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Portal:Indigenous peoples of North America

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Following the great advices of Kirill Lokshin and Rlevse, perhaps two of the most experienced and knowledgeable users regarding Portals, I've steadily worked on this one, and I hereby submit it for your consideration and scrutiny. I believe it is ready to attain featured status; but if you feel it should be enhanced any further, just shoot please! :) Thank you in advance, Phaedriel ♥ The Wiki Soundtrack!♪ - 23:49, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support, excellent portal in every respect. Kirill Lokshin 00:22, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, comprehensive and thoroughly informative. DVD+ R/W 00:42, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support the first truly excellent portal to come our way in a long while. --cj | talk 00:58, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wow! My only concern is updates and lack of scheduled future content, especially for the new aspects that don't have much of a history. But I'm willing to assume that won't be a problem in this case. Support.--ragesoss 01:04, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • A real tour-de-force. What's remarkable is that the recent improvements are completely the work of one editor. One of our finest, to be sure, but a truly beautiful portal. Support although I agree that the single point of failure on the updates is a minor concern. ++Lar: t/c 01:08, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Dear Sage and Lar, first of all, thank you for your kind comments and your support. If you don't mind, I'd like to address your concern regarding future updates, even if it's a minor one. Following Rlevse's and Kirill's advice, I've already prepared rotating contents for all sections (except News, of course). Although I've recently added the option of submitting candidates for each section, I don't want to depend solely on that, and thus all contents for August are already set - see August's selected article, bio, quote and picture. Just in case, all rotating contents for September are also ready; again, you can check them out: article, bio, quote and picture. Needless to say, if any candidates are submitted in the meantime and look good enough, I'll replace these preset contents with them. Hope this is enough ;) Cheers, Phaedriel ♥ The Wiki Soundtrack!♪ - 14:37, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support This is the best portal I have ever seen. It is so ergonomic, so well-maintained, so pleasent to look at. And do you want to talk about useful? Do you want to talk about the ideal Portal ?! This portal, put quite simply, NEEDS to be a featured one. It shows just how good portal's on Wikipedia can be. Thε Halo Θ 10:42, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's a lovely piece of work, but isn't it a bit long? In particular I think the "what you can do to help" should be shorter as we generally optimise for readers not editors. --kingboyk 16:38, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. It's a really petty formality, but some people are still out there with 800x600 monitors, and with the top picture being formatted to be 810px wide, plus (in most skins) the sidebar, it exceeds the width of those people's screens. The map at the end has the same problem. Can anything be done about this? - Samsara (talk • contribs) 16:51, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Unfortunately, no, dear Samsara. Of course, the top image can be resized (tho it looks very poorly in high resolution monitors, which the vast majority of people use) or simply removed. However, the map cannot be resized since it would lose greatly in terms of detail in resolutions higher than 800x600. Since that map is a key section of the Portal, I must sadly conclude that your concern cannot be solved. Sorry :(
      I'd like to point out, tho, that other Featured Portals (i.e. London and Latin America) also exceed the screen's width in 800x600. Thanks for your input! Phaedriel ♥ The Wiki Soundtrack!♪ - 18:36, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • I wonder if there might be a stylesheet or scripting solution for this? If there isn't my personal opinion is that the status quo will have to suffice. Most of us have 1024x768 or better now, and the map needs to be as large as is reasonably possible. It's better to have the inconvenience of a horizontal scrollbar than lose detail imho. --kingboyk 19:11, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. The Portal is attractive and ergonomic; but I am not sure if it is useful or well-maintained. Even at the time when its up to FPoC, the selected biography is a stub. The selected article is at best start-class (two pages, no sections yet). All the portal's features (articles/bios/quotes/pictures), with the exception of news are updated monthly. DYK hasn't been updated for over a month now, and the new listing for august is again the same. Isn't a month a bit too much for updating contents? The candidate list is also empty so it is unlikely to get updated any more. I assume that this portal will work in tandem with the related Wikiproject. I went to the project page to find out if there would be any assistance, only to find that there are only 12 featurable articles (1 FA, 3 A, 1 GA, and 7 B-class); these are to be divided among the selected article and the selected bio, which leaves an average of 6 per section. Shouldn't the portal's main page contents be updated atleast once in a week? Looking at history of many pages I find that Phaedriel has done an excellent work considering she did so much on her own. I suggest to get a few more people from the Wikiproject, which will surely help things to speed up and help it get FPo status. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 06:41, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    You've provided no actionable objections. Please see the criteria. The maximum period a featured portal may go without updates is three months. --cj | talk 09:43, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    For a start, replace the stub and start-class articles from the portal's main page with articles that represent Wikipedia's best works. That is, preferably FA class, A class or in the worst case, B-class articles. Also, create a list of such articles for future so that we can know that the portal won't get de-featured three months after getting featured. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 09:58, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I forget to mention about the central theme of the portal, the Indigenous peoples of North America article. Currently, it redirects to Indigenous peoples of the Americas article. I find that the article has been rated as a start class (see talk page). This doesn't represent Wikipedia's best works. The actionable part of this objection would be to raise it to atleast GA class, though as a central theme of the portal, it should preferably be FA class. Even better would be to create another article titled Indigenous peoples of North America, which forks content specific to North Americas from this article and raise it to level that we can say it represents Wikipedia's best works. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 10:20, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    First of all, dear Ambux, thank you very much for your detailed analysis; it certainly reveals that you took the time and effort to dig deeply with with utmost seriousness on the merits of this Portal. I perfectly understand your concerns, which are valid when expressed the way you have. However, you're missing vital information, which has led you to these conclusions, at least in part. Allow me to explain.
    You mention that there is no list of the articles currently covered by the Project from which this Portal could benefit, and that only 12 featurable articles are listed at the Project's page; that is incorrect. If you had read all the Project's subpage, you'd have seen that we are currently migrating the assessments made under the previous system to the new one recently introduced by Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. We have hundreds of rated articles that are being migrated to the new system at our archive; but they don't appear listed yet for obvious reasons.
    On other points, I agree with you, and I will surely take action; I also think that the main article should be updated weekly, and I'll implement that system as soon as I possibly can (most likely after the update scheduled for Aug 1). But I sincerely don't see it necessarily as a flaw that rest of the sections are updated monthly. In fact, a scrutiny of many Featured Portals reveals that many use that updating frequency, even for their main article, i.e. Aviation or Scouting, to name just a couple. The DYK section is also updated monthly, and the sole reason why the contents that will appear on Aug 1 are still the same is, because I'm currently updating it and preparing it as we speak. The candidates list are empty as of now because that system has just been implemented, as I mentioned above; in order to prevent that a possible lack of submissions may alter the updates, the rotating system is already in place and fully functional, as I expressed above.
    A quick consideration regarding the central theme article: of course, logical and thoughtful as your suggestion of splitting it to have a separate one for Indigenous people of North America is, again, that is not actionable; it's not your fault at all, dear Ambux, but if these topics fell within your field of expertise, you'd know why. Indigenous topics are a vast conglomeration filled with gray areas; and our modern ways of thinking and assigning categories to everything don't work with topics like this. Just for you info, at first I have named the Wikiproject merely as Native Americans in the United States; then, when it became clear it was impossible to make such a separation because of the lack of sense in separating tribes and languages with a modern day frontier, I had to include Canada; and after that, Mexico... Indigenous topics are often vague and imprecise, and many times they have politics inherently involved. That's why I ask you, don't use a modern criteria to assign categories and search for solutions to matters like these; rest assured that the ideas you're offering have been thought already... over and over!
    With utmost respect to your opinion, which I completely believe to be based on your experience in the matter and your own very high standards, I do think however that you're utilizing the same criteria and schemes you normally use at Portal:India to judge this Portal's possibilities and usefulness; and again, friendly disagreeing with you, I believe that's wrong. There is no chance whatsoever that the contents available on Native American topics can ever match not in quantity nor in quality those on India, simply because there is an incredibly larger number of excellent editors from that country, you being one of them. The possibilities that such a great amount of top-notch material offer you will never be at my disposal, and as such, I do think that your objection regarding the showcased contents this Portal has to offer are not actionable to a degree. In fact, I think you're literally comparing India with this one; when in fact, a comparison with other featured ones, closer in terms of available material should be more fair.
    To end this, I wish to tell you that I've focused this initiative exactly as means of showing our material to both the members of our project and specially to the community at large, in order to get more interested people to work and enhance our articles on Native American topics; this is a different approach than the one you chose for the reasons I expressed above, and which from my humble perspective, it is the kind that this topic needs. Dear Ambux, again, thank you so much for the deep and serious analysis, even if I disagree in part with your appreciation; I am totally convinced that your considerations are motivated entirely by your desire of improving the quality of our project as a whole. Warmest regards, Phaedriel ♥ The Wiki Soundtrack!♪ - 11:37, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I believe I made a mistake of only mentioning the sky (for which this Portal should aspire for), and not the grounds (to make it a Featured Portal). So here's the solid ground that will get this portal my support: A minimum of GA status to the central theme (you may develop the current article itself). All articles that appear on the main page should have been assessed as minimum B-class (I wonder if anything less can be considered Wikipedia's best work). According to your reply I find that there would be considerable number of such articles. They don't have to be unique everytime. Repetition is often required. Even if you have four articles, I prefer rotating them monthly by featuring each for a week, rather than keep a single one for a month together and rotate every 4 month. I know DYKs would be hard to find on this narrow topic, so even if you can find a DYK in every month (or two months), it should be fine. You don't need to keep a monthly archive. Archiving can be also done in groups of 10 (or 20) DYKs. There doesn't seem to be any problem with the news section. Try to get the quote section rotated every week. You don't need to always go for quote by indigenous people, you can also go for quotes on indigenous people. Also, I would like to see a complete listing of selected articles of the portal (I am not talking about archives). For example, see this. Same for other sections. Hopefully this should be sufficient. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 13:29, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Err, what? The featured portal criteria call for the portal to showcase "high quality content", not "Wikipedia's best work"; it has never been convention to require a particular quality level for the articles showcased on the portal, and I strongly oppose imposing any such requirement out of the blue. The rotation schedule is fine as it is; there's really no difference between once-a-week and once-a-month rotation if the set of articles is the same size. As far as WP:PINSA: that bastardized clone of WP:FA should have died a gruesome death a long time ago; there is absolutely no reason to go around creating copies of it for other portals. An archive of past (and future, if auto-rotation is used) articles is quite sufficient without creating an entirely redundant process for "selecting" articles. Kirill Lokshin 18:03, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Ok. Replace every occurance of "Wikipedia's best works" with "high quality content" in my previous edits. The "high quality content" isn't a new requirement. I wonder if anyone would call stub-class articles as "high quality content". It was my interpretation of "high quality content" to be atleast B-class. If I really meant "Wikipedia's best works" as you saw it, I would have insisted on FAs only. The WP:PINSA was created because its predecessor (an impostor of WP:FA) died a gruesome death long ago and the new name was suggested and adopted after consensus was reached in the deletion debate. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 18:31, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Despite the change of name, it is still nothing more than a useless copy of the entire FA process (complete with word-for-word copies of the criteria and candidate pages) that's utterly unnecessary for a portal to have. Kirill Lokshin 18:42, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    The community consensus was to keep it – long before I started editing. I think you might be aware of the happenings as I happen to see similar involvement back in 14 January this year. However, allow me to suggest that any more discussions whether WP:PINSA should exist be discussed in relevant talk pages, and not here. Here, we should specifically discuss if stub-class and start-class article represent "High quality content" and the merits of central theme of the portal being a start-class article. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 18:56, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Fair enough; WP:PINSA is only relevant insofar as you suggested creating a copy here.
    As far as "high quality" is concerned: once we get away from actual FAs, the quality ratings are (a) determined by WikiProjects, (b) largely informal, and (c) liable to change on a daily basis at times. It is disingenuous to suggest that the article is unsuitable because you would rate it as start-class, as another reviewer may have a different opinion; and it is impractical to insist that portals take responsibility for the quality of every article they showcase, as those articles may increase or decrease in quality depending on the actions of outside editors. So long as the articles being selected are not egregiously poor—and I don't believe that is the case here—their exact rating shouldn't have an effect on how we regard the portal itself. Kirill Lokshin 19:12, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    To aid the discussion, I am quoting some excerpts from WP:WIAFPo: "It should exemplify our very best work" (our=>Wikipedia), "It should showcase the best of Wikipedia's content for a particular area" (there are better candidates available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America/Article Classification/Archive), "As portals should promote the best of Wikipedia's content, featured portals should be selective in what they display. They should showcase only high quality content, which should preferably be already featured. Content does not have to be featured, but it must be high quality." (high quality content is considered near FA level, thus start and stub class shouldn't qualify). Now from Wikipedia:Portal/Guidelines: "The more often portals are updated, with fresh content, the more interesting they will be to readers and attract returning visitors. Some portals update the selected articles and pictures, once a month. Others update them weekly, which is preferred. Other update schedules—ranging from once every few weeks to daily—are also sometimes used." I chose to side with what is said to be "preferred". Shouldn't Featured Portals have what's "preferred". — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 19:22, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    My point, though, is that start and stub class ratings are sufficiently subjective that they need not be regarded as binding. I have no objection to better articles; but I don't believe the current set are so poor as to constitute a problem as regards to the featured portal criteria.
    As far as updates go, another useful quote from Wikipedia:Portal/Guidelines: "This page is a proposed Wikipedia policy, guideline, or process. The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption." Kirill Lokshin 19:28, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I encourage you to get the article rated by any other long standing reviewer. I have expressed my opinions as a (1) Experienced Wikipedia editor having nearly 6,000 edits; (2) Experienced Portal editor having nearly 600 edits; (3) Experienced Reviewer (WP:India) having reviewed nearly 60 articles. The fact that the rating is subjective doesn't mean it gives the freedom to have a random assessment. In most cases, there aren't any gray regions. I personally ask you: How would you rate this article? Would you say it represents high quality content? "Our" best work? — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 19:35, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    This is getting entirely too silly ;-) But, since you asked...
    As (1) an experienced Wikipedia editor having more than 20,000 edits, (2) an experienced portal editor having more than 800 edits, and (3) an experienced reviewer (WP:MILHIST) having reviewed hundreds of articles (though none in this topic area, obviously), I would rate Mangas Coloradas as a weak B-Class article. It's short, but quite usable for the casual reader, and seems to contain most or all of the key points, if not at a sufficient level of detail to rise higher in the scale. Kirill Lokshin 19:55, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I think you mis-read my intentions. I know you are much more experienced than me, and I was not commanding anything. I was saying that my perceptions were not unfounded (and I am not new to these things). Since we disagree, and unlikely to agree on this issue as it stands now, I think we should end the debate. However, I encourage you to remove the stub template from the article. Also, I would prefer other editors opinion on the issues mentioned in the debate. If you are interested, my assessment of this article would be "start minus". "Start", because it conforms to a start standards and not B-class standards, and "minus" because I am personally not aware of the subject, but the article mentions him as "the most important Apache leader of the 19th century". I thank you for providing the quick responses, but I am not convinced. The other major concern of mine, the quality of the central theme article of the portal hasn't been discussed in detail, but since it is likely to get the same kind of discussion, I would prefer to spend time with other articles I am currently working on. Regards, — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 04:46, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    The article gets a minus because it doesn't jive with the extent of your personal awareness? =/ Or because the article should be better because it's about an important person? heqs 20:33, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Ok. Let me clarify. Given no background on the subject (which I don't), I will rate it start-class. But I may be over-evaluating the article because an equi-length article on a more important subject may still be a stub (I am saying maybe, and frankly I am not capable of rating the article myself, not knowing anything about the subject before I first read the article while evaluating this FPoC). Hope this is what you asked to clarify. PS: There is no official "minus" appended assessment. I copied it from the way credit rating agencies rank industries/economies. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 13:39, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I've removed the stub tag from that article; it seems to be too long for keeping that status. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 19:57, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Mild object Conditional support: The news seems to be United States-based only - this is really quite out of proportion with current events. heqs 15:47, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment. Can you be more specific. I can hardly make out the grounds of the objection. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 16:16, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • The News section. It's all news from the United States. What about the Caledonia land dispute, the re-election of Phil Fontaine as Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, [1] the latest status of the Kelowna Accords, [2], to say nothing of what's going on in Mexico. heqs 17:50, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Dear Heqs, your concern is extremely valid, and this serves to prove that two heads think better than one! :) I hereby invite you to take part into the update of the News section with Canada related contents, something that is a bit difficult for me to do as I hardly know any sources. If you prefer, simply point out possible websites where to obtain future news and I'll take care of the rest. Congrats on a very good and valid point! Phaedriel ♥ The Wiki Soundtrack!♪ - 18:34, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • Okay, I don't think I will have time to work on keeping the news section up to date (I realize it's probably a ton of work to maintain a portal). I would suggest that if there isn't someone to monitor the Canadian and Mexican news, though, the Portal isn't ready to go featured. In fact, the more I think about it I would really have to make my recommendation a strong oppose - I think this is quite serious. As for good resouces, I'm sure there's a good RSS feed out there, but personally I prefer using clusty news search. If you just search for "First Nations", +Canada +Aboriginal, or +Canadian +Aboriginal you will see all the latest news. heqs 22:41, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
            • As I said above, there is someone to take care of it now, dear Heqs. Your position is perfectly understandable, and will be addressed accordingly. Since the only evidence of this will be the future updates with the material you've provided, you must not change your position now; but rest assured your sugestions will not go unheard. Once again, thank you. Regards, Phaedriel ♥ The Wiki Soundtrack!♪ - 22:58, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional support. The screen resolution issue is a non-issue; people who're still using 800×600 need to update their computers, I'm afraid. Time's a-changing. ;) However, the concern over the U.S.-centricism is quite valid; should that be remedied, I'll gladly support this visually and informationally very appealing portal. —Nightstallion (?) 16:00, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As true as that is, my counter still lists over 20% of users have 800x600 resolutions. Once enough people do update their screens, and the 800x600 userbase dips below 10% then we can optimize for 1024x768. - RoyBoy 800 22:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Let me point out that Phaedriel came to me before she submitted this as a FP candidate and asked for input. I asked Kirill to chime in. She listened to us and promptlly got working on it. KUDOS to her for this foresight and diligence. I think this is a fine portal and only needs tweaked to include more Canadian stuff. The rotating content is nice, but not a requirement. And what condition articles it points to are in is not an actionable item for FP candidacy, that is for the associated projects to work on.Rlevse 18:20, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I'd say that it is. I did specify in the criteria that featured portals must display high quality content. However, it has been pointed out above that this is ambigious and, without clarification, it is subjective. Therefore, I intend to propose an amendment to the criteria to provide basis for such an objection in future.--cj | talk 08:14, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is something I really-really look forward to. I have the WP:WIAFPo and WP:FPO on my watchlist and will keep a lookout if any such issue is raised. If you plan to raise it anyplace else, I request you to inform me. Regards, — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 09:44, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"High quality" is very ambiguous. If rotating content is a defacto requirement, it needs to be explicitly added. Also, I think some of the current FPs do not have that and that issue needs to be dealt with somehow.Rlevse 10:07, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Forget about rotating content. That was a suggestion, not an objection criteria. My point of objection was the quality of content. Yes, "quality" is ambiguous, but in many cases, it is easy to understand what is high quality and what is not. If an article is marked "stub", it can hardly be claimed to be "high quality", let alone Wikipedia's "best work" (which is a requirement for FPos). Also, I find it unlikely that a one or two page article would qualify as one. If they are high quality even being so small in length, then the scope of these article is so narrow that they shouldn't be presented on the main page. The article pointed by me above clearly can't be high quality (IMHO), as it is about the "most important Apache leader of 19th century". Also pardon my ignorance, but why the articles the portal points to isn't an actionable objection. One needs to just change the link from the main page to a summary of the other article. The fact that there are other "better articles" have been accepted and discussed by Phaedriel herself, with even a suggestive listing present, saving a lot of work. Also, I am concerned about the quality of the central theme article of the portal, which is currently rated "start-class". Something that will be most visible in the portal page, the quality of the article must be kept up to the mark. I am not asking it to be FA, but it would be a BIG compromise if it isn't even GA. When the changes in policy are discussed, this is the most important issue that I would want to discuss. I would encourage other editors to also brain-storm and arrive at some formal and defined criteria that the portals should follow. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 12:07, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ah. Some confusion existed, so I see we're focusing on "high quality". OK, the requirement for "It should showcase the best of Wikipedia's content for a particular area and encourage contribution to that area." could be clarified more. I will agree the showcase introductory article should be at least B-class. Two things about the showcase article in question: 1) it's rated Start by the project and 2) with just a tad of work, it could be B and even GA, but GA usually takes at least three weeks. As for other articles, it's unrealistic to expect every article a project works on to meet that and the portal should be allowed to include it if it has a reason to. The other problem with using the V1.0 assessment scale, is that not every portal may have an associated project and even then an associated project may not use the rating system, so then the question is, how would one go about rating it's showcase article? Use the V1.0 scale anyway? Rlevse 22:54, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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