Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Physics

Portal:Physics[edit]

This is a fairly old portal; it was started on 24 March 2005. For a long time, it's been fairly inactive; it's become increasingly active over the last few months, and I've just given it a facelift and instituted a few new systems. We now have weekly rotation of "Selected articles" and "Selected pictures"; we also have News (links to physics-related stories on Wikinews) and Anniversary sections. There's also the usual intro to the subject, and lists of categories/useful starting pages. I believe that the portal is now up to Featured status, hence this nomination. Mike Peel 21:25, 25 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Objections:

Expand Introduction. Use an image which is more closer to physics in Introduction section. IMO, Black hole does not have very close relationship with physics.
Move down Where to start section. Add more topics to the section.
Use Wikipedia links, wherever possible, in the News section. Use wikinews link as a reference or a link.
For Selected article/picture please connect the seperate years archives with cross-links. Place only a single current archive link on the main page. What is the current selected article. It is hard to know. There is no link for that. Please place a bold link. Place photo credit with the image. Correct the 2006 archive of selecte article. e.g. Which article was feature in Week 49 (probably December 7 - 13). There are two different articles in the archive, i.e. Ernest Rutherford and Werner Heisenberg. Please remove the incorrect and redundant archives.
Use current month anniversary rather than using upcoming two months anniversaries.
Any specific reasons for having seperate sections for Theoritical physics and Experimental physics. Could they not be combined in Topics.
Any specific reason for using wikibook section seperately. Physics on wikiboks in Associated wikimedia is not sufficient to serve the purpose?
There are good numbers of good biographic articles in Selected articles. Why the portal could not have seperate Selected biography?
Bold the highlighted links in the DYK section.
Need some work on Things you can do section. Place the links in the section what is going on the project, e.g. Peer-review, Wikipedia:Missing science topics and more.
There are many science related WikiProjetcs which are not listed. Please list them also. Shyam ^(T/C) 20:27, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments. I hope I have now addressed all of your objections (see Portal:Physics). I haven't created a "Selected biography" section, as I'm concerned that there won't be sufficient good-quality articles to be featured in both Selected Articles (52 per year) and a new section. Although, I guess that one possibility would be to only update a Selected Biography section once per month.

Have you any other objections/suggestions for improvement? Mike Peel 20:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Very nice work. Almost all the issues have been dealt carefully. In DYK section, you could use "..." as suffix in the heading. Please consider using "...More interesting facts" rather than "...More Did you know" which does not suit. Shyam ^(T/C) 23:21, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - I was aware that "More Did you know" didn't sound too good, but I wasn't able to think up a better line at the time. Your suggested changes have now been made. Mike Peel 08:35, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have fixed "..." on the portal page. Hopefully, you wanted to fix in that manner as I did. I support the portal to be featured. Shyam ^(T/C) 08:44, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Why is the "Things you can do" referring to the portal itself? This kind of self-reference should be found on the portal's talk page under the todo list. Please format the section properly and add articles needing attention instead, see the "Things you can do" on the disasters portal for a good example. Michaelas10 (Talk) 11:24, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- From item 6 on Wikipedia:What is a featured portal?: "Aspects of portals that encourage contribution may be self-referential." I took that to mean that entries under "Things you can do" can include improving the portal. Articles needing attention are listed on other pages on Wikipedia, which are linked to within that section. It doesn't make sense for me to duplicate this, as I would then have to regularly copy across updates from the other pages. Mike Peel 12:58, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - Not necessarily, you might move the "Pages needing attention" section on WikiProject Physics to a subpage and synchronize the subpages using "{{}}" brackets. Michaelas10 (Talk) 14:11, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

True, but that just lists the pages in a different format, sans the portal tasks and wikiproject links. It's less of a "Things you can do" list, and more a "Pages needing attention" list, anyhow. I still hold that the best method (i.e. keeping the page simple and up-to-date) is to link to the pages as I have currently done. Mike Peel 14:50, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Overall very nicely done, just a few minor problems:
- In "Did you know...": "'Lasers" should be "lasers" (linking only the singular word), add an image of the Large Hadron Collider accelerator chain, and create a suggestions page for it.
- In "December anniversaries": "December 22 – 1968" should be "December 22, 1986" and the hyphen should come after it.
- In "Physics news": I don't like the change of dates format between the sections, so change either it or "December anniversaries". There also seem to be no updates for over a month, while over 2 or 3 months without updates are often a criteria for FP delisting. Michaelas10 (Talk) 16:55, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your first two points should now be addressed, along with most of the latter. I'm currently working on the news section; that should be up to date shortly. We've only been using Wikinews as a source up to now, which hasn't been updated since Nov 19th. Mike Peel 19:01, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Please avoid thumb mark-up in image formatting. It conflicts with background colours.--cj | talk 11:35, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've now switched the image from the thumb markup to a right-aligned image. Mike Peel 20:26, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please avoid using red links in selected article, selected picture archive which are mess of red-links. These comments could be hidden by "" from the page. I do not think 2008 link should be there so early. Shyam ^(T/C) 13:48, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed the 2008 links from the pages. With the red links, there are several different approaches that could be taken: 1) they could be left; while they look a bit ugly, they hopefully encourage people to add selected articles/pictures to them. 2) They could be hidden; this would make the page more tidy, but it makes the process of adding new selected articles/pictures much more obscure, and hence less likely to be done by people other than me. 3) I could create all of the future selected article/picture pages using a placeholder; this is probably the best option, and seems to be the one used at WP:FA, but creates more work for me unless I figure out a way to automate the process. What do people here think? Mike Peel 20:36, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect about the proper mantainance of the portal. The portal does not have selected picture of the present week while it is in the process of promotion. I would recommend to have all the contents for at least coming two weeks. Shyam ^(T/C) 08:57, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry; I've been a bit distracted with templates this last week. I added this week's image this morning, and will add the next month's worth or so later this evening. Mike Peel 10:07, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please consider reducing the image size for the present selected picture. It is a very long image. So, I suppose, 250px would be sufficient to have for this one. Shyam ^(T/C) 18:38, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. I went with 200px wide; it still seems to be large enough to see all the details at that size. Mike Peel 18:42, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The issues have been dealt accordingly. I do not think of any points to delay in promotion of the portal. Shyam ^(T/C) 20:43, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support looks great. Arjun 17:47, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support Jo e I 05:42, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Shouldn't we soon make a decision?? It seems that the portal has support for featured status, unless anyone else has objections? Snailwalker | talk 18:22, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]