Wikipedia:Portal peer review/Archive/February 2011

Portal:United States

This portal peer review request is intended to take stock of what still needs to be done to return it to featured portal status. The most recent review is here. The portal's to do list is here. The only item on the to do list not checked as done is the "On this day" item. Currently, the U.S. events are entered through mid August. Regards, RichardF (talk) 22:14, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for taking this for action. IMO the portal is pretty good other than what you mentioned. Below are a couple specific comments I have that may help.

There are a couple bots that may be able to update the On This Day pages and I think we should consider looking into this to make it as automated as possible. In the mean time if we can just stay a couple days ahead I think well be ok.

Sounds good. Do you have the links? RichardF (talk) 23:18, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't heard back from Misza13 (talk · contribs) about any relevant bots. RichardF (talk) 15:57, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Same with DYK's

Same here. RichardF (talk) 23:18, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Finding no bots, I just did a simple browser search for "United States" at a few of the DYK archives months. For example, I found 48 DYKs for December 2010 alone! >;-o) Clearly, it's not that hard to find on-topic DYKs, and a bot couldn't decide which ones to include anyway. Perhaps the U.S. project would like to adopt updating this section. I updated Portal:United States/Did you know/archive#Nominations to include links the the monthly archives and a sample month, Portal:United States/Did you know/archive/2010. Picking a few DYKs from here and the full archive should be an easy eough project-worthy activity. -- RichardF (talk) 15:57, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Article alert bot has it on the list of To do's but hasn't gotten to it yet. I thought there were a couple but I can't find one at the moment. I'll keep looking and once I find one I'll let you know. With all the portals and projects out there checking for them I can't imagine that knowone else has done it before. --Kumioko (talk) 22:32, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I also started a DYK: U.S. navbox to help track nominations candidates. -- RichardF (talk) 18:05, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To DYK I added... "The layout design for these subpages is at Portal:United States/Did you know/Layout." -- RichardF (talk) 20:53, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Same with In the news

Already hooked up to the bot! :-) RichardF (talk) 23:18, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think we need to establish some basic system for updating content even if that's just leaving a note on the portals talk page. I am not sure that we want to let everyone and anyone edit and add whenever they want. I have already asked the projects to consider adding content and as far as I know US roads is the only one that has actively been working on selecting some. Optimally I think it would be good to get some of the other Active projects like Milhist/US and National Register of Historic places involved regularly as well to make sure that the portal refelcts a complete US picture rather than just a nationalistic one.

Works for me. RichardF (talk) 00:02, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should consider using articles and images that are above GA and even then only rarely below A for any new additions. With that said now that WPUS and the Collaboration of the month are back up and running I think we should start seeing improvements to the lower rating articles currently visible in the portal. --Kumioko (talk) 22:57, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All of the archives include "Nominations" sections that go something like this:

"Feel free to add FA-Class United States articles, A-Class United States articles, GA-Class United States articles to the above list. Other United States-related articles may be nominated here. Y"

That approach sets a clear expectation. Stepping it up a notch or two should be easy enough at this point. RichardF (talk) 00:02, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the GA-Class United States articles and GA-Class biography articles references in all of the article archives nominations sections. Here's the current list of GA-Class United States Selected articles -- RichardF (talk) 15:04, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wow great job thanks. There are lots of good articles in here to be sure but I think we need to be clear and set high standards for what is "featured" in the portal. We have plenty of Featured content throughout the US related projects so finding high quality things shouldn't be that hard IMO. --Kumioko (talk) 15:11, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I'm sure the relevant project members will enjoy improving the articles showcased on the portal! :-) RichardF (talk) 17:01, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I see several that I personally think should be towards the top of the importance list for improvement such as American Civil War, American Revolution, Manifest Destiny and others so Ill present them on the WPUS project page and or see if we can get some built up in the Topic of the Month. Hopefully we can get some of them relisted fairly soon. Thanks again. --Kumioko (talk) 17:18, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I also update the portal's to do list article selection guideline to read as follows:

As a guideline, let's stick to using FA-Class United States articles, A-Class United States articles, plus FA-Class biography articles and A-Class biography articles about Americans to populate each 'Selected' section where possible. The main exception could be for Top or High Importance articles of lower quality, given a consensus to do so.

RichardF (talk) 17:39, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]