Cyber Nations Wiki talk:Village Pump/Portal namespace

Since the establishment of Portal:Portals in November 2007,  have been a part, albeit a minor one, of the Cyber Nations Wiki. The concept of the portal originated at the and. The idea behind portals is to provide a secondary "Main Page" specifically targeted towards a specific topic. As such, portals are intended for topics which have a wide array of coverage on the Wiki. It would not be recommended, and may be impossible, to create a functioning portal for a topic which only has one or even five articles designated to it.

On Wikipedias which feature portals, it is common for portals to be separated from the wiki's main content using a namespace, usually "Portal:". For example, the poetry portal on Wikipedia is located at. While this has been the model which has been followed on the Cyber Nations Wiki, the "Portal:" namespace has never been defined. As such, portals are currently considered by the wiki software to be normal articles. Portals currently count towards the article count and are included in results accessed from Special:Random.

The reason I am bringing this up is that I, for one, really like portals, as they allow users looking for information to quickly find articles regarding specific aspects of a topic. They also allow for greater creative control than normal articles do: for example, Portal:Orange would not be considered encyclopedic as an article, since it functions more like a directory to other articles than an article itself. However, when used alongside Orange team history, it provides quick access to topics about the Orange sphere (even if it is currently outdated).

I wish to propose that the Cyber Nations Wiki establish a "Portal:" namespace, in order to better differentiate portals from content-based articles and promote the development of appropriate portals on the Wiki. This discussion should remain open for at least two weeks, or longer if it develops to the point where it is warranted, after which the issue should be put to a vote of the wiki community for a further two weeks. During this time, I will make reasonable efforts, and encourage all other interested parties to make reasonable efforts, to bring this matter to the attention of the wiki community via the Village Pump, the information template, and via talk page messages and IRC.

Kindly add discussion points under the following header; a separate header will be created for the vote later on. Please ensure you sign your comments and add indents as appropriate. Michael von Preußen  voicemail  •  nation   @ 7:01, Duodi, 2 Prairial CCXVIII