Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Renewable energy

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 OhanaUnited 21:16, 2 October 2011 [1].

Portal:Renewable energy[edit]

The Renewable energy portal has been upgraded in August 2010 with the support of numerous editors. In September-October of the same year it has been through a peer review and further improved. Since than it has been well maintained, and has attracted an increasing number of viewers. As agreed between contributors on the portal's talk page, it follows a number of specific criteria:

Avoid duplicating content featured in Portal:Energy;
Provide balanced coverage of the different types of renewable energy sources;
Keep most sections automated so that minimum maintenance is required;

The portal currently includes 19 Selected articles (3 FA, 9 GA), 13 Biographies, 17 Quotes, 9 DYKs, and 22 selected pictures.

As it stands, I believe it meets the Featured portal criteria and the standard set by the best Featured portals. --Elekhh (talk) 05:28, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have also been an active contributor at the portal and would like to support what Elekhh has said and co-nominate. Renewable energy is a very topical issue and some 85 countries now have wide-ranging government policies to promote renewables. Climate change concerns are driving renewable energy commercialization. Johnfos (talk) 21:55, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have concerns over the quality of the content showcased in the portal. The biography that showed up the first time I loaded the page was Ron Pernick, a two-sentence stub. The DYK was REN21, a not-very-well-sourced almost-stub article. In fact, it's not really like a DYK at all, or at least how I imagine one (like the main page system, just collections of single-sentence hooks). It would be optimal to keep the selected articles/biographies to GAs and FAs only, and eliminate the "Selected biographies" section if this is not possible. ¶ I also see some minor consistency/style issues, such as "Dissent" not being italicized in Portal:Renewable energy/Quotes/8, or some of the article blurbs (such as REN21's) with a link to the article in the bolded section of the lede, but other blurbs are bold without links. I'm guessing that's because there is no "Read More..." link for the DYK section, but the difference slightly confused me for a second. Also, the "Archive..." in the "News" section could be bolded to match the "Read More..." links. ¶ Also, it would helpful to have links opposite the "Read More..." linking to the archives, a list of all selected content of that type, and/or a place for users to nominate new selections. ¶ Lastly, the navboxes at the bottom don't really fit in with the rest of the portal's design. I really like the header, but perhaps the info in the navboxes could be incorporated into a new green-header box and integrated with the rest of the portal, or simply removed altogether as redundant to the "Explore" subpage. Speaking of the header, I really like the picture choices and the placement of the tabs, but I think "Renewable Energy Portal" should be bigger to catch the reader's attention. /ƒETCH COMMS / 03:04, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the prompt and detailed feedback. Would have been good to have them in bullet points so that I can answer them one by one, but hope I will not miss any. Some of the issues you raised came up previously or have been thought about through the design process, and the current layout/configuration represents the reached consensus so far. That does not mean that upon further feedback these cannot be changed. In detail:

Content quality: I believe the Selected Article and Selected Picture sections showcase only high quality. Indeed the other sections (Selected Biography, Quotes, DYK) often link to short articles as well. The aim was diversity and inviting contributions. If this is not acceptable there are two solutions (1) remove all short articles, and thus reduce diversity or (2) remove the entire sections until more quality content is found.
Magazine title in Quotes/8 now in italics. Please feel free to fix minor issues like this on the spot.
The "Archive..." link was purposeful not bolded as is not an important link. New news are important, old news are not.
The links to the selected content follow the main page format with a "more..." link for the Selected articles and otherwise bold link.
Links to nominate content: currently these are all grouped under the Tasks tab as from my experience with other portals these are rarely if ever used by readers so only clutter the page. But if required it will be no problem to add direct links at the bottom of each section.
The tabs simply follow the sister Portal:Energy layout, which is a featured portal. I agree that is improvable but I think all three tabs have an important function.
The font size of the portal title has been changed a number of times and the current size is the last consensus reached.

Hope I didn't miss any of the issues raised. --Elekhh (talk) 08:11, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I usually use bullet points, but I'm not sure why I didn't here.

I think that removing the biography section, if there aren't enough GA/FA biographies, would be better (as not all portals need a selected biography box), and putting the quality bios, if any, with the rest of the selected articles. If the DYK bit was changed to be a list of hooks, then perhaps the diversity/inviting users to edit goals would still be met.
Everything else seems fine now it's been clarified.

Cheers, /ƒETCH COMMS / 17:29, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the further feedback. I think that's a good idea with the DYK's. As it was mainly the work of Johnfos I will wait for his feedback as well. From the 13 selected biographies one is rated B-class, another 9 are Start-class and 3 are stubs. So the more detailed options here are (1b) move the B-class rated to Selected articles and drop the section, (2b) keep the section and remove or upgrade the 3 stubs. --Elekhh (talk) 22:26, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this useful discussion. It seems that we don't have any FA/GA biographies to include at this stage and I agree that this is not an ideal situation. Nevertheless I wouldn't like to see the biography section removed altogether, as it provides a useful extra dimension which balances the portal as a whole. I propose that, in terms of Portal:Renewable energy/Selected biography, we simply remove some of the more flimsy bios, namely Stefan Krauter, David Faiman, Benjamin K. Sovacool, Chris Goodall, and Ron Pernick. (And I would add a bio for John I. Yellott.) This will leave bios of acceptable quality, with an image and substantial article to back them up.

In terms of the DYK section, I have no problem with that being changed to a "list of hooks". Johnfos (talk) 22:47, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Removing those five bios seems to solve most of the problem, so that seems good. /ƒETCH COMMS / 04:51, 24 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, thanks to Elekhh's speedy cleanup that selected bio section is looking quite good now... Johnfos (talk) 06:06, 24 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Query: No supports so far, no comments for two weeks — any updates on the status or what's going on here? Have talkpages of relevant WikiProjects been notified? — Cirt (talk) 16:25, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Cirt. Certainly Portal:Energy was notified by Elekhh on 22 June. Have now notified WP:Energy and WP:Environment also. Johnfos (talk) 19:18, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps also notify other related more general projects, like Science, Business, Economics, World, etc. — Cirt (talk) 20:00, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Left messages at WikiProject Technology and WikiProject Science. --Elekhh (talk) 22:11, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.