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Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Biological warfare

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

The portal was promoted by Cirt 20:56, 16 April 2010 [1].

Portal:Biological warfare

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Self-nomination. See archived peer review. I believe the portal meets the standards for Featured Portal status. Thank you for your time, Cirt (talk) 20:27, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from J Milburn
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Comments from J Milburn

A few thoughts from a brief look around...

  • Selected articles... Are death and animal testing really worth including? Yeah, they are both issues that arise, but they're not really articles about biological warfare that the others are.
  • Again, there seem to be some rather vague articles on the SBA section- things like fungus and bacteria
  • strains is a dablink on SBA2
  • protect a dablink on SP4
  • plague is a dablink on SP15
  • Equine Encephalitis in the topics is a dab link
  • Osho, plague dablinks on DYK
  • Look at the DYK nomination section- something up there.
  • The majority of the Wikimedia links, although they look pretty, actually point to nothing.
  • No source is cited for File:BWC Participation.svg

Bit of a grim topic, nautrally, but this is well done. I particularly like the "in this month" section. J Milburn (talk) 16:32, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Responses to comments from J Milburn
  1. Done. Removed those pages. Cirt (talk) 16:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Done. Removed those pages. Cirt (talk) 16:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Done. Fixed the dab link. Cirt (talk) 16:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Done. Fixed the dab link. Cirt (talk) 16:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Done. Fixed the dab link. Cirt (talk) 16:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Done. Fixed the tab links. Cirt (talk) 16:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Done. Fixed the DYK nomination section. Cirt (talk) 16:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Done. Where there is not a specific page, the search function is used. This brings up relevant items of interest, and when a specific page becomes available, the search function defaults to bring the user there. Cirt (talk) 16:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Done. Removed this. Cirt (talk) 16:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for making those changes. Looking again, a couple more things are jumping out-

  • The featured content section is a little spartan- perhaps, rather than linking to lists of related featured content, you could just list good and featured content that is directly tied to biological warfare- something more like I've done on Portal:Cumbria. Also, I'm not sure it needs the whole page width- it could be cut to half the size, and placed below "in this month"? The page currently seems a little right-side heavy.
  • Wikiprojects should be WikiProjects
  • The selected quotes seem a little US-heavy- I applaud the fact you've found lots of historical quotes, but some more international ones would also be good.
  • Seems to be inconsistent sizing on the related portals icons- the war one, for instance, is much too small.
  • Seems to be a little too much whitespace below the intro- perhaps you could try smallifying the image, moving the caption to below it, and swapping the "more about Biological warfare" (which has a random capital letter anyway) to the "(more...)" that is used on the main page.
  • This is a personal preference, but I like a bigger "Show new selections", as I feel that one is a little inconspicuous.
  • Personally, I'd say more of the likes of File:SalmonellaNIAID.jpg and less of the likes of File:M114 bomblet.jpg should be selected pictures. Pictures of germs, flies, fungi and whatnot would offer a little variety.
  • On the Japanese war crimes blurb, could it perhaps be made clearer who the image subject is? Some kind of (pictured), as we use on the main page?
  • A better picture for dogs in warfare would be nice- there are lots of decent photos in the article currently. That said, it's another of the less relevant articles, I would say... Along with cell biology and DNA. This may be a little dumbed-down, but I've done something similar in Portal:Sharks- perhaps you could include some selected articles on fiction (films, books etc) that use a theme of biological warfare as selected articles? Again, would create a little variety while staying very much on-topic. For instance, the Resident Evil series of games, films (probably books, visual novels...) includes a major biological warfare theme. There are plenty of others; I'll help you think of some if you like the idea.
  • Not wild about the criminal justice portal link- is there nothing more appropriate? One on disease or microorganisms or something?

Hopefully you'll be able to get something useful from these ideas... J Milburn (talk) 17:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Responses to additional comments from J Milburn
  1. No, I think the links provided are just fine. The featured content is only one click away for the reader. Cirt (talk) 19:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Fixed. Cirt (talk) 19:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  3. It took a lot of time and research to add those quotes, and source every single one of them. Feel free to add more if you like, of course. Cirt (talk) 19:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  4. The sizing looks fine to me. Cirt (talk) 19:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  5. I think the intro sizing is fine. It draws attention to the material. Cirt (talk) 19:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  6. I like the current style of "show new selections". Cirt (talk) 19:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  7. I made sure to gather a variety of images. Feel free to please add more if you so desire. Cirt (talk) 19:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  8. There is already a roll over caption for this. Cirt (talk) 19:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Removed these. Cirt (talk) 19:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Criminal justice is directly related to the investigation of the subject matter. Cirt (talk) 19:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm happy to support at this time. I don't feel the portal is perfect, but I certainly think it's excellent. Very pretty (if pretty is the right word...) and care has been taken. A good subject for a portal. J Milburn (talk) 20:06, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Cirt (talk) 20:07, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Fixed it, using suggestions from userspace draft, as recommended. Thank you, Cirt (talk) 21:17, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Nod, okay, definitely will do. :) Cirt (talk) 21:40, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OhanaUnited (talk · contribs) may be busy with some other things going on at the moment. As it appears that there is support, and without objection for promotion, I will close this discussion in one week. -- Cirt (talk) 02:56, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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