Portal talk:Featured content

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For the subpages associated with the Featured Content page, see Portal:Featured content/Pages

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Contents 1 Featured Templates 2 New FL on the Main Page proposal 3 Featured picture deleted 4 Current Featured Article 5 LOTD proposal 6 Picture Recommendation 7 move to portal namespace 8 May 14 2007 featured picture 9 Featured Sound WikiProject Proposal 10 Sidebar Translation 11 Prominence of featured content 12 List of the Day 13 Featured Sound Nomination and participation 14 Bufo Frogs 15 IRC channel 16 Just an idea 17 Featured video

[edit] Featured Templates

I have previously asked about the possibility of Featured Templates. I have a better conceptualization of templates now and understand that I really only think featured navboxes are what I am interested in proposing. I don't think infoboxes, substitution templates, or parser function templates would work out. I do think however, that navboxes would make for a great featured content addition and eventually a great main page addition. Any thoughts.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 23:08, 9 October 2007 (UTC) 416 748 8488 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.243.246.96 (talk) 14:17, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

How is one navbox any better in its content than another, since they don't have any actual content I can't see the point of this. IvoShandor 15:52, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

The featured topics project may be similar to what you are looking for. That relates to topics which as a whole (across multiple articles) are considered featured. They have navigation boxes for the related articles in the topic. --CBD 17:13, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

The thing about navboxes is that we don't want them to be big and flashy and featured. We want them to be small, efficient, and useful. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 22:17, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New FL on the Main Page proposal

We now have over 400 featured lists and seem to be promoting in excess of 30 per month of late (41 in August and 42 in September). When Today's featured article (TFA) started (2004-02-22), they only had about 200 featured articles and were barely promoting 20 new ones per month. I think the quality of featured lists is at least as good as the quality of featured articles was when they started appearing on the main page. Thus, I am ready to open debate on a proposal to institute a List of the Day on the main page with nominations starting November 1, 2007, voting starting December 1, 2007 and main page appearances starting January 1, 2008. For brevity, the proposal page does not discuss the details of eventual main page content, but since the work has already been done, you should consider this proposal assuming the eventual content will resemble the current content at the featured content page. Such output would probably start at the bottom of the main page. The proposal page does not debate whether starting with weekly list main page entries would be better than daily entries. However, I suspect persons in favor of weekly lists are really voicing opinions against lists on the main page since neither TFA nor Picture of the day started as weekly endeavors, to the best of my knowledge. See the List of the Day proposal and comment at WP:LOTDP and its talk page.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 14:24, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the 'picture of the day' was originally shown on the main page only one day a week (Saturday I think). However, a picture was selected every day. Featured lists might want to start a similar practice of selecting one list to promote each day. Once the process exists it may be easier to get it included on the Main page as well. However, I think the main objection there will continue to be a lack of space for a list in addition to the current content. --CBD 17:13, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Featured picture deleted

Is this page regularly updated? I see that the featured picture shown on the page has been deleted... — Lost^(talk) 04:32, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, it looks like its updated at random. I see another picture there now.. — Lost^(talk) 04:41, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

The page elements are randomly selected each time the page is refreshed. The missing picture you encountered was likely one which has been deleted since the last time the random list was updated. --CBD 17:13, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Current Featured Article

Says that Tony Blair is the current prime minister of Britain! Please fix ASAP! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.29.227.214 (talk) 12:13, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Featured article blurbs are copied from the articles at the time they are displayed on the Main page. Thus, some of the older ones contain information which eventually becomes out of date. Thus far there hasn't been any sort of general consensus that these should be updated - though I often go in and replace pictures which have been deleted and the like. --CBD 12:10, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] LOTD proposal

You may have seen either the original list of the day proposal or the revised version. A more modest experimental proposal is now at issue at WP:LOTDP. Feel free to voice your opinion.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 17:59, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Picture Recommendation

You should add the picture Top of Atmosphere.jpg to the page.

- KevinJi9 (talk) 01:40, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, that picture has been part of the random selection for this page since August. There are just so many featured pictures now that the odds of it coming up on any particular page view are only about 0.2%. --CBD 12:10, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] move to portal namespace

I suggest we move this and associated pages to the portal namespace. —Ruud 17:38, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Context: This suggestion is related to the recent moves of the various subpages of Portal:Contents into portalspace, and would allow us to re-add the links to {{Contents pages (footer box)}} (that were removed due to WP:SELF).

Unless there is an obvious reason not to, I support this move, which would cover this page and its 6 subpages. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:39, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Ugh. Not this again. I originally created this page as Portal:Featured content, but it got moved to the Wikipedia namespace about two years ago as the result of similar wrangling over namespace. The 'featured article/picture/et cetera' pages, which I think are what is meant by the '6 subpages' (though several of them actually predate this page), were always in the Wikipedia namespace. I gather that the motivation for the move is to allow linking to these pages in templates used on articles? Though of course the 'featured article star', {{featured article}}, does that already by just ignoring the 'cross namespace' silliness. I don't much care where the pages are located, but I'm not a fan of shuffling and reshuffling things to comply with whatever triviality people have decided to go on crusade about this week. I'm trying to recall the reasons people wanted them in the Wikipedia namespace, but I didn't find any of it very compelling then either. This page could go in the Wikipedia namespace like Wikipedia:Community portal, the article space like Main page, or the portal space like Portal:Current events... note that all three of those, like this one, link to both article space and project space. My 'simple take' is that all of these pages are very obviously 'portals' and thus logically would go in the 'Portal' namespace... but it just isn't important enough to fight over. Whatever namespace they end up in doesn't change what they are and shouldn't have any impact on whether they can be linked to. It's just silly bureaucracy. --CBD 01:46, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, you're absolutly right ofcouse, but that still doesn't really stop me from wanting to put tings in the right place :) I didn't really get Quiddity's point about self-references but I wouldn't want to see any links to this 'portal' from article space. —Ruud 01:57, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

But they're not really portals, are they? They're lists of articles, and it really belongs in the wikipedia namespace. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 03:37, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, this 'featured content' page at least is definitely a portal... like any portal it has display boxes for samples of the topic matter, links for accessing the pages in the topic, and other links for projects and discussions related to developing the topic. The pages for the individual content types (articles, pictures, et cetera) have the same sort of links to both the content and development work. They are not just "lists of articles". The only thing common to 'portals' which they don't have is a 'showcase' for individual examples of the subject. However, that could be added easily and I'm not sure it's a 'requirement' for being a portal. The purpose of 'portals' is to provide organized access to both content and meta-discussion... they are meant to coordinate things for BOTH readers and builders of the encyclopedia. Things in the Wikipedia namespace, such as Wikiprojects, are generally intended for encyclopedia builders - not readers.

That being said, some things which are obviously portals (e.g. Wikipedia:Community portal and the Main page) are put into other namespaces... the Community portal is almost entirely devoted to encyclopedia builders rather than readers and thus makes some sense in Wikipedia space. The Main page goes into article space as an exception. This page started out as a portal and got moved to Wikipedia space... and now back.

I don't really care where these 'featured' pages are located. Right now they're split between Wikipedia and Portal space. That ought to be sorted out so they are all consistent. So... what reasons are there that they should be in one namespace or the other? What difference does it really make? --CBD 09:59, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe it is good idea to separate the reader-oriented navigational pages from the editor-oriented pages. Moving this to portal-space is a near trivial improvement, but so are most things done on Wikipedia. —Ruud 12:25, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I posed this basic question at the Portal peer review: Contents and megaportals. Viewing portals as the doorways to the encyclopedia, I support having this and all six featured content pages in portal space. Project-related pages for peer reviews and candidacies can stay in project space. To me, that's just the most consistent organizational message to send to novice readers, in particular.

Four key namespaces of Wikipedia
Portal namespace: The doorways to the encyclopedia. Contents/ → Featured content → Megaportals → Current events/ → Portals →	Main namespace: The encyclopedia's articles.	Category namespace: The network of classification systems to organize pages.
Wikipedia namespace: The project's workspace.

RichardF (talk) 20:52, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] May 14 2007 featured picture

The tag para says it's under 136 atmospheres of pressure. the "article", or page, or whatever, says 1950 atmospheres. Fix it, I don't know which is right. 71.92.65.87 01:04, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Took a while to find the page you were referring to because it was the 'static' image rather than the animated one which gets displayed here. The correct figure, according to the image creator, is 1950 atmospheres. I updated it on the static image page. --CBD 12:10, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Featured Sound WikiProject Proposal

I have proposed the creation of a new WikiProject dedicated to collecting, and critqueing sounds for Featured Status. Sounds is the smallest group of Featured Content on Wikipedia, and we need to help fix that. So if you like, please click on the following link, and second my proposal, so it can be created. Thanks. Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#WikiProject Featured Sounds Zidel333 (talk) 23:14, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sidebar Translation

Heyho,
please choose between 'Exzellente Inhalte' oder 'Exzellenter Inhalt' in the sidebartranslation for german users. Greetings, Conny (talk) 18:31, 12 December 2007 (UTC).

I gather I got the tense wrong with 'Exzellente Inhalt'? Sorry, my German is more than a little rusty. I've switched it to 'Exzellenter Inhalt'. --CBD 10:29, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Prominence of featured content

Not sure if this is the right place to suggest this (and it's probably been said before, though i had a quick look through the archives), but with all the publicity of Citizendium's "approved" articles and special editors, I think it should be made more obvious that WP has Featured Articles. The criteria for FA/FC is strict, and only the best articles get through. Therefore, if we made more of a point of it, it would alleviate some of the concerns that the public and media have about WP ("oh no, anyone can edit, it'll all be vandalised!!! omfgs", etc) If I'm talking in the wrong place, let me know :) Trouts! (talk) 18:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Any ideas how to accomplish that? The 'Featured content' link was added to the sidebar to promote this material on every page. It is also linked from the Main page. How else should it be promoted? I'm personally hoping for the introduction of 'flagged revisions' so that we will be able to mark particular versions of a given page as having been entirely reviewed and approved for accuracy. --CBD 10:38, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

To be honest, that was my problem. The link you spoke of is clearly shown, but it still seems that people don't know much about it. There needs to be some way of making them more "important" to people I know it seems silly to say this when I have no answers... but I think you get me.

Flagging revisions would be good, but then there's the problem of how to present that to people. eg would you put a link at the top of a page saying "The revision of this page saved at XXXX on XXXX has been flagged as accurate, click here to view"? That seems a bit clumsy... But if you could make it work I'd like that, and I'm sure others would. - Trouts! (talk) 12:24, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

You can see info here on the system being developed for revision flagging. I understand what you mean about changing perceptions 'in the media and general public', but that's not really something in our control. The media isn't asking us. Jimbo could probably get mention of it into an article somewhere, but long term it'll have to be some fundamental change in how Wikipedia works... hence my focus on revision flagging. When we can point to something and say, 'this has been every bit as thoroughly reviewed as anything in Citizendium... or Brittanica' then that perception problem goes away. Until then there will always be people who don't 'get' how Wikipedia works. --CBD 09:47, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Finally I've come back to read this! Actually, the flagging has convinced me... Still isn't perfect, but I don't have many more ideas! Trouts! (talk) 18:12, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

FYI, This is about the 40th most popular page on wikipedia, with almost 600 000 views so far in February. henrik•talk 09:38, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

How about greenlinks? Mdiamante (talk) 18:42, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] List of the Day

There is debate about the propriety of placing the {{ListoftheDaylayout}} (See below) on this page. It is an experiment that needs to build up steam or lose tracktion. Exposure on this page could be the difference and could help it to eventually succeed enough to go to the main page. Comments welcome.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 22:35, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Subpages	Today's featured list is: United States Navy enlisted rates	This month's featured list is: List of countries without armed forces
Home nominees voting/comments orphans templates	United States Navy enlisted rates are used to display where an enlisted sailor falls within the chain of command and are also defined as pay grade. Enlisted pay grade is a numbering system from junior enlisted member to senior, labeled E-1 through E-9, and is the same across all five branches of the U.S. Military. Rates are displayed on a rating badge, which is a combination of rate and rating. E-1s through E-3s have color coded group rate marks based on their career field. (More...)	This is a list of countries without armed forces. The term "country" is used in the sense of independent state; thus, it applies only to sovereign states and not dependencies, whose defense is the responsibility of another country or an army alternative. The term "armed forces" refers to any government-sponsored defense used to further the domestic and foreign policies of their respective government. (More...)

You forgot to mention the reason there is debate. There is another proposal out there, and displaying either one would be choosing sides and it would look like advertising. Also, I think that we shouldn't display either since at the moment they are just proposals and aren't official. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 23:15, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes the other proposal had been posted based on choosing a list of the day chronologically based on promotion date was showing on the WP:FL. When WP:LOTD started on 2008-01-01, I had one of the admins who handles WP:FC add it so that both ideas would be getting exposure. Then the controversy arose.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 02:51, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Apparently there are two different lists for each 'day'? Looks like competing methodologies for choosing them. Obviously that should get sorted out first. Finding ways to promote a 'list of the day' should be easy enough, but we ought to get agreement on how that list is chosen before doing so. --CBD 22:26, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem with taking the sample display down is that one method is just chronological selection and the other requires generating the interest of participants. Failure to display chosen selections somewhere will reduce enthusiasm for this method and reduce its likelihood of success.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 18:06, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The other one is {{lotd}}, and currently it looks like this:

Today's featured list is: List of The Unit episodes.

It can be expanded to display the whole list, if necessary.

The Transhumanist (talk) 19:35, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Would it be possible to have a compromise showing a significant but reasonably small section from the head of the list followed by a more... link as used in other featured content? Currently over 90% of the portal is devoted to List_of_Lost_episodes. This might mislead a casual visitor into thinking that WP concentrates on one area of knowledge such as popular culture at the expense of whatever his interests are. Certes (talk) 12:23, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

This is a problem caused by the accidental removal of the "includeonly" tags. List of Stargate SG-1 episodes is displaying in full too. I'm not sure how/where to add the tags to fix this. (and no time to research it ATM...) -- Quiddity (talk) 20:52, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Someone has kindly fixed the problem with [[{{/Lists}}|See full list...]]. It looks much better now. Certes (talk) 22:16, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Featured Sound Nomination and participation

Hey all. Whilst trawling through wikipedia i cam across the Featured sound page. I noticed that there was a significant lack of regular participation in this process. At the moment there are only 15 audio rerecording that have reached featured Status and I was wondering whether it would be possible to get more involvementfrom people interested in music and also generally audio recordings so that the best audio on wikipedia can be truly appreciated. I hope to you participating on the page more often and that a greater community consensus can be formed here. Seddon69 (talk) 18:53, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Yep, it's unfortunately a place that has not received as much attention as it should. Gary King (talk) 01:23, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bufo Frogs

Hello

I live in south florida and have a jack russell named Lakota she is almost 3 and has been to the vet for the 3rd time last night because of bufo frogs. I am desperatly looking for someone who might know how to at least ward these frogs off a little, I live on a canal so I know that there are hundreds of them, I was told that there is some sort of fertlizer or something to put on the grass that would at least keep them at bay but I do not know what it is. I am picking her up at the vet this morning thank goodness she lived but very costly and my vet says now I have to mussell her and I do not want to but have no choice. If anyone can help me or has any suggestions on this issue I am all ears.

Thank You for any comments

Amber —Preceding unsigned comment added by Katsmeow69 (talk • contribs) 15:18, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:REFDESK would probably be a better place to ask this question. Gary King (talk) 01:14, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] IRC channel

Seeing as one doesn't exist yet, I created a IRC channel (#wikipedia-featured-content) under freenode.net. Anybody is welcome. Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 00:15, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Just an idea

We've got stars at the top-right of individual FC items, but there's usually no way to tell if (say) an article's featured unless you go there. What if FC links appeared as a different color than blue, say, green? Since FC articles inevitably touch upon more than just their own subjects, greenlinks could help browsing by steering people to the best prospects for research. It'd also provide an additional reward for FC stuff in terms of added visibility. Thoughts? Cheers, Mdiamante (talk) 18:36, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Don't everyone pipe up at the same time, now... ;) Mdiamante (talk) 18:01, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

i like eggs —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.4.62.20 (talk) 16:04, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

A great idea. Fully support if possible. (its like an extension of the Special:Preferences gadget that "Display[s] an assessment of an article's quality as part of the page header for each article."

I think the practicality is low though, as it would (surely?) massively increase the number of database-calls for each page loaded. (but I am not a coder). It might be worth bringing up at WP:VPR or WP:VPT. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:38, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Featured video

Just a possibility, but since we have a featured sound, we might as well have a featured video as well. We have enough videos on this site to do one everyday for a while from now, and, even if there's not enough, we could make it weekly featured video.–Sidious1701_{(talk • email)} 23:03, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

• Videos worthy of featured status are currently nominated and promoted through Wikipedia:Featured pictures. Teemu08 (talk) 16:47, 8 June 2008 (UTC)