Portal talk:South East England

Welcome to the SE England portal! I created it but it doesn't belong to me, so be bold! Waggers 14:44, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Selected items

It's important that the selections are balanced and that the page is refreshed regularly. To that end, I've set up Portal talk:South East England/selections which will enable us to (a) track which articles, pictures, etc. have been selected, and (b) decide in advance which ones should be selected in the future. I think the guideline should be that discussion should take place here but final decisions added to the selections page.

To begin with, I've set a target of refreshing the portal on a fortnightly basis. We'll see how that goes and how much interest is generated - if lots of users want to be involved, we can make it more frequent. Waggers 14:44, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Change of plan. I've been reading up on how to get the pages to change dynamically, so I'm going to set them up to change every week. Waggers 13:49, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure where you intended the nominated selections to go, but I think they should be on this page, its more visible. MortimerCat 21:29, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

My plan was for proposed selections to be discussed here and Portal talk:South East England/selections to act as a record of what selections have been made, so that we can ensure that there's a decent balance (ie. not favouring Oxfordshire over Kent, say, or male biographies over female ones). While there are just the two of us actively involved in the portal, I don't think we need to discuss selections much (I'm happy to trust your judgement) - just be bold and add to the list. At present, next week is cued up but the week after and beyond need some articles to be chosen. (By the way, apparently Wikipedia weeks start on Mondays for some reason). Waggers 10:09, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I have created one selection so far Rudyard Kipling, although I am a bit worried that its lead article may be a bit long. I have some more names but they are all historical at the moment, so I will create a nomination section on this page. Mainly so I do not forget them, but it will also allow us to have a mix of historical and modern celebrity. MortimerCat 00:28, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

How about not including the year, just using the month. Once we have the 53 in place, we would replace the ones that have been seen recently. This has the advantage of always showing articles even if we both give up. MortimerCat 23:03, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I've been thinking along those lines for a while. The reason I've resisted is to do with ensuring freshness (ie. if an article's introduction is updated but the portal's version of it isn't, there'll be a disparity). But on reflection it's better to display an older version of an article than none at all, so I'll make the change. Waggers 12:21, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

On This Day

I'd like to add this feature but don't want it to be hopelessly incomplete. Dynamic updating is essential of course, so I'll create a box to point to "today's" page once we have a good number of pages to link to. Here is a list of all the "on this day" pages we have so far. Waggers 15:06, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I've now made a full directory so that it's easier to spot missing items (red links): Portal:South East England/On This Day/Directory Waggers 13:45, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Success at last - we now have an entry for every day of the year (although I'm sure many could be improved) Waggers (talk) 08:53, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Selected Article/Picture/Celebrity nominations

I think its a good idea to list them here first. It allows someone else to verify their accuracy, and allows a good mixture in the final stage, rather that having consecutive weeks of similar articles.

This area is no longer used for nominations. See links on Portal front page

Celebrity

*Virginia Woolf Lived and died in Lewes, East Sussex

Provisional accept. - the actual article is Virginia Woolf. Be careful! Waggers 13:16, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

*Winston Churchill - Retired to Chartwell, Kent

Accept. He was born and raised at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, too, so definitely suitable. Be careful with your wikilinks though - the one you've used above is to the more famous Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. Waggers 13:16, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I think I was tired - I meant Chartwell. MortimerCat 14:56, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

• General James Wolfe - Born in Westerham,Kent

Accept. It's easy to justify a selection if they're born in the region. Waggers 13:16, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

*Benjamin Disraeli - Lived at Hughenden Manor,Buckinghamshire ::Accept. Represented several constituencies in the South East (including Maidstone) so I think we can justify him as a selection. Waggers 13:16, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

• Pam Ayres - Born Stanford in the Vale, was Berkshire, now Oxfordshire.
• Derek Jarman - Lived in Dungeness, famous shingle garden cottage.

Accept all (as it's just you and me voting!). These all look like ideal candidates. Waggers 10:17, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Article

• Paddington Bear - Author Michael Bond born Newbury, Berkshire
• University of Oxford - In Oxfordshire!
• Nonsuch Palace - Was located in Surrey

Accept all Waggers 10:17, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Picture

• Image:Brill-windmill.jpg - Brill, Buckinghamshire
• Image:Guildford cathedral.jpg - Guildford
• Image:Kent NASA.jpg - Kent
• Image:Canterbury Cathedral - Portal Nave Cross-spire.jpeg - Canterbury, Kent

Accept - all good, although a picture of the Radcliffe Camera was the first selected picture on the portal (used 19th-26th December 2006) so we should probably wait a bit before using it again. Waggers 10:22, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

It is easier to quickly list the ones I found here than enter them in the boxes. Plus, it gives a chance to vary them so we do not get Kent items for a month. We never know, someone else may come along too. I have noted that the first words should be wikilinked. MortimerCat 18:54, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I have just bolded the titles on the unpublished picks. MortimerCat 20:46, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Random Featured articles.

On the Kent Portal we have just set up the featured articles and pictures to randomly choose from a list. It is much easier to organise plus not having to worry about getting the choices by a deadline. As a bonus, it uses the same directory structure that was setup on this Portal. Shall we? MortimerCat 18:37, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Sounds great. The only downside I can see is that the portal maintainers will need to ensure that all the featured article excerpts are reasonably up to date, but I don't see that as a major problem. Presumably this can give the portal the appearance of being updated every day rather than every week (when we have a suitably long list of featured article excepts), which would make things even more interesting for visitors. Yep, let's go for it! Waggers 10:32, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

You may have noticed we have random articles. Too tired to finish it tonight, will recommence tomorrow MortimerCat 01:27, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks for your work on this. Waggers 10:59, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

No need for thanks. As you say at the top, it doesn't belong to you! Its a combined effort. MortimerCat 17:19, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Template:More about

I've just created the above template, which hopefully will come in handy. Waggers 11:09, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Plan

Thought I should share my long-term vision for this portal. What I'd like to see is a portal for each of the counties of South East England, all with a selected article, picture and biography (either randomly generated or changed manually, doesn't really matter). Then, all the content from this portal stripped out, with the selections from here each picking (at random) one of the subportals and grabbing the/a selected item from there. Thus maintaining the subportals would automatically maintain this parent portal. Any thoughts/objections etc? Waggers 09:27, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good plan to me. I intend to upgrade the East Sussex Portal very soon. MortimerCat 19:34, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Southampton Boat Show

New article - Southampton Boat Show --Montchav 12:13, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Related Portals map

Hi all, just to let you know I've created a map to display the related portals for the SEE area. See {{SEERelatedPortals}} and the Berkshire Portal to see how it looks as part of a portal. Ideally it would be nice to include this on all portals, but I thought I'd see what everyone thinks before making the changes! Many thanks, Seaserpent⁸⁵ 15:51, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

That's superb! I'll add it immediately to the SEE portal, and Hampshire and Oxfordshire. I'm not really involved in the others (at the moment) but MortimerCat has some involvement in those so hopefully he'll do the same. Waggers (talk) 13:19, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Buckinghamshire

I was just wondering why Bucks is the only county in the south-east not to have its own portal. I would try to create one, but I don't know how. Mpvide65 (talk) 17:28, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

It's simply because we haven't got round to it yet - certainly nothing personal about Buckinghamshire! I'll try and pull my finger out and set it up soon. Meanwhile, if there are any particular articles, images, biographies etc. you'd like to see on it, it would give me a bit of a head start if you could list them here - I'd really appreciate that. Waggers (talk) 09:30, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

 Done. This means we're now ready to implement The Plan - I'll start work on that soon. Waggers (talk) 12:24, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Implementing the plan

Ok, we're ready to go, except for two subportals. Surrey doesn't use the random selection process - and in fact only appears to have one selected article, biography and picture - and Kent uses the word "featured" instead of "selected", (which I believe is a general no-no to avoid confusion with official featured content). If and when we can get those two on board, it's easy enough to add them in.

Here's how it works. There are two templates, {{PortalSEERandomSubportal}} and {{PortalSEEselection}}. The first randomly selects one of the P:SEE subportals and returns its name, eg. "Hampshire", "Berkshire", etc. It takes two arguments, the same as {{rand}}, to ensure that a different portal is chosen each time (otherwise the same portal would be used throughout the page). The second template takes two arguments; "selectedthing" (eg. "article", "picture", "biography") and the portal ("aportal") to take it from ("Buckinghamshire", "Oxfordshire" etc. - generated from the first template). So the syntax is:

{{PortalSEEselection|aportal={{PortalSEERandomSubportal|192|37}}|selectedthing=article}} PortalSEEselection includes the P:SEE header and footer.

Along with the subportals, P:SEE itself is included, so that we can still have articles that are about South East England as a whole, and so we can also include content about Surrey and Kent while we try to sort those last two subportals out.

I'll make the changes now.... Waggers (talk) 14:36, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Snag

All done, but I've realised that the random number for the article/biography/picture always seems to be one! I'll try and fix that... Waggers (talk) 15:09, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

 Done Waggers (talk) 15:13, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

One down, one to go

It looks like Portal:Surrey has been a bit neglected so I've taken the liberty of bringing into line with the other SEE portals. That means P:SEE can now select items from it, just leaving Portal:Kent out of the loop. I'll have a go at sorting that problem out next. Waggers (talk) 14:01, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

 Done - I've now amended Portal:Kent so everything's hunky dory. Waggers (talk) 14:51, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Notice from the Portals WikiProject

WikiProject Portals is back!

The project was rebooted and completely overhauled on April 17th, 2018. Its goals are to revitalize the entire portal system, make building and maintaining portals easier, support the ongoing improvement of portals and the editors dedicated to this, and design the portals of the future.

As of May 2nd, 2018, membership is at 60 editors, and growing. You are welcome to join us.

There are design initiatives for revitalizing the portals system as a whole, and for improving each component of portals. So far, 2 new dynamic components have been developed: Template:Transclude lead excerpt and Template:Transclude random excerpt.

Tools are provided for building and maintaining portals, including automated portals that update themselves in various ways.

And, if you are bored and would like something to occupy your mind, we have a wonderful task list.

From your friendly neighborhood Portals WikiProject. Hope to see you there. Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   07:45, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Proposal to delete all portals

The discussion is at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Proposal to delete Portal space. Voceditenore (talk) 16:11, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

General images

I've hidden the "General Images" box for now. It's currently set up to transclude from just three pages - South East England, Isle of Wight and Southampton. This makes the image selection very Solent-centric, but adding a wider list (I tried the list of all counties in the region) causes an error because it takes the script too long to gather images from all those pages. It's a nice idea to grab images from key articles but unless/until we can include a decent sized list I suggest we stick with the Selected Images. It wouldn't hurt to review and expand those selections. WaggersTALK 15:38, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

In terms of layout, it was also pushing things like the Selected Biographies too far down the page - I think one set of images is the way to go. WaggersTALK 15:41, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

@Waggers: Too many image transclusion links = Lua timeout errors, which breaks the portal. At this time, the only way around the errors is to limit the article list. Since you don't like the general images, perhaps consider adding more selected images, as you have suggested. All the best, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 01:38, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Northamerica1000, Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of general images, especially as all the captions/attribution etc are maintained as part of the articles so we don't have to worry about doing it separately. I wonder if we can set it up so the template randomly selects a small number of articles from a larger list and then transcludes the images from those. I'll have a play and see what I can come up with. WaggersTALK 10:39, 15 July 2021 (UTC)