Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Canada

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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 not promoted by OhanaUnited 18:25, 14 June 2014 ‎ [1].

Portal:Canada[edit]

For the 2010 nomination, see Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Canada/archive1

Sell-nomination - I've looked at all of the comments that were made at the last Featured Portal Review and, I believe, dealt with all of them. I'm hoping to get some feedback as to other issues the portal might have before bringing it to FPOC. Some stats: 46 Selected articles; 22 Selected bios; 27 Selected pictures; 37 Selected symbols; 59 Sets of 5 DYKs; 19 Selected panoramas. Achowat (talk) 20:12, 8 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support - Wonderful portal - "Wikinews section" should be the norm on large topics of this nature. -- Moxy (talk) 20:48, 8 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • I tend to remove them, and strongly advocate against the inclusion of a Wikinews section. There are 13 items in that section, and only one is from this year. All but three of the items are over six months old, so old that I don't feel that they any value to the portal. As a news service, Wikinews doesn't produce enough content to be useful, and that problem is heavily magnified when you filter only for news on a specific subject. Sᴠᴇɴ Mᴀɴɢᴜᴀʀᴅ Wha? 23:32, 8 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If this is the case should we not expose Wikinews to more people and perhaps gain new editors for the Wikinews project over hiding them? All that said no big deal if removed. -- Moxy (talk) 23:40, 8 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It's been tried for years, and that approach has failed. Leave aside portals - it was prominently linked from the "in the news" section on the main page and this had no effect in boosting participation there. Unless one of the few Wikinews regulars happens to be producing regular news articles within the scope of a portal, a Wikinews section will be full of out-of-date news and it will drag down the overall appearance of the portal. I agree with Sven on this. BencherliteTalk 14:53, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Review by Sven Manguard

Major issues

  • The pictures in the Selected picture are too small. 220px is good for articles, but not for selected pictures on a portal, where you want that element to visually 'pop'.
  • While I can understand wanting to have Parliament of Canada and National Flag of Canada as selected articles, even though they're not featured. That being said, a lot of the selected article selections seem kind of random (Liberal Party of Canada leadership election of 1968, Superman, etc.) and if you're going to choose random articles, why not select from FA (and GA) class articles?
  • Is there any way to center the contents of the "Related Wikiprojects" and "Selected wikiproject" sections? On wider screens, there's a ton of white space on one side (right side for related, left side for selected) in those boxes.
  • I really dislike the Wikinews section. It's just so out of date.

Minor issues:

  • Selected panorama 11 has visible stitching quality issues. I would get rid of it or replace it.
  • Selected symbol 37 (ice hockey) needs a different image, as it's hard to see what's going on in the current one.
  • I don't really see a value to the "In the News articles" section on the second tab. That's not really recognized content in the way that FAs, GAs, and FPs are.
  • I would also remove the "Picture of the day pictures" section on the second tab, as all POTDs are FPs, and you have an FPs section right there too.

This portal is in really great shape. I can see that a ton of effort has been put into it, and it's certainly not far away from Featured Portal status. Please let me know your thoughts on these issues. Sᴠᴇɴ Mᴀɴɢᴜᴀʀᴅ Wha? 23:59, 8 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Sven

  • Picture size - Do you have a proposal for a more appropriate size? I totally agree that they should be bigger; is there a best practice about that?
  • Non-GA articles - These were at FA when they were built into the Portal. I'm going to replace any articles that are not FA or GA with more appropriate articles. There are quite a few FFAs in the SA section, so this won't be an easy fix, but it'll get done.
  • Wikinews - I'm not in love with the WikiNews Section, but it seems contentious (Moxy seems to like it). I don't know if there's a good solution.
  • Centering - I'll see what I can do.
  • Panorama 11 - has been removed
  • Ice hockey picture - replaced by File:McGill hockey match.jpg. The Commons don't have many good images of Canadian hockey.
  • Second tab issues - Agree entirely; fixed. Achowat (talk) 18:51, 9 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Drive-by comments from Bencherlite
  • Check that all the blurbs for selected articles / biographies are up to date. Ray Emery, for example, now plays for the Philadelphia Flyers; Martin Brodeur has played for 21 years for the same team now, not 13; Eric Brewer has moved teams etc etc.
  • Install one of the various dablink finding scripts and check the list of selected articles/biographies etc for dablinks. Celine Dion blurb "Unison"; Louis Riel "Divine right" etc.
  • Ursula Franklin's article doesn't have a link at the start
  • Removal of the "in the news" box (a decision I agree with) leaves the columns unbalanced.

That's all for now. BencherliteTalk 15:04, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Achowat, how's it going with addressing above comments? — Cirt (talk) 06:11, 27 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Achowat:, any updates on this? — Cirt (talk) 16:58, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to just review the featured picture section, as that's rather my specialty.

Portal:Canada/Selected_picture/24 has this weird "Featured picture candidates" text that links to Commons:Featured pictures. This seems to be a mistake.
The diversity is very low: May I suggest at least adding File:Edward Walsh - Queenstown, Upper Canada on the Niagara (a.k.a. Queenston, Ontario).jpg and File:Montreal from Mount Royal4.jpg to add a bit more historic imagery? Adam Cuerden (talk) 15:02, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not promoted due to multiple outstanding concerns. OhanaUnitedTalk page 18:25, 14 June 2014 (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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