Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:New England

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 Northamerica1000 16:24, 13 October 2012 [1].

Portal:New England has been designated as a featured portal, per the consensus here to do so. – Northamerica1000 (talk) 16:19, 13 October 2012 (UTC)}}[reply]

Portal:New England

Portal built from practically nothing. Peer review revealed no issues. It includes 27 Selected Articles (All FA), 22 Selected Bios (All FA), 20 Selected Pictures (All FP) and a constantly-updating DYK section, featuring the last 5 New England-related DYK hooks to be featured on the Main Page. I'm more than willing to do additional work to bring this to Featured status. Achowat (talk) 18:36, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

For starters, have you contacted related WikiProjects? You might be able to draw some reviewers by leaving a message there. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 17:34, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

All WikiProjects of the six states have been notified, with no response. Achowat (talk) 17:40, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved comments from Bencherlite ^Talk 20:24, 14 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

;Comments by Bencherlite

Well, this looks to be nearly there already - well done for the work done to date. As you'll have seen, I've made some minor tweaks and fixes as I went through it. My remaining suggestions / comments are these:

I would suggest implementing a random DYK system - those with longer memories than me at FPoC have noted in the past that portals reliant on updating manually have their drawbacks, and automating as much as possible is useful in terms of showing new content to readers on each visit or page refresh. We've already had a brief discussion about this on your talk page.
You have a "topics" section with a few entries, then use {{New England}} at the bottom, which has many more. Why not copy the useful links from the template into the topics section, then remove the template as unnecessary duplication?
~~For me at least (Firefox 14, laptop) the entries in the "Related portals" sections are much more cramped than in the "Wikiprojects" section - can you let the portals breathe a bit more?~~
Portal:New England/Selected picture/6 the description doesn't match the picture; if you do have a map drawn by Sir Thomas tucked up your sleeve somewhere, then you can wikilink the credit to his article at Thomas Hyde Page.
Pictures 7–10 could do with an explanation as to why they're within the scope of the portal for those not "in the know"
Pictures 17–20 - it looks odd to have "the Official gem" etc; I think lower case would be more correct. (Non-FPoC comment: compare List of Oregon state symbols to List of New Hampshire state symbols - time for the NEWENGers to catch up!)
Biographies - you only give dates of birth and death for some of the people - was this intentional? The current TFA main page blurb standard, as you may have seen, is only to give years of birth and death. I don't mind what you do, full dates or year dates, but consistency is best.
Selected articles - I've made some minor tweaks, as you'll see on your watchlist; nothing to worry about
~~"Selected State" should, I think, be "Selected state"~~

Otherwise, not much to say. There are some stylistic things that I might have done differently to you but as these are matters of personal preference, I think, I won't bring them up. I think this is very close to meeting the FPo criteria and I look forward to supporting when you've implemented these points (or told me why I'm wrong!) Bencherlite ^Talk 20:30, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, to address some of your points (the ones I can address now):

DYKs now randomized (10 sets of 5)
I did, in fact, have a Map by Sir Thomas up my sleeve, it's there now (with link)
For pictures 17-20, is your concern merely one of capitalization?
Pictures 7-10; this may be my own cultural bias speaking, but isn't it like super-common knowledge that the Kennedy's are New Englanders? I mean, with that accent, isn't that their defining feature ?
The intention for the Bios was to not indicate birth date, or death date, in any way. It appears I missed about a half dozen. But now it begs the question, is a (Birth-Death) the preferred style on Portals?
IE (I'm at work, don't yell at me) doesn't seem to have the "Cramping" issue, but I can steal the code from the Related Portals, to make it make more sense.
Selected State now reads "state" on the Portal. I didn't change the inner workings because, I'll be honest here, it seemed like too much work for literally Zero gain. I agree with you on the Portal proper, however
The issue of Topics (there being more in the Navbox) is because the Navbox links to [[New England#Cuisine]] etc. It seemed poor form to link to New England so often, but I see your point.

And, when this is all over, if you want to talk about the style differences, I'll be available at PT:NEWENG. Achowat (talk) 21:04, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nice and speedy work on the DYKs, and the other issues that I've struck too. You correctly guessed that I wasn't asking you to change the capital letter in "Selected State" throughout the inner workings of the portal! As for the remaining issues:

No harm in saying that the Kennedys were from somewhere in New England (if we're playing "common knowledge" games, my first Kennedy location thoughts would be Martha's Vineyard and Chappaquiddick, but I presume that's not quite right...)

pictures 17–20, yes the only issue for me is the capital "O" in "official"

As for birth/death dates, I don't think there is a preferred style - the TFA blurbs only started adding years of birth/death a couple of years ago - so I'd just aim for consistency and if you remove them all that's fine. Bencherlite ^Talk 22:42, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've fixed Pictures 17-20 and the Bios. As for the pictures, I'm having a difficult time finding a way to work in Context without getting excessively wordy. I'll look at it with new eyes tomorrow morning. Achowat (talk) 00:18, 14 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Pictures 7-10 now prominently feature the word "Massachusetts". Achowat (talk) 14:27, 14 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support the portal meets the criteria. Good work. Bencherlite ^Talk 20:24, 14 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support i'm not an expert but this portal seems to meet the criteria listed at WP:WIAFPo. benzband (talk) 13:33, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bencherlite appears to have covered most of the obvious, minor improvements that were necessary. Generally, the portal is engaging to read, provides a sound overview of the topic, and selects content that is likely to interest the reader enough to prompt further reading. I made some very minor improvements to the lead's prose, but some of these may come down to editorial preference so feel free to revert any of my changes you do not like. I would have ended each selected picture's caption with a full stop, but I understand that many editors do not think captions (much like headers) should be treated as a proper sentence—and in any case this point is so incredibly minor that it is probably not even worth further discussion. The portal obviously satisfies the featured criteria, and I commend the nominator for his efforts there. Support promotion. AGK [•] 22:14, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support JJ98 (Talk / Contribs) 07:29, 1 September 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.