This portal is a former featured portal candidate. Please see the links under Portal milestones below for its original nomination page and why the nomination failed.
Portal milestones Date Process Result February 25, 2012 Peer review Reviewed January 4, 2013 Peer review Reviewed January 25, 2013 Featured portal candidate Not promoted
Current status: Former featured portal candidate

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On January 1 the following things should be changed:

• Picture: File:Heb cover hi.jpg

• Did you know: Infobox from First Jewish–Roman War

• Quote: Rambam quote from here

There are a few problems with this section:

• Way too long. I think we should have just a paragraph or two of summary, followed by the following: For more information, read the complete article here.
• The line beginning "The weekly portion..." is an unruly mixture of blue and green. Unless it has some deep significance (Herod's renovation of the Second Temple?) I think it should be one solid color.
• The list of commentaries is quite long. I think it should be placed into two left-aligned columns to save space.

A few other concerns

• Perhaps I'm alone in this, but having an Infobox for the Did you know? section seems a little unexciting. Infoboxes are long lists of information that can be useful if someone's looking for it, but otherwise very dry. A Did you know section should be engaging. Thoughts?
• What exactly are the criteria for the "Featured article" section? The current one (Trembling before God) isn't even in the WikiProject! I think the only articles to be included should be those rated FA, A, or GA, and which are part of WP:WikiProject Judaism.

I would like some feedback, but otherwise I guess I'll just WP:be bold and change some stuff myself.ypnypn (talk) 16:18, 8 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to agree that some sort of regularly rotating DYK section, maybe with only a few short summary statements relating to individual articles of specific high importance to the topic, might be the best way to go. It would also be one way to help include in some way some of the articles of significant importance to the topic but not currently at a particularly high level of quality in the portal in some way. John Carter (talk) 18:06, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I added a News section at Portal:Judaism/News. It would be great if we could agree on some guidelines as to what qualifies as newsworthy, how many items to include at a time, and so on. ypnypn (talk) 16:52, 29 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This portal currently includes a section providing a summary of the weekly Torah portion read in synagogues. As is, this section currently takes up a large amount of space, and may not be interesting to all readers.

• Option 1: Keep as is.
• Option 2: Abridge greatly.
• Option 3: Eliminate.
• Option 4: Create a separate subpage of the portal, and move the material there

04:21, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

• Option 1. I don't think the space issue is that overwhelming a problem; it's a nice touch to the portal, IMO. dci | TALK 01:35, 19 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Option 1. Its an excellent aspect of the portal and the links below are highly useful. Keep.Whiteguru (talk) 18:45, 19 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. I would have to say that so far as I can see the section is a clear and obvious impediment to the portal ever achieving Featured Portal status. Frankly, based on previous discussions of other portals, I have no reason to believe that this portal ever has a chance of achieving FP status with the material included in the way it is. And, of course, it is, more or less, our objective that all of our material be improved to the highest quality, which in general means promoted to Featured status. Therefore, I would have to say that keeping this section in the way it is currently included is more or less directly contrary to those objectives. The material might be acceptable for inclusion in some alternate form of the portal, but its current means of inclusion is almost certainly going to prevent the portal ever achieving wikipedia's goal of bringing it to the highest level of quality, as such things are determined with portals. John Carter (talk) 19:12, 19 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Option 1. Torah study is fundamental to Judaim, and the Torah reading component of the portal page provides a small introduction to Judaism's weekly Torah reading tradition. And so I would keep it. -- Dauster (talk) 11:00, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Option 2. While I agree that the Torah portion is a valuable addition to the page, I think it would help the overall balance of the page if it were a bit shorter. Miniapolis (talk) 21:25, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Option 4 (first choice, essentially per generalization of John Carter's comments) Option 1 (second choice). Strong oppose 2 and 3. Got request from FRS. St John Chrysostom ^Δόξα_{τω ^Θεώ} 11:25, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Option 2 -- I was one of those fighting to keep the articles on the torah portions, I'm glad we succeeded, but I think a link to them is sufficient. DGG ( talk ) 00:09, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Closing

The tally of opinions is:

• Option 1: 3
• Option 2: 2
• Option 4: 1
• Other comment by John Carter: 1

One way to interpret this is that no consensus has emerged, so keep Option 1, which is the status quo. Option 1 also has a plurality. Nobody else agreed with John Carter's point that the portal should strive to be of featured quality. It should be noted that the Hebrew version of the portal (see interwiki links) does not contain a long section on the weekly Torah portion, so it is not necessary; however, it does add some value, especially because it changes from week to week, thus giving some readers an incentive to return to this page from time to time.

I agree that the Torah portion description is disproportionately long, but it is not a good use of anyone's time to shorten it. Perhaps someone can come up with readership statistics, but Portals generally get low readership, and reduing the length of the Torah portion summary would have a very low impact.

I am disclosing here that I am Jewish and I am familiar with the weekly Torah portions. However, I don't think that my personal experience colors my neutrality in closing this discussion to maintain the status quo. Chutznik (talk) 18:56, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Continuing from the discussion about including holidays, it seems that no-one has yet opposed to the idea. Now implementation needs to be worked out.

The three ideas I mentioned were:

1. Replace the Star of David in the intro with a picture relevant to the given holiday, which will link to the article about that holiday. A caption could be added if desired.
2. Have a simple banner across the very top, as shown. The date could be added.
   Today is Yom Kippur.
3. Below the intro, provide a full paragraph or two explaining the holiday, similar to the Selected Article.

These were meant to be mutually exclusive; however, we can certainly do two or three of these (although it may get a little overwhelming).

We also need to determine what qualifies for a mention. Do we include Tu B'av, Yom Kippur Katan, Ta'anit Bekhorot, and other really minor days, or do we limit to the main holidays? Also, should we include the Israeli days of Yom Ha'atzmaut, Yom Yerushalayim, Yom Hazikaron, and Yom Hashoah?

What are your thoughts? -- Ypnypn (talk) 13:16, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Let's start off here with a couple of basics. Right now the Portal page does feature a section on the Parshat Hashavua. When does that flip to the next week's entry? StevenJ81 (talk) 13:49, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]