Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Conservatism

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured portal candidate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the portal's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured portal candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The portal was promoted by Resident Mario 03:14, 21 January 2012 [1].

Portal:Conservatism[edit]

The Conservatism portal is automated (except for News) and requires minimal maintenance. It is fully documented to assist future changes. Content display is randomized and includes:

  • 32 Selected articles, all are FA or GA except 6 B-class
  • 40 DYKs
  • 30 Selected media: including 3 audio files and 1 video. 4 of these are Featured media.
  • 12 months of rotating Selected anniversaries

The portal has been checked against the Featured portal criteria and is ready for your consideration. – Lionel (talk) 10:48, 17 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support. Looks great to me, but could use Selected quotes. — Cirt (talk) 18:17, 17 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Great idea Cirt! We've started to build the quotes page here: Portal:Conservatism/Selected quote. It will make a nice addition when done.– Lionel (talk) 23:38, 22 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, great work! — Cirt (talk) 04:03, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support As a member of this Project, I do not feel entitled to vote due to a conflict of interest - however, I think this is an excellent portal that meets the criteria. Alright, granting support. Fits the criteria nicely. Toa Nidhiki05 00:34, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I believe that everyone, except for the nominator, may express their Support for this nomination--and their criticism. I would greatly appreciate your support, Toa. – Lionel (talk) 02:22, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Anyone may express support, but membership of a project that is behind a nomination for featured portal status is likely to be taken into account when the closer is assessing consensus in the same way as it is at FAC, for example. The nominator's support is implicit. BencherliteTalk 12:16, 28 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • There is no provision at WP:FPOC for discounting or setting aside votes of related wikiproject members. The only caveat is that the closing editor may not be "materially involved in ... any related WikiProjects." This requirement doesn't apply to !voters. – Lionel (talk) 02:49, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Not really that bad for a portal. JJ98 (Talk / Contributions) 01:46, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Bravo JJ98. I can't tell you how pleased I am to see your Support here, especially taking into account your nomination of the portal in a quite different venue. – Lionel (talk) 04:52, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comments verging on an oppose from Bencherlite
  • I'm surprised that with three expressions of "support" already I was able to find plenty of things to fix on a quick glance:
    • the election was not "pictured", a map of the results was (I fixed it)
    • This DYK hook said "pictured" but there was no picture (I fixed it)
    • This selected anniversary was given without a national qualification (it's only observed in the US, so I fixed it)
    • This DYK didn't end with a "?", so I fixed it.
    • This DYK linked to the wrong election, and although I fixed it, Lionelt undid my change, seemingly not understanding the point; so the error remains.
    • This DYK was grammatically incorrect (as the 2008 US Presidential nomination campaigns are over), so I fixed it, but Lionelt undid my change, seemingly not being a fan of proper grammar
    • This DYK referred in the future tense to something that has now taken place, so I fixed it, only for Lionelt to undo my change, seemingly not understanding the point. His approach seems to be that hooks on a portal's DYK ought to be left as they were when they appeared on the main page, grammar or changes in target wikilinks notwithstanding. I can't see how that attitude can be defended when it results in misleading hooks on the portal.
      • I think it's obvious that I understood the point inasmuch as I acknowledged it on my talk page 3 days ago and asked a couple questions. Here's where we left off:

        Good point. I'm not particularly wedded to preserving the DYK. Curious, what do other portals do? How about bringing this up on talk and seeing what people think? – Lionel (talk) 09:21, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

        • Obviously you didn't understand the points I was making when you chose to undo my edits. Nor do you seem to agree with me to the extent of being willing to reverse the changes you made. You've now changed DYK28 to "... that Holby City woman is a voter demographic in the United Kingdom considered influential to the outcome of the next United Kingdom general election? (August 16, 2009)" with a wikilink to the 2010 general election (not the "next election"). That is a mess. Why have unexplained dates after some of the DYKs but not the others? I know, it's because you're saying "This information is out of date", isn't it? And the point of saying that is... what? As for what other portals do, I'm not going to go through hundreds of DYKs on 150+ featured portals and check them against the original in the archives. If I saw DYKs on a portal that needed a copy-edit like this, I'd do it (and probably have done for the two portals that I'm largely responsible for, though can't actually remember). The principle is the important thing, and that surely points in favour of not presenting out of date or misleading information on a portal. Or do you still disagree? BencherliteTalk 18:44, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • The "In the news" section had wikilinks to dates, odd capital letters and the default option of assuming that anyone reading the stories would know that they were from the US unless otherwise stated - not an attitude to be encouraged in a website with world-wide interest  Already done
    • The introduction breached WP:SELF, until I fixed it
      • WP:SELF was not breached, as it only applies to articles: "self-references within Wikipedia articles to the Wikipedia project should be avoided". The Conservatism intro was based on the main page which states: "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. 3,809,821 articles in English". – Lionel (talk) 04:27, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • Perhaps you ought to re-read WP:FPO? and particularly criteria number 4 "It is not self-referential" and check where that link goes. The main page is a different kettle of fish. BencherliteTalk 18:44, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
          • The entire passage from #4 reads: "4.It is not self-referential: it does not speak of itself beyond (if at all) a welcome note". The self-reference you removed was in the welcome note. – Lionel (talk) 02:43, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
            • A welcome note is "Welcome to the [insert name of portal] portal!", which many portals have. Not "there are [insert inaccurate and irrelevant number here] articles about the topic on Wikipedia." BencherliteTalk 08:29, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Apart from the unresolved issues above, other things that need to be fixed (and as I've fixed quite enough on this portal already, I'm not going to do them) are these:
    • Why do some of the selected anniversaries have links to the days of the month, and some not? I wouldn't have thought any such links were necessary but it ought to be consistent.
    • Fix dab links in the selected anniversaries (Sept: "US Capital" [sic!] and Oct: "Santander, Colombia") and selected picture 28 (La Gaceta)
    • Selected picture 2: why the strange wikilink to User:Greg L?
    • Many of the selected articles have opening lines such as "John Doe (1950- )", which doesn't comply with the manual of style (MOS:DOB) – "John Doe (born 1950)" is the WP house style.
  • Aside from that, I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned that portal turns into "Portal:Ronald Reagan" once a year, on the anniversary of his birth. Hardly a worldwide attitude: why just Reagan? Why not create Portal:Ronald Reagan in the same style as Portal:Barack Obama? I know of no featured portals that turn into something else to mark one person's birthday, however famous or American they may be.
    • This has nothing to do with notoriety nor nationality. It has everything to do with showcasing the very best content that Wikipedia has to offer and Wikipedia precedent:
  1. There is a long standing tradition of displaying selected content for special occasions. You can schedule a Featured article to appear on a certain date. In fact points are awarded for "relevance to the main page date request" Wikipedia:Today's_featured_article/requests. Special occasions are also a factor with DYKs: Template_talk:Did_you_know#Special_occasion_holding_area. Selected picture also schedules for special anniversaries. This is nothing radical nor out of the ordinary.
  2. There is a tremendous abundance of high quality, Featured content which is Reagan-related. This is a way of showcasing this abundance of articles, pictures and audio media. No other topic in conservatism has anywhere near the amount of featured content and good articles. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Conservatism/Recognized content.
Most components of the Main Page allow scheduling content based on a special occasion. I see no reason why a portal cannot emulate this feature. – Lionel (talk) 04:27, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, but (1) all that Reagan material is included in the portal anyway, so it's not as though it needs an excuse to be shown; (2) if you've got lots of it, then you should have no difficulty creating a Reagan portal; (3) focusing on a recent American president as a particular example of conservatism is a textbook example of recentism and a failure to take a world-wide view; (4) I'm well aware that TFAs can be requested for a particularly relevant date, but each TFA can only appear once, and the same with DYKs and Featured pictures. In contrast, all this Reagan material appears daily on this portal anyway. (5) What DYK / TFA / TFP do in that regard is irrelevant to this nomination. We are talking about a portal that morphs into something else yearly for no good reason other than paying homage to a recent US president. What next? If you get enough material about Palin, will you give us Palin day? BencherliteTalk 18:44, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • Portals do not have enough articles nor the manpower to implement daily "special occasion" configurations. Designating annual topics is the best trade-off for portals.

          Reagan is hardly RECENT. His position in scholarly history books is stable. Reagan will not be the only topic to benefit from "special occasion" treatment. Edmund Burke will be highlighted on Nov 1, the anniv. of the publishing of Reflections on the Revolution in France. Wikipedia is not done: neither is this portal. But enough with Reagan already.

          The question is: are portals improved by emulating a variant of the "special occasion" feature utilized on the Main Page? – Lionel (talk) 03:23, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

          • Sorry, I can't see Edmund Burke highlighted in the portal code, unlike Reagan - am I missing something? Apart from that, you still haven't convinced me and I doubt I'm going to convince you by arguing the point further. BencherliteTalk 08:29, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This portal has certainly improved a lot since its first nomination, but there are still many rough edges. BencherliteTalk 12:16, 28 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks for all of your help, Bencherlite. It shouldn't take long to fix these issues. – Lionel (talk) 04:27, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thank you for making the changes you have done. I won't be supporting, although I have struck my "verging on an oppose" above and now just remain neutral. BencherliteTalk 08:29, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Thank you for your suggestions. They were valuable and the portal will be the better for them. – Lionel (talk) 09:51, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

May I just say that I was really impressed by the portal, content-wise?Mzk1 (talk) 20:41, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support – The Conservatism portal is very complete, user friendly, has a pleasing graphic layout, and is modernized with a tabbed header layout. While this portal would benefit from the addition of Selected Biography and Selected Quote sections, I feel that it meets the criterion for featured portals at this time. Northamerica1000(talk) 13:07, 20 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Support Archive it passed already =) ResMar 00:23, 30 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Needs quotes. Fill them out and this is a pass. ResMar 19:25, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If you're pressed for time right now, I'll go fill them out for you, then =) ResMar 02:01, 20 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Alright I added 10 quotes onto the page, and I think we can safely close this as a pass, no? ResMar 02:59, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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