Portal talk:Solar System#My Opinion of How this Portal Should Work

I haven't worked on portals before, but when I saw a great featured article, Solar System, having a poor (under construction) portal, I decided to help give this portal a facelift. Now that it is usable (although there is still work to do), I think that the discussion should change to how this portal can continue to be usable and interesting. Therefore, I have posted my thoughts on how this portal should be maintained.

The selected article should change on the first of each month and go down the list headings in the Topics box (excluding the main Solar System article). This has already been partly done via the switch from Sun to Mercury, so I think that the others working on this portal agree with this point. There should be discussion on whether it cycles or new articles are chosen similar to images after the list is done (see next paragraph).

The selected image should similarly switch weekly as there are a lot of images out there. The image should be chosen on this talk page from Wikipedia's featured pictures on objects in the Solar System and there should be a few featured images waiting to be added at the right time so that lack of consensus doesn't ever make the image change late. There should be an archive of the old articles and pictures (I'll get to work on archives immediately after posting this).

People should go through new articles relating to the Solar System and take interesting facts and add them to the Did You Know section. It must be diverse to get people to go to articles of varying content. When it gets too large, someone should create an archive of the oldest facts and remove them. In fact, anything that has regular changing content should have an archive created so that people can look at old things, similarly to how Portal:Astronomy or even the main page has archives (archives would of course be subpages of this portal).

Boxes of primarily link content should go on the right (or the very bottom of the left if there's too many on the right). Meanwhile, boxes of primarily text content should go on the left (one or two could probably be added without compromising design). This kind of organization would make the portal better as even some well-done portals seem quite random in the way they sort their boxes.

We should tell projects where this portal could fit in about this portal and those that agree to help maintain this portal should be added in the "WikiProjects" box. This way, the portal gets added help and is made better while the people viewing this portal see the projects that help with this portal and might decide to join them. Hopefully several projects will help on this portal.

I personally think that this portal has a lot of potential and it would be a good compliment to a good featured topic. I will thus try to help regularly maintain this portal. I hope that everyone interested can agree on how to maintain this portal so it can one day be a featured portal to compliment the many related featured articles. — Pious7_Talk^Contribs 19:07, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

• I revised the statement a bit now that it's been a while since I posted this. — Pious7_Talk^Contribs 16:01, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

{{Wikipedia:Portal peer review/Solar System/archive1}}

{{Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Solar System}}

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MichaelManaloLazo-Thur Oct 1, 2009 at 14:15 inside Isetann Cinerama Complex Shopping Centre in Quiapo,Manila,Metro Manila,Philippines. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.92.245.5 (talk) 06:10, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Someone could update this portal? It's so ugly and out of date! The Portuguese model looks much better than this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.83.135.27 (talk) 00:15, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Portals is back!

The project was rebooted and completely overhauled on April 17th, 2018. Its goals are to revitalize the entire portal system, make building and maintaining portals easier, support the ongoing improvement of portals and the editors dedicated to this, and design the portals of the future.

As of May 2nd, 2018, membership is at 60 editors, and growing. You are welcome to join us.

There are design initiatives for revitalizing the portals system as a whole, and for improving each component of portals. So far, 2 new dynamic components have been developed: Template:Transclude lead excerpt and Template:Transclude random excerpt.

Tools are provided for building and maintaining portals, including automated portals that update themselves in various ways.

And, if you are bored and would like something to occupy your mind, we have a wonderful task list.

From your friendly neighborhood Portals WikiProject. Hope to see you there. Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   07:45, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

This portal was recently nominated for deletion, and the MFD was closed on 28 August 2019 as No Consensus. The following points were noted either by the Keep editors or by the closer:

1. This portal is now said to have a maintainer. That will require periodic attention to the portal, not just some drive-by edits.
2. Outdated content in content forked subpages was identified. The subpages all need to be reviewed. At a minimum all of the subpages that no longer match the articles (which are updated through normal editing) need to be reforked. A better idea would be to add new subpages also. An even better idea would be to replace the content forks with transclusion of the lede.
3. Any new scientific information about the solar system, e.g., based on robotic space exploration, should be reflected in the portal.

Addressing those points within the next two months is a minimum for addressing the concerns raised in the MFD. If these points are not addressed in two months, this portal is likely to be nominated for deletion again.

If there is really a desire to demonstrate that portals in general can be improved, here are a few suggestions for design improvement:

1. Use categories to select solar system bodies, such as moons, dwarf planets, or small solar system bodies, for display.

Robert McClenon (talk) 18:55, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

:Solar System is upper cased. Other than that, good advice. Randy Kryn (talk) 19:46, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

:{{Ping|Robert McClenon}} There is no need to threaten another MfD one day after the old was closed. Thanks for the ToDo lists and improvement idea(s) though. I have already major changes planed for the layout of the portal. But the outdated content will be addressed first. --Hecato (talk) 19:50, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

::Experience has shown that there have been many MFDs for portals in past years that have been closed due to unkept promises of maintenance. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:22, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

:::Hecato, I am sure that @Robert McClenon no {{tq|threat}} of another MFD. Take it as an assessment of probability as near-certainty, rather than threat: multiple maintainers, actively maintaining ... or MFD again. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:04, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

::::Thanks. Consider me informed of the probabilities. --Hecato (talk) 00:11, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Moon, Portal:Mars, and Portal:Jupiter have all been deleted at MFD.

I have converted all the links to each of them into links to Portal:Solar System. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:27, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

{{u|Hecato}}, would you like me to update the "Selected picture" box using new template {{tl|Portal pictures}}? It allows using POTDs as inputs. Demo with just four pictures, any number of pictures can be used:

{{Portal:Solar System/box-header|Selected picture}}

{{Portal pictures|function=slideShow|2007-04-28|2019-07-18|2018-07-14|2007-06-11|more=More selected pictures}}

{{Box-footer}}

—⁠andrybak (talk) 23:23, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

• {{ping|Andrybak}} Yes, that would be great. Please feel free to update it. --Hecato (talk) 00:27, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
• : Done: Portal:Solar System/Selected picture. —⁠andrybak (talk) 00:41, 24 November 2020 (UTC)