Talk:Scientology/Portal talk archive

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Is this portal really necessary?

Is Scientology really all that important a topic that it needs its own WP portal? Steve Dufour 22:27, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

It's really not the question of "importance", which is really kind of impossible to gage. And, by the way, I live in a city that doesn't have a portal that has a lot more people than Concord, California. As the creator of the portal, I guess my reasons were as follows:
  • (1) The content relevant to Scientology is only likely to ever appear in geographic portals otherwise, given the huge scope of the Portal:Religion, the only other one which would deal with the subject itself.
  • (2) From what I've seen, portals are generally seen as having one of their primary goals to get more people invovled in editing articles. Right now, there don't seem to be many people working on Scientology related articles, so in that sense it might potentially increase the amount of editors working on related articles.
  • (3) Lastly, maybe not a good point but a real one, I noted just about every other differentiated religion project out there (not counting all the Christianity projects, which can feed into Portal:Christianity as well) already has its own portal of one sort or another, and it made sense to me at the time that there wasn't any good reason not to let Scientology have one of its own as well. Some of them, like Portal:Jainism, don't actually seem to change much, if at all, but that's a different matter entirely. John Carter 22:36, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
You might be right. I also think that the 400 or so articles listed in Project Scientology is a lot. In many cases the same information is given in multiple articles. I'm not sure if I'm going to get back into the project or not right now. Steve Dufour 22:51, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Great job!

  • A job well done to John Carter ! This sure looks like all the subpages and main portal page was a lot of work, and it looks great so far! I'm sure when it all gets fleshed out it will be really sweet. Cirt 21:41, 20 October 2007 (UTC).

Notes on Portal quality

Good examples

Cirt 21:08, 30 October 2007 (UTC).

Selected article captions

From Portal talk:Psychology#Layout help?

I modeled a page at Portal:Scientology after your portal's layout, but could not get the image caption to display. Actually, it looks like your caption is also not displaying for the Milgram experiment featured article on your portal. Does anyone know how to fix this? For the page w/out caption display showing up, see Portal:Scientology/Selected article/3. Thanks. Cirt 23:37, 30 October 2007 (UTC).

This page layout template is displaying as designed. The caption displays "on mouseover" - when you move the mouse over the image, the caption displays. It's considered to be visually more elegant than a typical "thumb"nail image found in most articles. RichardF 00:52, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

  • Oh. In that case, great, and thank you for the help! What do you think of the portal so far? Cirt 00:53, 31 October 2007 (UTC).
It looks like a good start. :-) I would suggest taking a look at the two lists noted at Wikipedia talk:Featured portal criteria#Personal requirements to help you plan and track your work. RichardF 01:01, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
Okay, will do. Cirt 01:33, 31 October 2007 (UTC).

To do list

I started a to do list template to help track portal development activities. Have at it! RichardF 01:50, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

  • Thanks! I started a quotes subpage at Portal:Scientology/Quotes, now I just have to figure out how to get it to appear neatly below the categories box on the main portal page. Cirt 01:52, 31 October 2007 (UTC).
    •  Done - Now I'm just trying to get everything to sit together and lay out nice on the page.. Cirt 01:57, 31 October 2007 (UTC).

"Things to do" section

The "Things to do" section typically uses related project lists as a way to coordinate such activities. In this case, you might want to consider folding in the Scientology project's "To Do List" and "Tasklist." RichardF 12:24, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

  • Oh, okay, I will try that later. Thanks. Cirt 12:30, 31 October 2007 (UTC).
    •  Done -- Looks nice, thanks. Cirt 00:36, 1 November 2007 (UTC).

I wouldn't necessarily consider it done, since the information at {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Scientology/Things you can do}} still isn't included. It could be transcluded as well. RichardF 01:30, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

  •  Done - Okay, did that, some extra good, useful info there. I think we are almost ready for a Portal Review. Cirt (talk) 07:50, 28 November 2007 (UTC).

Selected quotes

Here's another idea to play with - Selected quotes. There's a way to randomly select a specific number of pages to form a list. For the quotes here, that would be a way to keep adding to them without making the section too long or forcing manual rotations. I don't think the method has been used with quotes yet, so here are a simple and complex example for DYK lists: Portal:Sustainable development/Did you know and Portal:Religion/Did you know. You can see more about how to use the method at Template:Random subpage, with more examples at Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Random_subpage. RichardF 02:26, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Thank you! Alternatively couldn't I just use the same coding format that rotates entries at the bio and selected article sections? This is a great idea, because we could have a massive number of selected DYKs and quotes, and just filter them. Also, it the randomness would ensure NPOV as well, which is a very good thing. Cirt 03:25, 1 November 2007 (UTC).
    • I like the simpler method. I am going to try to use Portal:Sustainable development/Did you know as a model. Bear with me... Cirt 03:33, 1 November 2007 (UTC).
      •  Done -- Thanks so much, RichardF (talk · contribs), this was a really great idea. Random DYKs and Randomized quotes, in addition to the randomized pictures, articles, and bios, makes the portal really dynamic. Cirt 07:36, 1 November 2007 (UTC).

Look good, great job!  :-) Now, I'll admit my personal preference is for a slightly different style on quotes. Because quotes vary so much in length, it's almost impossible to arrange the entire page with even columns when quotes are in the left or right column. That's why I prefer quotes to span the entire page, like at Portal:Religion. I also like to throw in an image, like at Portal:Religion/Selected quote. Either way is fine with me. RichardF 12:06, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

  • I certainly like the idea of spanning the quote the whole width. As far as images, it will be tough to find free-use images for each individual that said the quote, I think it might be better to stick with what we've got going already. As far as it being impossible to arrange the entire page with even columns when quotes are in the left or right column - it's already difficult when the size of the "selected article" and "selected bio" blurbs are all not exactly the same size. Cirt 12:09, 1 November 2007 (UTC).
    • I took a preview look. If I span the quotes section the entire width, they are spaced out unevenly centered, and the attributions of who said what do not line up right. So another option would be to default to show less quotes on the main portal page, like two or three at a time instead of four. This would also probably ensure even more randomness... Cirt 12:20, 1 November 2007 (UTC).
Yes, the other randomized sections all could use a rule-of thumb for number of lines for text and height for images. Then they'll tend to even out more. The toughest section to balance that way will be quotes. RichardF 12:45, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
Good point, so I moved the quotes to its own section so it won't affect balancing. Now just to balance out the other sections. Cirt 17:02, 1 December 2007 (UTC).

Getting the word out

Don't forget to add links to the List of portals, Portal Directory and the Community Portal. RichardF 00:31, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

  • It was already listed at the first one, I added it to the next two. Not sure if I added it right to the last one, diff. Cirt (talk) 03:08, 28 November 2007 (UTC).
Almost, I added the pulldate for the Community portal. RichardF (talk) 04:03, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. How is that determined? Cirt (talk) 04:06, 28 November 2007 (UTC).
It's a week. I probably could have added another day for wikitime, but they stick around longer if nothing else shows up anyway. You have to click "edit" up at least one heading to see the comment that explains how to do it. RichardF (talk) 04:11, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Cirt (talk) 04:38, 28 November 2007 (UTC).

Rules of thumb for rotated section sizes

Cirt asked me to comment on this here. Since I tend to work on portals no one else is much interested in editing, I usually just pick something off the top of my head. A relatively good example would be Portal:Sustainable development. What I usually do is look at the number of lines on the subpages view, e.g., Portal:Sustainable development/Selected article, Portal:Sustainable development/Selected biography, Portal:Sustainable development/Selected picture and Portal:Sustainable development/Did you know. Taking any images into consideration, I start trying around 10 +/- lines then take it from there. This applies mostly to any sections in left or right columns. Because quotes are so variable, I always display them full width. Let me know if you have any other questions. :-) RichardF 18:44, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

  • What about uniformity among image sizes? Cirt 18:54, 1 December 2007 (UTC).
Each of the subpages I mentioned uses a layout page that includes a default image size, e.g., Portal:Sustainable development/Selected article/Layout. Those sizes are based on a number of portals that have reached featured status. They seem to work pretty well. If an image has unusual dimensions, then the image size can be adjusted on the subpage to keep the overall section height about the same. RichardF 19:44, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 Done - I shortened any lengthy article and bio blurbs to 10 lines. Also made all article/bio/selected picture sections use default image sizing. Displays much better in the portal now. There are a few bio blurbs that are a tad short that I will expand, but I think that's about it for now. Cirt 20:20, 1 December 2007 (UTC).
Cool! :-) RichardF 20:26, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
  • After I do a teeny bit more work to double-check that all article/bio blurbs are 10 lines, I'll go for a Wikipedia:Portal peer review. Cirt 20:34, 1 December 2007 (UTC).

Image credits

All of the images need credits, like at Portal:Sustainable development/Selected picture/Layout. RichardF 20:31, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

  • And if all we have for a credit is there Wikipedia or WikiCommons username, we can use that? And with flickr users, I'm just writing their username itself, since a link to flickr and mention of flickr is given on the image page itself. Cirt 20:37, 1 December 2007 (UTC).
    •  Done - Added credits to all the selected pictures. Still curious about the above questions though. Cirt 21:01, 1 December 2007 (UTC).
You basically use the best credit you can find. That often turns out to be usernames. I assume the same applies to flickr. RichardF 21:08, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Okay, that's what I did. They're all free-use as well. Cirt 21:26, 1 December 2007 (UTC).

Quotes layout

Just a thought, any interest in adding images to the quotes? See an example at Portal:Sustainable development/Selected quote/Layout. RichardF 21:23, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

  • I'd rather just keep it text. Don't get me wrong, Portal:Sustainable development/Selected quote looks really really cool, but there aren't free-use images for each quote, and I'd rather not have just some quotes with images for that. Cirt 21:27, 1 December 2007 (UTC).
    • Is there a way to make the quotes all somehow align on the left hand side? Cirt 21:31, 1 December 2007 (UTC).
Finding good images certainly is a pain. I keep having to find replacements when something gets deleted! :-( I don't know if there's a way to left-align with the quotes template currently used, but a layout page certainly could be adjusted however you wanted it to look. RichardF 21:45, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Eh, not such a big deal either way. Now, to bulk up some bios and make sure they're all around 10 lines, and then for a review. Thanks for all of your help! Cirt 00:55, 2 December 2007 (UTC).
  •  Done - Fixed the quotes formatting, at Portal:Scientology/Quotes. Replaced some of the shorter quotes with longer quotes, in some cases from a different cited source, but by same author. With longer quotes, quotes automatically format to align right, and everything looks much nicer and uniform now. Cirt 04:31, 2 December 2007 (UTC).

Selected article criteria

I made the criteria more selective for the Selective article section, see Portal:Scientology/Selected article. Now that we have a few more WP:GA and WP:FA articles related to WP:SCN, we should tighten and only allow Featured or Good articles to be selected in that section of the portal. Unfortunately, until we have a good number of Featured/Good articles that are biographies, that section won't work yet with the same tight criteria. Cirt 04:08, 2 December 2007 (UTC).

Ideas to work on longer term

  • This is certainly interesting and doable: Portal:Religion/On this day. As obviously we'd need 365 entries, this would take a long, long time to work on, and I don't think it's crucial to improve the portal further, just an added nicety for sometime in the future. Cirt (talk)
  • checkY Done — [sd] 01:48, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
  • See Portal:Scientology/Features, for the statistics. Currently the Scientology project does not have any featured lists, or featured pictures. I'd also hesitate before splitting that stuff off into a subpage of the main portal page, because there are not as many categories and main topics either. But I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on this, I suppose it is a possibility. Cirt (talk) 16:56, 5 December 2007 (UTC).
  • I didn't mean the subpage thing, just the opportunity to highlight any other types of featured content, if available. :-) RichardF (talk) 18:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Portal peer review

"Best Portal"?

Its very blue. Can something be done about that, it looks extremely bland. Clinkophonist (talk) 23:14, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Interesting you mention it, the coloring was specifically addressed at the Featured Portal Candidate discussion, and then the portal was promoted successfully as a Featured Portal shortly thereafter. What different color adjustments would you suggest? Cirt (talk) 23:19, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

"So-called Neutrality"

I thought Wikipedia was supposed to be an encyclopedia, not an anti-Scientology site. You've got quotes from a bunch of Scientology hating randoms (since when is Trey Parker an expert on Scientology?), the "selected articles" consist of mostly anti-Scientology articles and films (because the Simpsons and Time are the holy grail of knowledge and intellect). If I tried to put say, Nietzsche quotes, anti-Christian articles and black metal on the Christianity portal, it would be reverted in less than a second.

Of course, this garbage deserves a star, because "high quality" in Wikipedia terms is "going with popular opinion/attitude". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.44.111.51 (talk) 11:33, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

The portal has been through a thorough review, twice, by multiple editors. The "Selected article" section contains WP:GA and WP:FA content, so those selections have themselves also been through review. The "Selected quotes" section contains a balanced number of quotes from multiple varying viewpoints, both supportive and otherwise. Cirt (talk) 20:04, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. The fact that many of the articles relevant to Scientology at GA and FA class is basically irrelevant. If the editors who wish to put forward the pro-Scientology perspective were to improve more of those articles to GA or FA level, they would be included as well. If the originator of this thread is one such editor, I encourage him to join the Wikipedia:WikiProject Scientology and help with the development of the articles favorable to Scientology. John Carter (talk) 20:14, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
I am not pro-Scientology, I'm just tired of double standards. There's plenty of articles and quotes that are anti-Christian, yet do we see them on the anti-Christian page? No, because there's an over representation of Christians on Wikipedia who would be offended and a minority of Scientologists. These "editors" are nothing more than high school drop outs going with the tide. --121.44.111.51 (talk) 11:03, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Actually at present the quote balance is overweighted in support of Scientology. Cirt (talk) 12:43, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Why even have quotes? They're ridiculous, since when have the opinions of celebrities counted for anything? Also, John Carter, your comment on my page was hilarious, basically, because Wikipedia in general is pro-Christian and has no idea about Scientology, it's OK to have a bunch of idiotic crap on their page. Thanks John, that 166 IQ shows in the brilliance of your logic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.44.111.51 (talk) 21:53, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Property?

"Today the total body of beliefs and practices of Dianetics and Scientology are the sole property of the Church of Spiritual Technology" - How can a belief or a practice be property? No one can own a belief or a practice. An organization can own a copyright on books and documents describing a belief, but not the belief itself. Reinderientalk/contribs 06:58, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Tentatively making some changes until I hear anything to the contrary. Reinderientalk/contribs 19:01, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Changed should be made at lede/intro of main article, Scientology, not here. -- Cirt (talk) 17:25, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. And, actually, I think that WP:TRUTH might apply here. If the ideas and beliefs are protected by copyright, patent, or whatever, then, yeah, they are the property of a group. Certainly some of the recent gene patents would also indicate as much. John Carter (talk) 17:37, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
Further discussion about that, should take place at Talk:Scientology, about the main article, Scientology, and not here. -- Cirt (talk) 17:48, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
The information in Scientology and its introduction is unique and different from the information here. If you want to copy the information here to the article there, then I would agree that such changes should be discussed there, but insofar as this is the only copy, I don't see how it should be made invulnerable to correction. Regarding gene patents, I find it somewhat silly to compare a patentable and concrete medical concept to a religious belief. The Catholic church does not hold a copyright on the bible, nor is belief in God property of the church. Reinderientalk/contribs 02:52, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
No, the WP:LEAD at the main article Scientology should be exactly the same as the portal intro subpage here. Please keep such discussions about changes to content, to Talk:Scientology. -- Cirt (talk) 03:08, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
 Done, updated. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 03:12, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Placement on articles

Note: This portal navigation can be placed on articles, and is commonly placed in the See also section of an article on Wikipedia, using the following code:

{{Portal|Scientology}}
This displays as:
{{Portal|Scientology}}

Cirt (talk).

There is a specific difference between the Bible and a contemporary document, religious or no. Most of the material in The Bible has been "out of copyright" for about 2000 years. The written and spoken words of L. Ron Hubbard are protected by copyright. That makes them, as it would make any work within the last seven or so decades the "intellectual property" of the creator or his assigns. This also means that the entity to whom copyright is assigned [in this case, The Religious Technology Center] retains the right, under copyright law, to take legal action against plagiarism, and unauthorized publication of the work, etc.

A practical body of the materials of Scientology is available for free on the "Scientology Handbook" website, in any case. There is, therefore, no substantiation of the criticism of Scientology that it is not freely available to anyone who wishes to learn about it and use it.

68.167.17.61 (talk) 23:48, 21 August 2011 (UTC) GH

Notice from the Portals WikiProject

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   07:44, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

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