Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:U.S. Roads/archive1

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 Cirt 02:06, 29 May 2010 [1].

Portal:U.S. Roads

This portal is supported by the U.S. Roads WikiProject with regular monthly updates. Unlike some other portals I've recently browsed, our project as a whole updates it with monthly nominations for selected article, photo and DYK hooks. The portal is also updated one extra time of the year for April Fool's Day, where the introduction and other sections of the portal change with alternate versions for the day. Additionally, a special selected article and photo are used. For 2008, the entire contents of a stub article were used as the SA, with a bad photo used as the SP. For 2010, we used an article blurb previously nominated for TFA for AFD on the Main Page. The photo was a road sign error, the hooks were funny, but accurate facts from articles, and the News section was set to change to a humorous, roads version of the Main Page's "On This Day" section. We strive for regional balance with our selections, attempting to shine the spotlight each month on states that have never been selected for articles or photos. Later this year, we've discussed using the video of "Galloping Gerty" (the Tacoma Narrows Bridge), for the anniversary of its collapse, instead of a still image. Any comments are appreciated.

On behalf of several members of WP:USRD, Imzadi 1979 → 05:45, 12 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Query

Have talk pages of relevant WikiProjects been notified? -- Cirt (talk) 16:24, 12 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WP:USRD has been notified through its announcements template {{USRD Announcements}}, and ArticleAlerts will pick up the nomination as well. Imzadi 1979 → 00:19, 13 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Looks fine from a quick look through, although the navbox at the bottom looks out of place. Perhaps just add its contents to a portal subpage and use the same color box? fetchcomms☛ 21:02, 12 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Created a new subpage, customizing the navbox for the portal. Imzadi 1979 → 02:39, 13 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

None of the associated Wikimedia links point to an existing page or useful search page. I'll see if I can fix it sometime son. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 02:50, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Eh, I see it's a default template. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 13:00, 21 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My attempt at a redirect on en.wikinews to a portal news importation page used for the project newsletter was summarily deleted. I may try to recreate that page by transcluding the content. As for the other projects, maybe we can set up a high-level gallery on Commons, but for now I might just remove the template. Imzadi 1979 → 17:19, 21 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've recreated the Wikinews page in another format, and I've set up the category on Commons with some image subcategories. Now I just have to get pages going later on Wikiquote, Wiktionary, etc. Imzadi 1979 → 18:52, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A few comments: The layout is generally well-layed out; however, the related Wiki-stuff is not very useful. The titles are excessively long; perhaps they could be changed to "U.S. Roads in Wiki-Blah" instead of "Roads in the United...." Also, having New York Roads portal on the related portals area makes it look to an unfamiliar user that USRD is focused mainly on New York or perhaps that New York is worked on separately from the rest of the U.S. But otherwise, I think it's well-organized. --P C B 23:42, 25 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The related wikimedia stuff was just changed to accommodate the category naming scheme on Commons. It used to have "U.S Roads" instead of "Roads in the United States". I might just pull the related Wikimedia template though for now.

I disagree on the comments about the NY Roads portal. It clearly is a related portal and should be included. I'm not sure why the NY sub-project felt a need to create their own portal, but as long as it exists, it should be linked from this portal in some fashion. Imzadi 1979 → 23:46, 25 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It was created partially because I felt that New York was being blackballed at the US Roads portal. Every time a New York item (article, picture, etc.) was nominated, it was instantly opposed regardless of how good or not it was. I stopped contributing to the USRD portal several months ago for that reason. I also disagree with the portal's practice of favoring regional balance over quality content. The other reason the portal was made is that NYSR already had its own SA system, so creating a full portal was a logical extension of that. – T M F 08:15, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, I'm a fan of regional balance if the content from the "less well known" regions are as good or better than the content from the "popular" regions; however, if they aren't, I'd rather bypass regional balance in favor of ensuring that the content that's featured on the portal is of high quality. – T M F 08:34, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Until we can resolve the issues with the "Associated Wikimedia", I commented out that section. Imzadi 1979 → 05:04, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Open for a significant amount of time with not a great deal of support, will likely close and archive after one more week. -- Cirt (talk) 15:06, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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