Misplaced Pages

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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)

Why not yourself? WP:BB. ;) -- œ 02:44, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Purpose of the Portal space

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At Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Wicca, someone raised this discussion:

The name "portal" suggests that readers will find the page first and use it as a gateway, but I've never seen a Misplaced Pages portal pop up in my search engine results. They are easy enough to locate via internal links, but in general even the best of them are not a priority to the community; the number of featured portals makes that clear. Who uses these pages?

I get that in theory, the intent is for a hub to navigate similar topics, but they aren't exactly easy to get to in the first place. As the user above pointed out, they don't turn up in search engines, so they're really not the easiest thing to find unless you're a somewhat experienced editor. In short, their use as navigation is moot. And it may just be personal preference, but I've been here nearly 6 years and never used a portal once. Considering the tiny size of the portal box at the bottom of the article, I always assumed they were an afterthought that had little to no purpose.

Also, literally every week, I see another portal get sent to MFD for one reason or another. Most often, these are portals that get started and never maintained — four years later, they show exactly the same selected article, selected picture, etc. They're just sitting there gathering dust because nobody is willing to maintain them, further debilitating their purpose as a navigational aid. I did a check of the 150 or so featured portals, and the first 20 or so I checked all had the air of staleness. Few to no updates in all of 2010, much less 2011.

So that's what we have here. A purported "navigational aid" which is difficult to access, and a purported presenter of information that often gathers dust and presents the same outdated information for years on end. My conclusion is that the Portal namespace is horribly broken and needs something. I would suggest deprecating the Portal namespace unless someone has a viable alternative for reconstruction. Ten Pound Hammer • 20:18, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Let me self-identify as the user referenced above. Just prior to being made aware of this RfC I posted a question at Wikiproject Portals to see if anyone there even knew if the namespace can appear in search engine results. Like Ten Pound Hammer, I've never used a portal, but I have a very clear idea of the well-intentioned origins of the concept as a reader-focused orientation into a particular subject. I don't know where I can find pageview stats, but other metrics (update frequency, number of featured portals) suggest that we've failed to fulfill the promise. --~TPW 20:32, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Database reports/Most-watched pages by namespace.

—Wavelength (talk) 00:35, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Comments about deprecation

Support deprecation suggestion by tph - been here a few years and could not readily find the portals related to my editing interests. A quick look now has found some but most were created by well meaning editors years ago and are generally abandoned and not maintained and unlikely to be used as a navigation aid. MilborneOne (talk) 20:43, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - The portals are an exceptional navigational aid, particularly to browse many related topics, per the "show new selections" option that many of them have, in which archived pages are randomly shuffled showing new information. I've never encountered any problems in finding them. Refer to Portal:Contents/Portals as a starting point. Portals add to the overall value of Misplaced Pages, and provide users with additional browsing options. It seems rather hasty to suddenly deprecate them as they continue to be expanded. Also, portals don't need to be constantly updated to be functional and encyclopedic, and not all information on them is outdated. Some information is historic, and therefore doesn't require updating. Also refer to Wiki is not paper:
  

—Northamerica1000 21:13, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

• Okay, fine. Then find me a portal that's being actively maintained. I've looked at literally dozens and seen none. Ten Pound Hammer • 22:09, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
• I don't know if someone with over 25,000 edits under his or her belt not having any difficulty finding portals as terribly instructive. How do new users find them? And again, do they show up in search results? I can't see the value of portals if they're a tool which solely benefits a community of experienced editors - isn't that what Wikiprojects are for? --~TPW 22:18, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose — I support Northamerica1000's reasons. Maybe others just need to start using portals and adding links. Case in point: I'm the primary editor of articles related to Michigan's highway system. There are over 200 articles now, and all of them have a link to Portal:Michigan Highways. My solution is to fix the broken/incomplete/malformed portals, maybe delete some of them as appropriate, and then spam portal links to appropriate articles. If portal links get visibility, they'll be used, but for right now, many portals have no visibility. Imzadi 1979 → 21:33, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

This issue of portals not being linked (Orphaned!) has been discussed before (I cant find were). Some of the solutions besides adding portals to all related articles that were proposed and has been implemented by many projects was...

• Firstly - add portals to talk page headers and integrate the templates with sub projects (those less active and there portals) as with Template:WikiProject Canada.
• Secondly was to add portal and other links like books cats and projects to article templates like with Template:The Beatles
• Thirdly was to add portals to cats as with Category:September 11 attacks

Moxy (talk) 22:02, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Adding portals to talk page templates isn't the same as adding them to the articles: non-editor readers don't look at talk pages normally. If they aren't linked from articles, linking them from talk pages doesn't entice that potential audience. Imzadi 1979 → 22:05, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

And as I said, the current link from article to portal is so tiny that I bet most editors don't even notice it. If I see a little tiny box way down at the bottom, I'm not gonna think much of it. Ten Pound Hammer • 22:09, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

As mentioned above adding them to talk page headers is but one of the solutions proposed in the past. I personally believe that any and all pages that contain the links many be of potential benefit to our readers. That said if some see no benefit in automatically linking portals over a projects entire talk page scope simply by one edit is up to each project. What is needed here is possible solutions proposed when a problem is found. Moxy (talk) 22:20, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Which I don't think works either, since a.) some editors never read talk pages, and b.) I can name hundreds of articles where no one's discussed anything on the talk page in years despite the article not being low-traffic. Ten Pound Hammer • 22:25, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I do have a question for you TPH as the proposal is not all that clear to me - do you believe that all portals should be outright deleted or they should be moved by way of name space? Moxy (talk) 22:43, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm proposing that they be deprecated. In other words, keep them around for history's sake — treat them like anything else with {{historical}} on it (except of course for the ones that are just bare skeletons) — but disallow creation of new ones and stop actively promoting the namespace. Ten Pound Hammer • 23:06, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

So what about portals like Portal:U.S. Roads or Portal:Michigan Highways that would need additional subpages created for future monthly updates? Would you tell us that we'd be disallowed from creating new subpages? Imzadi 1979 → 23:32, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I will concede that those are active, well-maintained portals that seem to be doing what portals should be doing. But 2 portals doing it right for every 998 doing it wrong is a pretty big sign that the portal space as a whole just isn't working and should be deprecated wholesale. The very few portals that are "working" should have no problem finding other outlets for most of what they're doing, such as WikiProjects. Ten Pound Hammer • 23:36, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

A WikiProject and a Portal are two different things and shouldn't be conflated into one. WikiProjects are about collaboration and supporting resources for editors to edit articles. A Portal is for collecting information for readers (remember, they're the 90+% of people around here that don't click the "edit" button) to allow them to access groups of quality content on coordinated topic areas. Sorry, but I must reiterate opposition to this proposal because it seeks to make a sweeping change without even a proposed method of implementation. Please come up with a starting point on what "deprecation" would mean in some detail so that we can weigh in on something concrete. Imzadi 1979 → 23:53, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

That's what I'm trying to get from you. I say that the Portal namespace isn't working and suggested deprecation as one option. Something is horribly, horribly broken in my opinion, and if not deprecation, then I'd like to hear what other fixes there could be. Because whatever we got now, for the most part, ain't working at all. Ten Pound Hammer • 23:57, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

TPH, I believe you're mistaken. There're currently 1098 portals (per {{Number of portals}} and 156 of them are featured (per {{FPO number}}. That's over 14% of portals which are considered as in "very good condition" and is nowhere near your estimate of "2 portals doing it right for every 998 doing it wrong" (or 0.2%). OhanaUnited 00:05, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

The numbers for Featured Articles are much lower, and yet no one is proposing we deprecate main space. There are 3,413 featured articles out of 3,798,207 articles in total or 0.09% and another 13,217 articles are GAs, or 0.35%. Again, I think your perception is skewed, and if the incomplete/broken/etc portals are fixed or deleted as appropriate, you'd see that Portals may not be numerous, but have quality behind them. Imzadi 1979 → 00:19, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose You don't destroy something simply because you don't use it. Nothing gained by eliminating it. And many portals might be for things where nothing new has come out for awhile so they don't have any information to update, so saying they aren't well maintained is ridiculous. Hopefully no one is going around deleting complete portals simply because they don't have a lot of people around to notice they are up for deletion and comment. The Anime and Manga portal gets about a thousand hits a day. I'm sure others get some decent hits as well. Even if they don't have many people, there is still no reason to eliminate something some might use. Popular culture items get more hits than some educational ones after all. There is a link to the Misplaced Pages Community portal on the left that you see whenever you are anywhere on Misplaced Pages. Have you see how many portals there are? Portal:Contents/Portals If anyone actually took this suggestion serious, then you'd have to contact all of them and bring in their comment for this. Dream Focus 23:47, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

• Way to assume bad faith. I already said there are a couple portals here and there that do it right, but they're drowned out by literally 10 times as many, if not moreso, that are just blank skeletons. I've seen some portals where all they did was put up a few words and never even made all the subpages. And then those sit for 3-5 years before someone notices they're blank. Redwall had a portal that was so out of date it still claimed that Brian Jacques was alive despite his dying in February. And it's not just because I don't use them — it's because as long as I've been here, I've seen very few people use them in general. Ten Pound Hammer • 23:52, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

• Then nominate incomplete portals for deletion if a reasonable time period has gone by since creation. In other words, don't through out the baby (good portals) with the bathwater (the rest) just because some things aren't complete. Imzadi 1979 → 23:59, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

• Strong oppose - now that I realizes this was about making "ALL" portals dead by default. This will not get far I believe as portals get more user interaction then categories. I agree that portals do not get all "that much attention" by our readers but nor do categories that people spend alot more time on , in rearguards to editing and even conflicts that arise. Should we delete all the cats - I think not - so why would we delete portals that are unused more by our readers.Moxy (talk) 23:49, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

ie. Canada a parent article is viewed about 22k times in a day.

its parent Cat Category:Canada is viewed about 35 times a day

the parent portal Portal:Canada gets on average 110 views per day

110 views per day is really, really freaking low. Way to bring in a straw-man argument about categories too. Ten Pound Hammer • 23:52, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

So what? Page views and popularity have never been acceptable acceptable arguments in deletion debates outside of redirects. Imzadi 1979 → 23:59, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Yes, continue to send the ones that never get finished to MfD, but don't depreciate the ones that are well made. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:55, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose, and Northamerica1000 (talk · contribs) has given an excellent rationale, above. — Cirt (talk) 04:01, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose per my comments below. Given TPH's alternate proposal section, can we consider this initial proposal done? --Philosopher  09:11, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
• Consider. I am not going to say that the entire portalspace needs to be deprecated, but I also don't think that the portalspace is currently attracting the attention of many users and thus is not operating effectively. (Keep in mind that portals are supposed to attract the attention of users -- they're not one of the "behind the scenes" namespaces of the encyclopedia like the Misplaced Pages: or Talk: namespaces are.) --Metropolitan90 (talk) 09:48, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support. I've put long hours into portal support and maintenance, but there are too many of them and to much to do in comparison to the more important work of expanding and maintaining the parts of the encyclopedia that readers seem most concerned with. I would suggest deleting the incomplete portals and merging the good ones into project space; I can think of no reason that the functions of a portal can not be combined with the functions of a WikiProject covering the same ground. Cheers! bd2412 T 14:42, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
  • How do you mean? Iowa's WikiProject and Portal don't really have anything in common - one's a coordination noticeboard and one's a, well, portal. --Philosopher  19:28, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
    • They are both about Iowa, which is somthing in common. Don't most portals, based on their scope alone, coincide with WikiProjects? Why not make the current Portal content sort of a "front page" for the project, and mix in a bit of the things-to-be-done? bd2412 T 22:50, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support I do not get the point of portals. While they do look nice, they serve no useful purpose. They do not appear as a result on google if you type in the subject (no one is going to type in "Cornwall portal" if they are looking for information on Cornwall) and internal links to a much better job at linking between articles. They were a good idea but they only useful purpose they seem to serve is to be a reason to hang a star on the wall of a wikiproject or userpage --Guerillero | My Talk 22:47, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support deprecation. The purpose served by portals seems to have mostly been taken over by sidebar and footer navigation trees, for the articles I've been involved with. Portal content doesn't have to be thrown away; if the information is useful, editors who feel strongly about it can integrate it into other navigation mechanisms, WikiProject pages, and similar. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 04:11, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
• Comment Some portals will not show up on search engines because they are noindexed. They do seem to get readers however. The noindexed Wicca portal nominated for deletion gets over 1,000 visitors a month. I checked the beer portal, and that gets over 2,000 visitors a month; compare that to the beer category page, which gets less than 500. That the portals are visited, however, may not be sufficent reason to keep them, as I take the point that they are constructed in such a way as to require maintenance, and often do not get that maintenance, so they are not an effective means of navigation or information providing. The visitors may simply be clicking in from links on related pages, and then finding that the page is not helpful, or is out of date. The news in the Scientology portal is over a year out of date. The news in the ber portal is three years out of date. I note that on a number of portals there is a click option to show different selected articles. This seems fine. There are lists of categories, main topics, related Wikiprojects, things that readers are invited to do, etc - a number of reasonable and useful lists. All in all it seems that a portal, even a neglected one, can offer the reader something useful. While I do not use them myself, I think the principle of portals seems fine; and while some may require updating or improving, that doesn't seem sufficent rationale for removing or depreciating them all. SilkTork 21:04, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support Very strongly support the doomed idea that they be deprecated and never included in the article. The supporters of portals have presented an number of strawman arguments, portals will be fiercely defended because they serve the vanity of 'editors', or worse. I notice, for example, that a supporter who is paid for putting content on the main page, or one click from it. They do not serve the reader, they are created, featured, and become idle because they have served the editor's purpose.

  The primary reason why categories receive less traffic would be because the reader has found the content they wanted, end of story, the traffic to portals is very likely to be the creators and those seeking a model for their own portal, often those focused on everything but the creation of proper content. The legitimate category has, after all, probably already been created, and finding citations for a list is difficult.

  The "not paper" guideline addresses the creation of article content, the creation of portals is usually a silly self reference, redundant, or a pov fork. They are vaguely defined in purpose, an arbitrary compilation, and do not use references. Lists and categories require references and/or consensus, yet these types of non-article content are problematic enough. The solution according to those who can't be bothered with researching and developing proper encyclopaedic content will be to make them more obvious, 'they are over-looked, that is why the traffic is low'. They are time-wasting rubbish that skirt the policies, guidelines and focus needed for the creation of proper content. cygnis insignis 11:34, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Alternate proposal

If not deprecation, then what should be done with the Portals? Far more of them are dead and abandoned than functional. What we have now is a horribly broken system in need of repair. How should it be fixed? Ten Pound Hammer • 23:59, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I believe you would have to define abandoned/dead much more? You are aware that many portals are self updating on there sub pages, thus meaning the main portal page may not reflect true update history ... i.e Portal:Canadian Forces/Canadian Forces Featured articles.Moxy (talk) 00:06, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I already gave you a few solutions:

• Increase visibility of the good portals. Moxy mentioned adding portal links to talk page banners, but we also need to add them to articles in namespace. If they're not visible, no one will find them.

I also mentioned adding them to article templates ...we also have Template:Portal bar that makes them more visible. Moxy (talk) 00:26, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

• Do portals show up in search engine results? If not, why? Again, make them more visible.

They show up in a search - you have to specify your looking for a "portal" (just as you would for any other portal by other web sites) IE search and Firefox search.. Moxy (talk) 00:26, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

• Cull the abandoned incomplete portals after reasonable inquiries. If work stopped in the middle of creation, maybe a polite query will prompt someone to finish it? Maybe the original creator has been too busy to get back to it (or any editing) and someone will finish the job? Maybe the creator just needs some help to finish.

We have to remember that Misplaced Pages is a work in progress: perfection is not required. That said a proposal system like that for wikiprojects may help.Moxy (talk) 00:26, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

• Make an effort to see if anything needs to be updated, and then update it. You'd do the same with an out of date article, I hope.
• Don't rely on the edit history to see if a portal hasn't been updated in a while. I've seen Wikiprojects tagged as inactive, or even proposed for mergers because the talk pages are quiet and the main page hasn't been changed in a while. That doesn't mean no one is editing the articles in question, they just might not have a lot to discuss lately, and the project page may not need any updates at all. Ditto portals. Some are automated, and in the case of Portal:Michigan Highways, any regular updates aren't needed for over a year yet.

Again, fix the problems through updates, deletion, mergers and increase visibility, don't eliminate the whole system. Imzadi 1979 → 00:14, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

• So get off your asses and do it. Ten Pound Hammer • 02:14, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the encouragement, but my time is not limitless around here, and I'm not the only one. Since this thread was opened, I posted at WT:USRD to encourage editors to place portal boxes on USRD's articles that lack them. I added a box to U.S. Route 2 when I was doing some other editing there. In the interim, I've been getting advice concerning and conversing with an official at MDOT via e-mail over some comments on M-6 (Michigan highway) before that article heads to the Main Page in a few days, checking in on my two open FACs for U.S. Route 2 in Michigan and M-185 (Michigan highway) and replying to and reading the comments left here. And to top it off this evening, I've been re-reading through the M-6 article to identify any minor prose changes to improve it before its day in the spotlight. Now, are you joining in the needed efforts as well to fix things? Imzadi 1979 → 02:29, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
• The obvious answer is not to deprecate portals, but to expand their visibility. If you're too lazy to help with this, TPH, then please don't waste our time with these unhelpful discussions in which you order people to get off their asses and do work you yourself aren't willing to do. Kthxbai. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:49, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
  • I second what Fetchcomms (talk · contribs) said. ;) Wise words. Cheers, — Cirt (talk) 04:05, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
• Comment Have you people seen portal:Conservatism? It is amazing. Lots of featured content. It has nice, sleek design, one might say minimalist. Except for the News, it is completely automated and requires no maintenance. And in the month of February it converts into the "Ronald Reagan Portal." (Feb is his birth month.) To my knowledge it is Misplaced Pages's only dual portal. And.. it is integrated into the sponsor wikiproject, WPConservatism. This is definitely the portal of the future. If every portal followed this design we could see newfound interest in portals. – Lionel 08:37, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
• What about page views? Since portals are a reader resource, I'm quite surprised that no mention of page views has been brought up. Portal:Iowa, which I maintain currently, (no, it has no recent edits - because a Portal of its design virtually never needs to be edited, that's done on subpages) has had 572 pageviews in the past 30 days. 572! Considering that Iowa is a small Midwestern state, imo that's quite impressive! The problem, as others have suggested, is with individual portals, not with portals as a whole. Some portals are doing just fine.--Philosopher  09:09, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree that page views are relevant to this discussion, but I don't interpret them the same way that you do. The article Iowa has received at least 1,700 pageviews for every day over the past year for which stats.grok.se has compiled statistics. But, on the other hand, the corresponding portal Portal:Iowa has only once during that time received more than 50 page views in a day. Similarly, California has had at least 6,300 pageviews every day for the last year, whereas Portal:California has never had more than 105 pageviews in a day during that time. I don't know exactly what this means, except that a relatively small percentage of the people interested in a given topic appear to be finding their way to the topic's portal. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 09:38, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

• Case study Speaking personally, it was stumbling across Portal:Cornwall (which has 877 pageviews in last month, not bad for a county) that first got me involved as an active editor of Misplaced Pages and a member of WikiProject Cornwall - I think if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have ever become an active member of the community. Now, I know I'm probably the only one to come out of this particular portal, but I doubt I'm the only one out of all the portals - surely a case in point for keeping portals, they help bridge a gap between readers and editors. And now I have been slowly trying to update the portal to get it up to featured quality (but this does take time).

I agree with the points made by Imzadi, portals need to have increased visibility/maintenance. An effective way to do this would be through WikiProjects. Find and contact the appropriate Project of a portal that we have concerns about to try and update it, if that fails then we can start to think about other measures. But directly linking portals to projects (e.g. like the above Portal:Conservatism) would be in the Project's benefit as it could potentially bring them more editors/members. Zangar (talk) 09:53, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

• Comment As has been pointed out, Misplaced Pages isn't about perfection. We have some good portals. We have some that aren't working as well as we'd wish. I'm fairly convinced that trying to kill all bad portals would lead to a significally smaller number of portals reaching the level of quality we want them to have – just like articles. /Julle (talk) 11:13, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

  That being said, I'm sure there are things that could be done better, and it's good that you raise the subject – as long as we concentrate on "how should we improve our portals?" rather than "should we kill them all?", which is a question I doubt will lead further than to a "no". /Julle (talk) 11:15, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I think the real focus needs to be getting these things visible. If someone needs to type "portal:" into a search engine, they are not going to do so unless they are expecting Misplaced Pages to have portals. That's why so many portals have so many fewer page hits than their main articles do. If portals aren't easily visible to the rest of the universe than they are not serving their intended purpose, period. No matter how much work goes into them, no matter how pretty they are, if they can only easily be found through tiny links on Misplaced Pages, the whole concept is broken. We need to figure out how to make them the pages that turn up first, or find some other way to make them the pages that people turn to most often, and by people I mean readers, not editors.--~TPW 11:53, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

My question: Yes, portals are severely hidden IMO. No, depreciating the namespace would probably be a net loss. However, If we have information showing that readers rarely go to the talk page or even into the "See also" section (almost always at the bottom of the articles), why is it that the portal links are almost exclusively there? It would make a lot more sense in my mind to 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. Just my two cents -- Nolelover 13:19, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

After all, if the portals are supposed to be the beginning of a readers search on a topic, why are they in See Also, which implies a secondary step in the process? Nolelover 13:21, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Featuring portals: Also, we have these things called Featured Portals (156 at the last count) - why can't we go about actually featuring them on the Main Page? Perhaps highlighting one in the "Welcome to Misplaced Pages" 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. Just a thought. Zangar (talk) 16:02, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Wholeheartedly endorse this idea. Maybe deprecation isn't the best option, but can we agree that the problem is that portals aren't being utilized by their intended audience? Any efforts to expose the reading public to portals would be an improvement over the lackluster approach taken now.--~TPW 16:13, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Maybe we should utilize the space in between "Welcome to Misplaced Pages" and 8 portals on the right. Also, instead of using bullets for those 8 portals, we can use some kind of universally-understood & generic diagrams for each of 8 subjects. OhanaUnited 18:35, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

FYI: The last major discussion on whether to include featuring portals, now archived on Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Main Page features#Featured portals, was consensus to not to include them on the main page at this time. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 18:48, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break

I can go with that. It was my observation that the portal namespace seemed horribly broken and outdated, simply based on the dozens I'd seen, but several people have proven that yes, there are still several active and maintained portals. I'm now changing my position — I would approve nearly anything that makes the Portal namespace more prominent and accessible. As an aside, I think the "featured portal" concept also needs an overhaul. Ten Pound Hammer • 20:08, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

• comment Skimming over this who discussion (hit tl;dr about halfway down), what I see is not a problem with Portals, per se, but with the awareness of them. The are not well linked, not the first result in a search engine, and not maintained; whether this is a chicken or an egg conundrum, I don't know. However, I can safely say that rearranging placements could have a profound effect - 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. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 20:57, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Also, there could be some good possibilities to look into connecting the categorization system with the portal system, since they both work in the same realm of articles. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 21:00, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

The portal system can be entered from the top of the Main Page. Last time I checked stats.grok.se, Main Page portals get about 4 times as many visits as the total of all subportals linked from those Main Page portals. It follows that most people who click a Main Page portal look around because they don't know what it is, don't find anything they want to click, and leave – or perhaps they vandalize while they're there, since most Main Page portal edits are vandalism or reversions. It isn't people using the Main Page as an entry to portals to find their subject. So if we made that entry more prominent, I predict the main effect would be to distract readers from finding the search box, Misplaced Pages's much more practical form of navigation. Art LaPella (talk) 23:51, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

• While I have always had concerns about portals, mainly that they are used to advertise projects, and are put on too many pages, I think the question about SEO is a good one . VP(T) is the place to ask. Rich Farmbrough, 00:27, 18 November 2011 (UTC).
  

  Actually I asked Google. It sees portals, no probs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rich Farmbrough (talk • contribs)

  • I strongly believe that Misplaced Pages is missing a trick with portals. The idea of thematic sub-sections works very well indeed on many of the most popular news websites: nyt, AOL, MSN, huff post, guardian – the prominent line of thematic strips is where ever you go...except here. Our own front page top line is visually poor even from a layman's point of view: why is there a big monochrome empty space right at the center top of our most prominent page? The portal links on the right are not obvious in their purpose and seem like an after thought.
  • This might require a slight culture change, but portals would be immensely popular if we had (say ten) highly developed portals linked in a "tabbed" format at the top of the 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. If there was a chance that these portals were to become prominently linked, I'm sure you'd find numerous editors would suddenly become interested in supporting them. (Also, a little off-topic: why not have a "most popular articles" section on the main page somewhere too?) SFB 18:28, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I really like the idea of finding some way to include portals on the Main Page, but as recently as two months ago that was not the consensus. I have a tough time imagining portals actually being useful to readers of this site if they can't easily find them via the Main Page, and have to know enough about Misplaced Pages to include "Portal:" in order to find them via internal or external search methods. If we don't want them on the Main Page, then what is the point?--~TPW 19:07, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I completely agree with this. People forget the main page is a portal, yet there is resistance to hierarchically linking it to the portal namespace infrastructure. Imagine if we had articles that did not link to articles, categories that did not link to categories, or policies which did not link to policies. The portal namespace is poor because it is poorly linked. Without the main page, the only other parts linking to portals are the meek portal templates in articles (the French do this way better by the way). With no clear linking infrastructure, portals will generally remain poor quality. SFB 19:37, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

If Portals are to be kept, I think we should eliminate those that are unmaintained or kept in poor shape, and generally merge together portals on similar subjects. Do we really need separate portals at Portal:Florida and Portal:Miami? At Portal:Winter and Portal:Fall? At Portal:Christianity, Portal:Christianity in China, and Portal:Christianity in India? We need a sense of what falls under a "big picture" distribution of topics. bd2412 T 22:59, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Advertising this RfC

Given the strong feelings expressed by so many editors against portals in general in the Main Page discussion, I wonder how this RfC might be more widely advertised. It stands to reason that regular participants on this page generally favor Portals, and the discussion here is unsurprisingly much more supportive of them than it was there. That says to me that this discussion is reaching a limited assortment of editors, and discussions that could impact the Main Page or an entire namespace deserve broad participation. How can we ensure that?--~TPW 20:06, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I found this discussion from WP:CENT, not from watching this page - I suspect that others who are interested in the topic will see it there. I don't really see a need to publicize it much more, given that the discussion seems to have moved on to "how to improve portals," which is a step down in community-wide-ness from "let's deprecate a namespace." --Philosopher  22:02, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad you found it there, but I did just post a notice at the Village Pump as well. I trust I worded it neutrally enough so as not to raise concerns.--~TPW 22:13, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, TPH had previously posted a notice there. Nolelover 23:07, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Discussion pertaining just to increasing portal visibility (below)

As this above discussion has become very long, I've started a discussion below just about increasing portal visibility on Misplaced Pages: Misplaced Pages talk: Portal - Ideas to increase portal visibility.— Northamerica1000 04:40, 19 November 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  09:29, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

You could become more active at Wikinews yourself, we'd always love to have more contributors and article writers there. ;) And/or convert it to a list of relevant external links for news. — Cirt (talk) 17:32, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I suppose I could, but all I'd end up doing is plagiarizing political blogs, I'm afraid. Actually, I was more wondering if there was a way to import more generalized news, not necessarily from the Des Moines Register or Sioux City Journal, because we don't need daily headlines, but maybe from the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, or similar? "Automated" being the key word, because then we don't have to worry about "What happens when Philosopher stops maintaining the portal?" --Philosopher  21:57, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Generally speaking, those materials are not merely "imported" but are "purchased". I don't think we want the WMF go down that road. bd2412 T 22:53, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Philosopher (talk · contribs), I'm not sure if a bot can do what you ask, but if anyone would know, it'd be the expert that built the current importer bot, you could inquire at User talk:Misza13. — Cirt (talk) 05:39, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

BD2412 - I meant import headlines so we could link to the articles, not import the articles themselves. Cirt - good idea. --Philosopher  13:33, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Ideas to increase portal visibility

The following are some ideas to increase portal visibility on Misplaced Pages, 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 Misplaced Pages, and to encourage further discussion of this specific topic.— Northamerica1000 04:35, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Increase visibility on Misplaced Pages's main page

• “...The portal links on the right (on Misplaced Pages'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 Misplaced Pages page. Highlighting a featured portal “...in the "Welcome to Misplaced Pages" 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 Misplaced Pages page—  in between "Welcome to Misplaced Pages" 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 “Misplaced Pages 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).

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

• for Portal:Arts
• for Portal:Geography
• for Portal:Mathematics
• for Portal:Science
• for Portal:Society
• for Portal:Technology
• 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 06:08, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

• for Portal:Indian classical music (Image of tablas). It may be difficult to find diagrams for all portal links, so for this unique portal, here's an image. — Northamerica1000 23:55, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
  • I'm talking about the portal links on main page. Assigning an image to each portal beyond the scope of this suggestion. OhanaUnited 03:17, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
    • Individual portal images can be found under the template: Template:Portal/Images, these are then used by/transcluded into anything that needs them, such as {{portal box}} or {{portal bar}}. Perhaps you should create that for Template:Portal/Images/Indian classical music. Cheers, Zangar (talk) 11:11, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
      •  Done Thanks for the tip. Northamerica1000 08:02, 22 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)

• Looks so-so. At first glance, I thought it's something related to literature (since I saw the quill and the paper). OhanaUnited 05:19, 22 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.

• 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 18:46, 20 November 2011 (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
  

...add portal and other links like books cats and projects to article templates like with Template:The Beatles

...add portals to cats as with Category:September 11 attacks

...use Template:Portal bar to make them more visible in articles – (from User:Moxy's comments above)

• “...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.)

• The Portal bar template is a great addition to Misplaced Pages. (Here's an example below):

• Primates
• Mammals
• Fungi
• Physics

• It's a user-friendly graphic layout that promotes the portals, and the graphics in the format adds eye-appeal. —Northamerica1000 06:51, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

• I agree with the above and believe this is the least controversial of the suggestions. Already successful on the French wiki, it is a simple, elegant and non-intrusive link to portals. SFB 10:43, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

• 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. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 18:57, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

However I'll note that unlike the French wiki, we should figure out how to put this inline at the top right of an article. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 19:34, 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. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 07:48, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

— 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.)

Portal name	Status	Nominator
Portal:Biography	Already done	Aude (talk · contribs)
Portal:Mathematics	Already done	Tompw (talk · contribs)
Portal:Science	Already done	RichardF (talk · contribs)
Portal:Arts	Discussion ongoing... at ongoing peer review.	Cirt (talk · contribs) (first at WP:PPREV)
Portal:Geography	ω Awaiting	Not sure
Portal:History	Doing...	Resident Mario (talk · contribs) (at some point)
Portal:Society	Doing... almost halfway  Partly done	Cirt (talk · contribs) (not yet at WP:PPREV)
Portal:Technology	ω Awaiting	Not sure

Updated status = Portal:Arts on peer review at Misplaced Pages: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)

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