portal links in articles are just worthless spam

Nothing is more annoying than finding the link to the biography portal in every biography. It is just internal spam, no better than a Viagra spam message. However a link to the Nigerian Oil Minister's portal would be very helpful, I have lost touch with him after he cashed my check for $1,500 and I want to make sure he is ok. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 06:16, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Evolution

Personally, I feel that there may be a "portal problem" driven by a feedback loop; portals get fewer viewers, so they get less attention from potential editors, which affects quality and extent (though I have every respect for those people who do lots of good work on portals; there just aren't as many of them), which could discourage wider linking to portals, which means they get fewer viewers...
I'm not sure that it's possible to break out of that feedback loop. Also, the wikipedia ecosystem has evolved over time, but for the last couple of years it's been a lot more complex (for lay readers) than an encyclopædia (or any website that the average person visits at lunchtime) and I feel that portals are one of several evolutionary lines which simply didn't thrive, whether due to external or internal factors. A bit like a coelacanth. Other species - categories, wikiprojects, navboxes, taskforces, see-alsos &c - have outcompeted portals for various ecological niches, even though none of those species exactly recreates what portals do. bobrayner (talk) 16:28, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Are portals achieving their purpose?

Should the portal system be changed? If so, how? Guoguo12--Talk--  19:26, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

About a month ago, a user at the Idea Lab started a section entitled "Portals: is there any point?", in which he asked a question I believe the Wikipedia community should consider: "Do portals need to be rethought?" According to WP:Portal, portals serve as navigation aids, while also aiming to "promote content and encourage contribution". However, as Mr.Z-man observed in his reply (and I don't mean to put him on the spot), portals may not be fulfilling their job:

"I think portals are essentially a failed concept. At best, it was a good idea poorly executed. They require significant amounts of time to set up and they're very lightly used. They don't serve as an effective entry point since, except for the handful linked directly from the main page, you have to go to an article first to get a link to the portal and often the link is at the end of the article.

Editing portals is much more difficult than articles. The portal pages themselves are typically giant messes of HTML, wikitables, and parser functions. With many it's not at all clear how to go about adding new content to the selected article/image features."

The purpose of this RfC is to gauge Wikipedians' opinions on portals. Should the portal system be changed? If so, how? Guoguo12--Talk--  19:26, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Portals lack promotion, and are a natural evolution of topics

• It's hardly a surprise that few people look at them, given that portals get zero promotion. Which is a shame, because modern featured portals are very good. I envisage portals and good/featured topics merging one day. Many featured topics are more specific than a portal should ever be under our current guidelines, but I see no reason why that shouldn't change in future. Besides, that would actually open up the possibility of portals one day being main-page worthy, which would in itself would ramp up interest in portals many times over. --WFC-- 01:42, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
• Are they doing any harm? The reason they're so ineffective is because we don't, as WFC pointed out, promote them. I like portals--like the Main Page, they allow a showcasing of beautiful content from a certain topic area. In addition, it allows for a bit of creativity on our part, instead of boring walls of text. I don't find portals hard to navigate around or edit at all, and I think we should improve existing portals to featured status as they aren't hurting us at all. /?ETCHCOMMS/ 01:52, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
  • I would argue portals are somewhat harmful: every extra page we add to Wikipedia makes navigation more difficult and confusing. Having over-lapping systems of portals, categories, lists and articles can make navigation confusing. Personally, I think merging portals and categories would be the best solution--we could have the attractive visual elements of a portal on the category page, but still have the all-encompassing inclusiveness (theoretically, I know categories aren't perfect) of categories.Scientific29 (talk) 00:28, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
  • I once put a lot of work into a portal. After a while it became clear that it was getting very little attention and my time would be better spent on other activities. -- Derek Andrews (talk) 13:07, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
• I don't think portals on the bottom of article pages or in the sidebar in ugly boxes serve any useful function at all. I do think that "Links" to homepages of the various Wiki Groups on the talk page are good to have around. I'd get rid of portals altogether in article space. Carrite (talk) 01:55, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
• I disagree with the claim that they aren't promoted. There's links to portals all over the place, in articles, on talk pages, etc. No one uses them because they were a bad idea on the Internet in 1998 and they are a bad idea today. I support their phase-out, with the few highly-trafficked ones moved into wikiproject space. Gigs (talk) 14:01, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
• Every measure I look at shows that they're completely underutilized. The whole concept of a web portal was maimed by the rise of Google, and smothered to death by the rise of social networks. I'm afraid I support the people who think we're better off phasing out the portal space, starting with the inactive ones. If there are any active ones left at the end of it, we can figure out if they have any benefit and what to do with them. (If they have a navigational benefit, try to migrate them to a template. If they have a community benefit, try to direct them to a WikiProject.) Shooterwalker (talk) 18:39, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

GLAM and cultural portals? (An idea)

One thing I've been raising is the potential for using portals as a way of exploring content on Wikimedia projects in a way that doesn't necessarily fit into the structure of existing categories/templates/navboxes. See here and here. Being able to explore all the articles related to things like museums, radio programmes, events and so on may actually be an interesting place that portals could go in the future. With the British Museum example, imagine after someone gets home from the British Museum and they go onto the BM portal on WP and can explore hundreds of articles across a huge variety of subject areas, and also be able to read up on news, original sources, pictures/media, books and learning materials from all the other Wikimedia projects that cover the subjects covered by the exhibitions in the museum. It could cover all sorts of things: exhibitions at museums, issues being debated in the legislature of a country like the UK or US, ongoing wars like Iraq/Afghanistan and much more. The content wouldn't necessarily be encyclopedic in the same way stuff in article space is, and we'd probably have to draft some more policy - I'd suggest that a policy might allow for portals that collect resources together about non-commercial cultural, artistic, scientific institutions or mattters of generla public importance. The idea would be to help show the diversity of content available on Wikimedia sites to people who have just found themselves interested in that particular subject by dint of recent exposure (things roughly in the same ballpark as 'going to a museum'). Portals could literally be that: a portal from some real-world thing they have just experienced into Wikimedia content.

GLAM is a potential starting point for this: the GLAM collaborations in the UK have shown some really positive ways for Wikimedians to work with existing cultural institutions. Why not bring that into Portal space too? --Tom Morris (talk) 01:54, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

• Ooh, absolutely. That's a great idea. /?ETCHCOMMS/ 02:20, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I can't speak for all the portals but here are a couple number for some US related portals.

• According to this Portal:United States (Currently pending featured status) got 6998 hits to the main page of the portal alone in February 2011.
• Portal:U.S. Roads (Currently a featured portal) got 1835 hits according to this in February 2011
• Portal:United States Marine Corps got 4073 hits according to this in February 2011.

With that said I also like portals but not necessarily the way we display them on the articles in boxes. I do think having them on the article space is good though and demoting them to talk pages only is a sure way to start them down the road to elimination from non use. I think they are an excellent way of presenting content to our readers in an organized and visually attractive way but in order to work effectively they shouldn't be standalone entities as many are. They seem to work best when they are used within a package of WikiProject and Portal with active users supporting both. Examples of this are seen in the Military history project and its portals, US Roads and its portal and most recently in WikiProject United States and its portal as well as others. --Kumioko (talk) 02:52, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Portals have been superseded

I've been using Wikipedia for about 6 years now and have never used portals. In the early days, if I wanted information on a topic, I'd google it. Then, when I discovered the value of WP, I simply swapped search engines. Where I once googled, I now "woogle". My point here is that I (like many others, I suspect) find it far easier to find a topic simply by searching for it; and, if I can't find it that way, I look at a related topic. In that respect, those lovely decorated navboxes are extremely useful. In my eyes, they, along with the various List of... pages supersede portals.

Having said that, though, I can understand why portals were begun, especially if we consider them in light of the enduring influence of Dewey. However, a quick glance through All portals reveals their failings. If portals are supposed to classify articles, then I can not just see several glaring omissions but also more than a few inaccuracies. For example, I would have expected the religion portal's classification structure to more resemble List of religions and spiritual traditions. And I won't even bother arguing about the grouping of atheism with astrology.

It seems to me, then, that the tasks served by portals are being fulfilled in other ways. Consider:

• To classify articles: Categories dominate this aspect. A new article doesn't age much before it gets categorised.
• To aid navigation between similar topics: In-text links, See Also links, Navboxes and navbars dominate this aspect. (If I'm on a page and want to go to a simialr page, why should I waste my time going via some portal page, assuming I've even noticed the tiny portal box).
• To group articles together for collective viewing and editing: WikiProjects seem to fulfil this role. (My only criticism of WikiProjects, when compared to Portals, is that their main pages aren't always structured very well and often aren't sufficiently similar to each other to ease their use. It's much easier to navigate a new page if you know where to expect to find something).

Therefore, I propose the following:

• That the list of portals on the main page be adjusted to links instead to the relevant category pages;
• That portal pages be redirected to the relevant WikiProject pages, but not before the various WikiProjects adopt some sort of common basic structure for their pages.
• That categories be moved from the bottom of the page to somewhere more visible, such as above the other language list on the far left, or near the See Also section. Alternatively, the category bar should be better formatted and highlighted. As it stands, the categories appear as an inconspicuous mass of words, making them easily overlooked.

LordVetinari (talk) 03:26, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

• We were actually having a discussion about portals on the WMAU list the other day, and the universal point of view is that nobody had ever used a portal, knew anyone who had, or had much of an inclination to contributing to them, except maybe to rack up featured content credits. I think that says it all. A good idea, but badly executed and in need of significant reform if not outright closure. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 00:10, 10 April 2011 (UTC).

Rotate list of portals on the main page?

I realize that the list of portals on the main page is intended to encompass all of the broad categories of knowledge. However, as others have said above, other portals need more exposure. Could we make that section more prominent and repurpose it as a kind of "Have you seen this topic area?" section? If we want to maintain the "basic areas of knowledge" focus, on some days we could have one broad portal (e.g. Portal:Geography), and then some subportals or related portals (Portal:Africa, Portal:Asia, etc.) This would spread the love around and ensure that weaker portals get more attention and hopefully improvement. What do people think?--Danaman5 (talk) 04:51, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

What about a "featured portal of the month" section? /?ETCHCOMMS/ 16:04, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I like the idea of a "featured portal of the timeperiod" (I think it might be good to have them featured for a week or a fortnight instead of a month, to allow more rotation through them). I ran this idea past a few people at one point, but all of them said that the people running the main page wouldn't be likely to go for it. I still disagree with that, and I think it would be a great way to help people see the benefit of a well-designed portal. I should note that I have a log in the fire on this one since I designed and still maintain (almost completely by myself) the featured Speculative fiction portal. ···???^? · ?? · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 19:21, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

The German model

I think it's really worth thinking about the German model: WikiProjects are subpages of portals. E.g. the German version of WP:WikiProject Mathematics is located at de:Portal:Mathematik/Projekt. I have been an active member of our WikiProject Mathematics for a long time, but I am not sure if I have ever visited Portal:Mathematics. I think the same holds for most other project members. With a clear structure connecting the WikiProjects and the portals, the projects would feel responsible for the portals and the portals (which could reasonably be made to get more exposure as they would be generally in better shape) would draw in new experts as new editors and project members. Hans Adler 08:39, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Revitalizing Portals

Here's an idea. When users log in to Wikipedia, they are greeted by a boring white page with icons from our sister projects and a link back to the page they were previously looking at. What if users could instead choose a portal as their "homepage" that would be displayed when they log in? Each day, they would have something interesting to look at and have a listing of important "on this day" events for a topic they already care about. This could make portals a more personalized version of the Main Page. Anyone else have an idea? -Mabeenot (talk) 17:03, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Mythical Animals

I was wondering if a Portal for mythical animals would be helpful. Portal:Mythology is too general to make a difference in this area.Pinguinus (talk) 21:43, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Bolivia

I am making a portal on Bolivia. I am going to need some help, as this is my first portal. I would also want to know if people would want the portal. ~~EBE123~~ ^talk_Contribs 19:56, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Placement

Currently, it says to put portals in the "See also" section. If there is no other article in the "See also" section then the portal sits in the section below and the "See also" section appears to be empty. This is asethetically ugly, and seems inappropriate to have it that way if the section is empty. It seems like there needs to be a better way of handling the placement when the "See also" section is empty.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 23:35, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Logo

Is there currently any kind of logo or symbol for portals? How about File:Swirl.png, or something? Rcsprinter^{Gimme a message} 09:57, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Check out new, revolutionary portal

The Conservatism Portal is going to change the way portals are designed. It is a dual portal and during the month of February doubles as the Ronald Reagan portal. In the spirit of the German design, the portal is integrated with WikiProject Conservatism. See the Featured portal nomination here. - Lionel ^(talk) 03:18, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

New Portal

I recomendd to make the "USA sports portal" that contains the most famous american sports (american football,basketball,baseball,golf,tennis and motorsports),sport leagues (NFL,MLB,NBA,NHL,NCAA football,NASCAR) and sport providers (Fox Sports etc..),plus their events,matches,players etc.. Ok,who will make this portal? --Wikidexel (talk) 08:51, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

News

Right now, Portal:Iowa gets its news from the most recent entries to Wikinews:Category:Iowa, via the Wikinews Importer Bot. Lately, Wikinews hasn't had much to say about Iowa, which means that our most recent entry is "Texas governor Rick Perry to announce his presidential intentions," which is old news to say the least. Is there any other way to automatically generate news headlines/links for Portals other than relying on Wikinews? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 09:29, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Purpose of the Portal space

Browse Main Page portal introductions

At least in support of the Main Page Featured Portal drive, here is the collection of their introductions. In order for them to be less disruptive off-portal, I set (and sometimes added) the "TOC=yes" and "EDIT=yes" parameters. One "fix" I still found myself doing was up this section header to level 1 [now back to level 2 --RichardF (talk) 13:31, 8 December 2011 (UTC)] so that the TOC would indent the intros to subsections. I also smalled the font for this section to make it look more like the others. Another impact of this is any following sections here or on another page would need that type of fix to display properly. In case anyone can figure out/wants to add a section like this somewhere else, I placed the boxes in a subpage:

Wikipedia talk:Portal/Main Page portal intros --RichardF (talk) 16:25, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I added

  |SPAN={{{SPAN|}}}  

to each of the Main Page portal box-headers, and

  |SPAN=yes  

to the subpage used for this section. Because the SPAN box-header parameter removes the h2 header code, that took care of the goofy TOC display issue from using a box-header on a non-portal page...finally! :-) --RichardF (talk) 20:07, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Ideas to increase portal visibility

The following are some ideas to increase portal visibility on Wikipedia, most of which are culled from the discussion above "Purpose of the Portal space." As the above section became very long, the following is intended to summarize the main points specifically pertaining to increasing portal visibility on Wikipedia, and to encourage further discussion of this specific topic.-- Northamerica1000^(talk) 04:35, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Increase visibility on Wikipedia's main page

• "...The portal links on the right (on Wikipedia's main page) are not obvious in their purpose and seem like an after thought."... "portals would be immensely popular if we had (say ten) highly developed portals linked in a "tabbed" format at the top of the (main) page, with one rotating slot for a featured specialist portal. (And put a general sports one up there! There's a reason why all information sites carry sports stories so prominently - a plethora of readers want to read about it.) Each of these linked major portals could have an updated "in the news" section linking in with current happenings on that topic, as we do generally on the main page." - from User:Sillyfolkboy (listed as "SFB" above.)

• Featuring featured portals on the main Wikipedia page. Highlighting a featured portal "...in the "Welcome to Wikipedia" box right at the top, once a week, say on every Friday. That would keep us going for at least 3 years, and might actually encourage editors/Projects to work on them regularly to have a shot at getting them listed." - (From User:Zangar's comments above.)

• Utilize space at the top of the main Wikipedia page--  in between "Welcome to Wikipedia" and 8 portals on the right by adding more portal links. Should we revisit which portal links should be placed on main page? Also, instead of using bullets for those 8 portals, we can use some kind of universally-understood & generic diagrams for each of 8 subjects. - from User:OhanaUnited

• Users above posted about a previous discussion about listing featured portals on the main page being opposed by the majority of users that participated in that discussion: Request for comment - Main Page features - Featured portals.

• At the top of the main page on the right, simply adding a header titled "Wikipedia Portals" would be useful. As they are listed now, they just list the portal names without the term "portal" in them, except for the "All portals" link. A header would further clarify what these links are for. Also, moving the "All portals" link to the lead of this area might improve portal visibility. - from User:Northamerica1000 (not from discussions above).

--Please post regarding this subsection below--

Regarding my suggestion on using "universally-understood & generic diagrams", we can borrow what's being used in Wikipedia:Portal/Directory and fill in the rest. Here is what we could use:

• Not sure for Portal:Biographies
• Needs some thinking on Portal:History to avoid using symbols which could be viewed as offensive/insensitive to certain cultures/ethic groups

Feel free to suggest other diagrams. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 06:08, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support. I like this idea ... but it's probably the least feasible as far as getting consensus from the greater community to change something on the Main Page. :P -- Cirt (talk) 05:41, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support. All the ideas listed above seem good. I'm thinking perhaps the conveniently titled File:History.svg may be a good image for Portal:History. Also we can find other images if necessary at Template:Portal/Images, if we want to keep it consistent with what the portals use themselves. Cheers, Zangar (talk) 11:19, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Portal link placement and linkages

Change WP:Seealso policies regarding portal placement in articles

• Rather than in the the bottom of articles in the See also section, "...have the portal links either next to or inside the articles infobox. This might not be the only thing done, but would surely help those portal's page views a bit."... - from User:Nolelover.

• "... if portals were linked at the top of an article, they'd be getting a lot more attention, rather than being, as has been mentioned, an afterthought." - from User:Floydian above.

--Please post regarding this subsection below--

• Support. Now this is certainly an excellent idea. ;) -- Cirt (talk) 05:42, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
• Tentative support This is a good idea if the links are integrated well into an infobox or lead template. That said, I wouldn't want the current portal template placed alone in an all text lead. The Portal link should not be an excessive distraction to the lead. SFB 15:01, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support as semi-nom, I guess. SFB makes a good point, although I'd like to know if there's more support for the portal links to be inside the infobox or generally outside it. Nolelover ^{Talk·Contribs} 18:46, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support - Having a portal link inside of infoboxes that's similar or identical to those currently placed in See also sections would be an improvement. A good placement for this would be at the very bottom of infoboxes. For articles lacking infoboxes, however, a portal link in the upper-right hand corner of articles in italics, stating, "Related portals: " (with following portal names) would be less distracting with the omission of an image for this type of link placement. This would be similar to the "See also" hatnotes in articles, with the data being on the right-side of the article. This would both enhance Wikipedia's content and increase portal viewership. Northamerica1000^(talk) 07:12, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
• Support - I really like this idea, placing a link at the head of an article as opposed to the bottom would definitely help advertise the presence of the portals to users of WP. --Jeremy (blah blah o I did it!) 09:09, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
• Support - some infoboxes already have a portal link, see for example {{Infobox GB station}} (which has one) and {{Infobox London station}} (which has two). --Redrose64 (talk) 16:41, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Increasing links to portals

• Add portal links to articles (stated by several users)

• Post at Wikiprojects asking users to help improve portals and to place portal links in relevant articles. (several mentions above)

• "...add portals to talk page headers and integrate the templates with sub projects i.e = Template:WikiProject Canada
  

• "...connecting the categorization system with the portal system, since they both work in the same realm of articles." - from User:Floydian above.

• Directly link portals to Wikiprojects. - (From User:Zangar's comments above.)

--Please post regarding this subsection below--

• Support. Another great idea, makes tons of sense, zero downside. ;) -- Cirt (talk) 05:42, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support. Exactly what I had in mind. Obviously we'll have to play with what images are used and the size of them, but I fully support the concept. - ??o??ia? ^? _¢ 18:57, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support. I really like the look of the {{Portal bar}} - a great improvement and being a horizontal bar it will not intrude on any of the article content, so I think editors will more readily apply it than the sideboxes we currently use. Zangar (talk) 11:27, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
• Comment - Just to clarify that my suggestion of "Directly link portals to Wikiprojects" was more about structurally linking to the WikiProject (rather than wikilinking). Basically, that a WikiProject would be primarily responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of their related portals, hopefully ensuring work is semi-regularly done on the portal at a project-level. But this probably also falls inline with the "add portals to talk page headers and integrate the templates with sub projects" suggestion. Cheers, Zangar (talk) 11:34, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
• Comment: I wonder if we can make a random portal lister like the random portal elements which lists a random five featured portals any time the main page is viewed. This might help increase exposure to the featured portals and encourage people to work to get portals to featured status. ···???^? · ?? · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 07:48, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

• Directly linking portals to WikiProjects, and vice-versa is a useful addition that encourages user participation in Wikiprojects and portals, and is a user-friendly way to link the contents of these highly-related page types. Northamerica1000^(talk) 07:50, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Improve the portals themselves

• Improve the portals themselves and portal designs (many mentions above). Example:

• Conservatism portal

-- automated, requires little maintenance, a "dual portal" integrated into Wikiproject Conservatism. "This is definitely the portal of the future. If every portal followed this design we could see newfound interest in portals." - (Summary from User:Lionelt's comment above.)

--Please post regarding this subsection below--

• Support. I'm on this already. As a result of this discussion, I've gotten the idea to start improving the portals linked at top right of Main Page, starting out at first with Portal:Arts. Feel free to help out with the first one, we can coordinate at Portal talk:Arts. ;) -- Cirt (talk) 05:44, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support per Cirt (talk · contribs). I've been around to improve the Animation portal myself, so far its been pretty slow and hard, if there were lot of users around to help it. JJ98 (Talk / Contributions) 10:58, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support - If portal links become more visible in articles, then the likelihood of viewers viewing them increases, which corresponds with the likelihood of increased user additions and improvements to portals. The improvement of portals in general is a great way to improve the overall Wikipedia project. Northamerica1000^(talk) 07:23, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Improve portal listings in search engines

• Improve portal listings in search engine results. - (Stated by several users above).

--Please post regarding this subsection below--

• Support. However, this appears to be a statement of intended outcome, rather than a suggestion of what to do to improve the situation itself right now. ;) -- Cirt (talk) 05:45, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Merge Integrate portals with WikiProjects, using links such as tabbed headers

• Integrate portals with WikiProjects and a QA process similar to the one used in parts of the German Wikipedia.

--Please post regarding this subsection below--

• Support. Hans Adler 12:30, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
• Comment. An interesting suggestion, but I think that this would have an impact on the wider culture of the English wikipedia and not just portals. I don't think this is really the place to be having this discussion, as it is more about increasing visibility of portals rather than changing their usage. But it's worth suggesting later once this has been sorted out. Thanks, Zangar (talk) 11:40, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support. This makes sense since the project (or a project member) is responsible for starting a portal in the first place. Integrating the portal with the project would make it less likely for the portal to be abandoned. --Kleinzach 15:37, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support per Kleinzach and the OP. Ten Pound Hammer o ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 19:32, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - Merging the content of portals and Wikiprojects may make pages too long to view, read and navigate comfortably. Furthermore, it's uncertain how this type of merge would increase portal visibility on Wikipedia. Rather, linking portals to WikiProjects is a useful addition that encourages user participation in Wikiprojects and portals, and is a user-friendly way to link the contents of these highly-related page types. Northamerica1000^(talk) 06:59, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

• Important Note - This section appears to be about integrating portals and Wikiprojects with links, such as with tabs, rather than merging their contents into one article. Northamerica1000^(talk) 08:06, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
• Good clarification. While I would oppose merging, I support integrating. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 08:10, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
• Support - Tabbed links between portals and Wikiprojects is functional to increase reader knowledge about the existence of these types of pages. Northamerica1000^(talk) 08:34, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
• Support Another possible idea that may work. --Jeremy (blah blah o I did it!) 09:10, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Portal subject bars

Subject bars - Some examples below:

• {{Subject bar |portal = Primates }} creates:

• {{Subject bar |book1= Subfossil lemurs |book2= Lemurs |portal1= Primates |portal2= Madagascar }} creates:

These are just a couple of examples. See the Template:Subject bar page for all options. Northamerica1000^(talk) 16:38, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Main Page Featured Portal drive

• Featured portal drive = drive to get all portals linked from top-right of Main Page to Featured Portal quality status rating.

---

Edit at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Main Page Featured Portal drive

---

• Anyone interested in contributing to this drive? Perhaps even taking on one of the other portals not-yet-featured?

• Feel free to use the work I've done so far at Portal:Arts as a model going forward.

Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 08:27, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

An exceptional idea, which I fully support. Northamerica1000^(talk) 07:26, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+Updated status = Portal:Arts on peer review at Wikipedia:Portal peer review/Arts/archive1. -- Cirt (talk) 07:06, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+Updated status = beginning Featured Portal drive at Portal:Society, feel free to help out, we can coordinate efforts at Portal talk:Society. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 23:56, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

• I've done some work to the Technology portal: Improved layout and formatting. There's now 20 Did You Know entries. Northamerica1000^(talk) 12:35, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your help! ;) -- Cirt (talk) 15:47, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
• Portal:Society - improved "Things you can do" and "Featured articles" section layout. Changed box header color from bright yellow to a light blue. Added a visually-appealing header. Northamerica1000^(talk) 12:11, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Most of those changes were inappropriate and non-constructive, and reduced the overall quality of the portal -- I thought that Northamerica1000 (talk · contribs) was going to focus his efforts on Portal:Technology and getting it up to Featured Portal Quality, so we didn't have to duplicate each others' efforts and step over each other stylistically??? Thank you, -- Cirt (talk) 15:52, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

If anyones interested Portal:United States is pretty close. Last I heard we just needed to finish updating some of the Anniversaries. --Kumioko (talk) 16:13, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Great idea, Kumioko! Last I heard, RichardF (talk · contribs) had done a bunch of work on that portal, perhaps contact him? -- Cirt (talk) 01:08, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Update: Moved above table to subpage, at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Main Page Featured Portal drive. -- Cirt (talk) 19:35, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Exceptional idea, I would like to participate in this. --Extra 999 (Contact ^me) 10:28, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Introductions

I have been improving the introuctory pages of portals, some you can see. What do you think, is this perfect or it needs to be changed. Can anyone help in this? --Extra 999 (Contact ^me) 10:50, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Reagan Day commemoration

WikiProject Conservatism cordially invites you to celebrate Ronald Reagan Day. On February 6 The Conservatism Portal will commemorate Ronald Reagan Day with a format specially designed for the holiday. The Conservatism Portal has recently been promoted to Featured Portal. - Lionel ^(talk) 03:19, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

No Portals for maintenance categories

I added that Portals should not be for maintenance categories. The basis for saying this is Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Merge. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 14:21, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Puzzled over Portal:Current events/Sports?

Need some advice. Wanted to ask about Portal:Current events/Sports?. It's not a portal. It does not resemble a portal, or even its paretn Portal:Current events. It's just an unreferenced listing of sports statistics arguably more suitable for Wikinews than Wikipedia. What should be done with this, clearly it should be de-portalled but to where? Should it be deleted or is it salvageable? --Falcadore (talk) 22:08, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I understand it does not resemble a portal, and it's unreferenced, so it would be OK with me if its format is changed. I have no idea how to do it, or what should be done with it. Meanwhile, I will continue updating the "portal". Sorry for my English. --Itxia (talk) 09:03, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I disagree with it needed a major revamp. The issues with it are purely cosmetic, and anyone knowledgable about standard portal formatting can fix it, even if they know nothing about sports. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 02:07, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Request for creation of the IR portal

• Portal:International relations seems to be missing from English Wikipedia, while two other Wikipedias, Portuguese([4]) and French([5]) have this portal. In my opinion, creation of this Portal is vital and very important because it covers a subject of a high (and increasing) value. Also it should be noted that many Portals covering subjects of quite marginal importance exist in Wikipedia and this Portal is not. :) --Dj777cool (talk) 09:24, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

How to categorize a portal

Quoting that section:

• "Portals with their own categories are only categorized in that category, which in turn is put into the other categories that the portal would have been in."

That should cover only the categorization of portal categories in portals categories, such as cat Children's literature portal in cat Literature portals. It should not pertain outside the portals category tree. For example, the children's literature portal Portal: Children's literature should be one of the Pages at the head of cat Children's literature (after the main article Children's literature).
And so it is.
But Portal: Middle earth is not in cat Middle-earth. --nor is its portal category there, but that's another matter.
--Neither the Children's literature nor the Middle-earth category displays its portal shortcut, but that's yet another matter.

Suggesting a maybe-straw man:

• "Portals with their own portal categories should be in no other portals categories, where their portal categories should represent them."

That precisely states what is intended, I believe, and it may be clear to readers who are very good with singulars and plurals.

Is this directive sound? I doubt it. Cat Literature portals is bloated, partly because of non-compliance, as we suggest in the stated rationale. However, even if we eliminated the multiple listing of cat Twilight portal and others, those portals that appear in cat Literature portals only as members of cat Speculative fiction portals would remain overlooked among Oscar Wilde and other portal categories that are not speculative fiction. Essentially thus, Portal: Horror fiction is now "impossible" to find in cat Literature portals, because [a] it is named neither as a subcategory nor a page there and [b] numerous portal categories are named as subcats there (of which only Middle-earth and Twilight are also in the spec. fic. portals cat). --P64 (talk) 19:01, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Where to put portal links

The Portals project page gives the ==See also== section as the standard place for portal links. This is fine provided the specific project for the article in question allows a See also section. In the case of medical articles, their WP:MEDMOS deprecates See also sections, leaving some uncertainty as to where portal links should go. There is an unresolved discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Position of portal links which basically comes to the conclusion that there are no other sections where a portal link should go. I have resorted to a portal bar below the navboxes as the only logical option left that I can identify, but it would be preferable if a consensus could be reached for a general policy, and this added to the project page to save time in future. Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:51, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Some portal links are spam. It's just the ego of people contaminating Wikipedia. I'm glad Extra999 didn't revert my edition, but one of you might [6]; pay atention to the "offensive" edit summary. A portal about an academic discipline might be useful, and also a portal about a country, but a portal about biographies should go in Wikibooks or something like that. 200.124.54.133 (talk) 06:24, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Should a See also section be added to an article just for portal links? If they aren't played in the SA section, then where? Many articles don't have See also sections, and some of them that do shouldn't because the non-portal links are already in the article. If no SA would it be references?...William 13:43, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Portal:Sports

Is Portal:Sports featured? It appears on Featured portals, but its talk page says it's still a candidate, and it's missing the star in the corner. -- Ypnypn (talk) 14:34, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Portal:U2

Hi there, I am wondering if everyone could take a look at the portal and tell me what is missing and if it could be a Featured Portal? Thank you so much in advance. Miss Bono ^[zootalk] 18:45, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! :) Miss Bono ^[zootalk] 15:52, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I've tried, see what happened... :'( to the Selected Picture section...Portal:U2 Miss Bono ^[zootalk] 15:55, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

OhanaUnited, Sorry, I said something wrong. What I meant to say was something like, is it ok to use citing from a book (I have a copy of U2 by U2). (e.g DYK that Bono sings Miss Sarajevo whil brushing his teeth) (this is not a real fact from the book, just an example). Can I use some extract from the book? That's what I meant to say. Miss Bono ^[zootalk] 19:15, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi, OhanaUnited. The modifications for the portal are done now, can you please review it? Thank you. Miss Bono ^[zootalk] 13:31, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Today's featured portal

An RfC on including featured portals on the Main Page.

Please see Wikipedia:VPR#Today.27s_featured_portal.

-- Cirt (talk) 03:06, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Capitalisation of portal names

Is there a policy or guideline for capitalisation of portal names, for both the page name and display of that name on the portal page? I would have thought that portal names should follow the normal rules of MOS:CAPS and WP:TITLEFORMAT, ie sentence case. However, Portal:Australian roads uses title case in its banner. I disagree, and raised the matter at Portal talk:Australian roads#Capitalisation, where it was suggested that the matter should be discussed here for wider coverage.

Note that a point that has been raised (both at Portal:Australian roads and the related WT:WikiProject Australian Roads#Capitalisation of project name) is that MOS allows for proper names to be capitalised to match the proper name. However I assert that we get to choose the names, and that the names should be consistent with MOS, ie the name of the portal follows MOS and use sentence case. Mitch Ames (talk) 06:37, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Given that portals are:

• explicitly intended for readers - according to WP:P, they are intended to serve as "Main Pages" (oh the irony!) for specific topics
• being added to the "See also" section of articles (example) - which is, according to WP:SEEALSO, "A ... list ... of internal links to related Wikipedia articles" (My emphasis)
• required (by WP:P) to "comply with Wikipedia's core content policies"

I suggest that from the readers' perspective a portal page serves the same purpose as an article, and so we should seriously consider having MOS explicitly apply to portals as well as articles. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:48, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Just to clarify, there are actually three separate but related issues to discuss:

1. Some portals are located at Portal:Title Case instead of Portal:Sentence case (eg Portal:Michigan Highways). Should these portals, and all their subpages, be moved?
2. Most portals have a title banner that uses Title Case instead of Sentence case (eg Portal:Technology has "The Technology Portal", not "The technology portal"). Should these be changed (only requires 1 edit per portal)?
3. What about portal redirects from Portal:Title Case instead of Portal:Sentence case (eg Portal:Australian Roads is a redirect to Portal:Australian roads). Are these acceptable, should they be used when linking from articles?

My positions are (1) Maybe they should be, but this would involve an awful lot of pages moves for what seems to be to be relatively little benefit; if it is to be done, then it should probably be a bot task; (2) see my comment above; (3) These shouldn't be used - {{portal}} and similar templates use the form "Foobar portal", i.e. a lowercase p, so not a proper name - Evad37 [talk] 04:05, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Hey guys. Just a heads up that I left my views at the village pump. To summarize, in my opinion the MOS should apply to portals, but it's not immediately obvious that portal titles are proper nouns. -Well-rested^Talk 07:45, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Some help setting up

Hi, I couldn't see where to ask help questions, so will do it here in the hope that someone will help: why is the topics section a header type thing? Also, do articles in the DYK box have to actually have been in DYK on the main page? Thanks, Matty.007 19:17, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Portals again

Hi, I have asked a question here about portals. Thanks, Matty.007 19:00, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Inactive Portals

I've been working with WikiProject status updates and there are guidelines for assessing whether a WikiProject is semi-active or inactive. But I don't see any assessment tool to use with Portals. So, if a Portal has served its purpose and contains dated information, can it be marked {{historical}} or put up for deletion at MfD?

I'm not interested in debating the merits of specific Portals, this is just an inquiry into what the correct procedure would be. Thanks! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 14:50, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

References inside portals

Are we allowed to put references inside portals? I don't think so, but I've seen it so I was wondering. I thought references were supposed to only be on the main article. -- Kndimov (talk) 02:32, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Portal namespace

I don't know if this is the place to ask this, but what would I have to do to get a portal namespace at scowiki? --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 19:45, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Starting portals and making a "stub" effort

On the English Wikipedia you can make a stub, a bare minimum effort, and expect that stub to survive. Why can't this happen with a portal?

Consider the result of the portals: Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Portal:Mexico_City, User_talk:WhisperToMe#Mexico_city_portal: the nominator himself regretted the result b. Such a precedent would make it impossible for the vast majority of Wikipedians to start a portal! The person who decided to redirect argued that I should have a whole, complete portal ready on my userspace before releasing it. While that may be appealing for a lot of people, I have the school of thought that I should be able to start a "stub" article with the expectation of seeing it grow rather than be shot down. Many people who contribute to Wikipedia have limited time and resources, and they'll just quit in frustration if they see their incomplete efforts wiped away. Considering how portals are more difficult and time consuming to create than articles, the same standard should apply to portals: incomplete portals should survive Miscellany for deletion. WhisperToMe (talk) 02:15, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Portals on the mobile site

Most portals do not display well on narrow screens in the two-column format, as there isn't space.

Back in 2011, Brion VIBBER (talk · contribs) added new CSS classes to MediaWiki:Common.css and edited Template:Box portal skeleton to make use of them. Portals that use these classes switch to single-column display when viewed on the mobile site. For example, compare this from the main site with this from the mobile site.

But most of the 1000+ existing portals were created from older versions of the "skeleton" and don't use these classes. I'd like to address this; I've developed an AWB script that can do most of the work. Please see my edits to Portal:AC/DC, Portal:24, Portal:Abkhazia, Portal:1950s and Portal:1920s.

A downside is that the classes only support splits that are 50/49, 60/39 or 70/29 [the other 1% is the gap between the columns]. The old default in the "skeleton" was 55/44, so the switch to the new classes will change the appearance of the portals slightly. Nevertheless I think this is worth doing.

Comments please? Since I'd like to do most of the work from my bot account, I will need to show some support for this task before submitting it for bot approval. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:45, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject vs Portal

What's the difference between a WikiProject and a Portal? --Mr. Guye (talk) 01:25, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Location on articles

The How to add portal links to articles section tells us that the portal template should be added to the See also section of articles. What if there is no such section? I propose to add to the instructions, that in such a case the External links section should be used, or - if also non-existent - the bottom of the article, above any footer templates (if present) and categories. Your opinions, please. Debresser (talk) 08:44, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Discussion: addition of two sections - portal selection, portal removal

Greetings, At the Teahouse I asked a question about the numbers of portals for an article here. Based on a response from Cullen328 and my observations (while doing article assessments) I am proposing two new sections inserted right after section How to add portal links to articles.

This is a first draft, and I am asking for editor comments, suggestions, improvements before posting the two sections into the Portal article. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 13:21, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

== Appropriate portal selection ==

Since there are over 1,000 portals, it is important to select one or more that relate to the article content and would be helpful to the reader. Remember that portals are optional; not every article requires a portal. It is usually a case where fewer, well chosen portals will improve the article.

First of all, look to see if the article's infobox or any of its navigation boxes already include portals (which should not be duplicated). For details, refer to MOS/Layout#See also section which states that As a general rule, the "See also" section should not repeat links that appear in the article's body or its navigation boxes.

For example: if the article is a biography of a notable political person from centuries past from Paris, good portal choices might be: {{Portal|Biography|History|Politics|Paris}} Another article's best portal choice could be just a single one, such as: {{Portal|Energy}}

== Removal of portals ==

Portals that were added as spam or vandalism should be removed immediately, noting the reason on the Edit Summary. The number of portals for an article is determined by consensus among interested editors. If the portal is a duplicate (as described above) or is not relevant to the article's content, it should be removed. Boldness might suggest deletion of a portal without discussion, but on a highly viewed article, early discussion towards consensus is always advisable.

Source of the article : Wikipedia