Wikinews talk:Category Portals

Worry/Concern

Personally, I'd much rather have the Category redirect to the Main page. For instance, setting up the main page at /Africa, and having Category:Africa redirect there. I worry, that when we become larger, the list of articles on the bottom will be unwelcome - and rather cluttering. Especially if a specific portal/area becomes quite active, with lots of articles. We worry about page size on the main page - I think we should be treating each portal as a "main page" in itself. Lyellin 20:49, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

• That concern is groundless. Read the section on the redirects from the main namespace again. It explains why the portal must be at the category page and the redirect in the main namespace. It also explains that the very reason for having the redirect in the main namespace at all is so that those that don't like the list (and not all editors dislike it, note) can use that instead and not see the list. Go to India and see it in action. Uncle G 21:14, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Uncle G is right that, as presently constructed, the MediaWiki software does not list the articles in the category when you are redirected to a category page. I used to have an "Archives" link on the old Ontario portal that was simply a link to the Category:Ontario page in case somebody, and I occasionally do, wanted to see all articles ever written for that cat. DoubleBlue (Talk) 16:27, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Well, Uncle G - I know there was some discussion that having things in the main namespace could be gotten around, without using categories - which I feel is a good thing. My reasoning still stands, even if you feel it is groundless. We don't use Category:Published for the main page. It would be too cluttered, among other reasons. Why automaticatally strangle other "main pages" with that crowding. You can go to Quaker and see the direct opposite - a category redirecting to a mainspace page, and if, like I believe Ilya suggusted on the main page, getting around the DPL issue is possible, I believe it's a better solution. Lyellin 21:21, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
• without using categories — An aversion to using category pages, which is what I assume that you actually meant, for no good reason, makes no sense. The pages are there to be used. We don't use Category:Published for the main page — Yes we do. The entire Latest News section uses Category:Published. Take a look at it. (See Wikinews:2005/July/28, for example.) Why automaticatally strangle other "main pages" — There's no such strangling going on, so that question, being based upon a false premise, is unanswerable. a category redirecting to a mainspace page — That's exactly the wrong way to go about things. getting around the DPL issue — I've created several portals, and I'm seeing no DPL issue to "get around". Please look at the portal for India and explain what "the DPL issue" is with respect that portal. Uncle G 22:58, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
  • I believe what Lyellin meant was: We don't redirect to Category:Published from Main Page. I'm still not sure what I think about this whole Portal proposal but I'm leaning in favour of this method, though using a redirected to Category page as a portal seems a little odd. DoubleBlue (Talk) 23:26, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
    • We wouldn't redirect anything to Category:Published anyway. That's not a portal category. "Published" is neither a topic nor a geographical region. Treating the main page as a topic portal in like manner to other topic portals, should we wish to do that, would involve creating a topic category such as Category:Main Page. Uncle G 00:00, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

I strongly object to this type of redirection, too. There was no problem with using Category:Portal on portal pages — it is successfully removed from DPLs. However, this proposal relies on a quirk in the current version of MediaWiki. This quirk might get removed (it is a bug, more than a quirk). Additionally, if the page is purged, the (long) list of articles comes back. The Category:Portal plus DPLing notcategory=Portal, plus transclusion from the category accomplishes the same goal but without reliance on a quirk. -- IlyaHaykinson 06:12, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

Improvements

I'm working on improvements to the templates that will provide portals with "developing articles" and "submit new story" sections. Uncle G 21:14, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

• Those improvements have now been made, and the machinery is in place for several portals. I've already submitted articles through the submission forms on the Category:Birmingham and Category:United States portals. Uncle G 14:58:02, 2005-08-01 (UTC)

Evolution & workspaces

These instructions and guidelines are very useful and I think they will be able to provide for everyone's concerns. It seems to me that much of this will evolve in time and as people want to build up particular portals. For example, I was going to suggest having a Journalism portal for media reporting and then discovered that it already exists as a category. With a bit of fiddling within the structure suggested, it wouldn't take long to set it up as a sub-portal to Culture and entertainment. The redirects that we used for the Quaker page mean that you can ensure that people looking for something specific come to the same page and I think that is what Uncle G is trying to ensure we do consistently. All the pages he has created look busy (even Birmingham!) without having a lot of human involvement - pages won't look dormant if no-one is paying them any attention, they will just build automatically when people add categories to their stories. On the Quaker page we are also exploring the potential for more human involvement with, for example, a (voluntary) community sign-up section.

The Workspace there also suggests a good model for adaption too (I didn't build it so I can promote it!) - it is a simple interface which replicates the main page and we are using the categories SpecialDevelop and SpecialPublish as default (the DPL pulls up Special + Quaker so this can be used by all categories) - if a story is considered good enough or of world-wide interest it can then 'graduate' to Develop and Publish on the main page to be developed further by the wider community. This doesn't stop anyone from publishing on the main space but it provides the opportunity for localism. Personally I would prefer to see this workspace on all portal pages rather than the WikiBureau link that is on the India page as I feel that Bureau suggests a level of professionalism that should be developed by a community rather than on as the default. The workspace also applies across Wikinews so if they become comfortable writing news on a small portal, they will be comfortable with the system on the main page ClareWhite 09:49, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

• I created the Quaker pages (must get round to writing that up someday...), but Clare explains how it's intended to work very well. Dan100 (Talk) 18:34, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
• I thought about it, but didn't see a need to create a separate Wikinews:Workspace/India for the India portal. Each geographic portal already contains much of what would be on such an individualized workspace: a new article submission form, a list of developing stories, and a list of the latest published stories. There's no need for any "Special" tags for Geographic portals, and thus no need for individualized workspaces and "how to write an article" instructions. The ordinary tags, "how to write an article" instructions, and workspace will do. Indeed, geographic portals are, by their very natures, not intended to be walled gardens, and there is no need for a mechanism to make them so. The Quakers portal is a walled garden. But the India portal is not. By their natures, geographic portals overlap one another.

  An article about people throwing tea into a river might be of continent-wide interest, and so be marked with [[Category:North America]][[Category:United States]][[Category:Massachusetts]][[Category:Boston, Massachusetts]] making it visible to readers at all four levels. However, an article about a new sandwich shop opening can simply be marked [[Category:Cambridge, Massachusetts]], and so only be visible to people who decide to read "the local Cambridge edition of Wikinews". But none of those categories are walled gardens. Uncle G 20:14:23, 2005-08-01 (UTC)

Local news may be of national, and even world interest. The news flows from the local event in the direction of a world event. The 'Main Page' is the result local news redirected because of its importance to the outside world. -Edbrown05 07:04, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Input boxes

I'm wondering why these templates have input boxes on them - the existing portals have links to the Workspace right at the top, which seems sufficient. Dan100 (Talk) 18:29, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

• That argument applies to the Main Page, too, which also links to the workspace and yet has an input box itself. One reason that the portals have input boxes is the very same reason that the Main Page has an input box.

  Another reason is that it allows people who read a portal to submit stories that will then appear in that portal, with little work required on their parts. Each (Geographic) portal has its own new article template, as noted. Each new article template contains the appropriate categories for the portal, which will differ from portal to portal. The new article template for the Birmingham portal, Template:Birmingham/New page, contains [[Category:Birmingham]], for example. This is not the case for the input box on Wikinews:Workspace. The Workspace is not sufficient.

  This is exactly the same idea as Template:Quakers new page, which you wrote, by the way. ☺ Uncle G 19:30:52, 2005-08-01 (UTC)

Moving over to Portal namespace

It would be great if we could all work on moving all of the category portals over to the Portal namespace. The category pages would then only have {{Portal:Region name}} as their content, and would automatically reflect the portal. Thanks! 01:50, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

• I am willing to help moving category portals to the Portal namespace. I assume the articles should redirect to the Portal namespace. As for categories: I propose to add a link via Template:Portal rather than the full portal page. I set this up as an example on Category:Politics and conflicts (but has been reverted already). HenkvD 09:41, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Category confusion

This proposal isn't quite right and people have raised concerns about Categories being used as portals, which I think are fair. Here is the difference:

• Portals are active topic pages that might have offshoots like bureaus, source lists etc etc. Namespaces should redirect to them so that portal pages and all their community activities do not show up in the main article space
• Category pages should contain DPLs for all stories published in that category in date order. They should also contacin a link to the portal, if active. If there is no active portal and no active category, the category will still generate a list.

As far as I can see the best portals have already been built like this, so does anyone object to changing these guidelines and getting the portals off the category pages?

ClareWhite 14:41, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I did the enhancement of the U.S. state categories, where for the states that didn't have portals I added a standard "template" that went as far as it could go without causing refresh errors and other problems. I left existing state portals alone on the assumption that somebody else might have some slightly different ideas on how to development them. By pure coincidence I happened to create the Louisiana cat and portal just a few days before Katrina hit. I would like to see this issue resolved before I start pushing hard to do other countries/major subdivisions in the geographic realm that would create their own portal. As I see it, the Portal page should be the headlines and related information about the geographic division, and the category page is the "full list" of all stories. As with Category:Louisiana, the cat page has transclusion of the portal page. Not all geographic subdivisions have this format, but I think it works out fairly well. --Robert Horning 02:24, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Clare:

If I undstand you correctly, where there is an active portal (a topic/region which is receiving regular contributions), the category should contain minimal DPL of the latest additions, and a link to the portal. The Portal should have more complete DPL sections.

Where there is no activity, the same should apply? - Amgine/^talk 04:40, 14 October 2005 (UTC)