BattleTechWiki:Project Portals/Concept

Portals serve as enhanced "main pages" for specific broad subjects. Portals are meant primarily for readers, while encouraging them to become editors of Wikipedia by providing links to project space. Portals are created for articles only and not for article maintenance categories.

The nature of portals

What is a portal?

Portals are pages intended to serve as "Main Pages" for specific topics or areas. They are analogous to our Main Page, the subject of which is knowledge (the broadest subject of all). Portals narrow down the scope a bit to a more specific subject, and they vary in format and approach. Like the Main Page, which itself is not an article per se, portals are supplemental to the this wiki, and provide various alternate approaches to exploring a subject. Innovation is desired and encouraged.

Each portal is named for the subject it covers. Here is the doc that shows the Portal and which topics it covers To set them apart from articles, portals have their own namespace, and so the title of each portal is always preceded by "Portal:". For example Portal:BattleMechs

That's where our Wiki's various navigation systems come in. Including portals. provides a selection of main topics and links to delve into our Wiki's coverage of BattleMechs further. A good synonym for a portal is "doorway to knowledge".

Purposes of portals

Each portal acts as an alternative entrance to a subject. Portals supplement both the main page and the wide range of topics we have. They support their subjects in various ways, including but not limited to:

1. Providing a variety of sample content of subtopics ("topic tasters"), from within each portal's subject, that the reader may find interesting.
2. Aiding navigation. Portals are one of our navigation subsystems, designed to help users find their way around the vast amount of knowledge on our wiki to material within a particular subject.
3. Providing bridges between reading and editing, and between the encyclopedia proper and the our community, via links to pages in project space (and the other namespaces) that are relevant to the portal's subject. A portal may be associated with one or more WikiProjects; unlike a WikiProject, however, it is meant for both readers and editors of BTW, and should promote content and encourage contribution. Note that portals are created for overview topics only and not for article maintenance categories.

Features of portals

Most portals have some combination of the following features...

Selected content

Portals typically include one or more selected content sections that display one or more images or article excerpts. Such as:

• Selected featured article
• Selected featured picture
• Selected general article
• Selected general articles
• Selected image
• Selected images