Wikipedia:Portal peer review/Archive/July 2011

Portal:Supreme Court of the United States

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Statistics: Three rotating images in the Intro, 20 Selected articles, all GA-class or FA-class, 23 Selected biographies, all GA-class or FA-class, 40 Selected pictures, 20 sets of 3 DYK hooks, all with free-use images, 50 Selected quotes, all with free-use images, an In the news section, and a Rotating In this month section. -- Cirt (talk) 17:48, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for any feedback/comments prior to WP:FPORTC. Thanks, -- Cirt (talk) 17:48, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States courts and judges, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States Government. -- Cirt (talk) 17:54, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Bencherlite

Why not use n:Category:US Supreme Court to generate a newspage, instead of borrowing the Portal:Law news page?
Why not use User:JL-Bot/Project content to generate a list of featured/good content automatically, rather than require manual updating? (If there's only one FA and one FL, no harm in listing the GAs here as well).

Bencherlite ^Talk 17:57, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Great ideas! Thanks, I'll implement them. -- Cirt (talk) 18:04, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Update: Both now done. -- Cirt (talk) 02:30, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The intro is rather short.
Selected articles - thoughts:
Beware overlinks, e.g.: Selected article 1 (Roe v Wade) "1973" / Selected article 2 (Afroyim) "legal", "United States" (etc)

Try to keep the blurbs similar lengths - some are much longer than others, which will throw the balance on the main portal page.

The pictures ought to be mentioned in the blurbs where it's not obvious who the person / what the object is. Lots of pictures of judges but please tell us who they are in the blurb.

Article 13 has two links to the Supreme Court which is one, possibly two, too many. (Does SCOTUS need to be linked on every blurb when the link appears at the top of the portal in bold letters?)

Selected article 18 (Law) doesn't belong on this portal, as it's too generic an article for this specific portal, which is about SCOTUS. If you must have it, fix or remove the dab link to "fairness".

The blurb to article 19 (Bill of Rights) could do with focussing on the Supreme Court, otherwise it's not clear what it's doing on this portal.

Selected article 20 has three dablinks (abolition, free state and balance of power)
Selected biography - thoughts:
Generally, I think that the list has too many people with tangential connections to the court such as presidents, included here simply because they appointed the odd justice.

Some have full DOB and DOD, some have years only, others have nothing. Deliberate or accident?

Why have Learned Hand (no 4) when he didn't make it to the Supreme Court?

What has Daniel Webster (no 13) got to do with the Supreme Court? Oh, on re-reading it, I see that he appeared in front of it. Needs more focus to explain the reason for having him here.

22 (Lincoln) has a reference for a quotation, which isn't needed here.

Same comments about unnecessary links
Selected pictures:
Photos 7, 8, 21: James Earle Fraser is a dablink.

Photo 13: so is Edward D. White

Photo 29: spiral staircase is an unnecessary link, and is a dablink to boot

Three dablinks in photo 31 (Reed, Clark, Burton)

Another in 37 (Inman)
Anniversaries:
Hyphens between date and event should be n-dashes (per MOS:DASH)

Dab links in Feb (Confederacy / Union)
DYK
Most of the sets mention the {US/United States) Supreme Court (of the United States) more than once, and most of them link it every time. You can probably trim the "United States" or "US" from each mention (we know the context from the portal) and delink every occurrence.

I was slightly puzzled that the "More..." link took me off-portal. Is that usual? Can we do away with that link or retarget it somewhere?
Topics
Only {{SCOTUS horizontal}} is really needed here, I think. The other navboxes are too off-topic.

That's all for the moment... Interesting stuff, though, nicely done. Bencherlite ^Talk 14:46, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Doing.... -- Cirt (talk) 15:50, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Replies to 2nd set of comments from Bencherlite

Expanded the intro.
Removed overlinks. Pictures are mentioned in the captions. I like the blurbs to be varying sizes at times—it makes it more interesting for the reader each time they reload the main portal page. The Bill of Rights blurb is taken from the intro text of the lede of the article. But if you wish to tweak it, feel free, I'd be most appreciative. Fixed the dablinks.
Presidents did not simply appoint the odd justice—they appoint all the justices—and they are extremely influential on the scope of the court. The blurbs focus on that. Changed to years only. Learned Hand was an influential figure to the court, in many varied capacities, and the reader will learn about this when they read that FA article. Daniel Webster blurb was taken directly from the lede of the intro of the article, but if you wish to modify it, that'd be great. :) Removed reference from Lincoln.
Fixed dablinks. Removed spiral staircase link. Fixed dablinks. Fixed more dablinks.
Will fix the hyphens, not sure it is a crisis, however. Fixed the dablink.
These were taken directly from the archived hook entries—would rather keep them the way they were when they appeared on the Main Page. Fixed the More... link, it is now much more specific.
Removed the other navboxes, per suggestion.

-- Cirt (talk) 16:00, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

2a. As the images aren't in thumbnail format, with a displayed caption, captions only appear if you mouse-over the image, I think. I use a "pop-up" tool, so don't get normal captions, making it hard to see who's who. Regardless, a reader shouldn't have to mouseover the image in Portal:Supreme Court of the United States/Selected article/9 to see who it is; I should be able to read the blurb and learn during the course of that, as with the standard approach at WP:TFA to use "pictured" whenever the subject of the image is unclear.

2b. The Wikipedia:Featured portal criteria say that blurbs should not significantly exceed 200 words. Portal:Supreme Court of the United States/Selected article/10, for example, is 294 words, almost 50% over. I'm not sure that there's a good reason for departing from the criteria

2c. My point about the blurb for the United States Bill of Rights article is that whilst I can see why it would be on a portal about the law/politics/history of the US, I can't see why it's here on this specific portal, which is about the Supreme Court, not US law or the like. Reading the article makes me none the wiser. Similarly with Law - a great article for Portal:Law, but not for here.

3. I know that the presidents appoint all the SC justices (my phrasing was attempting to say that any one president is only going to get to appoint a few of them, at most). My point is that the presidents do much more than appoint SC justices and so their articles have very little to do with the Supreme Court. I don't learn anything more about the Supreme Court from reading Ronald Reagan than I do from reading Portal:Supreme Court of the United States/Selected biography/12, for example. Using presidents in the biographies section pads out the number of biographies, granted, but doesn't really advance the knowledge of the reader. I'd rather have more articles about the judges.

6. I think it's a shame to have so much repetition and overlinking, just for the sake of conforming to how the hook appeared on the main page months/years ago. The two purposes are rather different. On the main page, one has to say which Supreme Court is being mentioned, with a link for those who need it. On the portal, we don't need to be told repeatedly it's the US Supreme Court, nor do we need as many as three links to Supreme Court of the United States within each set of three hooks. Such overlinking detracts from the other, more important, links.

Bencherlite ^Talk 17:01, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Doing...— Cirt (talk) 17:03, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Replies to 3rd set of comments from Bencherlite

Added info, in-text blurb itself, to give context for the picture.
Trimmed the size of the blurb.
Removed the articles mentioned above. Replaced them with more specifically related articles.
I've removed all the Presidents from the bios. Except for the one that was also a Justice on the Court.
I will go through and remove overlinking, again.

Hopefully that at least addresses the majority of the suggestions raised. :) — Cirt (talk) 18:27, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I should hope so too! I'll leave you alone now and let the hordes of others waiting to comment have their fun with you. Bencherlite ^Talk 20:47, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bencherlite, I'm quite thankful for your comments and suggestions, the article is improved for them. :) — Cirt (talk) 05:02, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.