Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Society

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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 OhanaUnited 00:29, 28 January 2013 [1].

Portal:Society[edit]

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy ‎, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anthropology ‎, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sociology, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Human rights , User talk:Cirt ‎, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Community, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ethnic groups, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Family and relationships, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Gender Studies, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBT studies, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Literature ‎, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sexology and sexuality, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Travel and Tourism , User talk:AGK ‎, User talk:Bencherlite, User talk:John Carter, User talk:Resident Mario, User talk:Elekhh ‎, User talk:Northamerica1000 , User talk:Voceditenore. — Cirt (talk) 06:34, 13 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Self-nomination. See archived peer review. I believe the portal meets the standards for Featured Portal status. Thank you for your time, — Cirt (talk) 22:19, 12 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment Thanks for pursuing the Featured Portal drive, and inviting feedback regarding improvements on this portal. Without having had time to look into it in detail, my first impression is that it doesn't appear specific enough and is overly heavy with articles and pictures about individuals. For instance 13 of 20 featured pictures are portraits. In related portals there is a link to "Personal life". I almost hear an echo of Thatcher's famous "there's no such thing as society". What would you think of replacing Featured biography with Featured organisation? --ELEKHHT 09:17, 13 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think I have the same difficulty as Elekhh. I came here hoping to be able to support without much difficulty, but the selection of material needs work because if I covered up the title bar and the introduction, I would have real difficulty telling what the portal was about. Looking at the featured articles first, for now, (and only 20? I know that that's said to be the minimum, but such a broad topic as "society" can't be covered in just 20 articles, surely?) the articles chosen are unrepresentative of the topic "society" as a whole, or are overly specific. I would expect articles on broad themes about society, covering a diverse range of countries and cultures. Instead, there are two articles about US university student traditions, two articles focusing on Prince Albert Victor, an April 1st TFA blurb (Cock Lane ghost), and so on.

Perhaps it would help me understand what the portal's about if you could explain your selection criteria for this and the other sections; at the moment, it looks to be a bit of a random assortment of articles, images, sounds, DYKs, annversaries ("Dead Putting Society" - really?!) etc. BencherliteTalk 13:42, 13 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Response to comments by Elekhh and Bencherlite
  1. I tried to include a very broad inclusion criteria, basically featured-quality content relating generally speaking about people.
  2. If you wish to make more specific suggestions about specific entries to take out, I'd be more than glad to do that.
  3. It'd really be most helpful if you had ideas about other featured-quality content to substitute into the portal, instead of those entries to remove, I'd be more than happy to immediately do that. :)
Thank you for your comments, — Cirt (talk) 17:20, 13 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Update - 2nd response to comments by Elekhh and Bencherlite
  1. Done. Removed "Personal life" from Related portals section.
  2. Done. Went through a check of every single picture in Featured pictures section, and removed all those that were portraits of individual people. Swapped them out with other pictures from WP:POTD.
  3. Done. Removed "Dead Putting Society", from Portal:Society/Selected anniversaries/November.
  4. Done. Removed all Featured articles mentioned specifically as complaints, above.
  5. Done. Added ten (10) more entries to Featured articles section, mainly culled from the Culture and society section at Wikipedia:Featured articles. We now have a total of thirty (30) entries in the Featured article section.
Hopefully this has addressed above suggestions. :) — Cirt (talk) 19:18, 13 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the changes, the featured pictures section looks much better. However overall I think it is still a lot to do to get the portal more representative of "society". I think part of the problem is the selection criteria having been FA-articles only, even if these are of low-importance within the scope of the relevant WikiProject. I think including more core articles for this topic, even if they are GA "only" would benefit the portal. In various sections, there should be place for Sociology, Feminism, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, Polyethnicity, Greeks, etc. Is a pity the article feedback tool has only been enabled on article and help pages but not on portals. I am sure there would be interesting feedback from the 40K/month viewers of this page. --ELEKHHT 00:16, 14 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, thanks for those specific suggestions, I'll get right on adding those entries into the portal, we'll drop it down to allowing GA and FA class entries. Standby please for next update. :) — Cirt (talk) 01:58, 14 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
2nd Update - response to followup comments by Elekhh
  1. Done. Expanded selection criteria, now includes both WP:FAs and WP:GAs.
  2. Done. Increased dynamism to portal, now has Forty (40) selected articles, 40 selected bios, 40 selected quotes, and 40 featured pictures.
  3. Done. Added all entries suggested by Elekhh (talk · contribs), above, to portal, those were: Sociology, Feminism, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, Polyethnicity, Greeks.
— Cirt (talk) 04:39, 16 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think is clearly improving. I would hope to see more involvement from related wikiprojects, as well as article improvement drives for key topics such as Social class, Social movement, Urban sociology, Ethnology, Polygamy, Folklore, Chicago school (sociology), Popular culture, Georg Simmel, Auguste Comte. Maybe for now these could replace narrower topics in the DYK section. In the meanwhile some minor issues:
  • FA3 is identical with FA25
  • Images of people could be used when illustrating FA20-Tamil people, FA29-Taiwanese aborigines (plural), FA30-Toraja ...
  • Biographies selection appears to have US+UK bias with over half of the articles relating to one of the these
  • The "Recognized content" section doesn't fit well in the layout.
  • The "Related portals" section is very long. Maybe is worth considering trimming it to the core groups (i.e. Books, Film, Literature, Music, Theatre are sub-topics of art and culture). There are more directly related portals which are not currently linked, such as Portal:Social movements.
  • As previously with FPs, Illustrations in the DYK sections are not suggestive of society, only 2 of 20 DYKs illustrate "groups of people" vs. 11 portraits.
Sorry I only have time for critique. Hope these suggestions are useful for further improvements. --ELEKHHT 22:45, 20 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, will get on addressing these additional helpful points, soon, and provide further updates, back here. :) — Cirt (talk) 01:15, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Had a minor side-track digression doing some quickie updating responding to helpful suggestions and Featured Portal maintenance at Portal talk:Norway, will get back to addressing above recommendations in detail and reply here, soon. :) — Cirt (talk) 19:54, 27 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Response to 3rd set of comments from Elekhh
  1. Done. Thank you for pointing this out! Fixed FA25, moved a selection from FA40.
  2. Done. Good suggestion, replaced with images of multiple people together, as suggested.
  3. Note: Unfortunately as this is English Wikipedia, most of our best quality content will be related to UK / US, however if you have more specific suggestions for additional high quality articles to add into rotation, I will gladly do so! :)
  4. Done. Thanks, I've gone ahead and fixed the layout for "Recognized Content".
  5. Done. Trimmed the "Related portals" section, per your recommendations, and also added some, per suggestions from Elekhh (talk · contribs), above.
  6. Done. Removed all illustrations in DYK section of single persons only. Replaced with alternative illustrations, in most cases pictures of multiple people together.
Hopefully this is now satisfactory, — Cirt (talk) 21:15, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak support Thanks for all the changes. I think visually it starts to work and the content matches the quality of featured portals. I still find its focus on "Society" weak, as many articles would perfectly fit in other portals, while more specific articles haven't been included due to low quality. Instead of having a non-featured portal about society what we have is an attempt to have a featured portal about a very wide range of topics related to society. At this stage Bencherlite's test (cover up the title bar and introduction, and tell what the portal is about.) can work if lucky (ex. FA: Free Association of German Trade Unions + FB: Max Weber + FP: Batak warriors) but fails if not so lucky (ex. Postage stamps of Ireland + Albert Einstein + a natural gas pipeline explosion). Overall I find it much better than it was at the start of this process. Much appreciate your hard work. --ELEKHHT 02:36, 29 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, I will continue to address your helpful suggestions and update back here, — Cirt (talk) 18:56, 29 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Response to 4th set of comments from Elekhh
  1. Done. Removed Postage stamps of Ireland from article selections. Please note that this particular article is currently displayed at page Wikipedia:Featured articles under Culture and society subsection, see link at Wikipedia:Featured_articles#Culture_and_society.
  2. Done. I've removed Albert Einstein from bio rotations.
  3. Done. Gone ahead and removed the natural gas pipeline explosion from selected picture rotations.
I hope this is helpful towards improving the portal in line with above suggestions from Elekhh (talk · contribs), Cheers, — Cirt (talk) 19:06, 29 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Copying below comments by Ipigott posted on his talk page. Hopefully is of help. --ELEKHHT 04:42, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for suggesting I look at the Society portal. Well, I've had a look and my first impressions are that it is not too bad as it is. I also see that it is a candidate for FA and that quite a bit of improvement work has been completed as a result. My main problem with the page is the explanation of the portal's coverage. The way it is presented at the moment is "as long as a piece of string" as they say. That probably explains why you can get right down to categories like "Women in Denmark". I was quite surprised, for example, to see that if you go through Category:Corporations you can also turn up Category:Mergers and acquisitions, which seems to me to be rather outside the scope. Maybe a bit more emphasis on the areas which are seen as priorities for the project would be a good idea. I don't think the last sentence is really appropriate either: "A 'society' may also be a group of social organisms such as an ant colony, or any cooperative aggregate such as, for example, in some formulations of artificial intelligence." [...]--Ipigott (talk) 13:23, 30 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting points, thanks, but as for the last sentence, we defer to what's already written in the main core article's lede intro section per WP:LEAD, but I'll go ahead and remove it. — Cirt (talk) 09:42, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Trimmed last sentence of intro lede section. Any other specific suggestions would be most appreciated, — Cirt (talk) 09:43, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Support - acknowledging that my primary reservations are not so much about the quality of the portal in and of itself, but the not unreasonable question regarding how to determine what are and are not subjects of particular importance to "Society" in general. I actually have the same sort of general reservations regarding a lot of other portals of broad scope, like the religion and philosophy portals. I acknowledge the probability that the portal nominator has already done this, but if there is any way to access a major reference work more or less specifically relating to this topic, to see what are subjects are considered significant enough for inclusion in it, that might be useful. John Carter (talk) 16:37, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Please note that most of the featured content for this portal was drawn from articles already displayed at Wikipedia:Featured articles under Culture and society subsection, see link at Wikipedia:Featured_articles#Culture_and_society. — Cirt (talk) 16:48, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Changing earlier opinion, based on response. I have recently started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Religion#How to achieve goals for 2013? regarding maybe bringing a bit more concerted attention to major content specifically related to topics of importance to major portals, and maybe generating a bit more effort to bringing more portals up to FP status. Although I am in no way saying that any such discussion would be necessarily required regarding this portal, I do think that, maybe, some of the same actions might be useful for portals related to other topics as well, possibly including this one. John Carter (talk) 17:43, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the quality improvement to this particular portal is part of the Main Page Featured Portal drive. :) Cheers, — Cirt (talk) 17:45, 12 December 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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