Forum:Portals

What does everyone think about "portals" - should we start to create these for Memory Alpha?

To explain things, Wikipedia uses portals to further arrange its content. They got rid of a lengthy "Encyclopedia" table on the main page completely, and instead created a portal page for every major topic ("Arts", "Science", etc.) - only those (eight) portals are linked on the main page prominently, which frees up much space and allows visitors to dive into one of the topics easily.

Further portals can be created for "minor topics" and are listed on a project page. All portal pages are identified by having a "Portal:" prefix and typically act as "main pages" for their topic - no content, but links to related categories, subportals, individual articles and so on...

I'd like to see something like this here as well, at least to get rid of some of the content of our crowded main page. Any opinions? -- Cid Highwind 10:55, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I also thought of making use of them (when revising the MA/de frontpage). Further topics could be actors and for each series ... let's not restrict these to in-POV only. However I have no -- Kobi - (    ) 11:53, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I thought about the following five "main" portals to be placed on the main page: The first four are taken directly from section headers of the existing "Encyclopedia" listing, while "Star Trek" would be a combination of the sections "Episodes and Movies", "Other Media" and "Trek and Culture", basically combining everything that is about Star Trek from a production or franchise POV. Of course, these suggestions could still be refined.
 * People
 * Society and Culture
 * Around the Universe
 * Science and Technology
 * Star Trek

Further subportals, once those few main portals are up and running, could for example be "Starships" (about everything related to starships), "Klingon" (about the Klingon species, its culture etc.), "Star Trek:The Next Generation" (a portal for everything related to that series), ... -- Cid Highwind 19:46, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I like the portals. They make the Main Page less crowded and allow for easy navigation... or "diving", as Cid put it. ;) Now let's get this show on the road, shall we? :) --From Andoria with Love 18:00, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Moving "Encyclopedia" links to portals
The following are all links currently existing in the "encyclopedia" section of the main page. Although these wouldn't all need to be used on portal pages, they are a good way to determine what should go where, and what might be missing (or too much). Any thoughts about this preliminary way of sorting them? -- Cid Highwind 21:50, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * These look fine, but I think all of the lists with the exception of "people" and "Star Trek" should be in alphabetical order. Also, shouldn't production timeline go under the Star Trek section? Eh, maybe not... anyway, that's my brief take. --From Andoria with Love 03:42, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

This was just a quick copy&paste. If we have a list on one of the portals, it should of course be sorted alphabetically. However, I'm not sure if we really want to have lists, if we need all of these links, if we perhaps even need other links or need to rename some of the articles - for example, I don't think that Borg technology is an important enough topic to be prominently placed in an encyclopedia index as "All Things Borg". It might be a separate section on a "Technology" portal, though - and perhaps someone would even be interested in creating a "Borg" portal later... In fact, everything, starting with the naming of the few "top-level" portals we might want to place on our main page, should be up for discussion at the moment, because portals are a completely new page type on MA... -- Cid Highwind 12:03, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Also, the Shakespeare and Star Trek link is already included in the "Other topics" link (under the "other" section), so it doesn't really need a seperate link under "Star Trek". Also, do we really need a seperate link for "directors", when we already have "production staff"? Also, if we were to keep "directors", why not have "composers", as well? Lastly, "philosophy" might be better placed under "society and culture". Just a thought. :) --From Andoria with Love 12:27, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Right about "Philosophy". The remaining links in the "Other" section are those I couldn't find a matching "portal" for at the moment... Maybe those would just be "lost" or used in another way. Special:Categories is linked to from the suggested new main page, anyway, so I'm just removing that one... -- Cid Highwind 12:35, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I also agree that "All Things Borg" isn't really needed. I'm sure people will be able to find their way to Borg technology through the races and cultures link. I'm gonna go ahead and remove that as well as the Shakespeare link, since that's already included in the Other topics link. --From Andoria with Love 12:44, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

We further discussed this on IRC, with the outcome that "Around the Universe" (although that title is great) consisted of topics that really belong to either "Culture" or "Science". So that one is empty for the moment, I'd still like to see something like this, though - a portal for all possible locations, including but not restricted to planets as a whole. There also was the idea to split up "Science and Technology" into two separate portals. -- Cid Highwind 17:14, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

People

 * Main characters
 * Recurring characters
 * Performers

Society and Culture

 * Species and cultures
 * Language
 * Government and politics
 * Diplomacy and law
 * Recreation
 * Foods and beverages
 * Religion
 * Arts and music
 * Philosophy
 * Interstellar history

Does this need to split up in both Society and Culture as different portals, or just renamed, or is there some other way to split? Also, a Portal:Arts was added to the top level portals, which I think needs some discussion - I think "Arts" is clearly a subtopic of "Culture", so probably shouldn't be top level. -- Cid Highwind 16:45, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Science

 * Science and Scientists
 * theories and principles
 * Subspace
 * Energy
 * Physics and Chemistry
 * Temporal mechanics
 * Medicine
 * Exobiology
 * Stellar cartography
 * Astronomy and Astrophysics
 * Planetary science

Technology

 * Starships
 * Computers
 * Communications
 * Propulsion
 * Sensors
 * Military technology

Star Trek

 * Star Trek: The Original Series
 * Star Trek: The Animated Series
 * Star Trek: The Next Generation
 * Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
 * Star Trek: Voyager
 * Star Trek: Enterprise
 * Star Trek Movies
 * Audio
 * Collectibles
 * Comics
 * DVDs
 * Games
 * Novels
 * Reference works
 * Awards and honors
 * Trekkies
 * Tributes
 * Parodies
 * Fan fiction
 * Production staff
 * Directors
 * Production timeline

Other

 * Other topics
 * Reference tables
 * Timeline

Portal page layout/content
See Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Portal for a whole list of portals. There seems to be a general agreement to use standard elements on all portal pages: -- Cid Highwind 12:32, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Links to top-level portals (can be achieved via ) at the top of each portal page.
 * A short summary, defining the scope of this portal page
 * Lists relevant to this topic
 * Relevant categories
 * Featured articles, images, external links, etc.
 * Cross-links to related (or "sub-") portals

Top level portals
I agree that new top-level portals shouldn't be created without a consensus... I wasn't going to actually create the portal page without a discussion. I wanted to see how it looked, and I figured that putting it out there would get your attention, Cid ;) Anyway, you're right, Art could be considered an offshoot of Culture - but so could Technology be considered an offshoot of Science. And as far as Art vs. Arts... I had Art there first, but thought Arts was more inclusive, as in "The Arts" as opposed to art, which often refers to visual arts, such as painting, sculpture, etc. and not literature, music, and other artistic endeavors. So, here's the opening to the discussion. -- Renegade54 16:47, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah, you got me... ;) I think that, whatever top level portals we finally decide on, they should be
 * not too few and generic
 * not too many and specific
 * diverse enough to encompass the great majority of articles we have.
 * With that in mind, my feeling is that "Art/Arts" is not that important a topic to be placed among the top level portals. How many articles do we have that deal, in some way, with the topic "arts"? I guess there are topics that would be more prominent than that. -- Cid Highwind 17:30, 16 September 2006 (UTC)