Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Sven Manguard (talk | contribs) at 05:35, 31 January 2013 ('''PROMOTED''' by Cirt). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Portal:Massachusetts

previous FPOC (08:59, 25 February 2008)

Over the past few months, I've been working on getting Portal:Massachusetts up to FP status. It contains:

• 20 Selected articles, all of FA or GA status
• 20 Selected biographies, also all of FA or GA status
• 11 Selected pictures, all of FA status
• 10 sets of 5 DKYs
• 12 sets of 4 "in this month" items
• 15 Selected locations
• a board of state facts, which I haven't seen anywhere else, but really like the idea of

I have gone over everything myself, and largely redid it from scratch. Cirt provided invaluable help at Misplaced Pages:Portal peer review/Massachusetts/archive2 for this effort.

Purely by coincidence (as I joined this year on impulse), this is a WikiCup nomination. While I did a lot of the work before 2013, considering the ungodly amount of time I spent on the "in this month" items yesterday (you don't want to know), I feel justified in claiming it for points for this year.

Without further ado, I hope you support this. Sven Manguard Wha? 17:43, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Comments by ypnypn

Incidentally, I have also reworked (a portal) in the past few months, which is a candidate now also. I also joined the WikiCup more or less on impulse. As far as the portal goes:

1. The introductory box is really, really long. On my browser, it takes up an entire screen. Maybe instead of just copying the lead, you could summarize the topic (with some interesting stuff thrown in) in a paragraph or two? There is a link for readers to find out more if they want to.
2. The Related Portals box comes out a bit awkward, since there's a line break halfway through. I understand the logical purpose of it, but on some zoom settings it just doesn't look good at all.
3. Also in that box, is US Roads really so related to Massachusetts?
4. The navbox on the bottom seems redundant to the topics section above.
5. In the WikiProjects section, ummm... Universities???
6. The Selected Locations is a nice addition, but I think you should only include those of at least Good Article status, or at a minimum B-Class. Hingham Bay is only start-class.
7. The state facts section makes the portal unique, but I'm not sure it actually improves the portal. Maybe if some of the facts were unusual (species of cod, state fossil, full-time professors, etc.) it might be interesting, but as of now, it's somewhat dull (in contrast to the rest of the portal).
8. I think the first word in the portal should be linked to the article - similar to the Selected Articles, Locations, etc.
9. I noticed that on the entire portal, there isn't even one map of the state.

Sorry for being so critical: the portal really looks great, but there are enough issues here that I'm not sure I can support its candidacy. I'll be glad to change my mind if possible. Good luck -- YPNYPN ✡ 01:20, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

My responses, in the number order you gave:

1. Noted by you and the person below. Will change. I'm wordy, I like wordy, I forget sometimes that some people don't like wordy.
2. Fixed.
3. It was there when I started, and while it didn't seem the most compelling choice, I didn't see any compelling reason to remove it. There are U.S. roads in Massachusetts.
4. I was thinking the same thing. Since the bottom one is a template used elsewhere, and is rather well done, I feel that if we're going to remove one, it should be the topics section.
5. There are over 200 universities and colleges in Massachusetts, the highest concentration of higher education in the United States, possibly the world. I think it's a good fit.
6. I tried to go for diversity of location, and while I think I avoided linking to flagrantly broken articles, if I limited only to B-class or above, I wouldn't be able to pull off a balance of locations.
7. The point of a portal is to provide information about the subject, in an appealing and easy to absorb way. A selection of practical, need to know facts seems like a more useful thing to have then a listing of what, say, the state soil is (it's "Paxton Soil Series", by the way).
8. Fixed.
9. Seems like a good thing to have, no? I'll try and add one in when I redo the top section.

Thanks for the review. I'll let you know when I'm done with your suggestions. Sven Manguard Wha? 03:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

In the lead, the term "least extensive" is a bit ambiguous, how about just using "smallest"? Also, what is "high technology"? -- YPNYPN ✡ 15:25, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

For the map, I was hoping for something that would show a non-American where Massachusetts actually is. File:Massachusetts in United States.svg, which appears in the infobox of the main article, might be a good choice (perhaps as the inset). -- YPNYPN ✡ 15:27, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I've changed it to smallest, linked high technology, and swapped maps. Thanks again for this. Sven Manguard Wha? 17:18, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

All of the issues have been addressed, and overall the portal looks excellent. Support featured portal status. -- YPNYPN ✡ 00:35, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Comments by Espresso Addict

Comment. Nice variety of Selected articles/biographies/locations; I particularly like the fact that there are biographies of women, sometimes in sadly short supply in featured/good content. (Is there a reason for excluding Bette Davis?) Personally I'm not bothered by inclusion of non-GA/FA content in the Selected locations, as long as the linked content is of a decent standard (preferably B class). I fixed one typo, but the portal generally appears well copy edited, with rollover captions supplied for images and credits for the Selected pictures. The following are mostly fairly minor issues...

1. Is dark blue a Massachusetts colour? It's a fairly conservative colour choice.
2. Can you expand the Selected pictures? It felt an odd constricted selection without any buildings, landmarks, or geographical features. I don't see any reason for the pictures all to be featured, as long as they are attractive and encyclopedic; the criteria for featured pictures tends, I think, to produce a rather biased set of images.
3. A map would be useful.
4. Introduction takes up most of my (fairly high-res) screen. Suggest reduce so that at least the beginning of the two subsequent portal items is visible.
5. There are spaces of ~1 cm at the top of many boxed items (except the Selected picture, and boxes that start with bullet points). Also space under the introduction before the 'Show new selections' link and at the bottom of the Things to do box. (I'm using Firefox.)
6. Selected picture, biography, DYK all need link to archived items.
7. Selected article blurbs might be a little overlong. I counted a selection and they were all at or over 300 words (the guideline is 200 words max). The same is true of Selected locations. The biographies seem to be a more appropriate length.
8. Blurb for Ellis Paul cuts in an unfortunate place and feels unfinished.
9. Right-hand column appears consistently significantly shorter, often by more than the height of the DYK box. You might put In this month into a single RH column? (This might well disappear if the Selected article/location blurbs were significantly reduced in length.)
10. DYK would benefit from images. They need not have appeared on the main page, as long as the license is ok and the image works at 100x100px.
11. Is there a reason for gating In this month at 4 items? There are presumably many more. These items should probably end in a full stop as they are full sentences. Images might work well here, too.
12. The list of topics probably shouldn't be duplicated with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts box at the bottom of the portal. I'd suggest removing the latter.
13. Image captions (rollover text) should not end in full stop unless full sentences.
14. Miles should probably be given in full or abbreviated throughout for consistency.
15. Under Selected articles archive, the 'More selected articles' link is redlinked. Likewise Selected locations.

    This was a bug in the template; I fixed it while fixing the rest. 23:08, 19 January 2013 (UTC)~

16. Fascinated to find the origin of gerrymandering is American, but should the newspaper in this picture blurb be the Boston Gazette, per the linked article?

That's all for now. Hope this helps in improving the portal still further. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:55, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

My responses, in the number order you gave:

Bette Davis was not included because "born in Massachusetts" is, to me, not enough of a tie to the state to warrant inclusion. I wanted people that were strongly linked to Massachusetts. I ended up discarding several media personalities and sports stars for this reason.

1. Dark blue is, in fact, a state color. Kinda. The official colors are "Blue, Green, Cranberry", but outside of the WMF logo, those really don't work well together. Dark blue is what makes up the bulk of the state seal and the part of the state flag that isn't background, so I felt it was an apt choice. When I started on the portal, it had gold borders, but they looked horrid so I removed them.
2. Perhaps. I'd prefer to use FPs whenever possible, although it would give me an excuse to remove the unruly-shaped ones already in there. I'll think about it.
3. Noted above, will deal with that.
4. Noted above, will deal with that too.
5. I have no idea how to fix that. I don't know portal template syntax. The only one I was able to fix was the gap between the introduction and the rest. I'll ask Cirt for help.
6. That one has bothered me, but again, I have no idea how to fix that. I'll ask Cirt for help.
7. Yeah, they are long. I tend to write long. I'm not sure it's a problem though, and at this point it would be difficult to change them.
8. Added an extra line on about Mr. Paul's success.
9. There are three especially tall images that can throw the balance off. There is no way, save removing the images, to fix this. Adding content on the other side will mean that there will be a large imbalance in the opposite direction 8/11ths of the time.
10. I disagree. There are already plenty of images, and I don't like messing wit DYKs; once they've been published, I feel it's wrong to change them, even to add an image.
11. In this month took a day and a half to populate. I really don't ever even want to think about that section again. That being said, the reason I capped it at four was because I did consider putting it on the left hand column, but I couldn't get the balance to work. I don't want to add images here either. At a certain point, it becomes visual pollution. 100px images are generally useless, and it's cleaner without them.
12. I removed the former.
13. I'll look into that and fix it.
14. ?
15. It works perfectly fine from the main portal. I'm not sure why it's redlinked once you go in further. Again, it's likely template syntax. I'll ask Cirt.

    I got this while fixing the other portal. Adam Cuerden 23:08, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

16. I took the spelling from the file description page.

Thanks for the review. I'll work on some things and get back to you. Sven Manguard Wha? 03:49, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

So I think all that's left is to:

1. Redo selected pictures selection
2. Get rid of that torrid green border in the selected pictures section
3. Get a link to the archives for DYK
4. Sort out the 1cm gap issue

I can do the first and only the first of those; someone with more expertise in portal template syntax will be needed for the other three. Sven Manguard Wha? 03:27, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Having another look... (Same order as above.)

1. I'm ok with the colour, if it's a state colour. It does look a bit bland, though. Was the gold really terrible?
2. Still waiting on Selected pictures.
3. I appreciate the location map in the facts box, but a map somewhere actually showing the state a little larger than a grain of rice would be nice too.
4. The intro still seems overlong. Without scrolling, I get only 3 lines of the Selected article, which is not enough to see whether it's of interest. (And my monitor is reasonably high in vertical resolution.)
5. I have no idea how to fix the 1 cm gap; I've tried fiddling with the most obvious parameter to no avail, sorry. You might try asking Bencherlite; he was very helpful with the formatting issues on the Cheshire portal.
6. Still waiting on link to archives for DYK.
7. Selected article/location blurbs still seem substantially overlong to me. Some of the Selected article choices take up the entire screen depth, and the great majority prevent anything but the box header being visible for the next item.
8. Column balance is still off. I did a lot of refreshes and right was invariably shorter, usually by at least the depth of the In this month box. (With a short image, it was light by the entire In this month and nearly all of DYK; with a tall image it was still somewhat shorter.) Could something from the lower section be moved up to the right-hand column? WikiProjects, perhaps?
9. I don't understand the attitude to not altering the main page DYK hooks; not changing the meaning is one thing, but not adding an image? But I won't insist. However, without images in either DYK/In this month boxes, there are no images in a broad part of the middle of the portal, from the map in State facts for nearly two screenfuls to the stock graphics of the Related portals/WikiProjects. Perhaps one of the image-including sections could be swapped with either DYK or In this month?
10. I hate to think how much time I've wasted spent on the In this month events on the Cheshire portal. It took about 6 weeks to develop, involving the whole Wikiproject. The full sentences thing still needs fixing too.
11. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts box has an odd "Note: Municipalities not listed have a town meeting form of government" at the bottom, which was one reason I preferred the portal-customised topics box.
12. "Miles" vs "mi" is probably because the unit conversion template is being used inconsistently.
13. There are still redlinks for More... in the various archives.

Hope this helps! Espresso Addict (talk) 01:27, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

The redlink issues should all be fixed. If there's more issues, leave a message on my talk page. Adam Cuerden 23:09, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

As with last time, I swapped your bullets for numbers, so I could respond in order:

1. Yes. Very much so yes. Definitely yes. Yes.
2. I'm up to seventeen now, with sizing normalized, and added in some landmarks. If you've got suggestions for more, I'd be happy to put them in.
3. Done. Now the first map has a friend.
4. I've trimmed it a tad, though it pained me to do so. I will trim it some more when I recover. Done, I think.
5. I have a feeling that I am going to have to create a new template, it seems to be the fault of the default templates.
6. Done.
7. I will get to this soon.
8. I believe I've fixed this by overhauling the selected pictures.
9. The in this month section now has images. Since it's below the DYK section, the image balance thing should be fixed.
10. Periods are in.
11. Fixed that.
12. I still need to find what you're referring to. Oh.
13. Adam got this one for us.

Everything but 4, 5, 7, and 12 is done. I'll keep working on it. Sven Manguard Wha? 04:47, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I think everything is done. The portal is balanced, the content is manageably sized, and all of the typical components are in. Besides that, it just looks good. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:42, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

2. I like some of the additions a lot, but others are a bit low in quality (10 is largely out of focus, 16 & 17 are rather dull). Also, not sure whether they did this before, but some of the wider images are now breaking out of the box?

3. The new map is excellent, thanks. Unfortunately, it too is poking out of the box.

7. The article blurbs are still rather longer than I believe is optimal, but at least now the top few lines of the next item are showing, thanks.

10. I'd prefer more items here, particularly as it goes over two columns and so won't affect the balance, but perhaps that is a section that can be developed more slowly.

12. I've fixed another one.

That's it! I'll be happy to support if you remove/replace image 10, which made my head ache, and fix the images poking out their boxes. Cheers, Espresso Addict (talk) 13:55, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

2. I picked 10 because it was a QI or VI (I forget which) on Commons. 16 and 17 are the only ones that aren't FP/ComFP/QI/VI, and it shows. I'll remove number 10 now.

2/3. As for the poking out of the box, my screen is 1600x900, which I know is large. I actually optimized the portal for 1280x720, which is, as best as my research could tell, what would be considered a decent resolution for computers purchased several years ago. Things start to protrude once you get down to resolutions lower than that, but I felt that I had to balance the ability for people to see the images clearly with compatibility, and let's face it, people with old 800x600 monitors (yes, they still exist) are going to have problems viewing Misplaced Pages project-wide. I feel bad for people who are operating 1024x768, but the only way to accommodate them is to make both the images and the maps uselessly small.

10. Thanks for the compromise. It was hard for me to cut what I did cut as it is.

12. Thanks.

Alright, so I swapped out 16 (which was meh, but at least good quality) for number 10, and scrapped 17. I trimmed down some of the wider images. Although I wasn't seeing issues before in 1280, I figured this would help anyways. If I run across any more anniversaries, I'll add so that we might get five a month eventually. I've been trying to track down a anniversary calendar, but have yet to find a good one. Additionally, I will keep an eye out for more high quality pictures to put in. Thank you for the review, and all the help throughout this process. Sven Manguard Wha? 17:32, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I've still got the map sticking well out of the box. I don't think it's so much the screen resolution as the fact that text columns are optimally read with a maximum column width of about about 10–12 words (what you get in a paperback), so forcing column width with fixed images that are significantly wider than that impairs readability, whatever the screen res. Looking at the Image use policy, it says maximum 400 px (which this exceeds) but that's for a single column layout. Is there any clever way of lining the two up so that they stay together if people prefer the columns wide, but separate if they narrow them? Or you might try swapping the State facts into the wider left-hand column? Or simply putting one of the maps at the bottom of the box?

Everything else is looking fine. Espresso Addict (talk) 08:31, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

How about now? Sven Manguard Wha? 00:12, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

That's very strange when the second image flows over! Have you tried float left? (As currently used to make the graphics in the Wikiprojects box flow.) Espresso Addict (talk) 10:46, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't want it to look like I'm passing the buck, but at this point I really don't have a solution that I know how to implement. If you can think of a better model, please implement it. I want the portal to work, but I've reached my template competence limit. In case the edit summaries haven't given it away, all of the advanced template coding mumbo-jumbo I have is taken from other portals. Sven Manguard Wha? 00:23, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

That's pretty much my approach too! If you're happy with the simple solution I've implemented, I'm happy to Support. Espresso Addict (talk) 13:13, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

I can live with it. Sven Manguard Wha? 16:03, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

PROMOTED by Cirt