Wikipedia:Featured portal review/Wine/archive2

The following is an archived discussion of a featured portal review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

Previous review from 2009 is at Wikipedia:Featured portal review/Wine. This portal fails several criteria:

• 1d well maintained: the newest item in the news section is from Feb 2008.
• 1b attractive: the "Things you can do" section is visually unattractive.

Portal:Wine/Selected person section has only 5 articles, the second being a stub, and none featured quality.

• 3 images: some of the content could have images, but it doesn't, such as Portal:Wine/Selected grape/4 where the former image has been deleted.

These are the very first observations, is likely there are more issues. --ELEKHH^T 22:09, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Notified: Wikipedia:WikiProject Wine, Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and drink, User:Jerem43. --ELEKHH^T 22:19, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

• 1a+1c useful+ergonomic: an important feature of a portal is to provide an easy navigation index of sub-topics (this is one of the few "required" components of any portal). This function here is spread out in three separate windows (Categories, Lists, Topics), none of them in an attractive form. Suggest having a look at fr:Portail:Vigne et vin which has a much more comprehensive topics index function, and four time more page views. --ELEKHH^T 22:46, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Hello,

I am going to start off saying you should talk to the people at WP:Wine as they are also involved in this.

Second you reasoning has some merits an more faults. I am going to start out by addressing some of your faults:

• This is the standard layout of most if not all portals on WP. To state that you don't like how it is laid out is a reason to have it stricken as a featured portal is not a very good reason to have it stricken from the records.
• The image issue has been fixed, so that is no longer a problem.
• The French Wine Portal page well, is French. They have a much smaller audience that has a greater depth of wine culture, so their page stats are going to be different. You are comparing apples to grapes.

Now as to your merits:

• It hasn't been updated in a while, and that is a problem. I only maintain the code side of the page. The person who used to maintain the content side has since quit WP. I suggest you bring the winos from WP:Wine in on this and let them have a go at it. As I stated in the first FP review, if the supplied me with the articles, I would update this portal. They didn't, so I didn't.

Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 09:24, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm glad you don't deny that it's not maintained, but disagree with your other comments. Also note that WP:Wine has been notified from the start per due process, as highlighted above. Please don't forget that the purpose of this review is to improve the portal. Recognising the weaknesses and areas of possible improvement is the first precondition. --ELEKHH^T 05:34, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

• Comment I am a WP:WINE member and, admittedly, one of the reasons why I haven't paid much attention to the Portal is because I don't really see the use in portals on Wikipedia in general. Every non-Wikipedian that I've talked to (especially the ones in the wine industry) don't even know that these portals exist or what they are used for. While Jeremy's willingness to take care of the technical side of things is greatly appreciated (and frankly, the outstanding work he does project-wise, not just for WP:WINE is not recognized enough IMO), I'm just not convinced that maintaining the portal offers much benefit to the project in getting our content out in front of a larger audience. Maybe if there was the carrot of Main Page exposure with a Featured Portal section, it would be worth getting it back up to snuff but that idea doesn't seem to ever get traction. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 20:25, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Portals can be useful for readers generally interested in a topic, and wanting to browse between its articles. Portals have been neglected on the English wiki for years, and now the standard is very low, with mediocre portals having featured status. In the meanwhile on other language wikis portals are more successful, by providing well organised content, like an index you can find in many books. This is possible to achieve on the English Wikipedia as well: for instance the constant maintenance and improvement of the Renewable energy portal has slowly increased the number of views from less than 1,000 to 5,000 per month. --ELEKHH^T 22:21, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

• Comment Updated all the random portal component numbers which were wrong, added 1 SG, and suspended the five years ago updated "news" section. While these edits cleared some of the most discouraging aspects, the portal is far from "Wikipedia's finest work", and given that key editors above showed no intention for improvement, and the limited quality content related to the topic, I regretfully suggest speedy delist. --ELEKHH^T 16:30, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
• Comment. This portal certainly wouldn't have my support for promotion to featured in its current state, and if members of the appropriate WikiProject are indifferent to it, it's long-term improvement is unlikely. Espresso Addict (talk) 21:01, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
• De-list. I agree with Agne that without main page exposure of featured portals, there isn't any motivation to maintain a portal's "featured" status. The usefulness, visibility, or hit count of this portal will likely not change at all if it is de-listed from the featured list. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:50, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

It is quality content and usefulness which attracts readers, not the star. The motivation to maintain portals at high quality should be readers focused, not the "featured" status, which is more of a recognition than a promotion. --ELEKHH^T 23:30, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Closed as Delisted. — Cirt (talk) 14:53, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.