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There is no fixed length for a formal request for comment (RfC). Typically 7 days is a minimum, and after 30 days the discussion is ripe for closure. The best way to tell is when there is little or no activity in the discussion, or further activity is unlikely to change its result.

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Administrative discussions

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#RfC closure review request at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 433#Closing (archived) RfC: Mondoweiss

(Initiated 28 days ago on 16 April 2024) - already the oldest thread on the page, and at the time of this comment, there has only been one comment in the past nine days. starship.paint (RUN) 03:15, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Requests for comment

Talk:Awdal#RFC - Habr Awal/Isaaq clan

(Initiated 141 days ago on 24 December 2023) ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 21:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

RfC: Tasnim News Agency

(Initiated 91 days ago on 12 February 2024)

Closure request for this WP:RSN RfC initiated on February 12, with the last !vote occurring on March 18. It was bot-archived without closure on March 26 due to lack of recent activity. - Amigao (talk) 02:33, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

RfC: Change INFOBOXUSE to recommend the use of infoboxes?

(Initiated 59 days ago on 15 March 2024) Ready to be closed. Charcoal feather (talk) 17:02, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Before I try to close this I wanted to see if any editors believed I am WP:INVOLVED. I have no opinions on the broader topic, but I have previously participated in a single RfC on whether a specific article should include an infobox. I don't believe this makes me involved, as my participation was limited and on a very specific question, which is usually insufficient to establish an editor as involved on the broader topic, but given the strength of opinion on various sides I expect that any result will be controversial, so I wanted to raise the question here first.

If editors present reasonable objections within the next few days I won't close; otherwise, unless another editor gets to it first, I will do so. BilledMammal (talk) 04:43, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Russo-Ukrainian War#RFC on Listing of Belarus

(Initiated 58 days ago on 16 March 2024) Hello, this RFC was started on 16 March 2024 and as of now was active for more than a month (nearly 1,5 month to be exact). I think a month is enough for every interested user to express their opinion and to vote at RFC and the last vote at this RFC was made by user Mellk on 15 April 2024 (nearly two weeks ago and within a month since the start of this RFC). The question because of which this RFC was started previously resulted in quite strong disagreements between multiple users, but I think there already is a WP:CONS of 12 users who already voted at this RFC. Since the contentious topics procedure applies to page Russo-Ukrainian War, I think this RFC must be closed by uninvolved user/administrator to ensure a valid WP:CONS and to prevent further disputes/edit warring about this question in the future. -- Pofka (talk) 09:50, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Will an experienced uninvolved editor please close this RFC. If there is a consensus that Belarus should be listed, but not as to how it should be listed, please close with the least strong choice, Robert McClenon (talk) 17:08, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

I think it should not be closed with the "least strong choice", but instead with a choice which received the most votes (the strongest choice). The most users chose C variant (in total 6 users: My very best wishes, Pofka, Gödel2200, ManyAreasExpert, Licks-rocks, CVDX), while the second strongest choice was A variant (in total 5 users). So I think the WP:CONS of this RFC question is C variant. -- Pofka (talk) 18:33, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Libertarian Party (Australia)#Conservatism

(Initiated 45 days ago on 29 March 2024) RfC template expired. TarnishedPath^talk 01:22, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Talk: Elissa Slotkin#Labor Positions and the 2023 UAW Strike

(Initiated 45 days ago on 30 March 2024) RfC expired, no clear consensus. andrew.robbins (talk) 04:05, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

WP:RSN#RFC:_The_Anti-Defamation_League

(Initiated 37 days ago on 7 April 2024) Three related RFCs in a trench coat. I personally think the consensus is fairly clear here, but it should definitely be an admin close. Loki (talk) 14:07, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Enforcing ECR for article creators

(Initiated 35 days ago on 8 April 2024) Discussion appears to have died down almost a month after this RfC opened. Would like to see a formal close of Q1 and Q2. Awesome Aasim 00:11, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Brothers of Italy#RfC on neo-fascism in info box 3 (Effectively option 4 from RfC2)

(Initiated 35 days ago on 8 April 2024) Clear consensus for change but not what to change to. I've handled this RfC very badly imo. User:Alexanderkowal — Preceding undated comment added 11:50, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Talk:International Churches of Christ#Request for Comment on About Self sourcing on beliefs section of a religious organization’s article

(Initiated 28 days ago on 15 April 2024) No new comments in eight days. TarnishedPath^talk 01:33, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Havana syndrome#RfC on the presentation of the Havana Syndrome investigative report content

(Initiated 19 days ago on 25 April 2024) No new comments in 12 days. {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 08:52, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Deletion discussions

XFD backlog

V	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Total
CfD	0	0	19	14	33
TfD	0	0	0	2	2
MfD	0	0	2	1	3
FfD	0	0	2	3	5
RfD	0	0	24	49	73
AfD	0	0	0	11	11

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 8#Medical schools in the Caribbean

(Initiated 53 days ago on 21 March 2024) HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 20:38, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 8#Category:French forts in the United States

(Initiated 53 days ago on 22 March 2024) HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 20:38, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Template:User hate CCP

(Initiated 32 days ago on 11 April 2024) Cheers, —Matrix(!) {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 18:58, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

 Doing... —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 00:08, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 24#Category:Asian American billionaires

(Initiated 20 days ago on 24 April 2024) HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 20:38, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 10#Category:19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Réunion

(Initiated 51 days ago on 23 March 2024) HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 13:39, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Other types of closing requests

Talk:Killing of journalists in the Israel–Hamas war#Merge proposal (5 January 2024)

(Initiated 129 days ago on 5 January 2024) The discussion has been inactive for two weeks, with a preference against the merge proposal. CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 19:39, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

 Done Soni (talk) 23:57, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Eat_Bulaga!#Merger_of_Eat_Bulaga!_and_E.A.T.

(Initiated 128 days ago on 6 January 2024) The discussion wasn't inactive for 7 days. It seems there's no clear consensus on merging those two articles into one. 107.185.128.255 (talk) 18:16, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

It's been over a month. So, it could be a good time to close that discussion. 107.185.128.255 (talk) 17:55, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

 Done Soni (talk) 01:31, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Maersk Hangzhou#Second merge proposal

(Initiated 110 days ago on 24 January 2024) Merge discussion involving CTOPS that has been open for 2 weeks now. Needs closure. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 04:46, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@WeatherWriter: I would give it a few days as the discussion is now active with new comments. GoldenBootWizard276 (talk) 00:00, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

As nominator, I support a non consensus closure of this discussion so we can create an RFC to discuss how WP:ONEEVENT applies in this situation. GoldenBootWizard276 (talk) 21:56, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Talk:1985_Pacific_hurricane_season#Proposed_merge_of_Hurricane_Ignacio_(1985)_into_1985_Pacific_hurricane_season

(Initiated 104 days ago on 30 January 2024) Listing multiple non-unanimous merge discussions from January that have run their course. Noah, AA^Talk 13:50, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Pharnavaz_I_of_Iberia#Requested_move_6_February_2024

(Initiated 97 days ago on 6 February 2024) Requested move open for nearly 2 months. Natg 19 (talk) 17:46, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Has now been open for three months. 66.99.15.163 (talk) 19:23, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Talk:12 February 2024 Rafah strikes#Merge proposal to Rafah offensive

(Initiated 91 days ago on 13 February 2024) The discussion has been inactive for over a month, with a clear preference against the merge proposal. CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 19:35, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Rupert_Sheldrake#Talkpage_"This_article_has_been_mentioned_by_a_media_organization:"_BRD

(Initiated 27 days ago on 16 April 2024) - Discussion on a talkpage template, Last comment 6 days ago, 10 comments, 4 people in discussion. Not unanimous, but perhaps there is consensus-ish or strength of argument-ish closure possible. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:24, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to me that there is a consensus here to do anything, with most editors couching their statements as why it might (or might not) be done rather than why it should (or should not). I will opine that I'm not aware there's any precedent to exclude {{Press}} for any reason and that it would be very unusual, but I don't think that's good enough reason to just overrule Hipal. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 01:01, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Forest_management#Merge_proposal

(Initiated 15 days ago on 28 April 2024) As the proposer I presume I cannot close this. It was started more than a week ago and opinions differed somewhat. Chidgk1 (talk) 13:46, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Press_Your_Luck_scandal#Separate_articles

(Initiated 11 days ago on 2 May 2024) Please review this discussion. --Jax 0677 (talk) 01:42, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Agroforestry#Merge_proposal

(Initiated 10 days ago on 3 May 2024) As the proposer I presume I cannot close this. It was started more than a week ago and opinions differed somewhat. Chidgk1 (talk) 13:46, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Pages recently put under extended-confirmed protection

Report

Pages recently put under extended confirmed protection (37 out of 7748 total) () WATCH Page Protected Expiry Type Summary Admin Category:Hamas 2024-05-13 23:01 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement Izno Sde Teiman detention camp 2024-05-13 20:49 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: WP:ARBPIA Ymblanter Çankaya Mansion 2024-05-13 14:18 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement, WP:GS/AA Rosguill Second Battle of Latakia 2024-05-13 13:39 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement ScottishFinnishRadish Alien 2024-05-13 13:23 indefinite move lower to semi, time heals; requested at WP:RfPP The Night Watch Shays' Rebellion 2024-05-13 08:08 2025-05-13 08:08 move dang it. Not used to move protection, I guess.... Dennis Brown Chuck Buchanan Jr. 2024-05-13 02:01 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan Animal stereotypes of Jews in Palestinian discourse 2024-05-13 01:24 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per ARBPIA Daniel Case Michael Ealy 2024-05-13 01:22 2025-05-13 01:22 edit,move Persistent vandalism: racist swinery Drmies Template:Nelson, New Zealand 2024-05-13 00:51 indefinite move Highly visible template that is vulnerable to macron vandalism Schwede66 Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2024-05-12 21:47 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per ARBPIA Daniel Case Interracial marriage 2024-05-12 19:14 2024-11-12 19:14 edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry RoySmith Template:FAQ/FAQ 2024-05-12 10:48 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated Justlettersandnumbers User:Arjayay/Rang HD 2024-05-12 10:46 indefinite edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Rang HD -- requested at WP:RFPP Favonian Rangiya 2024-05-12 09:27 2024-10-16 06:56 edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: confirmed socks edit the article Ymblanter Vaush 2024-05-12 07:35 indefinite edit,move per WP:CT/BLP Primefac Timeline of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in January–June 2015 2024-05-12 04:52 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement Johnuniq Later-no-harm criterion 2024-05-12 03:07 2024-06-12 03:07 edit,move Edit warring / content dispute: Protected per a complaint at WP:AN3 EdJohnston Draft:Lewis Raymond Taylor 2024-05-11 20:41 2024-08-11 20:41 edit,move Persistent sock puppetry; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan Lewis Raymond Taylor 2024-05-11 20:35 indefinite create Persistent sockpuppetry JJMC89 2024 Kharkiv offensive 2024-05-11 12:11 indefinite edit,move Community sanctions enforcement: WP:GS/RUSUKR --requested at WP:RFPP Favonian Drake (musician) 2024-05-11 09:32 indefinite edit,move Contentious topics enforcement for WP:CT/BLP; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan Slovenia 2024-05-11 09:29 2024-05-18 09:29 edit edit wars on the page Tone Timeline of the Israel–Hamas war (7 May 2024 – present) 2024-05-11 03:48 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBPIA Daniel Case Czech Republic 2024-05-11 02:43 indefinite edit Persistent disruptive editing: per RFPP and WP:ARBEE Daniel Case Ben Shapiro 2024-05-11 02:24 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBAP2 Daniel Case Eden Golan 2024-05-11 02:03 2025-05-11 02:03 edit Persistent disruptive editing from (auto)confirmed accounts ScottishFinnishRadish Nguyễn Văn Hùng (martial artist) 2024-05-10 20:21 2027-05-10 20:21 edit Persistent sockpuppetry: User:Nipponese Dog Calvero Favonian Nguyen Van Hung 2024-05-10 20:21 indefinite edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: User:Nipponese Dog Calvero Favonian Phan Bội Châu 2024-05-10 20:21 2027-05-10 20:21 edit Persistent sockpuppetry: User:Nipponese Dog Calvero Favonian Nguyễn Kim Hồng 2024-05-10 20:21 2027-05-10 20:21 edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: User:Nipponese Dog Calvero Favonian Vietnamese people in Taiwan 2024-05-10 20:21 2027-05-10 20:21 edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: User:Nipponese Dog Calvero Favonian McGill University pro-Palestinian encampment 2024-05-10 19:18 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBPIA Daniel Case England 2024-05-10 13:52 indefinite edit Persistent sockpuppetry: request at WP:RFPP Ymblanter Nemo (rapper) 2024-05-10 01:56 indefinite edit,move Persistent disruptive editing: per RFPP; will also log as CTOPS action Daniel Case The Eras Tour 2024-05-10 01:48 2025-01-29 23:36 edit,move Addition of unsourced or poorly sourced content: raise protection to ECP for duration to cut back on fan edits Daniel Case Kim Jae-joong 2024-05-09 23:16 2024-08-09 23:16 edit,move Persistent sock puppetry ToBeFree

Thousands of Portals

The purpose of this posting is to discuss portals, hundreds of portals. There is already discussion at Village pump (Proposals) (see WP:Village pump (proposals)#Hiatus on mass creation of Portals) to stop the creation of large numbers of portals by User:The Transhumanist, and the consensus is going strongly in favor of a hiatus, and there have been no new portals created since 22 February, but there has been no agreement to stop the creation of portals. The discussion at VPR appears to have slowed down, with a very clear consensus for some sort of hiatus, although it is not clear whether everyone agrees that the consensus is to stop the semi-automated creation of portals, or to stop the semi-automated creation of portals by TTH, or to stop all creation of portals by TTH (since there seems to be disagreement on what is semi-automated creation). Some editors have suggested that these portals are the equivalent of redirects by Neelix that warrant mass destruction. Anyway, proposals at VPR are just that, proposals. I am bringing the discussion here.

Perhaps I don’t understand, but User:The Transhumanist appears to be saying that we need to use portals as an experiment in navigation and in innovation. I am not sure that I understand whether, by experiment, they mean testing, a new initiative, or what, but I am not sure that I understand what is being innovated, or why it requires hundreds or thousands of portals. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:51, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Note that the mass hiatus wasn't on me per se, but applicable in general. It applies to everyone. It's so that nobody mass creates portals for the time being. That includes me.    — The Transhumanist   05:53, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

An Example and Some Comments

One of the portals that has been proposed by User:Legacypac for deletion is Portal:English language. A look at it, with its error messages, is sadly informative. It was one of Wikipedia's earliest portals, preceding the involvement of the current portal team of TTH and a few other editors. However, the current portal team has made breaking changes to Portal:English language, apparently in order to attempt to improve the maintenance of portals. They apparently don't know how to keep our existing portals working, so what business do they have creating thousands of additional portals? We are told that the new portals are maintenance-free or nearly maintenance-free, but have the new portals been created at the cost of breaking existing portals? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:39, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Also, TTH says, above, that there is a hiatus that applies to everyone so that nobody mass creates portals for the time being. What is meant by mass creation, as opposed to individual creation? Are they agreeing not to create any portals for the time being? How long a time? Will they defer the creation of any new portals until (and unless) there is a consensus arrived at the criteria for the creation and maintenance of new portals? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:39, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Also, if any editor wishes to propose mass deletion of portals, similar to Neely redirects, that can be Proposal 3 (or 4). Robert McClenon (talk) 03:39, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Further investigation found 2 of the 8 portals linked off the top of the Mainpage had similar Red Script Errors where content should be. User:Moxy has now reverted these to pre-automation status. A lot of effort goes into keeping content linked from the Mainpage error free, yet this little Portal Project group replaced featured article quality portals with automated junk. Legacypac (talk) 03:46, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

See WP:AADD#Surmountable problems. "Something broke but could be fixed" isn't a deletion rationale. Much less a deletion rationale for different pages; that's the guilt by association fallacy. Note also the ad hominem fallacy in there too, making it about specific people and getting back at them and suggesting they're too incompetent to create a new page, etc., instead of the argument focusing on content and our systems of presenting and navigating it. Tsk tsk.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:11, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Proposal 1: Interim Topic-Ban on New Portals

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I propose a topic-ban on the creation of portals by User:The Transhumanist for three months, to provide time for the development of new guidelines on portals, to provide time to dispose of some of the portals at MFD, and to provide time to consider whether it is necessary to mass-destroy portals. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:51, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support as proposer. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:02, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support the true number of portal creations by this user appears to be around 3500 portals since July 2018 (claims this here [1]). There were less than 1700 portals prior. On their talk they said it takes them 3 mins. 3 minutes is not enough time to properly consider content or what should be included. After we get a few automated portals deleted at MFD and the VP discussion reaches some closure I feel strongly we need to delete all the automated portals as a really bad idea. The template that automates these is up for deletion at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2019_February_28#Template:Basic_portal_start_page Further, even though TTH disputes semi-automated creation here he says he uses "semi-automated methods of construction" and is using a "alpha-version script in development that speeds the process further" [2] Legacypac (talk) 03:12, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment. I need to investigate this issue a little further, but I was quite concerned about this before I even saw the thread, because I discovered Portal:Ursula K. Le Guin a few months ago. I've written a considerable portion of the content about Le Guin on Wikipedia, and even I think it's too narrow a topic for a portal; and when I raised this on the talk page, Transhumanist didn't respond, though they've been active. Transhumanist has been around for a while, so if they're willing to voluntarily stop creating portals while guidelines are worked out, I don't see a need for a formal restriction. Vanamonde (Talk) 03:21, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Response from The Transhumanist – The proposer of the hiatus, User:UnitedStatesian, acknowledged that my efforts have been in good faith. Note also that no rules have been broken (to my knowledge) – I carefully went over the existing mass creation rule and portal scope rule before starting. I have been a participant in the hiatus of mass creation discussion, and have voluntarily ceased portal creation since Feb 21, so as not to aggravate the other participants of that discussion. (What purpose would that serve?) I wish the matter to be resolved as much as anyone else. Since scope is actively being discussed over at the portals guideline talk page, it makes little sense to create pages that might be removed shortly thereafter based on new creation criteria. I plan on participating in the discussions, perhaps continue working on (existing) portals, and I have no plans to defy the mass creation hiatus. Nor do I plan on pushing the envelope any further. The VPR community has expressed a consensus that mass creation be halted. Robert McClenon is seeking to go beyond community consensus specifically to stop me from creating any portals at all, which is not what the community decided. If editors in general are allowed to create portals, just not mass create them, as the response to UnitedStatesian's proposal has indicated, why should I be singled out here? A topic-ban would be unjustified given the circumstances, and would be punitive in nature. In such a case, I would like to know what I was being punished for. Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   06:20, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

• @The Transhumanist: I do not share @UnitedStatesian's assumption of good faith. The evidence which I have seen points far too strongly in the other direction for me to sustain that assumption.

Please see for example MFD: Portal:University of Fort Hare. I find it impossible to believe that a remotely competent editor acting in good faith could have created that portal-to-nowhere. If there is some good faith explanation which i overlooked, then I will enjoy hearing it ... but for now, that page looks like just one of many of examples of TTH intentionally creating utterly useless portsalspam in flagrant disregard of any version of the much-hacked portal guidelines, let alone the clear community consensus for selectivity in portal creation as expressed at WP:ENDPORTALS.

As others have noted, this is not TTH's first rampage of disruption. If there really was good faith this time, then TTH needs to urgently some serious explaining of their actions, because they do not look like the good faith conduct of a competent editor. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:07, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support, given Transhumanist's utter refusal to listen to the input at the Proposals thread during the last days, or anywhere else for that matter. Would go further and support a full, indefinite topic ban or even site ban. Every time I've encountered The Transhumanist over the years, it was invariably over some pattern of mindless mechanistic mass creation of contentless pages, which he then kept pushing aggressively and single-mindedly into everybody's face. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:18, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

And now we need to clean this mess up. It took me far too long to find and bundle thirty pages for deletion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Districts of India Portals compared to the 3 minutes a piece he took to create them, but better to head this off before he starts into the other 690 odd Indian districts. Legacypac (talk) 07:33, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

• Quoted Comment on scale of this issue "Since July 1st (after WP:ENDPORTALS was over), over 4500 portals, excluding redirects, have been created (quarry:query/33793); the Transhumanist created more than 3500 (quarry:query/33795); of those, at least 561 were created with a summary along the lines of Started portal, in tab batch save, after batch was inspected: image slideshow minimum 2 pics, no empty sections. No visible formatting or Lua errors upon save, but there may be intermittent errors; report such bugs at WT:WPPORTD so that they can be fixed. Thank you. (quarry:query/33794). Just a note --DannyS712 (talk) 04:42, 27 February 2019 (UTC)" (end quote) |This off a base of just under 1800 Portals existing in July 2018. Legacypac (talk) 07:49, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support. Given the history with TTH—who has been pulling this same kind of "create an unwanted megaproject, force it through without discussion, and expect the rest of us to waste our time maintaining it" stunt for well over a decade (anyone remember The Award Center? Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines? The Admin School?) and always tries the same "well, it wasn't explicitly banned so I assumed it was what you wanted" defense when called out on it, I'd strongly support a full and permanent topic ban and wouldn't be opposed to a site ban; anyone who's been here for as long as TTH and still can't see the issue with Portal:Yogurts, Portal:Rutland or Portal:A Flock of Seagulls is someone who's either being intentionally disruptive or is wilfully refusing to abide by Wikipedia's norms. ‑ Iridescent 08:26, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support temporary topic ban as a first step. We can look at a site ban if he ignores the topic ban. PhilKnight (talk) 08:32, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support A topic ban is necessary while the issue is discussed and mass deletion considered. Adding thousands of inadequate and unmaintainable pages is not helpful. Johnuniq (talk) 09:39, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support A generally-accepted principle of Wikipedia editing is that people who add content, and especially established editors, help to maintain it. Even assuming the best about Transhumanist here, I can't see how they can possibly do this with all these obscure portals. A ban on creating more of them has to be the first step. Nick-D (talk) 10:07, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Reluctantly Support We need time to curate and prune the low-quality portals, otherwise someone will panic and start deleting portals outright. 1:1 (topic to portal) parity is a nice goal, but it isn't readily achievable without the content to fill those portals.--Auric talk 11:33, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support: TTH's approach seems rather cavalier at the moment. A change, as they say, is as good as a test. ——SerialNumber54129 11:58, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose/Wait Let's see if he complies with the eventual results of the discussion at VPP. If he voluntarily agrees to stop, based on community input, then sanctions are not necessary. This seems like overkill right now. First, let the community guidelines pass, THEN let him violate those before we rush to ban. --Jayron32 12:13, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Massive Oppose - why the rush to ban? - the idea that giving a TBAN is the only appropriate means is bonkers - there are ongoing discussions. Currently you are trying to TBAN someone who hasn't broken policy. Let's get the agreements in, see if they stop and only then make any action Nosebagbear (talk) 12:18, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment: Isn't this all very similar to the mass creation of "Outline of" articles by The Transhumanist that met with the same kind of opposition (and tanked an RFA) 10 years ago? If so, then I'd say a topic ban might be in order.--Atlan (talk) 13:37, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

• Yes, it is. UnitedStatesian (talk) 03:26, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support this or a complete topic ban from portals or if this continues simply a complete ban. His latest reply here shows such a complete WP:IDHT attitude, with utterly founded claims about the need to have thousands of portals to be able to find and fix issues (even though many of the now reported issues appear in portals from months ago already), and on the other hand that they have now trouble finding and fixing flaws: "With Legacypac and others actively nominating the new portals for deletion at MfD, our opportunities for improving them and discovering and fixing design flaws are diminishing quickly.", even though perhaps 2 or 3% of the new portals have been nominated, and more than enough similar problematic ones remain to work on (e.g. the inclusion of a DYK which links to red herring on the Portal:Forage fish...). Statements like "Legacypac's approach is to recommend deletion of the new type of portal due to design flaws such as this. " shows a thorough lack of understanding of why these MfDs are made and why so many people support them. The designs flaws are just a small part of the reason for deletion, the lack of interest in, maintenance of, and contents for many of these portals are much more important. Fram (talk) 14:11, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
  • The MfDs are potentially a prelude to an RfC, which may accelerate the process of deletion. With that in mind, the potential shrinkage is worrisome. I'm so tired, I forgot to mention it above.    — The Transhumanist   14:42, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

The MfDs, which impact a tiny portion of these creations but a decent sample of various types of topics, are very useful for finding out what the community finds acceptable or desirable. The MfDs are consensus building (something you forgot/ignored). Soon we will be able to craft acceptance and deletion criteria based on the MfD results. That's how notability and other guidelines get developed, precedent. Legacypac (talk) 15:23, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

• Unnecessary Yes, they need to stop, but they have already agreed to do so (see above: [I] have voluntarily ceased portal creation since Feb 21, so as not to aggravate the other participants of that discussion), and they are unlikely to kneecap themselves by continuing under the massive scrutiny now present. Let's be civil and spare them the block log entry. Current discussion should drive the portal thing towards some practical steps that will likely include the deletion of most of the offending portals, and some agreed-on guideline that prevents mass creation from occurring again. Let's focus on that. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:44, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support – The unilateral creation of thousands of portals must stop. This has been driven largely by one editor, who has made the creation and preservation of portals his or her singular objective. We've seen since the portals RfC that this user will stop at nothing to continue the march of portals...regardless of community concerns, and regardless of Wikipedia policies and guidelines. Removing him or her from the portal topic area is the only way to prevent further disruption. RGloucester — ☎ 15:09, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support - as a first step. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:42, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Unnecessary per Elmidae. Enterprisey (talk!) 19:31, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Unnecessary at this time as the editor has already agreed to stop and discussions are ongoing. Jonathunder (talk) 22:45, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support Although TTH seerms to be acting in good faith he just don't know when to stop, so the community has to do it for them. Miniapolis 23:50, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• Reluctant support TT was one of the first users that was ever nice to me, many years ago, so I'd really rather not, but this is way out of line. Personally tripling the number of portals, a WP feature that almost nobody uses, and with apparenrly very little consideration to what subjects actualy merit a portal is grossly iresponsible. I get that they were upset at the proposed removal of portals, but this is a ridiculous overreaction that benefits nobody, and if they can't see that then a formal restriction is necessary. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:20, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support per User:Fram, and I assume it would also cover conversions of "old-style" Portals to the problematic one-page versions, as well as adding portal links to any article in the mainspace, and all other Portal-related editing. WP:IDHT is spot on: in all of these Portal-related discussions, TTH has again shown what is to me a shocking failure of self-examination: no "Gee, this is another case where a broad swath of the community seems to have a major issue with my behavior, and thus should cause me to step back and assess whether there is 1) anything that, in retrospect, I should I have done differently, and 2) anything I can do now to a) try to mitigate the damage and/or b) regain the communitity's good favor." TTH's factual statement that "I have not created any new Portals since Feb. 21" is meaningless as a commitment to future behavior. UnitedStatesian (talk) 03:24, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Unnecessary As mentioned above, moving to preemptively TBAN an editor who has already agreed to stop while discussion is underway serves no purpose here. If they choose to ignore the community consensus, then we can discuss further preventative measures, but doing so now is premature. As an aside, most of those red errors that are being reported are simple fixes, so anyone who finds one can post a note on WT:WPPORT for one of our editors to fix, or simply add |broken=yes to the {{Portal maintenance status}} template at the top of the page. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 06:11, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support. Portals have not been working for for 13 years. A pause of 3 months is more than reasonable. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:47, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
• Mass portal creation should be consider foul of Wikipedia:MEATBOT. Before continuing, I suggest seeking approval at an RfC, followed by the standard Bot approval process. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:59, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support This is a long-term problem with TTH. It used to be "Outline" pages, & maybe still is. He is always polite & cheery, but completely ignores all criticism and pushes on with his agenda, as his rather scary newsletters show. Johnbod (talk) 15:50, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support. Sensible proposal. Agree with UnitedStatesian that this should also cover conversions of old-style portals. feminist (talk) 05:04, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose TTH has agreed to stop for now, he doesn't need a formal ban when he's already doing it voluntarily. SemiHypercube 17:01, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose Per Elmidae, the user has agreed to stop and has not formally violated policies. We don't need more portals and this behavior needs to stop, but it seems that this has already been achieved for now while discussion is ongoing. — MarkH21 (talk) 08:12, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose - Uneccessary, as The Transhumanist has already ceased such activities (i.e. I have ... voluntarily ceased portal creation since Feb 21 ... I have no plans to defy the mass creation hiatus [that has already been established].). — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 00:04, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is circular reasoning. "I don't think we should have these portals, and others disagree, so I want to punish/shame my principal opponent in hopes of winning." This is several forms of red herring fallacy all at once (including argumentum ad baculum, appeal to spite, poisoning the well, and traitorous critic). If consensus firmly decides we don't want these portals, and then if an editor were to defy that decision and create a bunch more portals of exactly the sort we decided were unwanted, only then would a topic-ban of any kind be warranted.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:54, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
• Strong support this and any other restraint on TTH, up to and including perma-siteban. After stumbling on some micro-portals and MFDing them, I spent a lot of time in September last year discussing these issue ubsuccessfully with the Portals project (see e.g. WT:WikiProject_Portals/Archive 7#Portal_Wish_List, WT:WikiProject_Portals/Archive 7#BrownHairedGirl's_agenda, more at WT:WikiProject Portals/Archive 8)

It was absolutely clear throughout those discussions that TTH had no regard to the balance of opinion in last years RFC, and repeatedly personalised all reasoned criticism of his conduct as "bias", "personal attack" or "bullying"

There were a few other voices in those discussions who urged restraint, such as @Bermicourt, but TTH took no notice of any of it. So all that's happening now was flagged well in advance, and TTH paid no heed until a community outcry. TTH is now pledging restraint, but made similar promises back in September which were ignored when when the heat was off. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:16, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. Respectfully to supporters, this idea of a TB that targets a single editor for something that several of us have been involved with comes off as witch-hunty and scapegoaty. I know that's not what it is; however, that is how it seems – at least to me. Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  09:30, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • That's a really weird oppose, @Paine Ellsworth. If you know it's not actually witch-hunty and scapegoaty, what's the problem? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:48, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
    • uhm, I "know" because I really do want to AGF; the problem is that I can't stand by and watch forty lashes given to someone when I helped tie him to the whipping post, so to speak. Hold us all responsible if you want, but don't single just one of us out for something several of us helped do. Hope that's a bit clearer. Thank you for asking, because I do sometimes have difficulty expressing myself adequately with the written word. Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  10:15, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
      • @Paine Ellsworth: thanks for the reply. Can you explain more about what you mean by helped tie him to the whipping post, so to speak?

I am puzzled by it, because while I was aware that a few others WP:WPPORT supported auto-portals, I was not specifically aware that anyone had encouraged @The Transhumanist's mass-creation sprees of micro-portals and nano-portals.

For example, did you or others support the this creation of over 40 portals per hour?

Did you or others support or encourage the creation of Portal:University of Fort Hare (I have now nominated it at MFD: Portal:University of Fort Hare), which was literally a portal to nowhere?

I ask this, because it seems to me that there is in fact massive gap between the culpability of a) those WP:WPPORT members who supported creating far more more portals than the community supports; and b) TTH, who repeatedly rapid-created created portals which unavoidably meet WP:P2.

That's why I think it's fair to single out TTH. But if I have misunderstood the gap in responsibility, please correct me. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:25, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Responsibility begins with the discussion that saved the portals. It gave the impression that not only was portalspace worth saving, it was worth improving. Then there were those of us who joined the portals project to help when we can, and we did. Perhaps the nom should be held responsible for comparing TTH's actions with the Neelix redirect fiasco? Incomparable, because Neelix created all those filthy dirty redirects all alone, with no help from any members of WikiProject Redirect. TTH had help creating all those filthy dirty portals, though, and with spreading their application. This is outrageously overkill. TTH has ceased making portals all on their own. The nom knows this and yet still had to suggest a topic ban. Why? In my own crummy way of expressing myself with words: pffft! Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  12:57, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose per Elmidae, SMcCandlish and Jonathunder. The user has already voluntarily ceased creating new portals since February 21. There's no need for "the beatings to continue until morale improves". North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 01:39, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Northamerican1000 should also be banned from creating more portals. Creating automated navbox portals that overlap existing portal topics is not cool. Legacypac (talk) 01:46, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

You need to stop scolding everybody who has ever created a portal. I have breached no policies. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 02:18, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Au contraire: North, you need to desist from defending this flood of portalspam. Consensus is now clear that it has gone way too far, and a year ago at WP:ENDPORTALS was very clear that a significant minority of editors supported deleting all portals, while many more supported a purge., Instead you and some others went a spree in the opposite direction. That was at best reckless; at worst, it was wilful disregard of consensus WP:CONSENSUS. And WP:CONSENSUS is core policy, so don't push your luck. The guideline WP:DE is also relevant. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:27, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

The handful of portals I have created is certainly not a spree. Tired of this typecasting and WP:ASPERSIONS against any and all portal content creators. Does nothing to improve the encyclopedia. My !vote is regarding the matter at hand regarding TTH; that's it. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 02:32, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Tired of you defending the indefensible, and then claiming victimhood when challenged. Portals are not content, they are a navigational device ... and defending a spammer does nothing to improve the encyclopedia. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:46, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose TTH stopped created portals when asked and has not resumed since. A topic ban is not needed to stop disruption and imposing one about three weeks after they stopped would be punitive in the extreme. I am though deeply troubled by the personal attacks from some very experienced editors above. Thryduulf (talk) 11:52, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose as unnecessary, two weeks after it was proposed. As I understand it, there were multiple editors involved in this effort, so I don't see why we'd TBAN just one. AFAIK the editor at issue has so far kept their promise to stop making portals for the last two weeks. There's no need for a tban right now, as evidenced by the fact that we've had two weeks of discussion on this topic without a tban in place. Nuke the content, not the editor. Of course, that's based on the voluntary self-ban continuing to be observed. If that were to change, so would my !vote. (Non-administrator comment) Leviv ich 17:11, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Lack of good faith from User:The Transhumanist

I posted above[3] to dissent from @UnitedStatesian's assertion that User:The Transhumanist (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been acting in good faith.

I have just encountered a further small example, from today, of TTH's bad faith. In this case, TTH added[4] the nostubs=no parameter to Portal:University of Fort Hare, contrary to the general consensus that stubs should not be included in a portal's article lists. I see no evidence that TTH sought a consensus to do so ... and the change was was sneaky, because the edit summary add parameter did not disclose the nature of the change.

Since that portal is being discussed at Portal:University of Fort Hare|MFD: Portal:University of Fort Hare, the change should have been disclosed there.

That edit was of course only a small thing, and it has no practical effect because the sum total of non-biographical articles about University of Fort Hare is 1 (the head article). But at this stage, if TTH was acting with any good faith at all, the appropriate way to demonstrate it would have been to support prompt deletion of this portal-to-nowhere, rather than trying to expand its scope into stubs.

I have just checked the last 3 weeks of TTH's contribs, and have found precisely zero instances where TTH has supported the deletion of even the most ridiculously tiny-scope portal which they have created, let alone any instance where they assisted the cleanup by identifying and CSD/MFDing inappropriate creations.

I could understand that at this stage TTH might feel dejected by the deprecation of their portalspamming, and prefer to walk away from the topic ... but that explanation for inaction is undermined by a sneaky attempt to rescue a useless portal by adding stubs to its topic list. This breaches the spirit, if not the letter, of the self-restraint which TTH had promised. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:15, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal 2 - Indefinite ban on page creation

withdrawn

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. Helpful comments above lead me to these numerous Drafts by User:The Transhumanist (ranging from 1 to 12 years old) => Wikipedia:WikiProject_Outlines#Outline_starts:. This is an obsession with mass creation of content no one wants. He has been creating hundreds of useless pages for years and at least 3500 useless automated Portals in the last few months. He has used up his allotment of lifetime page creations on Wikipedia and has a maintenance job to do now on his creations. He should also be working on removal of these useless pages. Therefore I propose a TBAN on page creations in all namespaces, and a TBAN on moves of pages into Mainspace or Portalspace (to prevent the moving of presetup but now empty existing drafts into mainspace), with the following exceptions: Starting an XfD (so he can assist in cleaning yup his mess) and talkpages of other users (for vandal warning etc so he can maintain quality on his creations) and talkpages in general of any existing page. TBAN may be appealed to AN which would want to approve a specific plan for the types of pages he wants to create. Support as proposer Legacypac (talk) 10:44, 1 March 2019 (UTC) Oppose in current form - a TBAN on page creations in all namespaces is too drastic, give how many other namespaces that cuts off. I can understand prohibition on mainspace, portalspace, wikipedia space, or even userspace. But TTH not being able to start talk pages? To upload files? To start community books? That's unnecessary. --DannyS712 (talk) 10:57, 1 March 2019 (UTC) I explicitly exempted talkpages of users but modified so all talkpages could be allowed. If he wants to create 500 books he should get permission. If there is a desire to create articles, he could ask for a relaxation, going through AfC for example, but with a preapproved plan. Legacypac (talk) 11:06, 1 March 2019 (UTC) Oppose This seems overbroad, locking down the English Wikipedia over one user. --Auric talk 11:20, 1 March 2019 (UTC) Umm, this user has a long history of mass page creations. When people object he says no one told him he could not do it. A restriction would not prevent him from creating pages, it would just require him to get the plan preapproved. I don't know what crazy idea he might try next, so block everything except what he gets the community to agree to first. Legacypac (talk) 11:26, 1 March 2019 (UTC) The problem isn’t page creation, it’s MASS page creation (usually using automated tools). Essentially, TTH routinely sacrifices quality for the sake of volume. It is the focus on volume that needs addressing. Blueboar (talk) 12:20, 1 March 2019 (UTC) Yes MASS creation. We don't know what he will MASS create next, so let him propose what he wants to create BEFORE he creates it. If his idea is reasonable, great, but if not we save a ton of work and drama. Legacypac (talk) 12:24, 1 March 2019 (UTC) So why does the original proposal not ban him from mass creation? --Izno (talk) 13:07, 1 March 2019 (UTC) Because 3500 pages [5] is not Mass Creation according to his post near the top of the VPP thread: "Please clarify what you mean by "mass creation"; the figure provided above is less than 10 new pages per day per editor, which has never been considered mass creation by any WP standard. Also, please clarify what you mean by "semi-automated", since all software programs, including Wikipedia's internal text editor, may be considered semi-automated. Thank you. — The Transhumanist 19:25, 26 February 2019 (UTC)"[6] Legacypac (talk) 13:16, 1 March 2019 (UTC) Oppose - the problem is limited to the Portal: namespace; there is no evidence provided that there is a problem in any other namespace (I disagree with the foregone conclusion presented about outlines). This is overreaching by a wide margin. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:33, 1 March 2019 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal 3: Relax tagging and notification requirements for Grouped Portal MfDs

Withdrawn in favor of Proposal 4

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. Creating group MfDs for portals is almost as hard as creating one of these portals. If you use twinkle it creates a bunch of redundent discussion pages and floods the creator's talkpage with templates. TheTranshuminist is insisting every page in a group nomination be tagged for deletion [7]. He is technically correct, but this generates a lot of extra work for no real benefit. Notifying the creator with the first nom in the group should be sufficient. It is not like there are tons of editors with a vested interest in an a given district of India portal. I expect there will be a few more group nominations so addressing this will speed this up. Legacypac (talk) 18:06, 2 March 2019 (UTC) Well, there is no notification requirement that I'm aware of , so I think you can consider that relaxed. Tagging however, is usually considered a hard-and-fast requirement. It isn't exactly fair to discuss deleting a page while not giving any indication to users watching that page. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:13, 2 March 2019 (UTC) But in this particular case, there is no realistic expectation that there are any page watchers to begin with, other than the single individual who created them all. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:19, 2 March 2019 (UTC) Perhaps any change to the requirements should wait until until it has been agreed which topics merit a portal. There is no urgent need to carry out a mass deletion before deciding what to keep. Certes (talk) 18:22, 2 March 2019 (UTC) Grouped MfDs create precedent and help us create policy based on the result. For example if 20+ District of India portals are deleted at MfD a precident against creation of 690 more such portals has been established. Similarly an effort to create portals on all the counties in the US or regional districts in Canada would be easier to shut down. Given how we found two recently automated now broken portals linked off the Mainpage, is the creator even watching them? The Neelix situation creates precedent for this relaxation. We went even further there and dispensed with discussion. Legacypac (talk) 18:28, 2 March 2019 (UTC) Thanks for the clarification. Grouping portals which are clearly going to stand or fall together, such as districts of India, makes sense. Certes (talk) 18:38, 2 March 2019 (UTC) Oppose. Tagging is a requirement, notification is not. And I just completed tagging on all of the Districts of India that are in the bundled nom. Assuming the current crop of MfD's close as delete, the solution is to propose a temporary speedy deletion criterion X3. UnitedStatesian (talk) 00:47, 3 March 2019 (UTC) Those portals aren't representative, they're fringe cases. The set of new portals include a wide range of scope, for example, and many had additional work done on them.    — The Transhumanist   01:45, 3 March 2019 (UTC) What do you mean by "fringe cases" and "representative"? They seem very representative to me. UnitedStatesian (talk) 03:58, 3 March 2019 (UTC) Oppose – Any readers of a page that's up for deletion has a right to know that the page may go bye bye, and that's why the deletion policy requires notice. There's no need to create a separate MfD page for each page being nominated for deletion. Posting a notice on each page that leads directly to the same discussion is easy.    — The Transhumanist   01:45, 3 March 2019 (UTC) Oppose - As User:UnitedStatesian says, we need X3. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:11, 3 March 2019 (UTC) The is no need to relax anything. Mass tagging and mass notification is no great issue. If the consensus is that they should all be deleted, Feds them all through mfd in one list. Ask The Transhumanist to tag and notify. I trust that he will cooperate. Stop the panic. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:27, 4 March 2019 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Concerning further proposals

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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The proper venue for proposals is Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals).    — The Transhumanist   01:49, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

AN is a perfectly good place for many kinds of proposal. With over 300,000 edits and many years here you should know better. Legacypac (talk) 03:51, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

AN is not the proper place for a proposal on regulating content (referring to portals loosely as content). The way forward does not require administrative action, TTH will respect consensus. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:18, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe, I admire your AGF, but I think it is wildly misplaced.

This whole drama arose because after a far-from-unanimous RFC consensus not to actually delete the whole portal namespace, TTH chose to invert the meaning of that consensus to "create thousands of crappy new semi-automated microportals at a rate of up 40 per hour" ... and then go batshit raging at anyone who MFed some of the junk or pointed out that the consensus was not actually for a pressure hose of portalspam.

I don't know whether TTH has comprehension issues or just disdains the consensus, but I don't see any other explanation for the last year of TTH antics ... and either way, I see zero reason to expect that TTH will respect consensus. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:50, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

I’ve known TTH for a long time, although I have never worked with him. He always seemed perfectly reasonable, and really interested in a very worthwhile thing, navigation aids. There’s no problem there. I haven’t followed portal discussions closely, but I have never seen TTH rude or obstinate or disdainful. There must have been a misapprehension. I encouraged him to make auto-portals, and he did, and now he is trouble for it. I think the answer is at WT:Bots. AN should not be for making and implementing portal-specific proposals, the proposals should be directed at TTH. Follow the Bot process for any auto-portal creation. Do not create any new portals without an approved bot. That sort of thing. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:03, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Wrong venue In the nutshell at the top in read mode, and again in bold and red in the edit window, the words scream This noticeboard is for issues affecting administrators generally – announcements, notifications, information, and other matters of general administrator interest.. What we have here is a big idea involving the work of everyone. At most there should be a pointer diff here at AN. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:02, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

As I see it the reason this ended up here is because the initial proposal was for a topic ban, which is AN material. The other related proposals were put here for convenience. At any rate it’s not grounds for a procedural close. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 01:26, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

• This is absolutely the wrong venue, since this is not an "issue affecting administrators generally", it's a proposal (actually a pile of confused and confusing proposals – "I'm not getting my way in version A, so try version B. Nope? Okay, how about C? No? Then here's proposal D ...") that would affect the entire project, and is essentially a content-presentation and navigation matter, not an administrator matter of any kind. This is basically a variant of forum shopping, where instead of moving to a different venue, the idea is dressed up in a new outfit and put before the same venue over and over. The wrong venue. (And is actually regular forum-shopping, too, since we just had a big RfC about this last year.) WP:VPPOL is the place for something like this, especially since one of the various competing proposals includes making changes to WP:CSD policy, something we very, very rarely touch and only after considerable site-wide debate and a clear community consensus that it's required and will not have unintended negative consequences (ever noticed that the sequence of lettered and numbered CSD criteria has gaps in it? The community has revoked several CSD criteria as going too far). CSD is pretty much our most dangerous policy.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:59, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, if I were the one starting this, I would’ve put it on one of the village pumps. At any rate it’s on T:CD now so it will be seen by those who frequent the village pumps (though it won’t show up on watchlists). Also, only two out of the nine deprecated CSDs were repealed for “going too far”. 6/9 were removed because they were redundant and they were folded into other CSDs. This leaves CSD X1, the prototype for the CSD X3 proposal, which was repealed at the conclusion of the Neelix redirect cleanup. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 19:24, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal 4: Provide for CSD criterion X3

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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 Administrator note This proposal is being advertised at WP:VPP and WP:CD, and it has been requested that it stay open for at least 30 days. ~Swarm~ {talk} 05:14, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

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I am entering and numbering this proposal in order to get it into the record, but am requesting that action on it be deferred until the current round of MFDs are decided.

As per User:UnitedStatesian, Create Criteria for Speedy Deletion criterion X3, for portals created by User:The Transhumanist between April 2018 and March 2019. Tagging the portals for speedy deletion will provide the notice to users of the portals, if there are any users of the portals. I recommend that instructions to administrators include a request to wait 24 hours before deleting a portal. This is a compromise between the usual 1 to 4 hours for speedy deletion and 7 days for XFD. The availability of Twinkle for one-click tagging will make it easy to tag the pages, while notifying the users (if there are any). Robert McClenon (talk) 04:21, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

This proposal should be posted in a wider venue, such as WP:VPR or WP:MFD. Many of those portals have been in place for months, making WP:AN too narrow a venue for them. CSD notices wouldn't be placed until after the discussion is over, and therefore would not serve to notify the users of those portals of the discussion. A notice to the discussion of this proposal, since it is a deletion discussion, should be placed on each of the portals, to allow their readers to participate in the discussion. The current round of MfDs are not a random sampling of the portals that were created, and therefore are not necessarily representative of the set. The portals themselves vary in many ways, including scope, the amount of time they've been accessed by readers, quality, number of features, picture support, volume of content, amount of work that went into them, number of editors who worked on them, length, readership, etc.    — The Transhumanist   07:09, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

How would you suggest to get a representative sample? Legacypac (talk) 07:20, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for asking. That would be difficult now, since there are already a bunch of portals nominated for MfD. If those were included, then the sample would already be skewed. I expect a truly random sample would reveal that some portals are worth keeping and others are not. A more important question would be "How would we find the portals worth keeping? Which is very similar to the question "what should the creation criteria for portals be?", the very thing they are discussing at the portal guidelines page right now. Many of these portals may qualify under the guideline that is finally arrived upon there. For example, they are discussing scope. There are portals of subjects that fall within Vital articles Level 2, 3, 4, and 5, and there are many portals of subjects of similar scope to the subjects at those levels. And many of the portals had extra work put into them, and who knows how many had contributions by other editors besides me. Another factor is, that the quality of the navigation templates the portals are powered by differs, and some of the portals are powered by other source types, such as lists. Some have hand-crafted lists, as there are multiple slideshow templates available, one of which accepts specific article names as parameters. Another way to do that is provide a manual list in the subtopics section and power the slideshow from that. Some of the portals are of a different design than the standard base template. Some are very well focused, contextually, while others are not. For example, some of the portals have multiple excerpt slideshows to provide additional context.    — The Transhumanist   07:46, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support in principle. Looking at the existing MFD discussions, TTH seems determined to drag and wikilawyer as much as possible to try to derail the discussions, even for blatantly and indefensibly inappropriate microportals like those discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portals for Portland, Oregon neighborhoods; it's not a good use of anyone's time to go through the same timesink 5000+ times. (The cynic in me says that a speedy criterion wouldn't work as while the creators wouldn't be able to decline the templates themselves, TTH and Dreamy Jazz would probably just follow the tagger around removing the speedy templates from each other's creations.) In practice, it would probably be more efficient to do what we did with Neelix and have a streamlined MFD nomination process, in which "created by TTH" is considered sufficient grounds for deletion at MFD and they default to delete unless someone can make a strong argument for keep. MFD is less gameable and also gives a space for people to defend them in those rare cases where they're actually worth keeping. (Every time I look, I find that the flood of inane and pointless TTH portals has spread further than I thought; shipping containers portal, anyone?) ‑ Iridescent 08:26, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

  Dreamy Jazz seems unlikely do that, having already decided during this debate to stop donating their time to Wikipedia. Certes (talk) 18:06, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• Comment – Another option would be to move these to draft space. The templates and lua modules could be modified so that the portals render right in that namespace (I wish I would have thought of this before). Being in draft space would give time to fix their various problems (keeping in mind that micro-scope is not fixable), and identify the ones worth keeping. I would agree not to move any of them personally, and would propose/request such moves after the new creation criteria guidelines for portals are settled upon. I would also be willing to tag those that did not meet those guidelines with CSD (as creator), saving Legacypac the trouble of nominating them at MfD (he mentioned somewhere that he thought I should help clean up this "mess"). Another benefit of this strategy is that if any of them sit in draft space too long without further development, they automatically become subject to deletion per the draft space guidelines, and those that reach that age without any edits can be deleted en masse without time-consuming effort-wasting MfD discussions. This course of action would of course need the participation of some lua programmers to add the necessary functionality to the modules, which would be a good upgrade for those, to allow for portal drafts to be created in the future.    — The Transhumanist   09:15, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

P.S. @Iridescent and Legacypac: (pinging)    — The Transhumanist   09:28, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• Absolutely not. The problem is that hundreds of portals on obscure topics makes an unmaintainable mess. Passing it to another namespace does not solve the problem which is that the portals are not helpful and are not maintainable. Automated creation of outlines/portals/anything must stop. Johnuniq (talk) 09:36, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• No. I tried moving one broken portal to Draft as a test and it broke even more stuff. Not worth the effort to modify everything for draft space and then let the same little group of editors release them willy nilly back into portal space. Since this group ignored their own Wikipedia:Portal/Guidelines "portals should be about broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers." why should anyone trust them to follow stricter guidelines? Legacypac (talk) 09:57, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Definitely not. What possible benefit would there be to cluttering up another namespace with ≈5000 pages that will never serve any useful purpose? If you want to goof around with wikicode, nobody's stopping you installing your own copy of Mediawiki; we're not your personal test site. ‑ Iridescent 15:38, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• As a general rule, Portal pages should not be draftified. In fact, we should not usually move anything not designed to be an article to draft space. Draft portals should be in portal space, just like draft books should be in book space and draft templates in template space (pages with subpages are a pain to move, and many namespaces have special features that suggest keeping drafts in the same space if possible). If a portal is not ready for viewing by the general public, tag it with a relevant maintenance template and make sure it is not linked to from mainspace or from other portal pages.
• In the case at hand, TT's mass created portals do not seem like they will all be soon made ready for wider consumption, so deleting them seems the better option. —Kusma (t·c) 20:15, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support nuking from orbit: It's the only way to be sure. ——SerialNumber54129 09:32, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• How is this the "only way" to be "sure"? What about actually viewing the portals themselves, as opposed to mass deleting them all sight unseen? North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 03:08, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support enough with the wikilawyering and obstruction. This proposal is a little too narrow though - TTH created 3500+ automated portals but others in his little team created around 1000 more. I just grouped some by User:Dreamy Jazz into Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion#US_County_Portals Legacypac (talk) 09:57, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support These useless broken portals have to go. CoolSkittle (talk) 14:54, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• Could you provide any evidence that all of the portals are "broken"? Many of them that I have viewed and used are fully functional, and not broken at all. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 03:09, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support, too many, too quickly, not enough thought went into their creation. Nuke these, revert other portals that were better before TTH "restarted" them. Automation should help with portal maintenance, not replace portal maintenance or move the maintenance burden to navboxes or other places. —Kusma (t·c) 14:57, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support, sensible and fair way to deal with these. Johnbod (talk) 16:53, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support: MFD could never handle the overwhelming amount of unnecessary and unsustainable portals, considering the magnitude of TTH's portal creation entering the thousands. –eggofreason^talk 20:12, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support nuking. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:30, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Transcluded to Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 20:31, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support mass creation of portals on these topics isn't appropriate without wider discussion, and the automated/semi-automated method used to create them doesn't produce high quality output. Portal:Sierra County, California, for example, is about a county with a population of 3,240, and consists of the lead of the main article, a few random contextless images grabbed from that article (mostly maps or logos) and portal boilerplate. Cleaning these up will require a temporary speedy deletion criterion, I don't think MfD could handle the load. Hut 8.5 22:25, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support as proposer. I had already suggested deferring, but am satisfied that it is going ahead to mass-delete. I will add that, after a consensus is reached on whether and how to use portals, any that were deleted and are needed are available at Requests for Undeletion. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:01, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
• This mass page creation went against WP:MEATBOT and at least the spirit of WP:MASSCREATION if not the letter. An appropriate remedy for automated script and semi-automated creation is speedy deletion. Did you know they were driving for 10,000 portals at a rapid pace? It's here [8] Legacypac (talk) 04:44, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose any and all notions of creating new CSD criteria at any drama board. Discussions here are too rushed, too emotive, too reactionary. Use WT:CSD. Consider using a WT:CSD subpage RfC. Do not attempt to mandate the detail of policy from a drama board. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:52, 4 March 2019 (UTC) Transclusion is not good enough. The discussion needs to be searchable from WT:CSD, and the specifics of any and all new criteria need to address the Criteria for a new CSD criterion. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:55, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Many editors at the Village Pump discussion, the Tban discussion above, and at MfDs also supported this. We do not need to fragment this discussion further. Legacypac (talk) 05:12, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Proposal 1 will make this Proposal 4 moot. This Proposal 4 is not a proper CSD implementation. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:41, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe: Proposal 1 is about stopping TTH from creating new portals. Proposal 4 is about deleting those he created in the last couple of months. How is P1 going to make P4 moot? —Kusma (t·c) 10:19, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

List them all in an MfD, if they must all be deleted. A CSD that enables self appointed decision makes for which should go and which might be ok, is inferior to MfD. MfD can handle a list of pages. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:24, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

If you want them all at MfD stop objecting to the listing of specific Portals at MfD. Legacypac (talk) 01:34, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

No. Some of the Portals I would support for deletion, and others definitely no. This makes the proposal for a CSD invalid. It fails the CSD new criterion criteria. The proposal is neither Objective or Uncontestable. It would pick up a lot of portals that should not be deleted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:44, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support. No care at all went into these portals, they are mindless creations with loads of errors and little actual benefit for our readers. I would also support the restoration of all pre-existing portals to the pre-transhumanist version, the new "single page" version may require less maintenance, but is way too often clearly inferior (see e.g. this, which is more like vandalism than actual improvement, and has been reversed since). Fram (talk) 10:31, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment. Anyone restoring old multi-subpage portals should bear in mind that they will require maintenance. If there is no-one willing to maintain them, they, too are likely to be MfDed. No old-style portal with a willing and active maintainer has been converted as far as I know, so I suggest that anyone restoring them should be willing to maintain them. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 16:47, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
  • No. Converting an unmaintained but well-designed portal into an unmaintained semi-automated worse portal is not the way forward. Any claims that the new portals are maintained or don't need maintaining is false, as the many problematic new portals demonstrate. Fram (talk) 17:00, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Portal:Germany was converted (more than once) although it has maintainers. To make sure your portal isn't "improved", you need to put a specific template on the page, which isn't very obvious. There are old-style multi page portals that require only minimal maintenance, and where the conversion removed specific features. All those should be reverted, also to protect the subpages from overzealous deleters (the worst is deleting the /box-footer subpages; this breaks all old revisions by removing a necessary closing div). —Kusma (t·c) 17:21, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose A mass-deletion of the new generation portals. Listing them at MfD will be sufficient for any that do not meet the criteria laid out in the portal guidelines (which are still under discussion). It makes little sense to remove the whole batch because some of them are problematic. They would need to be properly triaged to ensure the good ones are not caught in the process. I would of course, help with said triage. We're not trying to create more work for the community, just preserve good content. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 23:47, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - You created more work for the community by creating thousands of portals, some of which do not work, and with no intention to maintain them. I see no evidence that this effort created good content that needs to be preserved. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:17, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

There is no new content in the automated portals, it's all poorly repackaged bits of existing content. Legacypac (talk) 04:40, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

All portals, old or new, good or bad, manual or automated, repackage existing content. That's their job. New content belongs in articles. Certes (talk) 11:20, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

• Strong oppose per wumbolo below: criterion P2 already covers a number of these, the rest should be discussed. I still stand by my original comment which follows this addition. Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 22:37, 13 March 2019 (UTC) Original comment: Weak oppose on principle. CSD is a necessary evil, and I don't think we should be hasty to add another criterion that skips our usual consensus process. I'm fine with nuking these portals and not opposed to deleting them, any diamonds in the rough will prove their worth by being created again, but I would prefer one big MfD with the rationale "created by The Transhumanist" which allows proper determination of consensus and gives those who want to spend their time triaging a chance to do so. Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 08:03, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Building multipage MfDs like Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portals for Portland, Oregon neighborhoods is time consuming and tedious. A temporary CSD is rhe way to go. Consensus against this mess of new portals has already been established at VP, AN and in the test MfDs. Legacypac (talk) 17:20, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support due to the massive amount of time it would take to put the ~4500 portals through MfD. MfD has been swamped with portal deletion requests from some time ago, and I can't see all this stuff removed via MfD in the foreseeable future (as someone said earlier, there is still a lot of Outlines left over from one of TTH's previous projects, so who knows how long it would take for MfD to delete all of this). This CSD X3 would streamline the process, and it would probably only take a few days to a week. It would help, as also mentioned earlier, to extend the criterion to the other users involved in the mass creation of these portals. Rlin8 (☎·✎·📧) 03:31, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  • MfD has never had an issue to nominations of list of pages. 4500 separate MfD nominations would be absurd, but a list would be OK. If each is new, and has a single author, notifications of the author will be trivial. A CSD proposal shortcuts a discussion of the merits of the new portals, and pre-supposes deletion to be necessary, contrary to deletion policy. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:01, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

TTH demands we place notification on every portal. We can skip notifying him, but building even 20 page MfD's is very time consuming. How do you propose to discuss 4500 or even 100 assorted portals at a time? These took 3 min to make - but far more than 3 min to list, tag, discuss and vote, then delete - when you add up all the time required from various editors and Admins. The test MfDs are sufficent and the very strong opposition to this automated portal project justifies this temporary CSD. Legacypac (talk) 04:16, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

"TTH demands we place notification on every portal"? Legacypac, I have missed that post by him. If he did that, it needs to be repudiated. If these are new pages, and he is the only author, it is sufficient to notify him once. If all 4500 are essentially variations on the same thing, as long as the full set is defined, and browsable, we can discuss them all together at MfD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:34, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

User:SmokeyJoe during the Portland Oregon neighborhood MFD I specifically said I was not tagging all the related portals but he insisted I tag here [9] I could not get support in the section above to relax the MfD tagging because others wanted this CSD. During the Delete Portals RFC TTH went all out insisting every portal including the community portal be tagged for deletion - then he did it himself. That brought in all kinds of casual infrequent editors who were mostly against deleting the community portal. (Even though that was Pretty much pulled out of consideration for deletion before the tagging project). That massive tagging derailed the deletion RFC. By making cleanup as hard as possible TTH is making a lot of people want to nuke everything. Legacypac (talk) 06:11, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Legacypac's analysis is erroneous and misleading. The WP:ENDPORTALS RFC was a deletion discussion, and posting a notice on each page up for deletion is required by deletion policy. Note that the Community Portal was only mentioned twice. A portal that was the basis for about 50 oppose votes was the Current Events portal. Neither the Community Portal nor the Current Events portal were exempted in the proposal at any time. If you didn't count those, that left the count at about 150 in support of eliminating portals to about 250 against.    — The Transhumanist   07:25, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe: (edit conflict) See the top of this section for the referred to statement, which is not exactly as he quoted. A notice posted at the top of the portals slated by this proposal would be appropriate. Legacypac has been posting notice for his multi-page nominations using the {{mfd}} template, which auto-generates a link to an mfd page of the same title as the page the template is posted on. Rather than following the template's instructions for multiple pages, he's been creating an MfD page for each, and redirecting them to the combined mfd. Then a bot automatically notifies the creator of each page (me), swamping my user talk page with redundant notifications. Thus, Legacypac believes he'll have to create thousands of mfd redirect pages, and that I somehow want 3500+ notifications on my talk page.    — The Transhumanist   07:10, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

You want us to manually tag pages for deletion that you used an automated script to create? You flooded Wikipedia with useless pages in violation of WP:MEATBOT but you are worried about having to clean up your talkpage notices? Just create an archiving system for your talkpage like we did for User:Neelix's talkpage. If you don't want notices you could start tagging pages that fail your own guidelines with "delete by author request" instead of commenting on how we will do the cleanup. Legacypac (talk) 08:37, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

TTH, if you don't want so many deletion notices on your talk page, then remember in future not to create thousands of spam pages. Please help with the cleanup, rather than complaining about it.

@Legacypac: good work MFDing the spam, but it does seem that you are using a somewhat inefficient approach to tagging. Have you tried asking at WP:BOTREQ for help? In the right hands, tools such as AWB make fast work of XfD tagging. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:21, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support whatever course of action that will result in every portal created in this manner being deleted with the minimal of time and effort required. TTH has set up his automated tool, created a massive mess, and left it unattended for others to sort out. It should take less time to clean up this mess than it did to make it, not more. Nuke the lot and if there is anything of value lost then TTH can manually request pages to be restored one at a time at DRV. Fish+Karate 11:19, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support per Fish and karate. RGloucester — ☎ 14:20, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
• Strong oppose as written. I could support something that explicitly excluded portals which are in use and/or are being developed, but the current proposal to indiscriminately delete everything, including active portals, unless the admin chooses to notify any editors and the ones notified happen to be online in a narrow time frame is significantly overly broad. Thryduulf (talk) 01:54, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support Not that portals are that bad, but I don't think we need portals on smaller subjects. (Portal:Spaghetti when we already have Portal:Pasta? Portal:Nick Jr., anyone?) Some might be worth keeping, but a lot are unneeded and unmaintainable. At least it's not a Neelix case. SemiHypercube 16:57, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @SemiHypercube: "Some might be worth keeping" is actually an argument against this proposal. Thryduulf (talk) 12:08, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
    • @Thryduulf: Kind of, but that might be a reason not to just mass delete all at once. In the Neelix case there were some redirects that were actually useful, so a separate CSD criterion was used to keep some redirects at the admins' discretion, so this might be a similar case (before you say that contradicts my "it's not a Neelix case" statement, I meant that in terms of what the redirects were about) SemiHypercube 12:23, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
    • It violates points 1 and 2 of the requirements for CSD criteria: objectivity and unconestability. Unless all the portals covered should be speedily deleted then none of them should be. If you only want to delete some of them then you should be opposing this criterion (just like you should have opposed the subjective Neelix criterion). Thryduulf (talk) 12:34, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

*Support Only realistic way to deal with these. Johnbod (talk) 01:57, 11 March 2019 (UTC) Duplicate !vote struck. GoldenRing (talk) 10:16, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

• Request the posting of a notice at the top of each of the pages being nominated here for mass deletion, as required by the Deletion Policy. This proposal is currently a gross violation of the deletion policy because it is a discussion to delete 3500+ pages, that have been created over the span of a year, that are presently being viewed hundreds of thousands of times per month (projected to millions of times over the coming year) by readers of Wikipedia. The proposal for mass deletion has been made without the required notice being posted at the top of the pages to be deleted. This is being decided by a handful of editors unbeknownst to the wider community, namely, the readership of the portals to be deleted. It may be that those reading such notices would decide that the portals should be deleted, but the point here is that you are denying them the opportunity to participate in the deletion discussion as required by the deletion policy.    — The Transhumanist   21:12, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Request you stop wasting people's fucking time. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:41, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

• He switched back to Outlines Special:Contributions/The_Transhumanist which are another unpopular plague for Wikipedia. The assertion that hundreds of thousands of readers a month are looking at his 3500 portals is fanciful at best and not supported by readership stats. Legacypac (talk) 21:58, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Support opposing anything TTH says from now on. Per OiD. ——SerialNumber54129 13:30, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Strong oppose taking ad hominem arguments into consideration. Thryduulf (talk) 13:49, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Oppose WP:BLUDGEONING. ——SerialNumber54129 15:48, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

• @Legacypac, technically he's probably telling the truth. Even obvious drivel like Portal:Coconuts averages around five views per day, thanks to webcrawlers and people who have the articles watchlisted and are wondering "what's this mystery link that's just been spammed onto the article I wrote?"; multiply that by 3500 and you have 500,000 pageviews per month right there. ‑ Iridescent 22:52, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

• Comment Neelix created about 50,000 redirects, which were reviewed by the community. The number of portals is an order of magnitude smaller. If X3 is to be introduced, it should involve a similar review process. We should certainly delete portals which have too narrow a scope or are of poor quality and cannot be improved. However, systematic deletion of all portals which qualify for consideration, purely on an ad hominem argument, would be as wrong as semi-automatic creation. Certes (talk) 10:51, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Absolutely not. Look at the rate these were created [10] sometimes several dozen an hour, and sometimes an average of 12 seconds each. If so little thought went into creation, why make deletion so difficult? The Neelix cleanup took far too long (I was a big part of it) and we deleted the vast majority of those redirects anyway the extra hard way. As far as I could see the editors who insisted we review everything did none of the reviewing. Also, these were created in violation of WP:MEATBOT which is a blockable or at least sanctionable offense Legacypac (talk) 11:04, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Two wrongs do not make a right - it is much more important that we get the cleanup right than it happens quickly. Whether or not TTH is blocked or otherwise sanctioned is completely irrelevant. While many (maybe even most) of the created portals should be deleted not all of them should be, and this needs human review: see requirement 2 for new CSD criteria at the top of WT:CSD. Thryduulf (talk) 12:07, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

@Thryduulf, Certes, SmokeyJoe, and Legacypac: Concerning the rate, Legacypac's observation is not accurate. What the edits he is citing do not show, is the method by which the pages were created: they were created in batches, in tabs. Before saving, all the pages/tabs were inspected. For the pages that did not pass muster, such as those that displayed errors (this did not catch all errors, because lua errors can be intermittent or turn up later due to an edit in source material being transcluded), the tabs for those were closed. In a batch of 50, 20 or 30 might survive the cull (though batch sizes varied). Some tabs got additional edits in addition to inspection, to fix errors or remove the sections the errors were in, or further development. After all the tabs in a batch were inspected and the bad ones culled, the remaining ones were saved. That's why the edits' time stamps are so close together. If you look more closely, you'll see the time gap is between the batches rather than the individual page saves. Therefore, WP:MEATBOT was not violated.    — The Transhumanist   18:55, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

He claims [11] he created 500 portals in 500 to 1000 minutes. and is using a script Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion#User:The_Transhumanist/QuickPortal.js If this is not MEATBOT we should refind MEATBOT as meaningless. Legacypac (talk) 19:07, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

A minute or two per portal of the new design sounds about right. Note that the script doesn't save pages. It puts them into preview mode, so that the editor can review them and work on them further before clicking on save.    — The Transhumanist   19:39, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

@Legacypac and The Transhumanist: As I said above, the method of creation is irrelevant to this proposal, as is what (if any) sanction is appropriate. Likewise discussions of WP:MEATBOT don't affect this at all. What matters is only that these pages exist but some of them should not, this proposal needs to be rejected or modified such that it deletes only those that need deleting without also deleting those that do not. Thryduulf (talk) 20:42, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

• Procedural note I have advertised this discussion at WP:VPP and would encourage others to add links where they think interested editors might see. I think this should remain open for 30 days, as it is quite a significant policy change. GoldenRing (talk) 09:24, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support now that the MfDs (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) are closing with strong consensus around delete, it is clear this is the fastest path to improving the encyclopedia (which is what we are here for, remember?) Any argument that 3,500 more portals have to go through MfD is strictly throwing sand in the gears. It is going to be enough manual labor pulling the links to the deleted portals from all the templates and pages they have been added to. UnitedStatesian (talk) 15:15, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
  • That shows that a speedy deletion criterion is possibly warranted for some, but several comments on those discussions - including your own at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Spaghetti - indicate that this proposed criterion is too broad. Thryduulf (talk) 15:33, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
    • You misunderstand my comment at that MfD: I strongly support that portal's deletion and all the others that would be covered by this proposed criterion. UnitedStatesian (talk) 15:37, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
      • You supported the deletion of Portal:Spaghetti because the topic was covered by Portal:Pasta, even though Portal:Pasta would be deleted under this criterion? That's rather disingenuous at best and very significantly and unnecessary disruptive at worst. Portal:Pasta is an example of a portal that should not be deleted without discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 16:00, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
        • Again, you misunderstand my reasoning: I was specifically pointing out to another editor that the existence of Portal:Pasta could NOT be a reason to delete Portal:Spaghetti, since in my opinion Portal:Pasta would likely also be deleted. Instead, I think the current Wikipedia:Portal/Guidelines provide ample OTHER reasons for deleting both portals (and many, many others, of course). Hope that clarifies. UnitedStatesian (talk) 17:55, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
• Strong oppose and keep all. WP:P2 covers unnecessary portals, and there is no rationale presented other than WP:IDLI to delete a large proportion of all of them, which were all kept after a RfC in 2018. The next time content policies are created at AN by the cabal of admins, I am retiring from Wikipedia. wumbolo ^^^ 16:40, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

  @Wumbolo: Well, if it came to that, take it to WP:RFARB first. Given the past history of WP:FAITACCOMPLI and WP:LOCALCONSENSUS extremism (i.e., WP:FALSECONSENSUS) cases, I have little doubt that ArbCom would agree to take a case about a gaggle of anti-portal people WP:GAMING the consensus-formation process by inventing sweeping policy changes out of their butts in a venue few content editors pay attention to and which is clearly out-of-scope for such a decision, even if it somehow had sufficiently broad input (e.g., via WP:CENT). I'm skeptical any alleged consensus is going to come out of this discussion, anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:33, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support This is a repeat of the Neelix situation. ―Susmuffin ^Talk 00:01, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @Susmuffin: The situation has similarities, but the proposed criterion is not comparable. Criterion X1 applied only to redirects created by Neelix that the reviewing administrator reasonably believed would be snow deleted if discussed at RfD (i.e. they had to evaluate each redirect), this criterion would apply to every portal created by TTH in the timeframe without any other conditions and without the need for anyone to even look at anything other than the date of creation. Thryduulf (talk) 00:13, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
    • Honestly, there are far too many portals to be deleted through the usual channels. However, an quick evaluation would be reasonable, provided we keep the portal system itself. ―Susmuffin ^Talk 00:24, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Unlike Neelix who created some reasonable redirects along the way, these autogenerated portals are of uniformly low quality. The community has looked at representive samples across a variety of subject areas at MFD and the community has already deleted 143 of the 143 portals nominated at closed MfDs. The yet to be closed MfDs are headed to increasing that number. No one has suggested any alternative deletion criteria for X3. Legacypac (talk) 00:45, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

That nobody has suggested an alternative is irrelevant - it's not up to those who oppose this proposal to fix it, and those who support it are by-and-large ignoring the objections. The MfDs have been selected as a representative sample of those that, after review, are not worth keeping and have been reviewed by MfD participants. This does not demonstrate that deletion without review is appropriate - indeed quite the opposite. Remember there is no deadline, it is significantly more important that we get it right than we do things quickly. Thryduulf (talk) 09:59, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Not particularly similar to the redirect situation that occurred; portals are vastly different in nature and composition from simple redirects. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 03:16, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose as unwarranted and dangerous (and circular reasoning). First, we do not modify CSD without a strong community (not admins' star chamber) consensus that an entire class of material is not just categorically unwanted but so unwanted that it should be deleted on sight without any further consideration. It's our most dangerous policy, and a change like this to it should be an RfC matter at WP:VPPOL. In theory, it could be at WT:CSD, except there is not yet any establishment of a consensus against these portals, and VPPOL is where that would get hashed out, since it's a project-wide question of content presentation and navigation (and maintenance, and whether tools can permissibly substitute for some manual maintenance, and ...). The cart is ahead of the horse here; we can't have a speedy deletion criterion without already having a deletion criterion to begin with. I strongly agree with SmokeyJoe: "Oppose any and all notions of creating new CSD criteria at any drama board. Discussions here are too rushed, too emotive, too reactionary."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:05, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose – WP:P2 covers problematic portals just fine. A concerning issue here is that some users herein appear to simply not like portals in general, and so there are several arguments above for mass deletion as per this "I don't like it" rationale. Mass deletion should be a last step, not a first step, and portals should be considered on a case-by-case basis. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 22:22, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

You created some with the same tools. One or two of your creations are now at MfD which is why you are now engaging against this solution. We will consider each of your creations at MfD. Legacypac (talk) 02:34, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

My !vote here is based upon my view of the matter at hand, and as such, it stands. Period. Regarding my portal creations, so what? You come across as having a penchant for scolding content creators on Wikipedia if you don't like the medium that is used. Please consider refraining from doing so, as it is unnecessary, and patronizing. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 01:12, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• @Northamerica1000: I agree - for example, I actually welcome the creation of Portal:Economics because I think econ should be established as distinct from business as in Portal:Business and economics. Qzekrom 💬 ^they_them 02:20, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose - this CSD seems have to no more objective criteria than "shoot unless someone defends it". For this to be justified, they'd have to explain how no-one reacting within 24 hours was sufficient reasoning. As far as the initial proposal included, it didn't contain any acceptable objective criteria for something warranting deletion on quality grounds. Far worse, it didn't contain suitable justification (whether popularity/quality) for these portals to impose such a major hindrance to Wikipedia as to warrant a process with as few eyes (per consideration) as CSD. The nominator might have had more luck with a PortalPROD mechanism. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:09, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

This CSD exactly meets each criteria for CSD's at the WP:CSD page. It is clear. It is easy to decide if the page meets the CSD. We ran 145 of these portals through MfD already and none survived. Numerous editors suggested this CSD in the Village Pump discussion. These mass created portals universally have the same flaws. Therefore this oppose rational is flawed. Legacypac (talk) 02:34, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support: will allow to quickly manage the auto-created portals of zero utility. --K.e.coffman (talk) 02:23, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support enthusiastically. Taking all these portals through MFD would be a massive drain on community resources. TTH created these portals at sustained speeds of up to 40 per hour, so even the time taken to apply a CSD tag and assess it 24 hours later will require more editorial time than TTH took to create them. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:23, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
• Strong oppose - There are good quality portals that will be excluded, few maybe, but deserve to remain. For example Portal: Cities, Portal: Architecture Portal:Sculpture.Guilherme Burn (talk) 11:40, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @Guilherme Burn, maybe those are worth keeping. Or maybe not. But even if they are good, they are not worth the price of the community committing huge amounts of time to individually debating every one of the thousands of useless portals which members of the portal project have spewed out over the last year (often as drive by creations, and which project members have then piled into MFDs to keep.

If the Portals Project had exercised discretion so far, then we would be in a very different place. But it's utterly outraegous to ask the community to devote more time to assessing this spam than the Portal Project put into creating them. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:10, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Could these portals be marked to be spared?Guilherme Burn (talk) 13:03, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@Guilherme Burn: not according to the proposal as written. The only chance of saving is if an admin chooses to notify and wait 24 hours and somebody objects within those 24 hours and someone spots that CSD has been declined previously if it gets renominated. Thryduulf (talk) 14:01, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@Guilherme Burn: Portal:Cities is totally moribund and unread, and has never had a single participant. Portal:Architecture dates from 2005 and wasn't created by TTH or this tag-team, so wouldn't be deleted regardless (although I imagine the enormous wall of pointless links which TTH's bot dumped onto the page a couple of months ago would be reverted). ‑ Iridescent 14:08, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@Iridescent and BrownHairedGirl:One portal that does not meet Mfd criteria is enough for me to keep my opinion. Portal:Cities Although poor visualized is an important and good quality portal and the Portal:Sculpture (erroneously I quoted another portal) as well.Guilherme Burn (talk) 13:20, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

@Guilherme Burn: please can you clarify that statement that One portal that does not meet Mfd criteria is enough for me to keep.

Are you saying that you are willing to personally scrutinise a few thousand drive-by Portals at MfD in order to find the one which should be kept? Or do you want others to do that work?

TTH as made it very clear that these portals took on average between one and two minutes each to create ([12] Have you tried creating 500 portals? It is rather repetitious/tedious/time-consuming (from 500 to 1000 minutes)). So many multiples of that-one-to-two minutes per portal do you think it is fair to ask the community to spend scrutinisng them? And how much of that time are you prepared to give? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:12, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

So many multiples of that-one-to-two minutes per portal do you think it is fair to ask the community to spend scrutinisng them?Yes. The community also failed to set criteria for creating portals. What is the difference of Portal: Lady Gaga to Portal: ABBA? For me both should be excluded. If the community not had problems to create a portal for a unique singer, why now have problems with someone who has decided to create portals for lot of singers? And to be honest I do not think so much work like that, Mfd can be executed in blocks excluding several portals at the same time.Guilherme Burn (talk) 17:11, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose per SmokeyJoe et al. Completely unnecessary to override already existing procedure. Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  17:12, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @Paine Ellsworth: the administrative work of trawling through several thousand drive-by-created micro-portals is huge. Cleaning up this flood of portalspam through MFD requires a huge amount of editorial time, vastly more than was involved in creating the spam.

If you think that existing procedure is fine, why aren't you devoting large hunks of your time to doing the cleanup by the laborious procedure you defend? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:33, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Because...? I don't know, I guess I think this whole thing is rather more of a knee-jerk reaction than a brainy, measured response. Sure I've done my share of big, teejus jobs for the project and plan to continue (on my terms). I have a lot of respect for editors like yourself and TTH who've been lifting this project out of the primal soup of its beginnings even longer than I have (I went over ten in January, or was it Feb? whatever) and I'm tired of seeing good, solid editors get reamed for their work and retire, just leave or get banned. Don't think it can't happen to you, because as good as you are, neither you nor the rest of us are immune to the gang-up-on-em mentality that turns justice into vengeance 'round here. Think you should also know if you don't already that I'm about 95 farts Wikignome and 5 parts other, and it takes a lot less for us to think we're being badgered and handled. I voted correctly for me and my perceptions, and I don't expect either of us will change this unwise world one iota if you vote you and yours! WTF ever happened to forgiveness? REspectfully, Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  13:28, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• @Paine Ellsworth: Thank you for adding the words that I dared not write in case I was next against the wall. Certes (talk) 16:31, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• @Paine Ellsworth and Certes: I genuinely don't in any way doubt the good faith of either of you.

But it seems to me that the unintended effect of what you are both saying is something like "I am not making any effort to assist the cleanup of this mass portalspam, but I will take the effort to oppose measures which reduce the huge burden on those who are actually doing that necessary cleanup work".

As I say, I do not believe that is what either of you intend. But all I see from either of you is opposition to any restraint on the portalspammer, and opposition to anything which would assist the cleanup. I respect the fine principles from which you two start, but I urge you to consider the effects on the community both of not easing the cleanup burden and of continuing to describe the likes of TTH in positive terms. Look for example at my post in a thread above about the #Lack_of_good_faith_from_User:The_Transhumanist, and at Iridiscent's observation above that of TTH's previous history of spamming useless pages.

As to lifting this project out of the primal soup of its beginnings ... that's an extraordinary way to describe TTH's spamming of hundreds, if not thousands, of useless, unfinished micro-portals. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:53, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

I am not making any effort to assist with mass deletions, beyond !voting to delete the clearer cases. We already have enough enthusiasts working in that department. Until recently, I had been adjusting individual portals and enhancing the modules behind them to improve quality, but I slowed down when it became obvious that my contributions in that area will be deleted. Certes (talk) 00:19, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

So that's as I feared, @Certes: members of that WikiProject are leaving it to others to clean up the mess created by the WikiProject and its members.

That only reinforces my impression of a collectively irresponsible project, which doesn't restrain or even actively discourage portalspam, doesn't try to identify it, and doesn't assist in its cleanup.

That's a marked contrast with well-run projects. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:06, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

To editor BHG: not a surprising perspective, possibly a hasty generalization, however that's not your worst move. Your worst move is to consider "mass deletions" of what you deem "portalspam" as better than the "mass creations" of portals. Who's really to say? As an editor mentions below, "...these portals are doing no harm so great that they can be deleted without due process." So maybe you're wrong about those mass deletions that portray some portals as WMDs instead of the harmless windows into Wikipedia that they were meant to be? No matter, at present you are part of the strong throng. If you're right, you're right. But what if you and the strong throng are wrong? May things continue to go well with you! Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  07:01, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support and also apply it to those created by Northamerica1000, who has made such useless portals as Portal:Strawberries and Portal:Waffles. Reywas92^Talk 08:26, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @Reywas92: Northamerica1000 has created only 70 pages in the portal namespace (excluding redirects) in the relevant timeperiod. In no conceivable scenario does that justify a speedy deletion criterion. Thryduulf (talk) 11:58, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support per F&K (whatever course of action that will result in every portal created in this manner being deleted with the minimal of time and effort required) and SN (nuke from orbit). I'll be honest I don't know enough to know whether it should be a X3 or a P2 or a single MfD list with 4,500 entries... but it should not need to involve manually tagging pages that were created by a bot or otherwise spending any real time figuring out which should be kept and which should not be kept. Delete them all. If editors feel like this portal or that portal should be kept, let them make the case for undeletion afterwards which can be examined on a case-by-case basis. (If that process is followed, it goes without saying that the portal creator should be banned from making any such undeletion requests.) Leviv ich 17:25, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  How are we supposed to work out what is worth undeleting, short of downloading all portals in advance lest they be deleted? Certes (talk)

  If an editor is not aware of a portal existing, then that editor shouldn't be asking for it to be kept. If there are particular portals that editors know they want saved, then they should have an opportunity to request that it be saved. But there should be no one-by-one examination of thousands and thousands of portals created by one user using semi-automatic methods. Leviv ich 19:39, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  Kill them all and let God sort them out is very much not the way Wikipedia works and is very much not the way it should work. Why should the review be restricted to administrators (as your proposal would require)? Why is it preferable to significantly harm the encyclopaedia by deleting good portals than to do the job properly and delete only those that actually need deleting (which are doing significantly less harm by existing than deleting good ones would cause)? Thryduulf (talk) 18:06, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  So let me create several thousand pages semi-automatically, and then I'll put it to you to go through them one by one and tell me which should be deleted and why? I don't think that's how it should work. It should work in reverse. The default should be delete them all, with some process for allowing people to request that particular portals not be deleted. BTW, when I say "all portals" I mean all portals covered by this proposal, not all portals that exist on Wikipedia. Leviv ich 19:39, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  If an editor created several thousand pages semi-automatically, the correct sequence of events is to analyse a representative sample to determine whether consensus is that they are (a) all good, (b) mostly good, (c) all bad, (d) mostly bad, or (e) a mixture. If (a) then no action is necessary, if (b) then individual deletion nominations are the correct response. If (c) then a CSD criterion to remove all of them is appropriate, if (d) or (e) then a CSD affectingly only the bad ones should be explored. In this the situation is somewhere between (d) and (e) depending on your point of view, but this proposal is treating them as (c). As I've said several times, I'm not opposed to a criterion proposed (in the right place) that caught only the bad ones and allowed for objections - that is not this proposal. This situation is frequently compared to Neelix, but the proposal is very different - this one: All pages created between Time A and Time B, unless anyone objects to the optional tagging within 24 hours. Neelix: All pages created between Time A and Time B that would be snow deleted if nominated at RfD, retargetting would not lead to a useful redirect and no other editor has materially edited the redirect. Do you now understand the fundamental difference? Also remember that pages can be tagged by bot. Thryduulf (talk) 20:56, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  Yes. We also need to clarify one important detail of the proposal: would an editor be required to look at the portal before applying CSD, or is there an assumption that everything created by this editor in that time period is automatically rubbish and does not deserve assessment? Certes (talk) 22:29, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  If a human being didn't spend a lot of time making a page, then human beings should not spend much time deciding whether to keep it. I put it to you again: suppose tomorrow I create 5,000 new pages and ask you to go through them and decide which to keep and which to delete. That would be insane; this is a website of volunteers; my doing such a thing would be disruptive. It would make work for others. Nobody reading this thinks it would be a good idea for me to do such a thing. Yet this is what is essentially being asked of us. Insofar as I have a !vote, I !vote no. Delete them all. They are all bad. Any that are good can be recreated as easily as they were created in the first place. Letting people flag keepers in one way or another is a perfectly reasonable way to prevent the baby from being thrown out with the bathwater. But yes, my starting point is that all of them should be deleted because none of them should have been made in the first place, and they do not have content value. Some portals are the product of careful creation and extensive work, but not 5,000 or however-many automatically created by one editor. The quantum portal idea is a much better idea, anyway. Leviv ich 02:38, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

  I've alreadyanswered this immediately above, but as you apparently don't like the answer I'll respond again. If you create 5000 new pages in good faith (which TTH did), then the correct response is for others to go through and look at a representative sample, then gain a consensus about whether they are all bad, mostly bad, a mixture, mostly good or all good. This has been done with TTH's portals and while you may think they are all bad that is not the consensus view, especially as others have taken over some and either have improved them or are working on improving them. This means that it is important that only the bad ones are deleted meaning any proposal (such as this one) to delete all of them is overbroad and needs to be opposed. Thryduulf (talk) 10:03, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

  This statement by Thryduulf is incorrect on many levels. Who has taken over and improved any of his creations? Where is the concensus view that they are not all bad when so far zero of his creations have been kept at MfDs. Where is the proof any of this was in good faith when he admits several sections down that no one (including him) has followed WP:POG Legacypac (talk) 10:38, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

  Are you even reading the comments made by those who disagree with you because I'm not seeing evidence of it, especially when it comes to the MfDs (to reiterate, a reviewed selection of the worst pages being deleted by consensus but not unanimously in all cases does not provide evidence of the need for deletion of all of them without possibility of review). Thryduulf (talk) 16:36, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

  Thryduulf, so I spend less than 1 minute per page creating 5,000 pages; you and others spend–what, an hour, cumulatively, at least?–per page to analyze it, discuss it, vote it, close it, and delete it. I spend 5,000 minutes; the community spends 5,000 hours. With all due respect I am flabbergasted to hear such a high-ranked Wikipedian express the view that this is OK or preferred. Even with your representative sample approach, say it's 100 portals that are looked at, that's still 100 hours of labor forced upon volunteers. In my opinion, no one should be allowed to make 5,000 pages without going through something like a BAG process to seek community approval. There was once a time, years ago, when it made sense to, for example, automatically create a stub for every known city and town in the world. I believe that time has long since passed; there are not 5,000 pages that can be created automatically that we need to have that we do not already have (IMO). And as for consensus, if they're not being kept at MfD, the consensus is clear. Those portals that people maintain manually are the same ones that can be flagged as exceptions to a mass-deletion. So I feel like we're on the same page about consensus, but I'm saying the consensus to keep a particular portal can be effectuated by allowing people to flag them as exceptions to mass deletion, whereas you seem to be suggesting: let's get together and spend an hour per portal to decide if it should be kept, even though nobody spent anywhere near that time creating it in the first place. If that's where we are, we'll have to agree to disagree, because I fundamentally don't believe these portals are worth a one-by-one analysis, and I believe the representative sample approach you advocate has been done and has led to the conclusion that these are worth mass deleting with exceptions. I guess that's for a closer to make the ultimate decision about, but for my part, from uninvolved editors, I'm seeing a lot more support than oppose for mass deletion. Leviv ich 14:42, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

  @Levivich: If you're just going to ignore all the explanations I give in response to you (twice) and all the explanations elsewhere from me and others about why a reviewed selection of the worst being deleted (and not unanimously in all cases) is not evidence of the need for all of them to be deleted without possibility of review by others then it is clear we will never agree. Fortunately, per WP:VOLUNTEER, nobody is being forced to do anything they don't want to do - including you - and it's really disappointing that someone as experienced as you feels the need to prevent that work being done by others just because you don't want to. Perhaps between now and the time this is closed those in support of this overbroad proposal will actually choose to address the points in opposition but unless they do the only possible outcomes are no consensus or consensus against. Thryduulf (talk) 16:36, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

  Thryduulf, I heard you say: pick a representative sample and decide if they're all bad, some bad, etc. As I understand it, a representative sample has been sent to MfD with consensus to delete almost all of them, if not all of them (I'm not sure if lists I've seen are complete). Then you say that just because the sample is all-delete doesn't mean the whole category is all-delete. I infer you think the sample is not well-chosen? By TTH's admission there are like 4,500–5,000 portals, and a tiny tiny percentage of those are being manually maintained–like less than 5%. Are we on the same page about the facts so far? If so, where do you see consensus other than "delete 95% of these things"? Why can't we tag the 100 that are manually maintained and delete the remaining 4,500? I am reading what you're writing, but I am not understanding it. Leviv ich 16:44, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support: these portals are easy to create semi-automatedly and contain no information not found in articles so we're not losing any information from Wikipedia, which sets this apart from most other CSD criteria. An alternative proposal I would support is to expand the remit of P2 to apply to any portals with fewer than one-hundred pages under their scope (or alternatively, fewer than one-hundred notable topics if there is evidence that the portal creators and users are planning to create such topics as articles). If a topic doesn't have 100 pages on it at the bare minimum, there's absolutely no reason to focus a portal around it. Even for portals covering tens of thousands of articles, reader interest is very, very low and the current semi-automated busywork is not serving the readers. — Bilorv (he/him) _(talk) 19:05, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @Biorv: a proposal for expansion of speedy deletion criterion P2 is being discussed currently at [[Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion}} (which is where proposals related to speedy deletion criteria should be held, not AN), so I will refrain from explaining here why I oppose your suggestion to avoid splitting the discussion. Thryduulf (talk)
• Support with exceptions. I support the speedy deletion of all portals auto-created in recent months as it seems excessive and unnecessary. However, those few portals which are manually maintained in good faith should be kept. Down the line we need to take another look at a notability threshold to keep a lid on portalmania. Bermicourt (talk) 22:37, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • If you believe there should be exceptions for portals maintained in good faith (and I agree there should be), then you should be opposing this proposal in favour of an alternative one that allows for that. Thryduulf (talk) 22:59, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  X3 only covers the mass created automated portals started by TTH so already excludes the type of portal User:Bermicourt wants to exclude. Thryduulf is muddying the facts. Legacypac (talk) 23:08, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose because a) on procedural grounds this shouldn't be discussed at the AN "closed shop" and b) because these portals are doing no harm so great that they can be deleted without due process. It is not TTH's fault that the guidelines for portal creation are permissive. Triptothecottage (talk) 02:56, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment: I have already voted here but I just wanted to provide an example of how much thought was going into the creation of these portals. Portal:Aquatic ecosystem was created by TTH on Aug 15 2018 and in classified as "Complete" despite having 4 selected images. An identical portal was created at Portal:Aquatic ecosystems by TTH on Nov 24 and is classified as "Substantial" (the portalspace equivalent of B-class). One wonders, which portal is of better quality, how was this determined, and how was this oversight not caught? — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 13:33, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose: Criteria are supposed to be uncontestable - almost all pages could be deleted under this criterion, according to consensus. Looking at the most recent 50 portals created by TTH, I see a lot of frivolous ones, but I also see Portal:Pumpkins, Portal:Woodpeckers, Portal:International trade, and Portal:World economy, all of which represent subjects with well-populated categories. And I could add at least as many that are debatable. If TTH, now under a topic ban, were to create more portals, they could be speedy deleted under WP:G4. But the pages considered here were created before the ban, so they should stand or fall on their own merits. RockMagnetist(talk) 06:05, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @RockMagnetist: I think you mean WP:CSD#G5 (Creations by banned or blocked users) rather than WP:CSD#G4 (Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion). Thryduulf (talk) 14:49, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
    • WP:CSD#G5 cannot be used here. The locus of G5 revolves around obliterating the edits of LTA's and sockpupeters and for ban-evasion in a generalized scope. << FR ^(mobileUndo) 15:12, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
      • G5 can be used to delete pages created in violation of a topic ban, if deletion is the best course of action. I would never use G5 on a page that was a borderline violation, but that's not relevant here (I can't think of any page creation that would be anything other than clear-cut one way or the other). It's all theoretical though as TTH hasn't created any pages in violation of his ban and I think it unlikely they will. Thryduulf (talk) 15:37, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
      • @FR30799386 and Thryduulf: My point in mentioning G4 (oops - G5!) was that it is a more appropriate standard for deleting pages based on who created them. The current proposal is too broad. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:09, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose I have gone over many of the portals. It seems that there are a mix of topics which are mainstream and some which should not have been created. This isn't a white or a black issue, the wheat must be carefully separated from the chaff. << FR ^(mobileUndo) 12:04, 18 March 2019 (UTC) !vote from sockpuppet struck. GoldenRing (talk) 10:17, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

• FR, is there some issue with deleting them without prejudice to re-creating existing ones? These were basically made by a bot in what amounts to a single spasm, so deleting them all could be seen as a BRD reversion. The next step would be to let uninvolved editors recreate any worth keeping. Yes, that might take a while. There is no deadline and if some potentially useful portals have gone uncreated up til now, it's fine if they stay absent a little longer. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 04:07, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose - the proposal assumes that none of the portals should have been created, and that is an incorrect assumption. Certainly the are some that perhaps should not exist, but equally there are some that definitely should, and some that need a bit of discussion to determine consensus. Speedy deletion is not the way to resolve this. WaggersTALK 16:45, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • No, the proposal assumes (correctly) that 95% should never have been created, and that the tiny amount of time spent on those few that might be worth keeping doesn't justify the hours needed to discuss them all at MfD. The ones that get speedy deleted and would be an acceptable portal anyway can easily be recreated if someone really wants them. No effort has gone into creating these portals (usually not even the effort of checking if the result was errorfree, never mind informative or not a duplicate of existing portals), so demanding a week-long discussion for all of them because sometimes the mindless effort created an acceptable result is putting the cart before the horse. Fram (talk) 08:28, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

  Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is not a sensible solution. Also, given WP:PAPER, could you explain why the existence of these portals is such a problem? This is nothing more than a massive exercise in punishing a user for the crime of trying to improve the encyclopaedia and getting a bit overenthusiastic. It's horrible to see and I honestly thought the Wikipedia community was better than this. WaggersTALK 11:42, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

  The existence of these portals is a problem because they add extra clutter to already link-intensive articles (the lower part of our articles has become more and more overcrowded over the years, with authority links, navboxes, links to sister projects, ...) and removing links with no or very little value makes the articles better and avoids sending readers to utterly useless pages created in a completely mindless manner without oversight or care. Deleting pages which are useless is not "punishing a user", that is a WP:OWN approach you show there which should not be taken into consideration when debating whether to keep or delete pages. Punishing the user would be blocking or banning them. Fram (talk) 12:10, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

  And that is happening (or has happened) too, so my point very much stands. Describing an editor's good faith hard work as "useless" isn't exactly conducive to a civil discussion either. Certainly some of the portals created are worthy of deletion, others are worthy of being kept. I could support a new PROD criterion, but CSD is not the right tool for this job. WaggersTALK 12:51, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose—CSD is for stuff where there's zero grey area. At best, this should be a specialized PROD. Gaelan 💬✏️ 14:42, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Arbitrary break (CSD criterion X3)

• Oppose Although the vast majority may not be needed: that does not mean they should just be deleted (without oversight or consensus). The arguments for this critera seem to be centered around: 'so little work was put into them, therefore we shouldn't need to put in any work to fix it'. Why not just let them sit there then? Is there a deadline? Seeing as portals themselves are an auxiliary aide to our main focus (of writing articles) this seems unnecessary. I'm surprised that this is (at least) the second time that a Private Bill has been proposed for the cSd, I guess times have changed a bit. It seems uncollegial to respond to opposers by saying: "then you better help out with all the MfD's'. I agree with the points made by SMcCandlish and RockMagnetist among others. Crazynas ^t 23:54, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
  • "Why not just let them sit there then"? Have you actually looked at the pure drivel many of these portals are? Most of these portals are not an "auxiliary aid", they are random shit, bot generated without bot permission but without actual human oversight. Sending any reader to such total shit is a disgrace. The below image is how one of these portals looks right now, after it has existed for 7 months and after this discussion highlighting many problems has run for a month. Time spent discussing these (time spent looking at these) is time wasted. Any portal which people think is necessary after all can be recreated (in a much better fashion) afterwards, the speedy deletion of these doesn't restrict this. But keeping the shit an editor mass produced because their may be some less shitty pages included is doing a disservice to the people who actually wander to these portals and can only stare in dsbelief at what we show them. "'Calamba, officially the ', (Tagalog: Lungsod ng Calamba), or known simply as Calamba City is a class of the Philippines in the province of , . According to the ?, it has a population of people. " Fram (talk) 09:16, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

have you looked at all the shit that sits in the mainspace (some of it for years)? There are like 182,000 unreferenced articles live right now, but this is the hill we're choosing to die on? Crazynas ^t 21:57, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Large in-line image
Typical example of the kind of portals spammed across enwiki. Not just the five errors, but also the actual "text" of the lead article...

Thank you for identifying a problem with a small number of Philippines portals where the lead contains {{PH wikidata}}, a technique designed for use in infoboxes. I'll pass your helpful comments on to the relevant WikiProject. Certes (talk) 11:02, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

No, please pass my comment on to all people supporting these portals, but not bothering to actually look at what they propose or defend. Creating and supporting pages with such blatant problems is basically the same as vandalism. There are e.g. also quite a few portals which confront their readers with the below "selected article" (as the default selected article, not even when scrolling deeper). Or with the same image two or three times. Or... The list of problems with these portals is near endless (selected categories only consisting of one redlink? Sure...). The fact that adding a category can cause a page to look completely different and generate different errors (like in the example above) should be a major indicator that this system, used on thousands of pages, is not as foolproof and low in maintenance as is being claimed. Fram (talk) 11:36, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Large in-line image
Read more... and weep

Thank you for your continued help in identifying portal issues. I have found and fixed three pages which had repeated "Read more" links. If you could be kind enough to reveal which portal you have depicted as "PortalShit2.png", we may also be able to fix that case and any similar ones. Certes (talk) 12:20, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

There are two very simple solutions: either support X3, and all these portals are instantly fixed. Or actually take a look at all these low maintenance, automatic portals of the future, find the many issues, and fix them. Which still won't solve the problem that many of them are utterly pointless, mindless creations of course. I've noted more than enough problems with these portals to wholeheartedly support speedy deletion, since spending any time "corecting" a portal like the Calamba one is a waste of time (as it should be deleted anyway, speedy or not). Fram (talk) 12:42, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

@Fram: You are clearly not understanding the opposition to this proposal. It is not about supporting the inclusion of poor content, it is about opposing a speedy deletion criterion that fails the criteria for new and expanded criteria and would delete content that should not be deleted in addition to content that should. Thryduulf (talk) 13:41, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

No, I often have trouyble understanding burocratic opposition which creates tons of extra work for very little actual benefit. Furthermore, I'm not convinced that this actually fails the four criteria: it is objective and nonredundant (I guess we all agree on these two?), it is frequent (in the sense that having 3K portals at MfD is quite a heavy load, it's not just one or two pages), so we are left with "Uncontestable", which doesn't mean that as soon ass someone opposes it, it becomes contested, but that "almost all pages that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus.". Looking at this discussion and the MfDs, I believe this to be true. Opposing this new CSD rule "because it is contested" is circular reasoning, as you are then basically saying "it is contested because it is contested", which is obviously not a valid argument. Having a significant number of portals which fall under the X3 but should not be deleted (which doesn't equal "should never exist", only "should not exist in the current form or any older form in the page history") would be a good argument, but I haven't seen any indication of such. Fram (talk) 13:57, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Frequent is not an issue (it wouldn't be as a permanent criteria, but as a temporary one it's fine), non-redundant is not an issue for most (although a few might be caught by P2 that's not a significant proportion so not a probelm). This proposal (unlike the ones being discussed at WT:CSD) is objective as written (created by a single user within a defined time period). Uncontestable however very much is, the requirement is "It must be the case that almost all pages that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus. CSD criteria should cover only situations where there is a strong precedent for deletion. Remember that a rule may be used in a way you don't expect, unless you word it carefully." It is very clear from this discussion and others around these portals that not all of them should be deleted - several have received strong objections to deletion at MfD, some are argued to be kept and others merged. "it is contested because it is contested" is exactly the point of this requirement - nobody argues in good faith against deleting copyright violations, patent nonsense, recreations, or specific types of articles that don't assert importance. There is consensus that were these to be discussed they would be unanimously deleted every time. There is no such consensus about these portals. Some, perhaps most, should be deleted but not all of them. Thryduulf (talk) 15:47, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I am pleased to report that a recent module change should eliminate the problem where articles too short to be worth featuring occasionally appear as "Read more... Read more...". This should fix the mystery portal depicted above next time it is purged. Certes (talk) 11:26, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

User:Thryduulf your opposition to X3 is baffling. You oppose it basically because some topics where Portals were mass created using automated tools against policy may warrant portals. But none of these pages have any original content to preserve. They are mindless spam poorly repackaging existing content. Kind of a poor Wikipedia mirror effort. MFDing these has proven they are unwelcome - yet you want to force us to spend a week debating pages that the creator spent seconds to create without even checking for compliance against their own criteria or for major errors? If these deletions were actually controversial (the only one of the 4 CSD criteria you say is not followed) we would expect a significant number of the MfDs to close Keep. We might expect the creator to defend and explain, but instead the creator freely admits he ignored WP:POG. Seriously makes me doubt your competence and judgement. Admins should show better judgement then this. Legacypac (talk) 17:12, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

@Legacypac: Assuming you mean X3, then I have explained every single one of my reasons several times and you have either not listened or not understood on every single one of those occasions so I Will not waste even more of my time explaining them again. Thryduulf (talk) 17:16, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Second Legacypac. Additionally, part of what I meant by "some might be worth keeping" is that they can be deleted, but if any were actually worthy they could be recreated, perhaps with more care and effort than this. SemiHypercube 17:19, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

• It seems like a lot of what is objected to can be covered by a judicious use of P2, G1, and A3 (via P1) but there's probably something I'm missing. @Fram:, I'm not here to support bad content, but bad policy (and precedent) can be far more harmful to the project than 'repackaged nonsense' existing for a bit longer than some people want it to. This would have the side effect of saving the portals worth saving. Crazynas ^t 22:07, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose let's discuss deletion based on content and merit of individual portals. No need to throw the baby out with the bath water, this is not how we do things here. You're proposing deletion of many very good portals here. ɱ (talk) 15:41, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Please identify 35 out of the 3500 (1%) that are "very good portals" so we can run them through MFD to test your statement. Also there is no baby - there is no original content at all. No work done by humans is lost with X3 deletions because they were created using an automated script that was used without BAG approval to repackage existing content. Therefore WP:PRESERVE is not an issue. If someone started creating thousands of articles called "Foo lite" that just copied Foo mindlessly we would CSD them without debate. These are just in another mainspace but they are really Foo lite. Legacypac (talk) 17:12, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Except that's not comparable at all. The point of portals (which the community has repeatedly endorsed) is to duplicate article content and provide links to related content - which is exactly what these portals are doing. They might be doing it poorly in many cases, but that's qualitatively different to one article duplicating another. Thryduulf (talk) 18:10, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be faster to delete them all and then recreate the ones that need recreating, rather than go through them one by one to see which to keep? Because the number of "keeps" is like 5% or 10% and not 50%? (It would have to be 50% to be equal time between the two approaches.) If you're not convinced that it's 5-10% keep and not 50% keep, what sort of representative sampling process can we engage in to test the theory? Leviv ich 19:13, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Yes it would be faster, but there is no deadline so it is very significantly more important to get it right than it is to do it quickly. Deleting something that doesn't need deleting is one of the most harmful things that an administrator can do - and speedily deleting it is an order of magnitude more so. As only administrators can see pages once they have been deleted, and doing so is much harder, deleting it first makes the job of finding the good portals very significantly harder. Thryduulf (talk) 21:30, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Timing matters because this issue is being discussed in several forums at once. If the first debate to close decides to delete, the portals may be gone by the time another discussion reaches a consensus to keep them. Certes (talk) 21:48, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

• CommentI listed The Transhumanist's portal creations, latest first, and examined the top entry on each page, i.e. every 100th portal.

Assessment of a sample of TTH's recent creations

Portal:Polar exploration – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 50 excerpts with more links at the bottom. Four other images, plus plenty more in the 50 leads. Manual input: refining the search criteria for Did You Know and In the News (DYK+ITN). Portal:Nick Jr. – Lua error: No images found. (To be fair, there may have been images before a recently requested module change to suppress images without captions.) 13 excerpts. No manual input: the wikitext matches that generated by {{bpsp6}}. Portal:Alternative metal – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 11 excerpts; one other image. Manual input: refining DYK+ITN. Portal:Modulation – decent but minimal portal with no obvious errors. 30 excerpts; four other images. Several manual improvements. Portal:Spanish Civil War – potentially good portal but with a couple of display errors which look fixable. 30 excerpts; 20 other images. Manual input: routine maintenance, probably of a routine technical nature rather than creative. Portal:Carl Jung – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 40+ excerpts; six other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Reba McEntire – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ other excerpts; six images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Romantic music – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 40+ excerpts; two other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Anton Chekhov – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 36 excerpts; 17 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Media manipulation – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; no image section. Routine maintenance. Portal:Desalination – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 15 excerpts; six other images. Manual input: refining DYK+ITN. Portal:Abuse – This portal has display errors which make it hard to evaluate properly. It's had plenty of manual input, possibly in attempts to fix it. Portal:Emmy Awards – decent appearance; one minor display error which looks fixable.(fixed) 50 excerpts; two other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Shanghai cuisine – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 19 excerpts; four other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Saab Automobile – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; 14 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:High-speed rail – decent appearance; one minor display error which looks fixable.(fixed) 40+ excerpts; 30+ other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Tetris – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 30+ excerpts; two other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Azores – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 20 excerpts; 18 other images. Some manual improvements. Portal:Musical instruments – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 40+ excerpts; 13 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Hidalgo (state) – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 11 excerpts; 16 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Sporting Kansas City – decent appearance; one minor display error which looks fixable;(fixed) narrow scope. 11 excerpts; 7 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Piciformes – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 9 excerpts; one other image. Routine maintenance. Portal:Birds-of-paradise – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 50 excerpts; five other images. Some manual improvements. Currently at MfD with the rationale that woodpeckers are not a family. Portal:Coffee production – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; 11 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Albanian diaspora – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 30+ excerpts; three other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:University of Nebraska–Lincoln – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 18 excerpts; eight other images. Routine maintenance. Currently at MfD with the rationale that Portal:University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff contains only two articles. Portal:University of Gothenburg – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 10 excerpts; two other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Transformers – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; two other images (everything else is non-free). Some manual improvements. Portal:Boston Celtics – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; 16 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Newbury Park, California – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 16 excerpts; 34 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Vanessa Williams – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 30+ excerpts; two other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Bette Midler – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40 excerpts; seven other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Ozzy Osbourne – generally decent appearance but several minor display errors;(fixed) narrow scope. 50 excerpts; 17 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Carnegie Mellon University – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 15 excerpts; 28 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Milwaukee – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 15 excerpts; 47 other images. Some manual improvements. Too few excerpts but potentially good. Portal:Billings, Montana – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. Four excerpts; 27 other images. Some manual improvements. Portal:Empire of Japan – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; 20 other images but with a couple of repeats. Routine maintenance. Portal:Cheese – decent appearance; no obvious errors. Nine excerpts; 50+ other images. Extensive manual improvements. Too few excerpts but potentially good.

It appears that most of the portals have a narrow scope and should go but a significant minority are either already of a good enough standard to keep or show sufficient potential to merit further attention. This impression is based not on cherry-picking but on a random sample. Certes (talk) 21:42, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for this, this is a very good illustration of why this proposal is too broad - it will delete portals that clearly should not be deleted, and others that may or may not need to be deleted (e.g. I've !voted to merge several of the portals about universities). Thryduulf (talk) 21:58, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

• Query Why don't we have a CSD for pages created by unauthorized scripts or bots? WP:BAG exists for a reason right? (And this seems to be a good example of it). Crazynas ^t 21:50, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @Crazynas: because not all of them should be deleted, as [[user:|Certes]] analysis immediately above demonstrates perfectly. Thryduulf (talk) 21:58, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: You're missing my point. Just like we have a policy that banned users are to be reverted in all cases not because they might not make good edits (to game the system or not) but because they are a disruption to the community; so we should have a policy that pages created (or edited I suppose) by unauthorized bots are inherently not welcome, because of the potential for disruption regardless of their merit (by disruption I'm talking about this AN thread as much as the pages themselves). This is the whole reason we have a group dedicated to overseeing and helping with bots right? Crazynas ^t 22:12, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

No bots were involved. The pages were created using a template. One of your last page creations was a user talk page, where you welcomed a new editor using Twinkle. You did a very professional job, by applying a template which introduces the new editor with the sort of carefully considered and neatly arranged prose that we don't have time to write every time a new contributor appears. Using a template is not a valid rationale for mass deletions. Certes (talk) 22:22, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Curious, what template did you use? I guess the difference I see is the twinkle is highly curated and subject to extensive review (as are the templates it calls). If all these pages were manually created, then what happened in the example of (what to me looks pretty much like G1) that Fram posted above? Why didn't the human that pressed the button take responsibility for that (so to speak) pile of rubbish? To clarify, Bot here covers scripts, AWB (which is 'manual'), java implementations etc. In short: "Bot policy covers the operation of all bots and automated scripts used to provide automation of Wikipedia edits, whether completely automated, higher speed, or simply assisting human editors in their own work." The policy explicitly references mass page creation as being under the purview of BAG here. Crazynas ^t 22:39, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I haven't used any of these templates myself but recent portals have been created by variants on {{Basic portal start page}}. The numbered versions such as {{bpsp6}} cater for portal-specific conditions such as there being no DYKs to feature. Certes (talk) 23:07, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

@Crazynas: I was simply answering your question about why we do not speedy delete every page created by an unauthorised bot, etc - simply because not every page created by such means should be deleted. You are also mistaken about banned users - they may be reverted but they are not required to be. Certes analysis shows that some of the portals created by the script have been improved since, sometimes significantly. Thryduulf (talk) 22:46, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: Sure, and this is tangential to the proposal here (which I'm still opposing, if you noticed). In any case the thought I'm having wouldn't be applied ex post facto but it would make it explicitly clear that mass creation of pages by automated or semi-automated means without prior approval is disruptive. Crazynas ^t 23:02, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

• Comment. The problem with many of these recently created template-based portals is that it is difficult or impossible to improve them. I've edited portals for over a decade but cannot work out how to change the portal code to include or exclude a particular article or image. (For articles I believe one has to change the template or mark the article as stub to exclude it; for images I believe it just harvests those from the main topic article.) Thus they are not drafts that could be further improved, they are static uneditable entities for which the only solution is to start from scratch. There is no thought to be preserved that is not equally present in the list of articles in the template/images in the root article. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:12, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
• The key issue is that traditionally, portals are viewed as entry points to broad topic areas. However a page generated by the helper templates that draw content from an underlying navigation box is more akin to a second screen experience: it provides an X-ray view into the navigation box. It's not clear this is the experience the community wants to provide for readers visiting something labelled a portal. isaacl (talk) 20:47, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
• the automated scripts are so easy to fool. Even if everything looks perfect when the portal is set up, as soon as someone adds an new link to a nav box (that may make sense in the nav box but not for the portal), adds an image to a page, or creates a DYK completely unrelated to the topic which includes the five letters "horse" within someone's name behind a pipe, you get random inappropriate stuff in an automated portal. The editor adjusting the nav box, adding a picture without a caption per WP:CAPTIONOBVIOUS or creating the DYK has no idea the portal is being busted. There is no edit to the portal to review so watch listing the portal does not help. You have to manually review the portal display regularly. That is before looking at lua errors. Autogenerated content is a bad idea. Forcing other editors to review your auto generated crap is wrong. Ignoring the guidelines because they are "outdated" and leaving 4500 pages that need to be checked and discussed against the guidelines by other editors is wrong. The only reasonable solution is to nuke these from orbit. Then if someone willing to follow the guidelines and use intellgently designed and applied tools want to recreate some titles, that is fine. Legacypac (talk) 21:23, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Everything you say before "The only reasonable solution..." may be true but is irrelevant to this proposal as written. "Nuking them from orbit" is not the only reasonable solution, as fixing the issues so that the portals don't break is also reasonable. As is not deleting the ones that have been fixed so that the errors you talk about don't occur. Thryduulf (talk) 00:46, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

    Portal creation ... is down to about a minute per portal. The creation part, which is automated, takes about 10 seconds. The other 50 seconds is taken up by manual activities, such as finding candidate subjects, inspecting generated portals, and selecting the portal creation template to be used according to the resources available. Tools are under development to automate these activities as much as possible, to pare portal creation time down even more. Ten seconds each is the goal.
    — Portal Update #29, 13 Feb 2019

    Someone spent less than 50 seconds creating the page; requiring editors to spend more time than that to delete it has an extortionate effect, even though there's a good faith intent. If we don't nuke from orbit, then those who want these automatically-created portals deleted will be forced to spend far, far more than 50 seconds per portal discussing them one by one (or ten by ten, or one hundred by one hundred, it'll still be a lot of time). 50 seconds "taken up by manual activities" is how we end up with a Portal:Sexual fetishism that includes Pedophilia as one of the selected articles–probably not the best selection–but that's been there for five months now. Leviv ich 03:04, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

    • Two wrongs do not make a right and there is no deadline. The only reason for deleting them all you seem to have is that you don't like that these portals were created so quickly, and that some of them are bad. That's fine, you are entitled to your opinion and some of them are bad. However that does not equate to a reason to delete all of them without checking whether they are good or bad. If you have problems with specific portals then they should be fixed and/or nominated for deletion, as I see you have done in this case, but just because X is bad doesn't mean that the entire set of pages of which is a part should be speedily deleted. Thryduulf (talk) 09:35, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

      • "There is no deadline" is a complete non-argument. There is no deadline to have these portals either. Knowingly advocating for keeping problematic portals around until someone not only notices it but also decides to MfD it is exposing readers to shitty, thoughtless reproductions of content for no actual benefit (the benefits" of these portals are addressed dequately by the navigation templates they are based on) and with the risk of showing them all kinds of errors which gives a very poor impression. Luckily very few people get actually exposed to these pages, but this also means that the very hypothetical damage deleting some of these pages would do is extremely minimal. Fram (talk) 10:09, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

        • There was indeed no deadline for their creation, now they have been created that is irrelevant. If we follow your logic though we should delete every article and then just recreate the ones that admins vet as meeting an undefined standard. Yes, deleting more slowly does increase the risk that some readers will see errors, but thtat's exactly what happens in every other namespace without a problem. Thryduulf (talk) 16:35, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

          • No, that's not my logic. Your use of "no deadline" when it suits you, and the dismissal when it doesn't, is quite clear though. Deleting articles is losing content, deleting these auto-portals is losing nothing. Furthermore, we have in the past speedy deleted large groups of articles by one or two creators once it became clear that too many contained errors. This has been done with thousands of articles by Dr. Blofeld, with thousands by Jaguar, and with thousands by Sander v. Ginkel (the last ones moved to draft and then deleted afterwards). Once we know that with one group of creations by one editor, there are many problems, we had no qualms in the past to speedy delete them. That didn't mean that they can't be recreated, or that admins will first vet them, no idea where you get those ideas. Please don't make a caricature of what I support here, and please don't make absolute statements which don't match reality. Fram (talk) 17:41, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose 1) Let's not create precedents where we hand single admins editorial control, admins may well be great editors (some better than others), but let's keep editorial control as much as possible only with all editors. 2) The formulation of this supposed CSD criteria seems to be a WP:PUNISH against a single user. (As an aside, different perspective: there are perhaps millions of pages in article space that are "poor", so portal space is bound to have them, too - just work through it -- and if we come-up with new forward looking policies and guidelines for all portals (or mass creations) consistent as possible with the 5 P, all the better). Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:42, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support - per Fish & Karate. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:08, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. I feel there are much better ways of handling the situation, including but not limited to: expanding P2, Portal PROD, and even MFD. This is too broad of a sword that doesn't even cut in the right places since it's only limited to one user in a given time frame. -- Tavix ^(talk) 16:15, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
• Thought I had voted here but I guess I hadn’t. Regardless, my thinking on this has changed because of Certes’ in-depth analysis of TTH’s portal creations. Anyway: Oppose. The mass creation of portals is something that should be dealt with preferably quickly, but this proposal as written is not the right way to do it. Sure, there are a lot of crappy portals that could be deleted fairly uncontroversially, but there are also a lot of good portals as well as edge cases that deserve more community discussion on whether they should be deleted, or at least a longer waiting period so users may object. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 12:40, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose for now. I still hope that the proposal might become limited to portals looked at and determined to be poor by some objective criteria, which I could support, but that hasn't yet happened. Speedy ad hominem deletion regardless of subsequent tuning, current quality or even potential for future improvement is likely to throw too many babies out with the bathwater. Certes (talk) 12:46, 29 March 2019 (UTC) Duplicate !vote stricken. GoldenRing (talk) 10:14, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
• Regretfully support: as an editor I dislike the idea of creations made by certain users being deleted en masse but, quite frankly, MfD cannot cope with the influx at the moment. Hell, I've got a decent laptop and MfD is getting so big scrolling down causes a bit of lag. SITH (talk) 20:57, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
• Strong support of something to this effect, per WP:MASSCREATION and WP:TNT (i.e., the babies thrown out with the bathwater can be recovered later). However, opponents raise good points of localizing control to a few members, and while I do argue that portals are not content, they are a navigational tool, so community control of them can be a bit "stricter" than mainspace articles, perhaps something like PROD would be better. Regardless of how this pans out, for future portals going forward I proposed Portals for Creation at RfC, and created a mockup here if anyone wants a look. — Preceding unsigned comment added by John M Wolfson (talk • contribs)

  Why is requiring administrators to comb through deleted portals to find those that should not have been deleted in order to restore them, having inconvenienced those people who use the portals in the mean time, in any way better for the project than deleting only those that need to be deleted? Thryduulf (talk) 07:34, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

• Support. Worthless pages which take 12 seconds to create shouldn't take more than 50000 times that for multiple users to delete. If a subject WikiProject or person interested in the portal's subject is willing to "adopt" that portal, or even assert that the portal is not useless, a more nuanced consideration may apply. And, I should point out, some of the individual deletions are incomplete, as user-facing pages (mostly categories and navigation templates, but some actual article pages) still point to the deleted portals. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 10:25, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal 5: Shut down or reform WikiProject Portals

I know, me proposing shutting down a WikiProject I'm in? What am I thinking?

Well, I mainly joined to make sure things would go smoothly after that RfC to delete all portals - clearly it has not. As thus, I think a solution (among the others) would be to shut down the WikiProject responsible for many of the bad portal creations. Right now it appears all its doing is creating new portals, not maintaining or improving them - which is what a WikiProject is supposed to do.

However, a less extreme solution would be to reform the project to actually maintain and improve the portals it creates, and creates portals sparingly. I'm fairly certain a task force making sure portals meet standards would be beneficial to the issue, and also making it clear that not everything needs a portal.

I'm going for the latter option to reform - however, I'm going to leave the shutdown option up in the air in case people find good reason for it to be considered.

Addendum 13:48, 15 March 2019 (UTC) - Since I forgot to clarify ( Self-trout) here's two examples of reforms I could see being useful:

• A quality scale for portals, like we use for articles - this could help with knowing which portals are good and which ones need improvement
• Dividing the Project into task forces to make sure necessary tasks for the maintenance of portals are completed, as right now they clearly are not

• Sub-reform for this would be to make a task force that deletes bad portals that don't meet quality standards and are not needed

Hopefully this can help clarify this proposal somewhat - if none of these can be done reasonably (which I doubt they can't) the shutdown option should be considered.

Kirbanzo ^{(userpage - talk - contribs)} 23:01, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Survey on sub-proposal to shut down WikiProject Portals

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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• Neutral as per above. Kirbanzo ^{(userpage - talk - contribs)} 23:01, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
• Strong oppose firstly this is the wrong forum, secondly there is nothing in the nomination that explains why this is needed, or how it will result in an improvement to the encyclopaedia. Thryduulf (talk) 01:04, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. Abyssal (talk) 01:35, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support: might as well. --K.e.coffman (talk) 02:23, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. There is consensus to keep the portal system but it has many faults, so a focus for improving it seems sensible. Certes (talk) 14:36, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. Not necessary and not the best way to fix Wikipedia’s portals. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 19:49, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose – Would amount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 01:19, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose For the same reasons. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 19:48, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose For the same reasons. Bermicourt (talk) 22:37, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support Incompetent project that doesn't want to deal with the crud their members create. CoolSkittle (talk) 18:07, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Invalid rationale. See Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions#Surmountable problems.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:58, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose as ad hominem vindictiveness. The only rationale for deleting such a project would be a proper community-wide decision to eliminate all portals. This is not the venue for that; WP:VPPOL is. And this is not the venue for deletion of a wikiproject; WP:MFD is. WP:Process is important, most especially in deletion discussions and related matters, because damned near zero people are going to look for such discussions in an admins' "house organ" page like this. Hardly any non-admins watchlist this page or pay any attention at all to what is said here. It is not intended to be a venue for community-wide concerns in the first place, and even with belated addition to WP:CENT, discussing such matters here is a special kind of forum shopping, namely an attempt to appeal to a small cadre of specialist editors whose concerns about maintenance (and cop-like role of "going after" people for alleged behavioral flaws, often with little oversight, especially compared to WP:ANI process) will colour everything they do and say about the matter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:58, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Widely misleading arguments. This is a widely advertised and widely participated discussion. It came from a VPR discussion, linked from the very beginning. There are far more non-Admins than Admins involved here. Try to stick to facts. Legacypac (talk) 23:23, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support [non-admin comment :] opposed to portals, they harvest legitimate contributions yet the creators expect them to be automatically protected as legitimate contributions and outside of normal guidance on creation. There are cadres of users who think this is what wikipedia is about, or at least it is a way of making a big splash without knowing anything but how to tweak code (and then wikilawyer when challenged). cygnis insignis 06:10, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose Punishing a whole community for the actions of one person is not reasonable. WaggersTALK 16:49, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per above. It's getting cold out... SemiHypercube 16:52, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose In the grand scheme of things I'd like to see portals deprecated, but doing so is not where the community is at right now. If there is consensus to keep portals, having a wikiproject to maintain them seems like a good idea. I also feel cold... Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 06:47, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Survey on sub-proposal to reform WikiProject Portals

• Support as proposer and per above. Kirbanzo ^{(userpage - talk - contribs)} 23:01, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose as the proposal is in the wrong forum and contains no details of what reform is being suggested, let alone how these reforms would solve the issues identified. Thryduulf (talk) 01:05, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• This is related to the discussion as the WikiProject is headed by the user being discussed here. Kirbanzo ^{(userpage - talk - contribs)} 13:48, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Wikprojects are a collection of editors, not just one person. There is no evidence presented that there is any admin action required regarding the WikiProject as a whole collectively (not that I can immediately think of what that action could look like if it were), and there isn't even consensus that admin action regarding the single editor is required. Thryduulf (talk) 13:57, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• Fair point, but considering the discussion below it should still be considered. Kirbanzo ^{(userpage - talk - contribs)} 14:00, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support. I’ve been doing some reform work of this type by creating a page to clean up some of the damage done to the older portals. WikiProject Portals has an assessment page but I’m not sure how much it gets used. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 19:49, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • It took quite a lot of discussion to form a consensus for those assessment criteria. Any portals would need to be evaluated against them to ensure they meet at least minimal quality standards (not including the other criteria in the portal guidelines). It will take a while to go through all of the portals and rate them on the quality scale, and that is one of our backlog tasks. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 19:48, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support in theory. It makes more sense than the above "I disagree with you so I will try to just erase you" bullshit. However, it's not at all clear that the wikiproject, as such, needs any "reform"; rather, some specific decisions and actions taken by its participants have turned out to be controversial, and the community will discuss that (hopefully in a more sensible venue like WP:VPPOL), and the wikiprojects should abide by the result of that process. We don't have any indication this would not happen, so there isn't actually a "reform" to perform, nor is there yet any consensus of what form that should take anyway. Some people here seem to be under the impression that WP is going to come out against portals; others that it'll be against automated portals; others that it'll be against portals on minor topics (and sub-sub-sub-topics) that people aren't likely to seek a portal for; others that nothing is actual broken; others that .... There isn't a single direction of "reform" being proposed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:03, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose The way to reform a project is to get involved with it. We've already had multiple discussions about how the project should be structured and how it should operate on the project pages themselves, and further suggestions there are always welcome. But proposing "reform" without specifying what particular changes are being suggested isn't exactly helpful. WaggersTALK 16:53, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Exactly right, Waggers, exactly right. You've hit the nail on the head. ~Swarm~ {talk} 18:22, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

But is you see little need for portals why get involved? Legacypac (talk) 23:18, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Nominating hundreds of portals for deletion is getting involved. If you see little need for them then fine, live and let live, they're not doing you any harm. The community has decided to keep portals, so either you respect that consensus and ignore them, or you respect that consensus and get involved with resolving whatever problem you have with them. WaggersTALK 12:58, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

• Qualified support. The current project is far from perfect but it's hard to give unqualified support without a statement of specific reforms. We don't want thousands more portals, but last year's RfC shows that it would be equally inappropriate to "reform" into WikiProject Nuke All Portals From Orbit. I removed my name from the project's roster when portal creation grew rapidly. Since then I have done some maintenance but I see little point in improving pages that other editors are working so hard to delete. I could rejoin a project that combined improved existing portals with the right blend of identifying poor, narrow portals for deletion and creating portals in small numbers where clear gaps exist. Certes (talk) 13:32, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Discussion on proposal to reform WikiProject Portals

• Query @Kirbanzo: - do you have any early thoughts about what some good reforms would be to shift the primary focus of the project towards maintenance/improvement over creation? Nosebagbear (talk) 23:11, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

• See addendum. Kirbanzo ^{(userpage - talk - contribs)} 13:50, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• Transcluded to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 23:36, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
• No, do not transclude important discussions from AN to the relevant talkpage. Hold the discussion on the relevant talk page. Transclude to here is there is good reason, which there is not. Holding hte discussion here means watchlisting it doesn't work, and it wont be archived in the right place. Shutting down a WikiProject is not in scope for WP:AN. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:20, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
• The Portals Wikiproject members can't even come up with a proper new guideline for what topics get a portal even when faced with a village pump imposed moratorium. The discussion is all over the place with no focus. Heck they did not even follow their old guideline about picking subjects broud enough to gain reader and editor interest. The only thing they appear to agree on is MORE MORE MORE and using WP:VITAL as a to do list. Their newsletter said they are pushing to 10,000 portals (off a base of 1500 old line portals). Now the number of portals will shrink until and unless they get new guidelines passed by an RFC. Legacypac (talk) 09:57, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• That old guideline wasn't generally followed, ever. That's because portals (except those on the main page) get about 1 to 3 percent of the amount of traffic that their corresponding root articles get. In other words, "not a lot". That's because almost all their traffic comes via WP internal links. Almost nobody googles "Portal". So, for the vast majority of topics, large numbers of readers and editors will never be forthcoming, and never were. Out of the 1500 portals, about 100 had maintainers (maintained by around 60 editors), and maybe 20% of them regularly edited the portals they maintained.

The WikiProject, and the community, need feedback in the form of hard numbers, in order to get a sense of what will even get used. How hard would it be to make a chart listing all the portals in one column, and their page views for the past month in the second column, and then sort the chart by the second column? That might provide some insight.    — The Transhumanist   11:05, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• Sigh. :TTH, you had this data already. You know that portal pageviews are miniscule. At the RFC on deleting the portal namespace, stats were posted on pageviews, and not even all the portals linked from the front page had decent viewing rates.

Yet despite knowing all that, you personally created thousands of new portals, despite having all the evidence in front of you that they are useless.

And when I presented the evidence to you again, and asked you to desist, you were furious. Instead of assessing the issues, you posted multi-screenfull unfocused ramblings replete with shouts of "bias", "personal attack" etc.

The problem is not any shortage of information. The problem is that as @Legacypac notes above, the discussions in the WikiProject have no focus, no regard for available evidence, and no respect for community consensus.

Legacypac and usually disagree, but in this case we see exactly the same problem: a WikiProject which has a long and sustained track record of being utterly incapable of acting responsibly wrt the page within its purview.

This is not solely TTH's doing. TTH bears by far the highest responsibility because TTH has been both the most prolific creator and the most angry objector to calls for restraint, but several other regulars at WikiProject Portals have been equally unfocused and equally bonkers. For example:

• Only 15 days ago, WT:Portal/Guidelines#Portal_creation_and_deletion_criteria_proposal_5: a proposal to create portals up to VA Lelevl 5, when even VA level 4 would be about 10,000 portals.
• 17 days ago, WT:Portal/Guidelines#Portal_creation_and_deletion_criteria_proposal_1: a proposal for portals to have minimum of only 20 articles. Precisely the sort of microportal of which the community has had enough.

So the community simply cannot rely on this group to set and uphold resposnsible guidelines. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:53, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@BrownHairedGirl: I make the proposal 5. And it was a proposal. I Support a reform in WikiProject Portals. My idea is the existence of approximately 1000(level 3) single page portals layout, directly linked in tree model with the main page. The role of the wikiproject should be to organize this tree and develop tools to transform all portals into single-page layout portals.Guilherme Burn (talk) 12:11, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@Guilherme Burn, no technical diversions. My point is not about how the portals operate; it's about their scope. And 20 pages is insanely narrow. A 20-page portal is just an bloated navbox. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:36, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@BrownHairedGirl: I'm trying to figure out how you've come to the conclusion that WPPORT completely ignores evidence and consensus. The project discussions I've participated in have been rational and reasonable, and far from unfocused. Also, please try not to conflate individual editors' behavior with the project as a whole. I've seen no evidence that the WikiProject has acted irresponsibly regarding the Portal system. If you're referring to the several thousand new portals created by TTH, you should keep in mind that WikiProjects don't have any actual authority to dictate who can and can't create something (even if we were opposed to creating new portals). That's what guidelines are for.

We've been working to develop updated criteria for the Portal guidelines since November (rebooted from even earlier discussions in April) - which you already know, since you've participated as well. We're still working on the guidelines so that we have better, more concrete criteria to judge new and existing portals against (and which would make MfD easier for those that fail). Once we've developed consensus on these, they can be applied to the namespace to fix the portals that can be fixed, and remove the ones that can't (new or old). (Side note: Anyone with input or ideas is welcome to participate at WT:PORTG.)

Actions in the Portal namespace itself (for most of us, it seems) has mostly been technical fixes and tweaks to our tools. Also, your not agreeing with particular proposals does not make those proposing them irresponsible or incompetent. Talk pages are a place to discuss new ideas so that we can find the benefits and drawbacks of each. If we constantly had to worry about being labeled as irresponsible or incompetent for suggesting something, we'd never have any new ideas or get anything done. I've made plenty of suggestions that didn't pan out later, as I'm sure you have, and everyone else here. That's how we learn what works and what doesn't and build a better encyclopedia. In the end, that's what we're all here for right? — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 19:48, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

@AfroThundr3007730: that's not at all how it looks from outside.

1. Last year, the project began developing automated portals, whose advocates claimed need little or no curation. No attempt was made to hold an RFC to determine whether the community found these automated portals to be a worthwhile addition. (I think I see an emerging consensus that they are not useful, or maybe useful only in some curcumstances)
2. Following the WP:ENDPORTALS RFC which decided not to actually delete the whole portal namespace, the project decided to massively expand the number of portals, despite the clear evidence at RFC that many editors wanted fewer portals. At no point did the project initiate an RFC to establish whether there was a community consensus for the project's enthusiasm to bizarrely interpret "don't TNT the lot" as "create thousands more".
3. You are right that a WikiProject has no powers of restraint on an individual editor. However, the project does have an ability to watch what is done, and to act a venue to monitor inappropriate creations, and to initiate cleanup as needed. I see no sign at all that the project has done any of that ... and on the contrary, when outsiders have challenged TTH's sprees of portalspam, other project members have rallied to TTH's defence.
4. Even now, as a cleanup is underway, I see next to no assistance from project members. V few even comment in the MFDs. For example, take the most extreme case so far: MFD Portal:University of Fort Hare, an utterly absurd creation for which there exists precisely zero relevant selected articles ... yet none of the project regulars is visible.
   In my view, a WikiProject which shows zero interest in removing inappropriate pages within its scope is dysfunctionally irresponsible.
5. The project's efforts to develop guidelines have been exceptionally poor. The discussions have been rambling and unfocused, with a persistent failure to distinguish between factors such as technical ability to create, availability of editors to maintain and monitor, actual usage data, etc.
6. Above all, none of the proposals has been put to an RFC to gauge community consensus, so the guideline discussion have effectively been the work of a small group of editors who are united by a common desire to massively increase the number of automated portals.
7. The result of this failure has been a walled garden of thousands of micro-portals, sustained only by the enthusiasm of the portal project ... and the absolutely inevitable massive shitstorm at the village pump.

What this needs now is a structured RFC, which brings together some or all of the proposals made at the project, adds proposals from outside the project, and seeks a community consensus. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:18, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Proposal 6: Proposed Deletion for portals

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Proposal: Create a proposed deletion criterion for portals created on April 8, 2018 or later by any user. Per normal PROD rules, the page would be deleted after 7 days, but a user who objects to the deletion may remove the prod template. However, unlike regular PROD, the creator would not be allowed to remove the template (though they would of course be allowed to contest it on the talk page). — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 21:58, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support as proposer. I proposed this to resolve issues raised by various opposers. This would provide a longer waiting period before deletion, reduce the chances that the recently created portals that comply with the portal guidelines, and not restrict it to a single user, because there were other users who created problematic portals. Possible reasons for removing a prod template include the portal meeting the portal guidelines or being under active development. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 21:58, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment. I'm leaning support, having been mulling over proposing something like this myself but, I'm not certain this proposal is quite right yet. I don't think there should be a list of acceptable reasons to deprod, rather a non-exhaustive list of examples to reduce the chance of wikilawyering about it (and there will be situations we don't think of and probably some we do that we shouldn't list per WP:BEANS). Any restriction on creators deprodding needs to come with exceptions for reverting obvious vandalism and where prod is not permitted (e.g. doesn't meet the criteria, previously kept in a discussion, etc) - it may be better to say creators should not rather than must not. I also think it important that prodded portals show up in article alerts before this goes live (I no idea if this would require any changes to bot code or not, and if it does how significant it might be). Thryduulf (talk) 22:21, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
  • I've now asked the article alert bot maintainer those questions. Thryduulf (talk) 22:32, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

  The deprod "criteria" are suggestions and not part of the proposal. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 01:56, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

  I wasn't certain either way, so thanks for clarifying. I do think though that jumping straight in to an RfC without workshopping the proposal first was a poor choice though - there is a good idea but it needs refining before I am comfortable supporting it. Thryduulf (talk) 03:11, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

• Prod isn't going to do anything except delay MFD for a week so long as there's multiple users who think all portals, however narrow, should be kept. And there are. —Cryptic 23:35, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Do multiple users think that? I certainly don't; I just oppose the view that all should be deleted. Certes (talk) 23:43, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @Cryptic: How does a link to a deletion log support the assertion that there are multiple users who think all portals should be kept? I'm one of the most (perhaps even the most) vocal advocates against the proposed speedy deletion criterion, yet I do not hold that view. I've repeatedly explained that I simply think that only some of the portals should be deleted, and that it is more important to get it right than to do it quickly - there is no deadline. Thryduulf (talk) 00:09, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. This would be a pseudo-CSD failing WP:NEWCSD. Better to list or reference all new templated portals in a big MfD. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:18, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment some users think all portals, no matter how narrow or inappropriate the topic, need to be debated at MfD. SmokeyJoe wants a 3500 portal MfD yet NorthAmerica1000 is complaining about a 6 fruit portals being bundled. A lot of unreasonable positions here. Legacypac (talk) 01:00, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment What's to stop the group behind the auto-portals removing every PROD? CoolSkittle (talk) 01:24, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
  • I would imagine exactly the same thing that stops (groups of) editors systematically removing prods from any given set of articles - doing so is disruptive editing - just as systematically tagging any large set of articles without considering them is (see also WP:FAITACCOMPLI and WP:SK points 2 and 3). Thryduulf (talk) 03:16, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment check out some of the comments here Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Alhambra, California where all portals prior to the reboot survived a deletion discussion as acceptable and any similar ones are therefore acceptable. No one followed the guidelines because they don't matter anymore. Amazing stuff. Legacypac (talk) 01:57, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
• Transcluded to Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 02:34, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
• (Summoned by bot)Oppose CSD is better, this just sounds like MfD with extra steps. SemiHypercube 11:19, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose I can think of at least three editors who would make it their duty in life to automatically remove a PROD with the rationale, "Controversial; take to MfD". Which makes this a waste of everyone's time. ——SerialNumber54129 11:25, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose Being created recently is not a rationale for deletion, let alone semi-speedy deletion. Certes (talk) 13:35, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal 7: Toss it to the WikiProjects

I suggested at the Arbcom case that this be imposed by motion as an interim measure, but I'll put it as a proposal here to allow people to support or oppose it.
Proposal: All editors intending to create a portal must consult with the relevant WikiProject for that topic as to whether they feel a portal would be useful. All existing portals should be raised at the talk pages of the relevant WikiProjects and deleted if there is no consensus at any one of those projects that the portal should be kept. If the topic has no relevant WikiProject, it should be deleted. ‑ Iridescent 10:42, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support as proposer. This would have the advantages of avoiding bulk speedy deletions, avoiding personalising disputes or naming-and-shaming individuals on either the pro or anti side, avoiding flooding MFD, putting the decision on each portal in the hands of those who actually know about that topic and can make an informed call as to whether the portal would be potentially useful (if a topic is so obscure that it doesn't have a relevant project, then it's reasonable to assume that it's unlikely there are sufficient people with an interest in the topic to maintain or use a portal), and providing an opportunity to neutrally assess whether the older portals are still deemed to be serving a useful purpose. The process could probably be largely automated; a bot could presumably scrape the WikiProjects listed on the talk page of the parent article for each portal, and post a "Do you find this portal useful?" question to the talk pages of those projects, and after a reasonable time (presumably 30 days) we could then go through at leisure and see which portals are considered worth keeping. It might annoy some projects, as e.g. WT:WikiProject Food or WT:WikiProject United States will be flooded with 50 different discussions, but unless we're going to speedy delete or speedy keep every portal there will be a flooding effect somewhere, and at least this way it spreads the flood to a manageable level across multiple pages, rather than dumping 4000 pages into WP:MFD or CAT:EX. ‑ Iridescent 10:42, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support as the compromise candidate. It's not guaranteed to annoy no-one or be loved by all, but it's better than, as we seem to be enjoying atm, a process that annoys more and is loved even less... ——SerialNumber54129 10:56, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
  • It won't be liked by anyone, as it concentrates the decision-making in the hands of small cliques of people, but at least it (1) spreads the load regarding where the discussions take place, (2) notifies people interested in the topics who may not be aware of the existence of the portals, and (3) means the fate of Portal:London transport is decided by people who have an interest in either London or Transport and hopefully have a better idea than the rest of us of what would be useful to readers. ‑ Iridescent 11:05, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
• (edit conflict) Support with minor tweaks: To avoid flooding WikiProjects there should be a limit on the number of concurrent discussions on each project (somewhere in the 5-10 region would be my first suggestion) and the 30-day deadline should not be absolute - e.g. if discussion is ongoing at that point there is no rush to close it, equally if consensus is abundantly apparent (by the standards of WP:SNOW) before that there is no reason to delay taking any necessary action or inaction. Discussions should also be framed neutrally (i.e. don't describe it as "spam", "worthless", "essential" or anything like that.) Also, to avoid edit warring, arguments, etc there should be no extended discussion of which projects are asked - if any editor in good faith believes that a project is worth asking then they are worth asking. Finally there should be a list kept somewhere (probably at the portals project) of which projects have been asked about which portals so the same project doesn't get asked about repeatedly. Thryduulf (talk) 11:15, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

  On the neutral point, it might be worth agreeing a standard wording that can be added with a template that also provides links to basic information about portals so people don't have to keep repeating themselves. Thryduulf (talk) 11:18, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose - See the bullet points below for my various rationales.

• Wikiprojects are perenially understaffed and underwatched, with some having no participation for months or even years at a time on their talk pages. Some are marked as semi-active or inactive. Making it a requirement to consult with projects with such problems would amount to muzzling portal creations for many topics, because nobody may actually come along to discuss a portal proposal.
• This proposal would further denigrate Wikipedia in the wrong direction, with an increasing nanny state type of governance regarding content, where permissions have to first be made to create pages. This would result in even more chilling effects than already exist in various areas of the encyclopedia at this time.
• The proposal goes entirely against the grain of WP:5, point #5, concerning being WP:BOLD. Wikipedia having no firm rules is one of the fundamental principles of the encyclopedia. The proposal also goes against the grain of WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY in several ways.
• Regarding the notion that if a topic has no project, the portal would then be procedurally deleted: some topics may not have a direct Wikiproject, but may have a related one. For example, there is no direct project for the topic of air conditioning, but a related project would be WikiProject Engineering.

Furthermore, many of the discussions listed at WikiProject Council/Proposals receive very little input, sitting in limbo. If a Wikiproject cannot be created without first consulting a forum that receives little input, and therefore a portal could not be created without a project backing it, all without a means for a project to get off the ground in the first place, it would amount to a vicious circle of automatically denying portal creation for some topics based upon the already largely broken system at the WP Council.

• Would older portals also be automatically, procedurally deleted if no project exists, or would this only apply to the newer ones, with a grandfather clause existent for the older portals? Either way, automatic deletion in this manner goes against several core principles of Wikipedia, and would serve to unnecessarily stifle the creation of functional, useful content.
• Regarding having discussions for all existing portals raised on talk pages of relevant Wikiprojects: this is very unlikely to even be viable. Who would ultimately be responsible to perform creating and then watching all of these discussions? Would said posited discussions be a subjective straw poll, or based upon actual objective discussion about a portal's content and how it relates to a topic? Importantly, this would significantly and negatively shift Wikipedia from being a volunteer project to one that requires specific actions, in this case, mandatory discussions for all content in the portal namespace. This would set a very poor precedent for the encyclopedia.
• Regarding the notion of procedurally deleting portals if no consensus exists in a talk page discussion: at AfD, MfD, and other areas of deletion on Wikipedia, a no consensus result typically results in retention of a page or pages, rather than deletion.
• There's more, but I will leave my post at that for now.

– North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 12:16, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose I appreciate this proposal as one made in good faith using reasoned language. We should certainly invite WikiProjects to have more involvement in portals, including their creation and deletion. However, Northamerica1000 makes enough convincing arguments that I don't need to add any. Certes (talk) 13:40, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
• Unfortunately reasonable, but WikiProjects do not own topics within their scope. (See also WP:CONLEVEL.) --Izno (talk) 13:48, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
• An essentially similar proposal is under discussion at the portal guidelines talk page. The issue is not one of ownership; it's integrating support for portals with the same interested editors who maintain the navigation boxes and articles for the topic area. Particularly if the helper templates are used, editors need to take portals into account when modifying any associated navigation boxes and articles. But in general, portals can only be successful in the long term if they are supported in the same way as the rest of the related content. Accordingly, decisions on their creation and maintenance should be made by those editors, either under the aegis of associated WikiProjects, or through other methods of identifying editors active in the area. isaacl (talk) 15:11, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
• If a portal is of high quality, it does not really matter whether there is a WikiProject about a related topic or not. Usually there will be a WikiProject (we have projects covering almost everything), but probably not a very active one. I do agree with the inviting subject experts to portal discussions, though. —Kusma (t·c) 15:25, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support - I have tossed this out at the Village Pump. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#RFC:_Portals_and_Project_Sponsorship . Robert McClenon (talk) 21:28, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - I will argue that NorthAmerica1000's argument about understaffed WikiProjects is a valid consideration that will serve as a check on the creation of rogue portals. (We are not discussing rogue WikiProjects here.) Robert McClenon (talk) 21:28, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

• Comment – Wow, so now we have two identical discussions occurring about the same topic in two different places, now at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § RFC: Portals and Project Sponsorship. As such, pinging all users who have participated here who have not commented at the new discussion, so their opinions here won't be lost or discounted at the new discussion: @Serial Number 54129, Thryduulf, Certes, Isaacl, and Kusma: Per the new discussion, I feel that this discussion should now be closed, with a redirect provided to the new discussion in the closure. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 00:22, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Three places, counting the discussion started in February at the portal guidelines talk page. isaacl (talk) 02:05, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
• Request Closure This is at multiple venues and since this is not a proposal that affects administrators (specifically) this one should probably be procedurally closed. Crazynas ^t 15:59, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Portal MfD Results

Discussion on MfD results

We get the message. 3% of portals, selected from the worst examples, have successfully been removed. I !voted to delete most of them myself. You are also working hard to get portal-related tools deleted while discussions on the project's future continue. However, AN is not the place to list every tiny victory in the War on Portals. This trophy cabinet is now full. Certes (talk) 13:15, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that not all of these were deleted uncontroversially, so do not demonstrate a need for a speedy deletion criterion. This list, if you wish to maintain it, belongs in userspace. Thryduulf (talk) 13:19, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

This list is very relevant to a discussion about creating a CSD for similar pages. It provides an easy way for users to assess discussions unfiltered by opinions which go against community consensus. Legacypac (talk) 15:52, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• I agree with Thryduulf; the trophy case belongs in userspace. Furthermore, most of the pages deleted were from bundled nominations. However, at WP:MULTIAFD, it states, "For the avoidance of doubt, bundling should not be used to form consensus around policy decisions such as "should Wikipedia include this type of article". Bundling AfDs should be used only for clear-cut deletion discussions based on existing policy." (Bold emphasis mine.) While WP:MULTIAFD technically applies only to articles, it comes across as an inappropriate list for this venue, where policy decisions are being discussed. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 19:59, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Yet this list was broadcast via the Portals Update #30 Newsletter. It can't be all that bad. No one wants to debate each neighborhood of Portland or each of the 723 Indian districts one by one. If someone listed a dozen very similar pages for debate there would be a lot of pushback to bundle them. Can we assume from these comments you insist on debating 4500 automated portals one by one? Legacypac (talk) 02:57, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

• Exactly that. This isn't one of our most frequently cited policies – mainly because attempts to do things that like that haven't been common since the early 2000s – but anyone deeply steeped in policy should already know it by heart, especially if they're big into deletion. Proposing major changes to deletion policy without actually understanding deletion policy is a competence failure.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:05, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
• @Legacypac: Bundling closely related discussions together is a Good Thing but completely different to using a bundled nomination of portals about 723 Indian districts to claim that there is consensus to speedily delete all single-page portals. Thryduulf (talk) 14:45, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

As an Admin you really should be required not to post such misleading characterizations of what I said and the list of MfDs. The community deserves better than this. Legacypac (talk) 15:13, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

While that is slightly more extreme than your position, I did not claim it was your position and it is far from being grossly misleading - certainly far less so than your mischaracterisations about what I am advocating for. This is particularly true as looking through the bundles, many are nowhere near as clear-cut as "Indian districts" - e.g. Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Crabapples is quite likely to end as a trainwreck, and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Bottom Importance Portals is a clearly inappropriate bundling of unrelated pages. Thryduulf (talk) 15:40, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

• I think it should be reformatted and moved to our existing page, Wikipedia:Record of MfDs of portals (please see the bottom on how to correctly add the closes, this seems to have been neglected lately). — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 16:02, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Thousands of Autogenerated "Quantum Portals" with no human curation?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Discovered Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals which I'm not sure I fully understand but looks like another big disruption brewing. Sent to Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals Legacypac (talk) 04:54, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Please note that in the case of quantum portals there would be no actual pages stored in Wikipedia, There would be a link which would create a temporary page which would exist only while it was open, and would disappear when closed, like a search result. Since they would only exist when someone actively invoked them, their existence would depend on them being seen as useful to the reader at the time. Some processing time would be necessary, currently this appears to be limited by technical constraints, and is the same as would be used for rendering an uncached article or saving an edit, so it is hard to see where massive disruption would come from. No maintenance would be required, other than occasional improvements to the script.· · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 16:09, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Legacypac (or anyone else confused by this), see Reasonator to get an idea of what they're talking about here. They don't serve exactly the same purpose—Reasonator assembles a pseudo-article in your browser on-the-fly based on data (which has no useful purpose on en-wiki, but it has an obvious potential use in more obscure languages, since it's less prone to errors than translation software)—but the principle is the same as that being discussed here.

I personally find the idea of a "quantum portal" beyond pointless, given that barely anyone uses even the real portals (something like Portal:Fish and Portal:Trains—both major topics with a high degree of world-wide interest and well over 100,000(!) incoming direct links—average around 20 and 80 views per day respectively), but I can see that the theory behind it might make sense, especially for smaller Wikipedias where the category structure isn't as well organized and "show me a list of all the articles we currently have about trains, and all the train-related topics which other Wikipedias consider important but where we don't currently have an article" might actually be useful.

However, English Wikipedia is certainly not the appropriate testing ground for TTH to be conducting his experiments, especially given that we still haven't finished cleaning out the detritus from the previous time TTH tried to pull this "it's too late for you to stop me as I've already done it" stunt, let alone the most recent attempt with the portals. ‑ Iridescent 11:06, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Non-open drafting of an RfC about portals, and BHG behavior in relation to it

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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BrownHairedGirl and a few others she's hand-selected are drafting a proposed RfC about all of this. I have concerns about the non-open drafting of it. Its present wording is a train-wreck, and seems almost engineered to inflame dispute rather than resolve it (details here). I also have behavioral concerns about BHG's over-control of this page and admin-unbecoming incivility and other behavior in regard to it.

• I was directed to the draft and its talk page by BHG herself: "See User:BrownHairedGirl/Draft RFC on Portal criteria and its talkpage" [13].
  • Not so. You were told about its existence. You were not invited to participate. (The distinction is not complicated. If I told you where me house is, that would not be an invitation to push your way in and make yourself at home).
    Your edits to that page were all made to a page which clearly warned you not to edit it. See e.g. the page when you made your first edit[14]: a hatnote which said This page is for discussion by invitation of the User:BrownHairedGirl/Draft RFC on Portal criteria. If other editors who wish to express views on the draft, please comment at User talk:BrownHairedGirl., and below that a list of the editors who had been invited, and why.
    All open, transparent, striving for balance, and clear that you were not invited. I can only speculate whether you a) did not read it, or b) did not comprehend that plain English, or c) just chose for some reason to ignore it.
    The rest of SMcC's post below is similar nonsense: misrepresentations, half-truths, and flat-out malicious lies. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:00, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
• After spending the time to do some policy analysis of this and to suggest revisions to most sections, it was all mass reverted by BHG [15][16][17][18][19][20][21], on the grounds that I didn't have "permission" to comment there, despite being sent there by her, and despite others already replying to what I wrote [22]. This kind of selective censorship does senseless violence to talk pages, not to mention the actual process of drafting this RfC.
  • No, you were notsent there. You were told about the page's existence. As above, there was a hatnote saying not to edit the page.[23].
    Holding a discussion among a defined small group is not "censorship". It is a form of collaboration. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:17, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
• She'd earlier said (though I did not notice it at the time) at her own talk page "I was quite happy to engage with you on the substance". She then censored all this substance anyway, with a demand that I put it on her regular talk page not the draft's talk page.
  • Yes, I did indeed write I was quite happy to engage with you on the substance. But note that word "was"; it's past tense, to indicate that I am no longer happy to discuss with you.And note that SMcCandlish has dishonestly taken that phrase out of it context. My entire from which that is excerpted reads: SMcCandlish a thoroughly bad faith comment like that bogus allegation that I get angry because my close is criticised marks the end of our discussion.
    I was quite happy to engage with you on the substance, but if you want to engage in that sort of smeary, twisted ad hominem, the discussion is over.
    Given that you agree that we need a consensus of criteria for portals, I really wonder what on earth was the point of this whole discussion.
    The RFC is not a public drafting process. I chose a small groups of people with differing views to facilitate quick progress. So the talk page is for that group only
    My edit summary was "enough".
    SMcCandlish's attempt to portray that as an invite to post on my pages is either WP:CIR-level reading comprehension problems, or a wilful attempt to mislead AN by dishonest trimming of a quote. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:17, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
• Such a "you can't discuss it here" demand in itself is highly irregular. I can't think of any draft RfC in WP history with a talk page WP:OWNed in this manner by someone. It'a also inconsistent with WP:TALKPAGE and WP:EDITING.
  • This is a WP:USERPAGE, not a WP:TALKPAGE. See WP:REMOVED.
    If and when the group completes the draft and move sit to apublic page, then you or anyone else can join in whatever discussion happens there. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:17, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
• Whatever; I did as requested, and relocated all of this feedback [24] to BHG's talk page. I think it's important feedback, since since 5 of the 6 sections of the RfC draft are very problematic (several of the proposals are in direct conflict with policy and with ArbCom rulings, for example).
  • I did not request you to relocate anything to my talk page. I had already banned you from it.
    The edit summary which you quote below was a verbatim quote of the draft talk's hatnote, not a request or invitation. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:48, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Whether or not there is any merit to your claim that your post contained important feedback, that does not entitle you to impose it on another editor's talk page. You also seem to assume that you have some special insight into policy which is so critically important that you could not wait to present it either at the later public discussion of the draft, or at the RFC itself. If you genuinely believed that bizarre proposition to be true, then you should have taken care to behave with civility so that your comments would not be deleted unread. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:55, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
• Despite having demanded it ("which part of "If other editors who wish to express views on the draft, please comment at User talk:BrownHairedGirl" was unclear to you???" [25]), BHG then censored this version [26], too. Note in particular the uncivil edit summary: "you know perfectly well why you have been banned from my talk page. Now get lost". No admin should behave this way.
  • I did not censor your post. I unread removed from my usertalkpage (see WP:REMOVED) a post from an uncivil editor who I had banned from my talk page for making a malicious and false allegation of bad faith.
    You know perfectly that you had been banned from my talk page because I honestly and fulsomely answered your questions about the close, you accused me of saying in effect[27] "I get angry when when my closes are faintly criticized, and will spin implausible interpretations of what someone wrote just so I can vent".
    You chose to personalise a disagreement, and you chose to accuse me of "spin" and "vent". Those are accusation of bad faith, and they are conversation-stoppers in any context. I had given you my time to explain what I had done and why, and I am entitled to the very basic courtesy of not being accused of "spin" when I write a good faith explanation.
    It is risible of you to kill a conversation with your rudeness and your ABF, and then whine that you were told to "get lost". There is clear warning in my editnotice to assume good faith, not that it should be needed ... and when you have been asked no to post any more a
• This is not actually a true claim; I had no idea BHG had "banned" me from her talk page until long after the fact, as I received no talk page notice about it. This apparently happened here; note the WP:ASPERSIONS: "maliciously false accusations of bad faith", which is pure projection, and accusing someone of malicious intent is a blatant assumption of bad faith. (Last I checked, BHG doesn't have psychic powers and has no basis for assuming "malice" on my part; nor did I make any kind of accusation of bad faith toward her to begin with.)
  • The accusation of bad faith was made in your post of 00:22[28], in whch described my honest description of my close as "I get angry when when my closes are faintly criticized, and will spin implausible interpretations of what someone wrote just so I can vent".
    You do not have to agree with my actions, or believe that my rationale is correct; but an an accusation of spinning "implausible interpretations" and of"venting" is an accusation of bad faith. It is demonstrably untrue, and can only have been made for malicious purposes.
    I made it very clear that I closed the RFC with a recommendation for a folowup portal-criteria RFC because the criteria were clearly unresolved and highly controversial. SMcC said in the same post I agree that "editors need to build a community consensus on criteria for whether a portal should exist ... so all this querying of the close was all nonsense anyway: SMcC actually agreed with point he was contesting. Bizarre conduct. Was it baiting? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:32, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
• Importantly, the "ban" message has a timestamp of 00:53, 18 March 2019 (UTC), while every single demand BHG made, diffed in series above, to move my RfC-draft commentary to her main talk page came after that, and no such "ban" was mentioned in any of those demands. This is blatant WP:GAMING#Gaming the consensus-building process (it qualifies under at least 3 of the 4 points there), is WP:WIN behavior, and also an WP:ADMINCOND failure greater than the civility lapses and bogus aspersions.
  • Yet more hyerbolic nonsense. Writing a draft in userpsace is not a consensus-building process. It is a private discussion in userpsace. Nothing discussed on my draft page is any way binding on anyone or on any policy or guideline, unless several steps down the road it it is presented at an actual consensus-forming process and is adopted by consensus.
    Nothing in WP:ADMINCOND requires me to facilitate the repeated intrusions on my talk pages by an editor who has responded to my good faith WP:ADMINACCT explanations by making a malicious accusation of bad faith. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:03, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
• What I actually did – what predicated all this weird behavior – was suggest that her strange reaction to my comments in user talk about one of her related closing decisions at this AN page seemed to me like a knee-jerk over-reaction to criticism. BHG's "ban" editsummary and wave of targeted censoriousness all being in response to that criticism (which I couched in terms of my own perception, not any allegations of intent) clearly proves the original point. It's the furthest thing from "maliciously false accusations of bad faith", but an accurate description of what's been happening.
• It's not actually possible to "ban" people from your talk page, per WP:USERPAGE policy (at most, ignoring a request to stay away and instead using someone's talk page for unconstructive purposes will be used against you at ANI; nothing I've done here is unconstructive). Further, with BHG being an admin, WP:ADMINACCT applies. I'm entirely within my editorial rights to raise concerns about BHG's over-control, as an admin, of this RfC drafting, at her talk page.
• As for the original close I constructively criticized: BHG clearly shouldn't be closing any of these discussions, being highly partisan and invested in the outcome.
• I've attempted to make it clear that I'm actually in agreement with BHG that many of our portals do not need to exist, that there are maintenance costs associated with them, that an RfC is necessary, and that the community clearly does need to establish guidelines about them. I also reached out in e-mail, suggesting this was all just some mutual misunderstanding and "one of those days". This all seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

I don't think this RfC should be drafted inside a tiny echo chamber, especially when the output so far flies in the face of policy and ArbCom decisions. Either move the draft to "Wikipedia:" namespace and let everyone help shape it, or someone needs to draft a competing RfC that makes more sense. I think we all know from past experience that the former is a more productive process, though competing RfCs often nevertheless come to a clear consensus result.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:42, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Oh, for God's sake. This a pile of timewasting utter nonsense from SMcCandlish, who appeared on my talkpage this evening spoiling for a fight, and got banned from my talk after a malicious and false accusation of bad faith ... and the disregarded the ban.

Here's the facts.

1. I drafted an RFC offline and pondered what to do with it
2. I decided as a first step to try to form a small group of editors with divergent view to improve it, and then decide as group where to put the draft out for public reworking or launch it directly.
3. Every step of this was done on-wiki.
4. I chose two editors who thought broadly agreed with, and two who broadly disagreed with me. See it all at User talk:BrownHairedGirl/Draft RFC on Portal criteria
5. I did not invite SMcCandlish to comment on the draft. What I did write was I am now working with a few other editors of varying viewpoints to draft an RFC which would try to set guidelines on which portals should exist. See User:BrownHairedGirl/Draft RFC on Portal criteria and its talkpage. [29]. That is not an invitation
6. SMcCandlish's comments were posted to User talk:BrownHairedGirl/Draft RFC on Portal criteria, which at the time of SMcCanslish's postings ahad aclear header saying This page is for discussion by invitation of the User:BrownHairedGirl/Draft RFC on Portal criteria. If other editors who wish to express views on the draft, please comment at User talk:BrownHairedGirl. See that header present in the first post made there by SmcC[30]. Itw a sthere for all his other posts too, but I laer made it much promienent[31]
7. I did not invite SmcC to join the group, because a) it was already formed; b) i had promised the group nom or invite without everyone's approval; c) SmCC had already on my talk been actively misrepresenting me, and I saw no benefit in bring a problem-maker into a problem-solving discussion
8. I ended the discusion on my talk with SmcC because of his conduct. SMcC had made malicious and false accusation that I was acting in bad faith[32]: specifically that I spin implausible interpretations of what someone wrote just so I can vent".
   In invited anyone interested to read the discussion above and see for themselves that there was no venting and no spinning.
9. I then hated the discussion, and banned SmC from my talk page[33].
   There was no point in further engagement with SMcC, because if he genuinely believed that I was spinning and venting, that the discussion was clearly going nowhere; and if he was just hurling abuse, it was also going nowhere.
10. Only after closing that discussion did I see that SMcC had posted heavily on the talk page of my draft RFC. I then removed all his comments unread
11. I then saw a post on that draft page from another eidtor.@Legacypac, who had written[34] If the User:SMcCandlish is going to be part of this working group I'm out of here. I have no interest in arging with their inability to be factual or analytical. Their comments should be removed so we can have a focused discussion.. I replied in agreement
12. I then found that SMcC had reposted his comments on my talk page, despite being asked not to do so.
13. I opened a discussion about his conduct at ANI, and then found I had just received an email from SmcC falsley claiming that I had been "Gaming the consensus-building process": You invited my commentary, then nuked it.
    Both blatant lies; I did not invite his commentary, and there was no gaming.
14. Then I found this pile of nonsense.

He raised on my talk a legit question about my close, and I replied at length per WP:ADMINACCT. SMcC's response was to repeatedly misrepresent me, put words in my mouth, and then maliciously accuse me of bad faith ... and then falsely claim that I rescinded and invite which was never made, and ignore a very clear notice about a page he was asked not to post on.

I have done nothing underhand here. I have created in my userapce a page User:BrownHairedGirl/Draft_RFC_on_Portal_criteria which cleraly sets out what I am trying to do; to collate all options, with a clear statement note that my aim is to ensure that all options which may command support are presented here, and not to promote my preferences. If I have omitted any options, or given undue prominence to some, or included too many options, please treat that as unintended error by BHG, and propose a fix.

If that is underhand or gaming the system, I am a banana.

I have set out to draft this RFC in collaboration with 4 people, two of whom who I selected precisely because they disagree with me: see User_talk:BrownHairedGirl/Draft_RFC_on_Portal_criteria#Can_we_draft_a_joint_proposal.

I explicitly say in hat section My thinking is that if we can each consensus between us on the design of an RFC, then we could either * Launch the RFC as what we have designed, or * Take it to broader design discussion. I currently have have no preference on which of those paths to follow.

I don't know why SmcC is behaving like this but their conduct this evening resembles that of an angry drunk looking for a fight. It is disagraceful disruption, timewasting, and a stream of malicious misepresentation. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:36, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

PS If there a strong feeling from others here that any draft produced by the we group we have assembled should be first taken to a public venue for further revision, then I for one would be very happy to do so. As I wrote long before SMcc appeared Note that my aim is to ensure that all options which may command support are presented here, and not to promote my preferences. If I have omitted any options, or given undue prominence to some, or included too many options, please treat that as unintended error by BHG. The very last thing I wnat is an RFC which anyone feels in any way unfair, incomplete or otherise flawed.

However, I absolutely stand my decision that I do not want any further engagement with SmcC on my talk. As Legacypac wrote, I have no interest in arging with their inability to be factual or analytical. Their comments should be removed so we can have a focused discussion.

The pile of malicious nonsense which SMcC has posted above merely confirms my judgement that SMcC would be a toxic and probably fatal wrecking factor in any attempt to collaborate. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:44, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Update: I didn't know it at the time, but BHG was drafting an ANI about me simultaneously: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User:SMcCandlish disregarding ban from my talk. I would think these should be merged, probably to this one since it's better diffed and raises more issues, including admin-specific ones and ones about community process. I'm going to bed now. I'll say three things before I do so:

• It's possible BHG may have believed I saw her "ban" note, saw her reverts and read their edit summaries, and kept posting to the same RfC talk page page just to spite her. It's not the case. I did my policy analysis of the RfC draft all in one go (though multiple saves), with single-minded focus. My monitor is something like 38 inches diagonal. The "you have a notice" icon is a very tiny blip at the far top right for me, and something I do not notice until I'm done editing and am looking around for what to do next; usually it's just the WP:FRS bot leaving "RfC spam" on my talk page, so I don't always look at the notices immediately even when I see that there is one. This quite possible to have escalated out of a one-sided misunderstanding, a misperception of someone else's editing and notice-checking habits.
• However, I can't see any kind of excuse for having "banned" me from her talk page then making repeated demands I take something from the draft RfC talk page to her talk page. It's flat-out GAMING. You can't bait editors into "you can't use my talk page but you must use my talk page" traps and then try to ANI them over it. That unclean hands ANI report is a third ADMINCOND failure in the same "incident" (and such baiting actually resulted in a desysop before, though I won't name names, since the editor who did it took a break, returned, copped to it, and eventually got their admin bit back). And ever time BHG repeat the "malicious" accusation without any evidence of malice, and considerable evidence to the contrary, she's just digging her own hole deeper.
• All I really care about is a neutral, policy-compliant, sensibly worded RfC to arrive at a solid community consensus about when we should and should not have a portal. I don't think an RfC-drafting process controlled by one person can do that (especially given the WP:Writing policy is hard problems evidenced in the current draft, and double-especially when said owner shuts out constructive input because of an unrelated criticism they didn't like on another page). If you're going to draft an RfC and refuse others' input, don't advertise the RfC and it's talk page, FFS. It's another form of trap. While I've raised admin-behavior issues in the above, I don't expect or seek them to result in anything but an admonition, and am entirely willing to ignore the hypocritical "maliciously false accusations of bad faith" nonsense as long as it doesn't recur. I did finally hear back from BHG in e-mail (after both the ANI an this AN were open), and it just repeated the exact same assumption of malice. I objected to it again on AGF grounds, and will trust (AGF!) that this will be the end of it. Sorry this is long, but I'm done for the day and may not participate tomorrow due to off-site duties, so I need to make my case now all in one go. I'm not going to pore over all of BHG's even longer post above. My diffs show what they show. Timestamps don't lie. In skimming it, it looks like a bunch of "It was okay to do what I did because I was angry and thought I was being ignored" handwaving; it's not okay, and that's not an excuse.
   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:48, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish:, more bad faith nonsense.

1. It is entirely reasonable of me to assume that an editor who is active posting on the pages of someone with whom they have had a disagreement reads their notifications. If you did not follow the notfication to stay off my talk page, that was your choice to ignore something pertinent.
2. I have engaged in no gaming and no baiting. That is yet more of your malicious nonsense. At no point did I invite your comments on the draft, and you posted the on a page which contained a very clear notice to post unless invited, with a list of who was invited which did not include your name
3. At no point did I "banned" me from her talk page then making repeated demands I take something from the draft RfC talk page to her talk page. I quoted to you repeatedly the notice at the top of the age on which you had been posting uninvited. It did rescind the ban.
4. SMcC claims If you're going to draft an RfC and refuse others' input, don't advertise the RfC and it's talk page. I did NOT advertise it; I mentioned its existence in one-to-one conversation, in the interests of transparency.
   If I told you where you my house is, would you interpret that as a license to push your way in past the notice saying "not unless uninvited" and then throw a tantrum if you were asked to leave? That is exactly what you did there.

If you actually care about a neutral, policy-compliant, sensibly worded RfC ... then please find within yourself the integrity to acknowledge that:

• that is precisely the aim I set out at the top of the draft
• That I have not acted unilaterally, and specifically asked editors to work me on the precise basis that they disagree with me. That is all set out publicly

I do not actually believe your belated claim that your concern is about the RFC. What I see is a rude editor who repeatedly misrepresented what I had written, maliciously accused me of acting in bad faith ... and has now thrown the absolute mother of all bogus accusation FUD temper-tantrums because (surprise! surprise!) the editor who he maliciously accused of bad faith doesn't want to work with him.

We are all volunteers here, SMcC. If you come to any editor or admin's talk, make outrageous and malicious allegations of bad faith, then do you really really expect to be asked to join a collaboration which had already been chosen to keep numbers low and views balanced? Really? Staggering sense of entitlement.

Sleep it off, SMcC. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:58, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal 8: Help with unlinking

Now that the number of deletions is going up, I propose we use a bot to remove the resulting redlinks from the articles and templates that link to the deleted portals? Twinkle doesn't really do the job, because it leaves a non-link on the template or in the article's See also section, which doesn't really seem to make sense (see {{Agoura Hills, California}} for Twinkle's result). This will become important if the X3 proposal gains consensus. Absent that, I propose we get a dedicated group of editors to help with this task? It would be really nice if some of the members of WP:WikiProject Portals who created these (now red) links helped with the cleanup instead of taking their toys and going home. Ideas welcome. UnitedStatesian (talk) 06:37, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Have you tried Evad37's Xunlink.js|? It's better than Twinkle, though it too may leave the non-link on the template I guess. SD0001 (talk) 05:13, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

I have removed the links which I created to portals which have since been deleted. The rest I will leave, to be part of the usual deletion process. Certes (talk) 16:34, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks so much, appreciate it. UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:09, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

The project members are too busy copy-pasting generic keep votes while they expect everyone else to come up with detailed unique rationals to delete on a portal by portal basis. The side project is opposing any bundling of noms. There is no time to handle boring jobs like removing links or fixing busted portals. Legacypac (talk) 16:42, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes, the need to respond to hundreds of simultaneous copy-pasted MfDs is diverting many good editors from useful work. Certes (talk) 16:53, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Look, because only one of the creators has objectively assessed the community's consensus and offered speedy U5 deletions, we have about 4,000 to discuss at MfD. Some will be kept, some will be deleted, but without pointing fingers we can all agree it is time consuming: will probably take about a year to get all the discussions completed. UnitedStatesian (talk) 17:44, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

And taking that long is not a problem. Thryduulf (talk) 07:30, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Of course not, having a year of tagging, discussion, back and forth, to debate the fate of thousands of creations which took one person a few hours to create obviously is not a problem. Sending our readers to error-riddled, useless, uncared for portals is not a problem. The only problem apparently is daring to question why these portals have to exist in the first place. Oh right, because of the content in them, which we should never delete but keep or merge. Except that they contain no content at all, of course, and there is nothing there to merge. Fram (talk) 07:44, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

The portals should not have been created so quickly, but they were. Unless you have a time machine, that's not something you can change, so we have to work from where we are. Some of the portals should be deleted, some should be kept and some should be merged into broader portals - I have !voted all three ways on MfDs. Deleting those portals that should not be deleted will harm the project (in the same way that deleting anything that should not be deleted harms the project - which is why the ability to delete pages is restricted to administrators and speedy deletion is restricted even further), but no harm will come from those portals that should be deleted hanging around for a bit. Thryduulf (talk) 08:27, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

They don't need to respond to anything. The portals were created without even looking at them (as the basic errors in many of them attest to), they are not maintained, they are in most cases not used or appreciated by the readers, but you still feel the need to defend them because... well, why actually? If you want to do useful work instead of opposing the deletion of these portals, please do, no one is stopping you! Fram (talk) 07:38, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

HuffPost article on WP COI editing

Thanks to JamesG5 I bumped into this HuffPost article of yesterday (or today depending on your timezone). It is dedicated to a particular COI editor on WP:

• Ashley Feinberg (14 March 2019). "Facebook, Axios And NBC Paid This Guy To Whitewash Wikipedia Pages. And it almost always works". Huffington Post.

Does it offer ideas for anything actionable? — kashmīrī ^TALK 00:05, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• So long as he has disclosed and not directly edited pages, there's nothing we can do. If someone wants to change the policy to be stricter and prohibit it completely, I'll be the first to support, but I don't think we have that consensus yet (though I believe we eventually will. Also, note I'm talking about PR nonsense, not Wikipedians-in-residence, which is always a sticking point.)
  I'll add that articles like this make us look ridiculous and that our official begrudging acceptance of disclosed paid editing is even more of a threat than undisclosed paid editing because it ruins our reputation when major media outlets runs stories like this.
  Finally, I'll put my 2¢ in that admins and others should not let declated paid editors do what I refer to as TOU bludgeon: declaration is the minimum required to edit. It is not a free pass to spam. WP:NOTSPAM is still local policy and if someone openly declares themselves a spammer and the content matches, they should be indefinitely blocked without warning. Native advertising is very much a thing, and just because spam doesn't look like it did in 2005 when out policies were written, doesn't mean that our policies don't apply. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:14, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

TonyBallioni I completely and passionately agree with your last paragraph. However, If a media organization wants to take issue with the calls we make on controversial topics they can and they will and we might not come out the otherside so great - they're tough areas for a reason. The fact that we have transparency means we can, if we want, revisit any of these editorial decisions. If there was no declaration those changes would be made and we wouldn't know or be any wiser and the community would have no option to re-evaluate the thinking. There are no good decisions for us to make here only least awful ones. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:47, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Which headline makes us look more like fools:

1. Wikipedia blocks hundreds of 'scam' sock puppet accounts
2. Facebook, Axios And NBC Paid This Guy To Whitewash Wikipedia Pages And it almost always works

The first headline is about Orangemoody. The second one is about someone following our TOU and policies. Anyone who has ever worked a day in a marketing department can tell you which headline they'd prefer.

This is significant because we've fought for years to have our credibility accepted. I'm not saying that this is worse ethically than Orangemoody. Of course it isn't. I am saying that to the general public, this looks significantly worse. In Orangemoody, we were the heroes: fighting a bad guy scamming people out of their money. Here we are the bureaucrats that allow Big Tech to whitewash their own articles.

Regardless of what the actual impact is on individual articles, the perceived impact is worse from declared PR editing, and that in turn makes all of the featured articles on notable topics that are extremely well researched worth less to the reader.

I'm well aware that these are tough calls, but I'm saying that the community does need to consider perception here, and the perception from "white hat" editing on the outside is worse than some of our biggest sockfarms. I don't want an RfC on this now, but I do think it is something that is missing from community discussion on the topic, which is why I'm raising it. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:57, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Not to detract from TonyBallioni's points, but just to answer one of the original questions of whether there is anything actionable, I didn't see such a thing. Problematic, sure. Actionable? Well, since the editor in question responds reasonably to comments, I don't see anything in particular right now. HuffPo also I feel is being a bit misleading. Regarding the Oppenheimer/Farrow thing, for instance, looking back, the section we had in his article was completely inappropriate for a BLP given what the sources actually stated. If what was previously written were verifiable, then those sources should have been added if the content was to stay like that. The wall-o-texts that HuffPo complains about don't seem big to me. And whether an article on a website needs to mention a criminal complaint against the founder is a completely ordinary coat rack discussion. Well, I guess CORPORATE PR PHONY WIKIPEDIA EDITOR WHITEWASHES ARTICLES is more compelling clickbait than Several companies pay Wikipedia editor to file routine boring complaints about content that arguably violates Wikipedia's own policies. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:26, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

I don't think today's headline is worse for us than Wikipedia’s Top-Secret ‘Hired Guns’ Will Make You Matter (For a Price) and at least today we can decide if the changes really were policy compliant or not. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:58, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Damn, what's next? Soon they'll discover that I've been taking millions to edit Intel articles. THE JIG IS UP Drmies (talk) 02:06, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Millions?! I only get a few rubles! You need to hook me up. PackMecEng talk) 02:10, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Bedoel je niet wij, goede dokter ;-). TonyBallioni (talk) 02:12, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Nice try, Tony, but that you are me (I?) is only a rumor on Reddit, and at any rate I AM NOT SHARING THE MILLIONS I GOT FROM INTEL FOR EDITING THAT ARTICLE WITH YOU. Damn I hope that that person who exposed me AS A PAID EDITOR FOR INTEL doesn't read this. Drmies (talk) 02:14, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• Back on point, while I agree the headline isn't great for Wikipedia, making policy in response to headlines is a slippery slope that I, for one, don't want to embark upon. Of course HuffPo is going to write the most sensational headline they can coin out of a relatively scant set of facts. I'm not really convinced that there is a lot in the story we should be worried about, which just leaves the headline. If you're looking for headlines critical of Wikipedia handling of material, there are plenty out there and they really do affect our credibility with a big section of the population; we shouldn't make policy in response to those headlines, either. GoldenRing (talk) 10:41, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

The headline itself is useless, but the rest of the text could possibly be of use for those who want to take a look at the mentioned articles. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:05, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Just to make it clear, we are talking about BC1278--Ymblanter (talk) 15:21, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

And I think the question the HP asks in our language would be whether their actions are compatible with WP:CANVASSING.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:39, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi. BC1278 here. Overwhelmingly, my Request Edits are made through a Request Edit flag. The format is usually very concise, as suggested by User: Spintendo, a frequent reviewer to the Request Edit queue: e.g. Talk:Pace_University#Request_Edit, Talk:Jonathan_Swan#Request_Edits. The "wall of text" complaint the author of the HuffPo column picked up on happened in an article about Noah Oppenheim during extended discussions about controversial issues with multiple RfCs. The consensus decisions ultimately reached by independent editors were not remotely like my original proposed edits, as the HuffPost author falsely implies. Instead, independent editors did their job and came to their own conclusions. One outcome of participating in a couple of these very contentious discussions was a chat last year with DGG, who advised me that he had learned over the years there's very little advantage in getting involved in debates after you've made your point once - you're not going to convince people to change their minds anyway. I have tried to adopt his style since. The HuffPost column is focused on a few high-profile media-related Wikipedia articles which involved public controversies (the author's beat), rather than how I conduct myself on Wikipedia in general. It's click bait. It is also rife with mistakes and misleading statements too numerous to explain here. I am going to ask for HuffPo for multiple corrections. For example, she ignores that I was the editor who suggested expanding into a robust paragraph, the few words mentioning the Matt Laeur firing on NBC News, despite the subject being very unflattering to them. But I wanted the NBC News article to be up to date anyway. The HuffPo author cherry picked one sentence she didn't like in my proposed edit, even though, as per a normal independent review, another editor chose to use entirely different language than anything I submitted (and I added words of encouragement, saying it was well done.) Talk:NBC_News#Expanded_info_on_Matt_Lauer Her example of alleged canvasing are notifications to editors who had already participated in extended discussions on Talk:Noah Oppenheim that more discussions were continuing in a new RfC. If she looked carefully, she would have seen that I notified (or tried to) all the recent editors, including those who opposed my proposals previously, such as User: Peter K Burian. This was my first RfC and to me, there appeared to already be consensus, when JytDog re-opened the question as a new RfC. I thought the previous editors discussing the same matter should be notified again. Today, having been through a few, I would have added all the notifications right on the RfC page, to be transparent, and let others double check I didn't mistakenly leave anyone out. Or, to be honest, I just wouldn't bother to notify anyone - at the time, I didn't know how RfC editors were even called upon.BC1278 (talk) 20:36, 15 March 2019 (UTC)BC1278

FYI, if you'd like to know what its like to field inquiries from prominent organizations, PR firms or individuals who think articles about them have problems, or want a new article, many balk when I tell them how I work - with full disclosure of COI as a paid editor and submitting all suggested edits for independent review. They don't want to take the risk of appearing in articles like the one by HuffPo. So I turn down their business, as my entire premise is that I do "white hat" work, only for those who want to follow the rules. Sometimes, a few months or a year down the road, I check to see if the articles of those who chose not to work with me nonetheless were edited or published as they wanted -- and it's usually the case they have been, but never with a public disclosure of COI or prior review. As the editing is anonymous, I can't be sure what happened, of course. I do know it will be more difficult to get subjects to publicly disclose because of this article, but it won't slow down the organizations/individuals from violating Wikipedia policy and making direct edits. Not in my experience. Only a much more radical change will solve the problem -- for example, the elimination of anonymous editing, with all user accounts requiring a LinkedIn profile. Then, COI and agenda editing will be more obvious. It would also go a long way toward solving the civility issues. But given the sanctity of anonymous editing on Wikipedia, I guess it isn't viable.BC1278 (talk) 20:36, 15 March 2019 (UTC)BC1278

Hi guy here who thinks you're right that UPE is worse. But do you understand why as a volunteer how your 700+ words are troubling and could be seen as WP:BLUDGEONing this conversation in contradiction of WP:PAYTALK. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:33, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Yes. Sorry/ I re-read it a bunch of times to try to cut it. But I'm responding to a major press article that made a slew of misleading and inaccurate statements about me, personally, and that now seems to be swaying discussion on Wikipedia policy itself. For four years, I've worked to convince organizations and PR firms to abide by COI disclosure rules because that's what Wikipedia has decreed is kosher Someone from the Wikimedia Foundation needs to publicly stand up to this young media reporter who thinks UPE is more ethical than declared PE or declared COI editing. That's what this author is explicitly saying! I received calls and emails from major PR agencies all day -- if this is the new normal, they're going to direct business away from the "white hats." There are board meetings taking place next week to formalize this, affecting some of the largest corporations in the world. Unless something changes, the outcome will be a lot more business for "black hats."BC1278 (talk) 04:00, 16 March 2019 (UTC)BC1278

• I mean, yeah, it does. BC1278 is alleged to be a serial POV-pusher and professional whitewasher, who games the system to get his edits through with a combination of relentless bludgeoning and canvassing. That's extremely alarming and I was ready to crucify this guy. I was even pissed to see the lighthearted reactions above. But, when you actually examine the article, I'm not seeing any violations. In fact, I'm not really seeing anything of major concern. The article itself seems to quietly concede that he doesn't actually violate any policies. In fact, it comes across as extremely misleading and obviously written by someone who doesn't understand Wikipedia at all. He "spent over a year lobbying" for the creation of Caryn Marooney? Come on, he created it as a draft and got it approved through the AfC process, not because he's some relentless lobbyist. Relentless bludgeoning, based on this? Really? He's literally just discussing something in the discussion section, because he was refraining from !voting. Obviously the writer has never witnessed true bludgeoning. Canvassing? The supposed incidents of "canvassing" are usually explained as simply being notifications to relevant users who are involved in some way, such as WikiProject members. I have not seen any refutations of that point. I mean, one of the warnings cited was literally for notifying the only other contributor to an article about a deletion discussion.[35] There's nothing even particularly unreasonable about that. Most of the supposed "whitewashing" seems to be mundane matters that don't harm articles at all, if not actual improvements, like making articles better comply with BLP. "It almost always works"? Uh, yeah, if you're in compliance with policies and are making reasonable requests that are being vetted by established editors who decide to approve them, then good for you, you're not terrible at what you do. It certainly isn't because the community has no problem with paid COI editors, on the contrary, they're among the most stigmatized editors within the community. This article seems to be little more than an unfortunate piece of trumped-up clickbaity garbage, and I actually feel bad for the paid editor here. I hope both the editor and the Foundation will push back in some way. If COIN wants to do an in-depth investigation of this editor, that's perhaps a reasonable reaction, but based solely on the allegations and supporting evidence presented in the article, which, I assume was the worst they could find, there's nothing actionable there. ~Swarm~ {talk} 21:02, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Swarm I have spent some time examining this user's editing. I think on the whole I agree with your analysis. But even in that rather long analysis above you're still about 55% as verbose as BC1278 is in his response here. I think given PAYTALK, which I value as a volunteer editor, he could learn how to be more concise. The problem with him at Oppenheim, as I see it, isn't with the RfC, it's with what came before. Similar verbose behavior can be seen at other of his pages. I compare that to this paid editor who accomplishes their work in a far more concise manner. But to emphasize I think that the HuffPo article, like much of the media commenting on Wikipedia practices, gets things wrong, and in this case does so with a clear agenda in mind. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:24, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

I think that there is a "money is bad" mentality that induces people into writing articles of debatable accuracy about paid editing on Wikipedia. In a way it's similar to the POV-pushing process. I agree that the "bludgeoning" there isn't, plenty of people write mildly detailed arguments. And if memory serves this would be far from the first time where a news article about Wikipedia has turned out to be partially or mostly wrong. Some caution is due before citing newspaper articles about Wikipedia as arguments for a policy change or on-wiki action. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:16, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks Swarm for taking time to go through the edit history and this way answering my original question.

As to COI editing, Jo-Jo Eumerus has put it right. We often distrust those who have vested financial interest in what most of us are doing for free, ergo, in our view, selflessly.

Hopefully, in the longer run, common sense will prevail. Maybe a day will come when for example we will allow company infoboxes to be edited by company staff, or person infoboxes by article subjects. Until we find an open and transparent way of managing COI, we will see articles like the HuffPost piece. — kashmīrī ^TALK 00:44, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Swarm, Barkeep49, Jo-Jo Eumerus, Kashmiri, Ymblanter, GoldenRing, TonyBallioni, PackMecEng, Drmies, Gråbergs Gråa Sång and anyone I missed here: Given the subject of the Request Edit here Talk:Caryn_Marooney#section=1 and the already removed language from from NBC News (editors using this HuffPo article to include accusations of Wikipedia impropriety in the WP articles about the organizations mentioned), would it be possible for an official consensus as to whether this article is or is not a reliable source for alleging paid editing impropriety such that it can be included in the Wikipedia mainspace articles about or related to the organizations highlighted in HuffPo? Or, whether the article is reliable in general? This is going to repeat over and over.BC1278 (talk) 23:10, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

I'd say it's reasonably reliable for alleging (by which I mean "according to HuffPost" or whatever) paid editing impropriety, but will currently probably fail on WP:UNDUE/WP:NOTNEWS (and maybe WP:BLP, depending on use) aspects. I was thinking of Conflict-of-interest_editing_on_Wikipedia#Miscellaneous, but it seems a little weak on it's own. HuffPost is not Daily Mail, but it's not Washington Post either. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:59, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

• @BC1278: In response to your request for "an official consensus", I've started a discussion on the reliable sources noticeboard at WP:RSN § HuffPost for paid editing at Axios (website), NBC News, Caryn Marooney, and other articles. — Newslinger talk 17:51, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

• Speaking of WP:BLUDGEON and WP:PAYTALK... 2600:6C44:E7F:F8D6:8694:953B:9EC1:FBC (talk) 04:27, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

• If you're implying that's an example of "bludgeoning", then no. In fact, based on the above, the user presents a perfectly reasonable case. If anyone is unclear on what "bludgeoning" looks like, check out the discussions I collapsed at Talk:Origin of the Romanians/Archive 18. If you're really a glutton for punishment, keep scrolling past that. Eventually, you may reach the bottom of the page. ~Swarm~ {talk} 20:14, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Maybe you missed the part of those 572 words where he asserted AN consensus that HuffPo is not a reliable source? That's a misrepresentation at best, and the whole thing is a classic example of throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. 2600:6C44:E7F:F8D6:8694:953B:9EC1:FBC (talk) 01:40, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

• We should at least say "paid editors are not to directly edit articles"... Even info boxes maybe problematic as they try to exaggerate the number of employees ect. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:11, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
• This part concerns me:

Posts calling attention to Sussman’s lobbying of other editors rarely stay up for more than a week. According to his Talk page history, Sussman deletes criticism frequently and any record of it in his user logs often gets buried by his prolific posting and editing.

Should paid editors be restricted from deleting other editors' comments from their user talk page? Combing through a history like this is unnecessarily arduous, and the status quo hinders oversight from other editors by allowing important discussions to be obscured. — Newslinger talk 10:25, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

I don't see this incident going away anytime soon. A new discussion was started at ANI just today: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Whitewashing?. What I find most offensive to those of us who edit for free, and worse, what may prove damaging to WP in the long term, are sites like this one and the claims they make while marketing their business. I don't know how long volunteers can be expected to keep working for free in order to make an article encyclopedic and compliant with our PAGs knowing it's for the benefit of paid editors. Think about that for a minute. Our own paid editing/COI PAGs lack common sense. So paid editor John Doe gets a nice check for $400+/- (probably a great deal more if worth their salt) to write/protect an article but unpaid editors are actually the ones writing the article for them. How is this not insanity? ^Atsme _Talk 📧 00:49, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

It's insane that Wikipedia's rules are that you cannot be paid to edit an article, you can only be paid to get unpaid volunteers to edit the article for you. Leviv ich 02:10, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

I highly agree with User:Atsme and User:Levivich. Why should volunteers edit an article for someone getting paid wads, while us volunteers get paid nothing at all? While I understand that we've opted to keep some COI editing aboveboard instead of outlawing it and just driving paid editing underground, paid editing is still highly problematic. Captain Eek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 03:55, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

I don't begrudge the way any person makes an honest living, and if a paid editor is complying with policy, they're doing nothing wrong in my book. The policies are kafkaesque, but that's the inevitable result of trying to police editors instead of edits. Leviv ich 04:39, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Nor do I, Levivich, but it's wrong to do it at the expense of volunteers who are committed to building a free knowledge-based encyclopedia. The marketing material of companies like White Hat Wiki is an insult to everything WP represents. Phrases like "We Bullet-Proof Your Wikipedia Presence", and "Wikipedia is a byzantine labyrinth of policies, guidelines and internal politics" are far from flattering to the project and its volunteers. Paid editing changes the landscape and the very definition of knowledge-based encyclopedia and converts it to a Whose Who in business. Catch phrases like "We use sophisticated strategies and our knowledge of the complex rules to get results is an insult - "get results"?? And what results might that be? When a company is notable enough to be included in WP, a volunteer (typically patrons or fans) will eventually write the article. To do otherwise weakens the very foundation WP is built on. I can't help but wonder how much money paid editing actually diverts away from Jimbo's fund drives and the much needed contributions that keep this project alive. Why should companies contribute to WMF when they're paying an independent company to write/oversee their articles? I truly believe this is something WMF needs to carefully reconsider, but I'm only one voice. Perhaps the time has come for WMF to pay its own select group of qualified editors to work exclusively on business/corporate articles, and keep that money going to the project instead of independent companies, unless the goal is to grow, support and protect the cottage industries that are sprouting up around us. I shudder to think all the time and energy that is being devoted to COI by editors like Doc James and the volunteers he's worked with is for naught, or worse, driving COI editors to become/work with independent companies at the expense of other WP volunteers. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 12:03, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

• This "Should paid editors be restricted from deleting other editors' comments from their user talk page?" by User:Newslinger is an excellent suggestion. They can use automated archiving but Talk pages are here to improve Wikipedia so they do not belong to any single editor. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:14, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

If I were making the rules here, I'd require all new corporate articles to be moved immediately to draft space and EC-protect the creation of each title in main space, forcing each new corporate article to go through review. If the paid editor has to wait for it, that isn't our problem. If disclosed paid editors complain, that also isn't our problem. I would also EC-protect any approved/established corporate article in main space, to force the PR folks to request changes on the talk page. These rule changes wouldn't have any effect on long-term paid editors with a long contribution history, but this would likely eliminate a lot of the undisclosed paid crap. I mean, we have these tools already, let's stop whining about the situation and use them. ~Anachronist (talk) 04:40, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

• How come this guy hasn't been blocked indef? It is most detestable and infuriating to have the fruits of our volunteer labor ripped by these paid editors walking away with swathes of cash. Another second that these parasites are accomodated here is an insult to us all. Concur with talk page post removal restrictions at the very least. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 19:49, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

  Because he hasn't broken any policies? We cannot and will not simply block someone because you don't like what they do. This was not a ban discussion, by the way; it's a discussion about a HuffPo article. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:20, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

• Random thought bubbles - would general sanctions work for some subset of articles prone to paid editing (say the highest risk topics: advertising, marketing and public relations or leveraged financial products targeted at retail investors)? Can we repurpose existing DS regimes to the same effect (WP:ARBIPA, WP:ARBCAM in particular)? The quality of cryptocurrency articles has improved since WP:GS/Crypto was put into place, but sometimes I feel tired keeping up with the influx of SPAs. MER-C 21:39, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

  MER-C I agree that Crypto has improved since GS. However, I don't know that advertising, marketing, and public relations are the topics most likely to have UPE and so I don't know that we could define this in a way that would make GS possible in this area given the broad scope of topics which potentially have UPE as it encompasses biographies, companies, and products. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:59, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

  Advertising is high risk because that's what spammers do. If they get the idea that we tolerate them creating articles about themselves and their companies, then it is not a stretch that they think we tolerate them creating articles about their clients. I also forgot we have WP:NEWBLPBAN for biographies. MER-C 09:29, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

• It looks like BC1278 removed the notice of this discussion and the notice of the prior conflict of interest noticeboard discussion (archived at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Archive 141 § Jytdog's efforts against paid editing covered in Media) from their user talk page on March 29. You can see the removal at Special:Diff/890053760.

Since there has been some interest in the suggestion to restrict paid editors from deleting other editors' comments from their user talk page, I think an RfC to include new guidance at Wikipedia:User pages § Removal of comments, notices, and warnings (WP:BLANKING) may be warranted. For the RfC, the proposed addition could be a new bullet point at WP:BLANKING that states the following "important matter" may not be removed by the user:

For editors making paid contributions, any comments and templates (from other editors) related to their edits on a topic in which they have a conflict of interest. Examples include deletion notices, Articles for Creation notices, noticeboard discussion notices, and comments on the editor's paid contributions.

Alternatively, here's a stricter option:

For editors making paid contributions, any comments and templates from other editors, with the exception of obvious vandalism.

Would this be helpful, and can this be improved? I'd like to hear your thoughts and suggestions. — Newslinger talk 06:58, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't think this would help with anything. Feels like we are hunting for solutions to non-existent problems, here. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:37, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Agenda editors, who use Wikipedia to smear the subjects of articles (this happens all the time, including from competitors, oppo research firms, disgruntled former employees and foreign governments - it's just not something Wikipedia can easily identity), also like to use User Talk pages to discredit those opposing them. So do overly zealous editors who use User Talk to attack paid editors or their positions, instead of confining their discussions to Article Talk or noticeboards. Two contributors to my User Talk now have indefinite blocks. One of these two verbally attacked me both on User Talk and offline. The HuffPo article's allegations have been discredited. I consider the allegations potentially libelous. Talk served its primary purpose by notifying me of the ongoing discussions. Why should I offer further credence to a discredited article by linking to discussions about it from my own User Talk? BC1278 (talk) 16:30, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

what I read in the Huffpost article was that there is a paid editor who knows the system of Wikipedia and its rules very well, and sometimes causes disruption in the pursuance of their business goals. What I see here is:

• this large ANI thread,
• a huge wall of text at the Caryn Marooney talk page, and
• a new thread over at Reliable Sources Noticeboard.

That's a lot of gaslighting as far as I am concerned, and to me it confirms the techniques claimed in the HuffPo article. So the HuffPo article is by no means discredited-- unless you also think that the border wall is getting built too.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 23:53, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Do you know what the word gaslighting means or did you just use it as a synonym for "thing I don't like"? 199.247.43.170 (talk) 08:49, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

If the community has reached a point where we no longer want paid editing of any kind and are willing to tolerate the drawbacks of making all paid editing UPE then let's do that. However, I don't think we should be imposing new restrictions of this sweep on declared paid editors. Frankly I would rather come up with some better incentives to motivate people to declare their paid editing. However, I haven't figured out what those incentives might be and acknowledge that what's good for the project might be to just ban all paid editing (though I'm personally not quite there yet). But I am confident that the "middle ground" isn't to stigmatize people following the rules further in ways we don't other editors especially those with strong but unpaid COI. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:47, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

• This DPE is wasting a lot of community time (cf the list of discussions two comments up), and as far as I can see it is all in pursuance of improving his business. The current model wherein a group of volunteers fulfills the desires of paid editor is, well, fundamentally flawed. I'm certainly not here to do corporate volunteer service. Additionally, I can't see how the quality of the encyclopedia is going to be that much poorer if paid editing is blocked on all counts (with an exception for Wikipedians in residence). For one, with a no paid editing policy, we will know that the primary intention of all editors is to edit with a neutral view and without COI. And in turn, we will know that the encyclopedia is primarily constructed on a non-commercial basis. Just a thought.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 00:12, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

User talk page redirects to French Wikipedia

• Koui² (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• User talk:Koui² (edit | subject | history | links | watch | logs)

Koui²'s redirects their English account's talk page to French Wikipedia. This seems against the spirit of guideline WP:SPEAKENGLISH. The first time I had to leave them a message, I was left with the dilemma of whether to post on their French talk page (where all the page tabs are in French), or just posting on their English talk page. I opted for the latter. The next time I visited their talk page to see if there was any followup, I saw my post blanked, and their talk page again a redirect to French Wikipedia. I removed the redirect and expalained my rationale of WP:SPEAKENGLISH.[36] However, they reverted it back to a French redirect without explanation.[37]

Is it reasonable to expect their English Wikipedia talk page to not redirect to another language?—Bagumba (talk) 17:30, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

No, this is not ok. If you are going to contribute here you must be willing to discuss things here. I will endeavor to make that clear to this individual now. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:42, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

(ec) I was going to say the same thing. You have to be able to discuss with users on THIS project. RickinBaltimore (talk) 17:44, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I don't know about this. I wander around to other Wikimedia wikis and I see a lot of user talk redirects to English Wikipedia or Meta. --Rschen7754 17:45, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I think that it's okay to suggest that someone contact you at your home project - I do that on commons and meta myself - but it shouldn't be required. —DoRD (talk)​ 17:53, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

To add, I hope that we're not going to start running around and telling cross-wiki users that they must maintain a user talk page here and check it here. For example, the steward User:Rxy has a user talk page that redirects to Meta. --Rschen7754 17:55, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

They shouldn't. If you edit here, why should anyone have to go to awhole other project to discuss your edits here? It's fairly ridiculous. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:58, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree. You can configure your notifications to work cross-wiki now. A note asking people is one thing, a redirect (unless, maybe, you don't participate on a project at all) isn't good. Guettarda (talk) 18:00, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

So you're saying that just because they are rollbacking edits across many wikis, including enwiki, they have to maintain a user talk page here? This is the sort of behavior that gives enwiki a bad reputation across Wikimedia. --Rschen7754 18:02, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

If we're just talking about Stewards who don't make "regular" edits here at all, then I think that's fine. That's not what this is. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:06, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. --Rschen7754 18:21, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Has this actually been a problem for any user trying to communicate with User:Koui²? Abecedare (talk) 17:54, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

That would be what started the discusion, so I'd have to say yes. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:56, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Mea culpa. Was distracted and missed part of original post. Abecedare (talk) 18:01, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

They haven't been particularly active here over the last couple of years, but they've also only ever made 20 edits to their own talk; the last time was 2 years ago. Fyi. ——SerialNumber54129 18:00, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm only looking for a resolution here, not some sweeping global enforcement. In this specific case, which I have had to contact the user, the French redirect combined with their lack of response (on slow edit war) is what is problematic. For the next editor who might need to post there, I dont want them to not post due to 1) an impression they are obligated to click on a soft redirect, 2) having to Google translate the French tabs if they dont remember the positions of their English equivalents, 3) feeling like the user is not fluent in English, and consequently feeling obligated to write in French (fearing a possible WP:SPEAKFRENCH).—Bagumba (talk) 18:21, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Note: In 2012, the user blanked another editor's post on their talk page with edit summary: soft redirect means you should contact me on the French WP. However, I've already witnessed your POV-pushing there.[38]—Bagumba (talk) 18:21, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

• I agree that there should not be a cross-wiki redirect of any kind. In this particular instance, it might be helpful if an editor/admin fluent in French could explain the situation over at this editors fr-Wiki talk page. Moving forward from this one case, it would probably be of benefit that this issue is raised and discussed with the wider Wikipedia community so that we can get it codified that this is not a good thing and is to be avoided. Mjroots (talk) 18:42, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
  • FWIW, WP:SOFTREDIR also says: Soft redirects to non-English language editions of Wikipedia should be avoided because they will generally be unhelpful to English-language readers.—Bagumba (talk) 18:50, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
    • That guideline is about articles. I generally see no problem with a request for contact on a page where they will see the message sooner - as others have indicated it is not uncommon - I do it myself at e.g. nl:Overleg gebruiker:Thryduulf where I contribute only very occasionally (I don't speak Dutch). A polite note is preferable to a soft redirect though. Thryduulf (talk) 19:13, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Meh, don't worry about the redirect. It makes their life easier if they contribute here only occasionally since they then don't have to monitor yet another talkpage. But if the person is editing the English wikipedia at all, they should normally be expected to be able to read English, and their edit summaries show good English. So go ahead and write in English on their fr.wp talk page. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 03:57, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

The message I eft them said to leave the redirect if they wanted, but if they were going to edit here they needed to be willing to talk here. I feel like that is a fair middle road. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:35, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

@Beeblebrox: My main issue is that a talk page version like their past ones with solely a French WP soft redirect don't exactly "welcome" an English post, let alone one on the local English WP site. I'd be OK if the page said something to the effect of "Im more active on the other page. I dont check EN WP often, but you are welcome to post here too." That would be a fair compromise, especially when interwiki notification already exists.—Bagumba (talk) 10:37, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Interwiki notification is optional. I have it turned off for example as I periodically get lots of (mostly but not exclusively) trivial notifications from Wikidata that distract from notifications here (which are almost always significant), so cannot be relied on. Asking people to contact them where they are most likely to see it is not disruptive at all. Thryduulf (talk) 11:41, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

If they are likely to come back occasionally, we should be able to communicate with them here about their actions here in English. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 15:06, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

If they contribute here regularly and significantly, yes. If they only contribute here very occasionally then no, that's not a reasonable requirement. Somewhere between the two then communicating with them in English on their fr talk page is acceptable. For any level of contribution below this being their primary project a note saying that you can leave a message here but you will probably get a quicker response elsewhere is no issue whatsoever. Thryduulf (talk) 00:42, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

This is my talk page on the French language Wikipedia. It was set up before Global Preferences were enabled and you had to dig a bit to find the preferences. It's easier now, just go to Special:GlobalPreferences and set the language to English. That should make most of the tabs English Then go to your user/talk on Meta and set something like this. It will now appear on the talk/user page of any Wikipedia, th.wikipedia. By the way, I've made some comments on other language Wikipedias (in English) only and not once has anybody put anything like WP:SPEAKENGLISH. It appears other languages are a bit more forgiving if you don't speak them. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 17:02, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

• Not too happy with what is apparently their only response to this [39], to completely reject the idea that they are at all obligated to communicate on this project about their edits to this project, and you must come over to the French WP to do so. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:25, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  I don't believe there is a policy that forbids having a user talk page on one language wiki forward to the more-regularly used talk page on another language wiki. The soft redirect at User talk:Koui² now says Please message me there (either in French or English)., which seems reasonable enough to me. Fish+Karate 10:13, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

  It's probably worth emphasising, though, that editors on en-wp are under no obligation to do as K. requests. If they wish to post à la française, it's up to them; ultimately, though, it is the responsibility of editors to this project (and, I assume, most others) to read if not acknowledge their talk page notices; if they fail to do so...ça plane pour nous. ——SerialNumber54129 11:02, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

  Within the limits of WP:VOLUNTEER, of course. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:49, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

  @WhatamIdoing: WP:VOLUNTEER does not excuse one from reading one's talk page, even if one chooses not to reply. Neither does it excuse a lack of communication. ——SerialNumber54129 06:36, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

  It's not been my experience that it's functional to require volunteers to do anything. How exactly would you know whether the talk page has been read? "You have to read this!" misses the point. Nobody has to, and we can't actually force them. The community's practice has been to assume that all users have read all messages on their user talk pages, regardless of whether they actually have, and despite our personal experiences of missing such messages at least occasionally. Perhaps more relevantly, the point in time at which we assume the talk page message was read is approximately around the time of their next edits to this project – which could be days, months, or years from now, or even never. There is not, and never has been, a rule that if I post a message on your talk page that you're required to go to that wiki to read my message before editing some other project. If you exercise your right as a volunteer to never edit here again, then we assume that you never read any subsequent messages here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:53, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

We should be allowed to leave them messages here about their actions here. If they come back here, we can expect them to have read these messages. If they never do, then we can't, even if they've been elsewhere on the Wikimedia project system.

As to SPEAKENGLISH-type messages, they have the right to leave such messages only if an attempt to communicate with them uses a language they can't reasonably respond in, regardless of which wiki the message was left on. It would be okay for me to leave such a message in response to someone trying to communicate with me in French, which I don't speak (I am FR-0); it would be problematic for me to do so over a message in Hebrew, which I speak natively. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:53, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

RfC Closure Review (Talk:RuPaul's Drag Race)

I am requesting a review of the closing of Talk:RuPaul's Drag Race#RfC on names of transgender contestants on the grounds that it is not a reasonable summation of the discussion. My attempt to discuss this with the closer can be found here. The RfC takes a look at how the wiki should handle using a transgendered individual's name and is an extention of this RfC. The close is almost incoherent and makes little sense when you actually read the discussion and take in the view points of those that participated. The last sentence alone makes no sense and is not a representation of the points made in the discussion. The two prevailing viewpoints are 1) to remove all real names from the articles as they are not included in the credits of the show and are essentially pulled from other sources and 2) to only list the current names of individuals and not the name they used at the time of filming. Most of those supported using their current name supported the idea of removing all the names entirely. Removing real names was not included in the original wording of the RfC but is clearly meant to remove all names from the articles. Removing only the names of transgendered individuals is inappropriate and makes no sense. I request that the community review, revert, and reclose this discussion to represent the consensus that is clearly there. Thanks. Nihlus 04:28, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

• I happened upon this shortly after closing and so I read the close and then the RfC and was also puzzled by it also not fully understanding what point QEDK was trying to make with MOS:GENDERID (which is obviously relevant here). I agree with Nihlus that the consensus, as I see it, is to remove real name from the seasons entirely and to only include their stage names (e.g. how they were referred to on the show). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:00, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
• I don't read this closure as prohibiting the removal of all non-credited names from the articles in question. I think the closer intended on answering the original RFC question, which related to trans contestants who transitioned after their TV appearance. Iffy★Chat -- 09:17, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

  I tried to clarify this with the closer and got no where. The consensus that is reached need not necessarily be a direct response or even a level response to the question asked. Nihlus 10:34, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

• I would like more participation in this topic before I revert the close myself based on what is here. Thanks. Nihlus 02:48, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
• (Uninvolved, did not know about the RfC till now): I don't know where to post this, but I agree with Nihlus both on his !vote and its rationale, and his points here in this thread. Plus it's confusing (for the reader) for a WP article on a TV show not to use credited names. Softlavender (talk) 03:38, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

User blocked in July 2018 asking to be unblocked

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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A few days ago, Norvikk (talk · contribs) sent me an e-mail asking to be unblocked. The log indicates that this user was blocked indefinitely last July. I'm not familiar with this user's history and do not feel I should be the one to make the decision. However, the user seems sincere in their e-mail and should be considered for the standard offer in my opinion. I would appreciate it if another administrator could look into this.

Thanks. Ixfd64 (talk) 17:36, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

I've restored talk page access, so they can make the unblock request there now. I don't think anyone would unblock without hearing from Norvikk directly. --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:41, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Courtesy pinging SQL, Materialscientist and Anna Frodesiak – the most recent blocking admins. Favonian (talk) 17:45, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

I interacted with the user previously, and I think their problem is that their command of English is not ideal. They are probably capable of contributing constructively in the narrow topic area they are interested in if they understand very clearly that edit-warring and calling people names is not a valid dispute resolution avenue. They probably need to be advised to take everything to the talk page, and ideally they would get a mentor helping them.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:49, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

He's blanked his talk page, which not blanking was a condition of his un-blocking.--Auric talk 15:28, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

@Auric: I'm probably missing something, but I don't see that as an unblock condition. I see someone proposing that as an unblock condition, but I think the unblock went through without it. GoldenRing (talk) 15:48, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Okay, I thought it was accepted.--Auric talk 17:36, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

• I reblocked Norvikk for socking with NavalDirk (talk · contribs · count), as well as very heavy block evasion with IPs going back many months.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:16, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

SPI vandal at it again

Keep an eye out for anything strange at SPI - I've blocked 4 of these guys so far. Thanks, GAB^gab 09:09, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm finding sleepers, so it might be useful to let me (or some other checkuser) know when you find one of these socks. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 10:31, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Another - Kernt329 (talk · contribs). -- Cabayi (talk) 13:08, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Blocked. RickinBaltimore (talk) 13:17, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Request to delete & move page

I need to have my user sandbox User:Mitchumch/sandbox1 deleted and article Samuel Hammond Jr. moved into that same namespace. The article Samuel Hammond Jr. is currently involved in an Afd at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Samuel Hammond Jr. A user added content to my sandbox that I did not want nor did I give permission to do so. I want to transfer the article into my sandbox in order to retain all edit history of the article and to allow other interested editors to add to the same article. Mitchumch (talk) 21:24, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

I deleted the sandbox. Until the afd is closed the article can not be moved to the sandbox. ~ GB fan 21:51, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. Mitchumch (talk) 22:06, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Article was closed. Mitchumch (talk) 01:17, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Topic ban appeal

My topic ban from "edits and pages related to conflict between India and Pakistan," was implemented on 15 May 2018 and today is 29 March 2019. I have not violated the topic ban.

I've been contemplating about this for a while now. I realize the issues with my conduct that led topic ban, i.e. battleground behavior and since getting topic banned I worked to have avoided any circumstances of sanctionable conduct.

I had appealed the topic ban in ARCA in June 2018 and the mass appeals were declined.[40] I had mailed GoldenRing on December 2018 and appealed the topic ban and he said that he is declining the appeal as he feels that his long absence from Wikipedia makes him ill-equipped to assess behavior since the sanction.

I have also worked in other areas constructively during this period while simultaneously avoiding the India Pakistan topic area. I created Maidan Shar attack for a name, which was ITN.[41] Topic ban is becoming an impediment in doing more of the same work related to content. I plan to keep editing in such a manner that no one will find my edits objectionable. Capitals00 (talk) 07:26, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

As the banning admin, I don't oppose this, but I'm unlikely to have time to have a detailed look through Capitals00's editing history to evaluate their editing since the ban. I can confirm that Capitals00 approached me in December about lifting the ban and that at the time I had been almost completely absent from Wikipedia for a period of some months and didn't feel equipped to adequately assess the situation. GoldenRing (talk) 10:07, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support: Capitals00 has shown himself to be a productive editor and has been an asset to South Asian-related articles on Wikipedia. The creation of Maidan Shar attack was helpful to the project. Additionally, this user has the skill of identifying sockpuppets (Exhibit A and Exhibit B, for example) who edit in this area. Keeping these things in mind, in addition to the fact that User:Capitals00 has not violated his/her topic ban to date, I would recommend that it be removed. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 19:10, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Note - I doubt that reporting socks who edit in the topic would be affected by the topic ban, making this claim less relevant. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 10:20, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support - so in terms of "has the editor contributed positively" - the creation of a decent article, their SPI work and a spot check of other edits would indicate a yes. I'd also make note that they have edited on some other India articles (including some mildly controversial ones) - but nothing that violated their TBAN. As such, there's at least a reasonable prima facie case of sensitive judgement in the area. The TBAN has existed long enough for it to be reasonable to be removed. Notwithstanding anything anyone else comes up with, I'm a clear support. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:05, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support Do not see any issues with removing the ban because of its age and that there have been constructive edits since. Sdmarathe (talk) 23:28, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support. Due to positive contributions elsewhere.Icewhiz (talk) 05:58, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support as requested. I see no issues given the lack of a topic ban violation and continued valuable contributions to Wikipedia. --RaviC (talk) 10:21, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Fake articles

The Bulgars (also Bolgars or proto-Bulgarians[40]) were a semi-nomadic people of Turkic descent, originally from Central Asia, who from the 2nd century onwards dwelled in the steppes north of the Caucasus and around the banks of river Volga (then Itil). A branch of them gave rise to the First Bulgarian Empire. The Bulgars were governed by hereditary khans. There were several aristocratic families whose members, bearing military titles, formed a governing class. Bulgars were polytheistic, but chiefly worshiped the supreme deity Tangra.

I disagree..It is propaganda against the oldest EUROPEAN FOLK ! ! !

(Redacted)

Best regards, Veselin Videnov Bolgar name, not Turkish, Tatar, Mongol or something else. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.183.114.242 (talk) 12:43, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

This is not the page to take up this issue. You want to go to Talk:Bulgars to discuss this, but you must have some sort of reliable source to add to this. RickinBaltimore (talk) 13:19, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

RfC re: Categorizing all works (albums, songs) by an artist by genre

I've submitted an RfC re: the categorization of all works (albums, songs) by artists by genre.

Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Music#RfC_on_categorizing_all_works_by_an_artist_by_genre.

Thanks! ---Another Believer _(Talk) 18:13, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

User:DbivansMCMLXXXVI‎

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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The user DbivansMCMLXXXVI‎ (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is behaving in a belligerent manner and appears to be an impediment at Albert Speer. He has found a book by historian Martin Kitchen (Speer: Hitler's Architect) published by Yale University Press to be unreliable and objects to it being used in the article. This is accompanied by personal attacks, accusations of vandalism, and edit warring. Here are some diffs:

• Accusations via edit summaries: "Restored previous version due to persistent vandalism. (...) This source has already been determined to be unreliable and members have been warned." [42]
• More: "Stop making repeated unprofessional and overdramatic edits or we are going to report you for vandalism." [43]
• Issuing bogus vandalism warnings: "You have already been repeatedly warned that the source and information is not reliable. Please refrain from vandalizing article "Albert Speer" [44]

This behaviour is not new; pls see:

• April 2018, accusations of lying: "You are being completely untruthful. (...) Refrain from making any further changes or from further blatant lying or else you will be reported." [45]
• More personal attacks: "I would appreciate it if you would refrain from defending members after they have been repeatedly caught lying and misrepresenting the truth." [46]
• March 2017: Using known fabulist Franz Kurowski and his semi-fictional book Panzer Aces as a source: Talk:Kurt Knispel#Now cited to Franz Kurowski

Attemps to resolve concerns:

• May 2018
• March 2019

Given the pattern of behaviour, I would like to request a topic ban from the history of Nazi Germany. --K.e.coffman (talk) 01:09, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Why have you not addressed my concerns? Do you really believe that a source that CLAIMS TO READ MINDS and novelizes historical events is a reliable source? For instance, open page 174 and he claims to be able to read Speer's mind, the mind of the officers he is talking to, AND THE CROWD PRESENT AT A RALLY. He also claims to know what soldiers at the front thought of a decision, when the soldiers would have been completely unaware of the decision even being made.

The very link you use as proof above shows that the only response was that members did not want to remove the reference, but show NO REASON why it should continue to be used as a source. Not one person was able to show a valid reason why this source should be used. He overdramatizes every statement and novelizes it. This does not meet wikipedia standards and you know it.

I have clearly stated and shown why he is an unreliable source and you pretend as if it does not exist. Your only response has been to simply ignore the concerns and warnings and force changes and override reverts. I have repeatedly attempted to discuss this topic and you have ignored all of the concerns. DbivansMCMLXXXVI (talk) 01:35, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support topic ban The above comment is made in reference to Speer: Hitler's Architect. This is a recent and well reviewed book written by an academic who specialises in the World War II era which was published by Yale University Press. This has been pointed out to DbivansMCMLXXXVI at the Albert Speer FAC (Wikipedia:Featured article review/Albert Speer/archive1#Please stop misquoting sources). Someone who is not able to understand that this book obviously meets WP:RS and is disrupting articles and the FAC should obviously not be editing this topic area. Nick-D (talk) 01:41, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Lengthy debate about the underlying dispute + attempts to get discussion back on topic.

Once again you have failed to address my concerns. This author repeatedly claims to know the mental state and thought of multiple individuals. He also repeatedly quotes himself OR UNNAMED INDIVIDUALS as sources. He has not been reviewed well at all, as there are nearly no reviews even available. That is a blatantly false statement. Why is a source this unprofessional not against wikipedia standards? Instead of trying to get me banned, why not answer the question? Also, I could not help but notice you verbatim repeated Mr. Koffman's original argument nearly word for word claiming the author is "well reviewed". Do you have any connection to Mr. Koffman or the author? Why are you repeating his statement verbatim? — Preceding unsigned comment added by DbivansMCMLXXXVI (talk • contribs) 01:51, 30 March 2019 (UTC) Dbivans, I am going to speak to you as a Wikipedia administrator, and this is only a comment on your behavior. I do not know who is right, and I actually don't care. That might sound crazy to you, but Wikipedia works by consensus, not by shouting over everyone else. Administrators called to a content dispute do not figure out who is right and then ban everyone else - the administrator determines who is disrupting the process of building consensus, and right now that is you. When you said "this source has been determined unreliable", what you actually meant is that you had determined the source to be unreliable. When you referred to opposing edits as vandalism, you were misusing the word. "Vandalism" has a specific meaning on Wikipedia: Actions taken with the intent of making Wikipedia worse. A content dispute is not vandalism. When you brand opponents as vandals, and we can all see that you are misusing the word, you are simply encouraging people to ignore your arguments. More generally, it is apparent that you believe that your personal interpretation of primary sources is more important than published historians' interpretations of primary sources. You are wrong. Wikipedia explicitly prefers secondary sources because the job of an encyclopedia is to inform readers of what other experts have concluded - not to draw our own conclusions. Also generally, it is apparent that you believe "being right" is an excuse to edit war. It is not. If we allowed that, everything would be in a state of edit war at all times because no one does anything in good faith if they think they're wrong. Administrators do not assess expertise of the user, by the way. If I come across a page where three editors are calmly discussing the article, and the fourth one is screaming that the first three are liars and vandals while edit warring with everyone, I'm blocking the fourth one. You are clearly passionate about this subject area, but the way you are approaching disputes has a very predictable outcome: you are going to be banned from the topic. The problem is not that your concerns have not been answered. The problem is that answers were given and you don't like them. When that happens, the solution is to follow the steps of dispute resolution. Bring up very focused questions on relevant noticeboards, like asking at the reliable sources noticeboard what other editors think of that book. Or open an RFC on the article's talk page to bring more editors to the dispute. Simply repeating your points and your reverts over and over again is not going to get anything done. If it is true that your point of view is obviously reasonable and correct and better than Koffman's, prove it by convincing other editors. Most of all remember: There is no rush, there is no deadline. You don't need to get the article fixed right-the-hell-now. After all, what can you even do? You make an edit, someone reverts it. You revert it back. Are you going to just play a game of tit-for-tat until someone gets tired? If you get yourself banned, you'll stop having any input at all. But if you build a consensus, you can turn your version into the stable one. And if you can't build a consensus, well, that just means you weren't going to get what you wanted regardless, and it's best to move on. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:24, 30 March 2019 (UTC) I appreciate your feedback, but if you look at the history of the edit war you will see that I have listed clear reasons and examples why the source is violating the rules, and quoted this as the reason for my claims against the other users. The user repeatedly added inflammatory content and accusations that do not meet wikipedia standards, including accusations of doctoring information, which I already responded to and disproved. The other users have shown exactly zero examples to back up their claims. Not just that, they have ignored ALL attempts at consensus and refused to discuss the actual subject. DbivansMCMLXXXVI (talk) 03:46, 30 March 2019 (UTC) I have repeatedly tried to discuss this topic and get consensus but it has been ignored. The issues with the author have been completely ignored. Not a single person has addressed how unprofessional the author is. Not a single one of the members complaining has attempted to reach consensus, but has instead tried to force through edits. I have repeatedly asked for clarification and it has not been addressed. DbivansMCMLXXXVI (talk) 03:46, 30 March 2019 (UTC) Please show me one answer where someone has explained why its acceptable to use a source that claims to be able to read minds. Not a single person has actually addressed how unprofessional the author is, or that he routinely claims to know what people were thinking, and quotes his own opinions as proof. Where has anyone posted a single response answering this? They havent. DbivansMCMLXXXVI (talk) 03:46, 30 March 2019 (UTC) 1) There is no requirement that other editors respond to your personal satisfaction. They engaged with you. They engaged with one another. Consensus is built. You are the odd man out. 2) See 1. 3) See 1. The reason you are being largely ignored on the talk page is that no one cares what your opinion of the book is. No one cares what your opinion of the author is. And no one has to. If it is so damned obvious, you should have no trouble finding other editors to agree with you at WP:RSN. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:58, 30 March 2019 (UTC) Not a single person has even responded AT ALL to my concern except by ignoring it. Show one example of someone addressing my concern that the author believes he can READ MINDS and that this is acceptable as a source. The only response is two members saying "This is well reviewed" and did not address the concerns in any way at all. Since they have not addressed the topic at all, how can this be considered consensus? It cannot. DbivansMCMLXXXVI (talk) 04:08, 30 March 2019 (UTC) "It's well reviewed." "Something something historian." and "...49 citations". As I said, no one has to respond to every point you make. This is not a game of gish gallop where if your opponent doesn't respond to every point you raise you win. They don't have to respond to any points. You have been heard and your opinion has been dismissed. And you continue to misunderstand what this thread is about. I don't care if you were right. This is a discussion of your behavior, not a discussion of whether your version of the article is better than the other one. I am trying to point out how your attitude is out of step with Wikipedia norms and expectations, and is going to get you banned. Being right is not going to protect you from getting banned if you continue to edit war against consensus and repeat yourself ad infinitum. As I'm trying to tell you, learn to use dispute resolution. Learn to call attention to a dispute and see what other people think. Learn to use noticeboards to get input on specific issues. Rehashing the content dispute in a discussion of your behavior is not going to get you anywhere. If you respond to this with more attempts to justify bad behavior I'm going to just ignore the thread. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:32, 30 March 2019 (UTC) And as I have tried to state, my behavior is because they keep breaking the rules and trying to smear anyone who opposed Hitler. How is pointing out that he is breaking the rules and being unprofessional somehow an issue with my own behavior? All Im doing is pointing out his behavior and attempts to desecrate articles. The guy is literally defending Hitler by smearing everyone who opposed him. Take a step back and think what this is going to look like if the media gets a hold of this thread. "Wikipedia defends Nazi sympathizer desecrating articles about Hitler opposition". He claims to be against Nazis, but his obsessive smearing of Germans who opposed Hitler sure as hell says otherwise. Dont you think its natural for other members to call out this kind of behavior? DbivansMCMLXXXVI (talk) 04:50, 30 March 2019 (UTC) Also, I have only reverted the article to its original state. The other user has made changes without consensus and it is extremely dishonest to try and paint me as the one without consensus when he has not even attempted to discuss it at all, and I am the only one who has made an attempt. There are exactly zero posts in the talk page where he has tried to get consensus from other members. He also has another member who follows him around making edits to support him in all cases where he argues. He is almost certainly using a sock puppet unless that person can read his mind as well. Seems to be a lot of mind reading around here lately.DbivansMCMLXXXVI (talk) 04:14, 30 March 2019 (UTC) Id also like to make the admins aware of some obvious Nazi apologetics by the above member. He has repeatedly defended Hitler and tried to excuse or shift blame, including a list of Hitler's actions he defends and labels as "alibis" to attempt to excuse them.[47]. Speer was one of the only Nazi leaders to condemn the atrocities of the war, and he wrote a book about the incompetence and corruption within the Nazi regime. The above user has been trying to smear Speer in an attempt to delegitimize his statements against the Nazi regime, as well as blame Speer for their actions. The user refuses to address this or that his sources are unreliable. I have to assume that his actions are an attempt to defend the Nazi movement and blame its opponents. He attacks almost every major accusation against Hitler or other high ranking Nazis and tries to smear and blame his subordinates. DbivansMCMLXXXVI (talk) 02:04, 30 March 2019 (UTC) Dude... you really need to take a good look at that userpage. Like, a really good look. Because I think you're so fueled by emotion right now that its meaning has gone completely over your head, and you're just looking ridiculous right now. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:27, 30 March 2019 (UTC) Really? Because on almost all of the topics he tries to accuse the anti-Nazi Germans of somehow being liars. He has repeatedly removed anti-nazi posts, including one about tank commander Kurt Knispel. Knispel was a decorated German veteran who had been given Germany's highest honors, but was refused promotions because he assaulted a Nazi officer he found abusing a prisoner. Mr. Coffman intensely opposes any story involving Germans fighting back against Nazis, and repeatedly accuses anti-Nazi Germans of conspiracies. His claim to be anti-Nazi is absolutely ridiculous in light of his behavior towards Germans who opposed the regime. DbivansMCMLXXXVI (talk) 03:46, 30 March 2019 (UTC) Koffman links to one content removal he performed on Knispel's page - a nickname with no source. The other two links were to Sphilbrick removing copyright violations. If you're referring to the revert he did of your contribution years ago, that was almost entirely either uncited or cited to a book from Flechsig Verlag, a non-academic publisher. You seem to pick and choose what you consider to be reliable sources based on your personal feelings of the work, rather than any kind of policy-based standards. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:21, 30 March 2019 (UTC) That is completely untrue. He removed the entire article and I had to revert it back. He then removed it again without consensus. This is what its supposed to look like.[48]. Coffman repeatedly removed all of the information without consensus and then did the same thing he did here. He accuses those trying to stop his changes of being the REAL ones without consensus. He clearly has absolutely no respect for consensus or the standards, if that was not clear from his refusal to discuss his source.DbivansMCMLXXXVI (talk) 04:25, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

• Note: I have blocked DbivansMCMLXXXVI for 48 hours due to their WP:IDHT-conduct and WP:NPA (and arguably WP:BLP) violations in this thread itself, without prejudice with regards to the discussion about the topic-ban. Abecedare (talk) 05:04, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support topic ban This editor has a big fat bee in their bonnet and is convinced that a recently published and well-reviewed biography of Speer published by Yale University Press is unreliable, based only on the editor's personal assessment. Their goal seems to be to frame Speer as a hero of the opposition to Hitler, which is absurd. False accusations of vandalism are evidence of bad faith, incompetence or both. By the way, I also support the block which was imposed while I was drafting this and having dessert. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:14, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support topic ban The editor's portrayal (see "obvious Nazi apologetics" above) of User:K.e.coffman##1: "That_idiot_Hitler!" is a complete misreading. The mistake was pointed out by Someguy1221 above yet DbivansMCMLXXXVI could not see it. It is not reasonable for such an editor to be active in a contested topic. Johnuniq (talk) 06:20, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support topic ban. This user has a history of tend, NPA and soapbox behaviour regarding Nazis. Szzuk (talk) 08:14, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support topic ban as this is someone who doesn't seem able to keep a clear head on the subject of Nazi Germany, and support the block too for the personal attacks in this discussion. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:44, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

  Looking over DbivansMCMLXXXVI's talk page and other edit history, they seem to have been rather confrontational and personal in discussions on other topics too, so I'm not sure a Nazi topic ban will suffice. But it's a good start, and hopefully there will be a lesson learned. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:00, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

  For the record, the personal attacks, including "making pro Nazi edits", have continued in their unblock request, and I have revoked talk page access for the block duration. This is further evidence that DbivansMCMLXXXVI is badly misinterpreting the words and actions of others (while refusing to listen to consensus), and is not able to recognize when to stop attacking. I foresee an indefinite block if this behaviour resumes when the block expires. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 03:59, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support TBAN Clearly confrontational, problem with RSes and consensus, and IDHT here.Icewhiz (talk) 21:22, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Regarding massive editing on page Pratishtha Sharma

hi more than 100 links of sources were deleted of the above article with out any discussion. editor have a view that sources are not of news papers like new york times. contributor has a view point that sources were of Indian popular newspapers as the personality is from India. government sources links were also included under the deleted one. contributor suggested to undo cahnges and a discussion can be done on source before deletion but editor is not ready to repose the same and adamant to his edit. he also quoted a six year old notification which was rectified with out opposition at the time only inside the article. kindly suggest what to do now.Rusianejohn (talk) 13:47, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

I deleted a mass of very weak links provided to support claims for this article. A search on Google reveals few if any reliable sources; many of those deleted were on YouTube. Far from refusing to discuss, I have repeatedly asked Rusianejohn to join the discussion and provide sources, which have not been forthcoming. Today at last Rusianejohn made some preliminary remarks but apart from asking for the weak sources to be reinstated, has provided no evidence of notability. I'm all ears for better sources. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:48, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Today only i have checked such mass deletion and i am making a list of new links and important from deleted links supporting the heads. article was not at all based on the you tube links and the remaining 27 links out of 144 is sufficient to support lines but still i will write more links and send to you. you tube links were mostly of episode of regular tv shows on national and international tv channels which supports title- Tv celebrity. most of the big channels has there own you tube channel and they put past episodes on those channel. few put them on there websites. i will mention those links as well. Remaining links deleted by you need to be verify before deletion. i will put them here with new links as well. my only humble request and objection is if we don't understand a language and don't know about one particular source or have confusion, than at least we can talk. talk page is for that only. we can always discuss before execution for old and established articles. this we do at wiki.Rusianejohn (talk) 16:39, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm very glad you have started on that. I have been through the sources in the article that I can access: nearly all are dead links or otherwise unusable. I have added quotations to two that are good and usable, but unfortunately those are much too brief to demonstrate notability. If you can find some Hindi sources and translate those we should easily find out whether Sharma is notable, but that isn't a matter for this noticeboard. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:48, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

I have send around 20 links with narration for you at talk page (including old and new), you can have a look, during revision of deleted links i have seen links of good news papers which are still active but deleted with the youtube one. those links supported with photo and news of Sharma honored with awards in other country. links of video of press conference on news channels website where she is sitting with minister of other countries, where she was sent by Indian government as culture Ambassador, that press conference is in English and with English narration also. that is the reason why i was dis-satisfied because you have deleted 118 links and it is not possible for any body to check all links so quickly, out of these 118 links you tube links were around 10 only . i can understand that you tube links are not reliable but others are. i can understand that few old links are dead now because of old news and articles that is the reason new news and articles were introduced and were added to the article. earlier also many users contribute to the article and deleted the links but this was my first experience in last 7 years. . Rusianejohn (talk) 06:39, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

We are discussing these links on User talk:Rusianejohn, which is sufficient. So far we have agreed that none of the links so far identified are usable for notability, we are examining further links. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:59, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

The OP has also started this thread Wikipedia:Teahouse#Dis-satified with massive edit of sources on article Pratishtha Sharma. Some one may want to consolidate them. MarnetteD|Talk 06:50, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

after the last 2 uploads of links and discussion i have uploaded more links of government sites in English as well Hindi news links with google translations as Chiswick Chap unable to translate. as far as previous links i had a view point that those links support the content and from reputed sites and can be easily translated but still i have uploaded more and more links, this time in English as well Hindi with translation supporting the content completely.Rusianejohn (talk) 09:51, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

we are working on it cooperatively, discussed and listed links which can be used. Rusianejohn (talk) 06:11, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Possible NLT at BLPN

Would an admin mind taking a look at WP:BLPN#Wang Zheng (pilot)? CTF99 is claiming to be an attorney for Wang Zheng (pilot) and is expressing some concerns about the article. That's probably OK except for the last paragraph of their post where the seem to move into NLT territory. There may also be some undisclosed PAID editing as well since the account has been editing the article over the years, but hasn't declared any connection. -- Marchjuly (talk) 14:15, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Given the exceptional length of the post, the potential NLT bit is: I am happy to work with you to resolve this but be advised that if the matter is not resolved expeditiously, and any libelous, contentious, or conflict of interest material is not removed, Ms. Wang will proceed to exercise all available remedies and hold accountable all responsible individuals for all damages permitted by law, including attorneys' fees. I'll leave it to others to work this out. Mr rnddude (talk) 14:20, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Appears to have been struck. SQL^{Query me!} 16:49, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

The content which might be seen as violation of NLT has been stricken as pointed out by WP:SQL; the undisclosed COI and paid editing concerns, however, have still not been clarified. CTF99 not only has identified themselves as being an attorney representing Wang, but specifically someone named James Fretcher. This could be the same Jim Fletcher attributed in this 2016 article about Wang, and also the same "Jim Fretcher" mentioned as being a "China General Aviation LLC" manager in this 2018 article about a lawsuit Wang has filed. So, CCLT should declare their connection to Wang per WP:DECLARECOI and WP:PAID and clarify that he is who he's claiming to be and not a WP:IMPERSONATION. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:09, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Or maybe the James Frechter who is her lawyer in this article or the Jim Frechter who is her husband in this one. See also the COIN thread that started it all.Hydromania (talk) 01:43, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

There is also the issue of multiple accounts/IP addresses being used by what appears to be the same editor, in particular CTF99 and Kigenkigen. Melcous (talk) 03:07, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Blocks handed out pursuant to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Kigenkigen. Yunshui ^雲_水 09:08, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Outing?

I'm going to add EdiK2016 to this discussion. This is another WP:SPA which appears to be involved somehow in the off-Wikipedia dispute with Wang mentioned in the article; however, the reason I'm adding them to this discussion is that posts made at Talk:Wang Zheng (pilot) (which have since been removed, but are still in the page's history) by the account seem really close to if actually not succeeding at WP:OUTING of Kigenkigen. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:03, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Other suspected socks of EdiK2016, Holmes767, Douwang, Douwang1124. - FlightTime (open channel) 21:10, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but those are more likely to be socks of either Kigenkigen or CTF99. I believe they want the removal of information critical of the subject putting them against EdiK2016 who wants it included. Hydromania (talk) 22:51, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

EdiK2016 is not (at least from a checkuser standpoint}} related to any of the Kigenkigen socks. Yunshui ^雲_水 09:09, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Answers in Genesis

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Can an uninvolved administrator conclude on this discussion?

Here is my take on it: there are currently 2 'support' !votes (me and user:1990'sguy) and 3 'oppose' !votes. However, all three 'oppose' voters have either not stated any issue with my proposal, instead arguing that it is not an improvement over the current version (like user:Doug Weller and user:Nick Thorne) or have explicitly stated that they are 'OK' with the proposed version (like user:Guy Macon). As per WP:TALKDONTREVERT, which says that "consensus can be assumed if no editors object to a change", that should imply that there is a consensus to implement the proposal. The only objection made against the proposal is by user:Rhododendrites, but these issues appear to me to be easily fixable ([49]), and the user hasn't explicitly stated that they oppose the general proposal. Either way, even if we count their comment as an 'oppose' !vote, we still have a 2 against 1 in favour of the proposal. Feel free to add your take on the situation under this post.^Ol^Ja 21:49, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

I object to the change. At the same time I am OK with the change if that is the way the consensus goes. I don't always get what I want and the proposed version isn't awful; it just isn't quite as good as what is there now.

Re "the only objection made against the proposal is by Rhododendrites", I object to Oldstone James' attempt to decide which objections are real and which don't meet his standard for "real" objections. Everyone who !voted "oppose" objects to the change, whether or not Oldstone James is willing to accept the fact of those objections.

I would also note that I asked for a clarification from the protecting admin on the article talk page.[50] He is probably off enjoying himself on the Wikipedia Administrator's Yacht weekly cruise to the Wikipedia Administrator's Private Island and hasn't edited since I asked. I would welcome any administrator putting down his Dom Pérignon for a moment and answering my question. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:35, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Behavioral issues

Let's reopen this for another purpose, please. I respect Oldstone James' tenacity and that he keeps his cool in a situation that is no doubt extremely frustrating for him. However, can we get an uninvolved admin to review the behavioral issues going on at Answers in Genesis?

• It seems like no change made by James isn't followed by a brief edit war, going back a couple years, though typically stopping short of 3RR.
• I have mixed feelings about the copious amount of text on the talk page. In part I can empathize with repeatedly trying to be understood or come to an understanding, but now that it's sprawling to multiple noticeboards, too (AN3, ANI, DRN), it's hard not to see this as disruptive given the way the discussion has gone so far.
• I was furthermore concerned about canvassing. There was this seemingly blatant example that resulted in predictable support shortly thereafter. I didn't bother mentioning it at the time, because, to be fair, 1990'sguy had participated on the page and would likely have supported this anyway, but it's not a good look. It was furthermore followed a little while later by three YGM notifications to three people who just happen to be editors that have taken issue in the past with the way AiG is characterized along the lines of e.g. pseudoscience. Unlike 1990'sguy, these are not people who were already involved in the current discussions. Again, to be fair, we don't know the content of those messages, and the recipients didn't participate in the discussion, but again, it's not a good look.

I'm not proposing anything in particular -- just suggesting an uninvolved admin take a look, for the sake of all the time that's being expended over the last few days (and potentially much more, now that it's at DRN, too). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:22, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

What you mean by edit war is actually an attempt to find consensus through editing, as I change my edit every time. I did not know about WP:BLUDGEON, hence the large amount of text. I have since reduced the amount of text I post. As for multiple noticeboards, I have clearly only tried DRN after being told so in ANI. As for canvassing, I only tried to notify users who have previously proposed changes that are similar to mine. However, since you mentioned behavioural issues, it would be unfair to not also look into User:Roxy the dog, who has launched several WP:PERSONAL attacks at me, including telling me to "fuck off" and admitting that is a personal attack ([51]), implying that I can't count ([52]), implying that I am blind, and others; as well as user:Guy Macon who has launched 1/2 personal attacks (implying that I am an unreasonable person and ungrounded accusion of me not abiding by consensus) in this post.^Ol^Ja 03:46, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Oldstone James has been blocked for a week by User:Black Kite. Doug Weller talk 19:44, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Community sanctions review

I have just ECP-protected Khalistan Commando Force under WP:GS/IPAK, however I'd like a review of this action. This topic is a militant group operating in the Punjab region of northern India, which has carried out attacks on Indian assets and is supposedly involved in arms smuggling between Pakistan and India, but I think that this might fall outside of the "conflict between India and Pakistan" scope of the community sanction. If the community feels that this action is inappropriate then I will happily undo it, but if so then I ask for more admins to watch the page as it's already under 1RR as an WP:ARBIPA discretionary sanction, and there is still a slow edit war in progress. Cheers. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 23:30, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

• KCF, and anything related to Kashmir or Punjab separatism, is well-within the scope of the real-world and on-wiki Indo-Pak conflict. No issues with the ECP. Abecedare (talk) 00:58, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
• Looks entirely within scope to me. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 05:04, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Revdelete diff

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Can somebody revdelete this diff because it contains some profanity? Thanks! INeedSupport ^:3 19:45, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Jo-Jo Eumerus handled it. In the future it's probably best to contact an individual admin for such things, that draws less attention to it. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Possible misunderstood UPOL block

Can someone take a look at this block User talk:Seansucksatguitar. My rational is posted on the talk page. - FlightTime (open channel) 02:21, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

It's April Fools' Day

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It's that time of year again. Remember, everyone, to abide by and enforce the rules at WP:FOOLS. Have fun (or don't), everyone. ansh666 03:34, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

As a suggestion since we've already had one administrator "prank" an Arbitration Committee page, lets try to avoid ARB space today. We (the clerks) don't need any extra clean up outside of the usual added. (These opinions are my own etc...) --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 06:06, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

That would be me, for full disclosure, it was hardly the most intrusive thing ever and in years past my similar comments on various arbitration pages never generated pushback. But, if you are getting resistance in one area, just find another place where you won't; it's not worth a fight. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:12, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Good to see the Arb clerks wanting to play fun police this year. Great work! Presumably, any sysop who's going to pull an April Fools' joke in the Arbspace is going to be responsible enough to remove it after April Fools' day. Though I'm sure Blade is very remorseful for this great burden he's dropped on you and the entire Arbitration team. You may file your grievance with the Department of April Fools' Day complaints department, along with the rest of the toothless complaining that happens every fucking year in response to the harmless tradition of good-natured humor and lighthearted fun for one day a year. ~Swarm~ 🐝 {sting · hive} 06:57, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

As tempted as I am to say, "Get over yourself. Chill the fuck out and let it go" with a straight face, I can't quite manage it. GoldenRing (talk) 08:14, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

I deleted my original post because I wanted to give myself more time to come up with a coherent thought, but in general, I just want to say that the attitude of "it's funny, get over it" is a nakedly hostile and uncomfortable stance to take in 2019, particularly in light of the fact that in recent years I've found that April Fool's Day on Wikipedia is used as leverage to post obscenities to the Main Page. I realize that Wikipedia isn't censored, but with the current changes in the global social climate and especially in light of the #MeToo movement, we need to be extra-careful to not brazenly alienate readers for the sake of generating "lulz".--WaltCip (talk) 12:18, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Two suggestions for the future

Yes, not even halfway through the day.

1. No messing with user talk pages' tilt and such, for accessibility reasons. See for example this (Cyberpower678) or this (TenPoundHammer).
2. No using CSD tags as jokes (e.g. TPH's yearly userpage tagging, or this talk page creation. They clutter up CAT:CSD and can't be clearly determined as jokes from there, unlike other deletion discussion logs. ansh666 06:50, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   re-pinging Cyberpower678 ansh666 06:53, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   Fun fact for anyone that is bored - User:Boing! said Zebedee fully protected their talk page to avoid any pranks, but their user page itself is only semi-protected... --DannyS712 (talk) 07:25, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   Well, "to avoid any pranks by non-admins". Mere plebes can't be trusted to produce humor adequate for such an advanced onomatopoeiaic life-form. DMacks (talk) 08:43, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   If we could get a global-renamer on board with the April Fools' spirit, we could fix that... GoldenRing (talk) 08:47, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   GoldenRing, Fun fact, I am a global renamer. → Call me CP678 15:09, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   If someone truly hates April Fools Day that much, they probably wouldn't find that very funny. Natureium (talk) 14:09, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   Ansh666, I can respect not joke tagging articles, joke nominating articles, and replacing the Main Page with pure nonsense, because readers. But on April Fools day I will do what I please with my userspace. If anyone doesn't like it, they can wait until April Fools is over and then come back to my pages. My userspace is fully automated. Cyber :  Chat  15:11, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   Nobody cares what you do with your user page and subpages, but your user talk is a different story. As you are undoubtedly aware, I did have an issue that I needed to discuss with you, but your talk page made it difficult to do that - especially as an admin, you must maintain your talk page to meet MOS:ACCESS and the obligations of WP:ADMINACCT. Essentially, have all the fun you want, as long as you don't make it difficult for others who are just trying to carry on as normal. This is something that, on any day, is unacceptable, and that we have warned others for in the past. ansh666 17:09, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   Ansh666, By that logic Boing should not be allowed to fully protect their talk until April fools day is over, with the instruction "come back tomorrow". I'm not in violation of ADMINACCT. I'm still reachable, via email and talk, and though my talk page is rotated, you can still leave me a message with the new section link. Urgent matters should be emailed to me anyways as I'm not always active on my talk page. From my experience, not much has ever been so important that the response couldn't wait for a day. This is my take on the matter. —Cyberpower (竜龙) 18:05, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   Don't touch your talk page because someone might need to post there? You can still post there; none of the edit or new section buttons at the top are tilted. And if that doesn't work for you, you could come back tomorrow. The encyclopedia will go on, even if some editor's talk page is unusable for a day. Excuse me while I go turn my talk page upside down. Leviv ich 18:12, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   Completely childish. Grow the **** up and get on with what we're all actually here for. People wanna have fun? Great, go to the park and leave the internet connection at home. ——SerialNumber54129 18:48, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   @Serial Number 54129: Here, here. I was going to ask for my talk to be semi'd, but then I realized it would probably be shot down. I have no time for April fools shit. - FlightTime (open channel) 19:10, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   Yeah, I'm sure the volunteers will just be lining up to join us with that kind of attitude. Wikipedia: You wanna have fun? Go somewhere else. Leviv ich 18:59, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   And thanks for drawing attention to yourWP:POINTy attitude.

   What amazes me, FlightTime, is the lengths supposedly experienced editors will go to to embarrass themselves in the name of "fun". Fun for them, I think, is all that matters; but not the impression that fun gives. Consider, for example, the response above, which makes a naive attempt to link WP:RETENTION to disallowing April fools. The truth, of course, is that it's a day "celebrated" (commemorated?!) in only a few western countries, and so is arguably contributory to a form of WP:BIAS repelling editors from the majority of the globe that doesn't recognise April Fools. But hey, as long as we can piss arse about with our user pages, and create a shed-load of work for AfD closers, etc, it's all grand. ——SerialNumber54129 19:43, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   the impression that fun gives is that we're having fun (dear God, no!), and while April Fool's may be celebrated in only a few western countries, I promise you that fun is enjoyed around the world. Leviv ich 20:02, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   Serial Number 54129, Well I’ve been mostly keeping to my user space. I like April Fools, and I like to show it. If I can’t do that, then I really don’t want to be here. If my userspace turned around for a bit, it’s not hurting the rest of the encyclopedia is it? I’m a nobody here, what are the chances I get reached out to during April Fools? –cyber^talk 20:38, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   Wikipedia isn't supposed to be fun. It's supposed to aggravating and stressful. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 19:06, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   NinjaRobotPirate, So I’ve been doing it all wrong for these past 8 years? Damn. --Cyberpower | My Talk 20:45, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   Yes, I agree Boing should not protect his talk page, that very violates it. The thing is, yes, we experienced editors know how to do all that, but if a new editor wanted to ask something, what would they think? User talk pages should not be modified like that just as any other talk page would not be modified like that. ansh666 19:22, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

   Ansh666, as I mentioned up above, I’m a nobody, and not likely to be contacted by new editors, especially during April Fools. –cyber^talk 20:40, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

I'll put it out there that this is the first year I haven't had to put this up. This was as calm an April Fools as I can remember. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 20:06, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

I will have to agree with that. - FlightTime (open channel) 20:21, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

I've been pulling joke AfD tags from articles linked from the main page, so please tell me it's calm... ansh666 20:30, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Just our point - FlightTime (open channel) 20:35, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

@Ansh666: Mine was a test to see what would happen if the name suggested in WP:NOTMOVED, was in a move request. I've apologised; it was reverted, and now: All should be quiet. The Duke 21:01, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

That might have been more convincing if you hadn't literally just admitted it was deliberate vandalism. ‑ Iridescent 21:38, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

All I can say is that you weren't around for the parties in years past. A couple misguided jokes and a couple excessively crotchety people is so minimal as to be statistically insignificant. I'm calling it a victory. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:51, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Suspicious activities to promote Jordan Harbinger

User:BodegaBiscuit created an account on 9 Feb to add content and information on Jordan Harbinger page. There after he strategically nominating AFD other podcasters pages and started voting from the IP addresses, first example, another example, another one here. Users edits need to be reversed and blocked from Wiki for Cohort practices to promote their client Jordan Harbinger on Wiki. 157.37.252.223 (talk) 19:59, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Do you have specific evidence of actual disruptive editing? Are there any problematic additions to the Jordan Harbinger page? Has there been any checkuser done to confirm possible votestacking? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 20:58, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't know about all the other stuff, but the article on Harbinger bears many of the typical earmarks of UPE. John from Idegon (talk) 21:17, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

@David Fuchs: There has been a troll stalking, harassing Bonadea with newly created accounts such as User talk:B4onadea, not sure if it's related, but the username is similar. - FlightTime Phone (open channel) 21:11, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Definitely not related to that LTA user. The pattern is nothing like that. RickinBaltimore (talk) 22:34, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Unban request by User:Cuatro Remos aka User:Diego Grez-Cañete

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Cuatro Remos (talk · contribs) posted the following unban request on their talk page (I assume he lost the password for Diego Grez-Cañete (talk · contribs).) I'm copying it here for a community discussion. Relevant ban discussion. Huon (talk) 21:01, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

It's been half a year since I last requested to be unblocked. It's been a lengthy ban that has made me rethink about my past behavior and I'm convinced these actions were not happy, and will not repeat them in future. I registered here in 2006, thirteen years ago, and it seems like it was yesterday, but time passes and people grow old. I made a lot of stupid mistakes, we all do, it's part of growing. It would be foolish to repeat them all over again, and you can be sure I won't. I would like to return to the encyclopedia, most likely not for active contributing, but for the usual minor corrections, referencing and the like, something I enjoy doing. Also, in the meantime, I have been actively contributing on the Spanish Wikipedia, creating thousands of articles (like I once did here), making a positive contribution. By the way, I have not used socks nor anything. Hopefully you will let me back, after so long. After all, bans are not meant to last forever, are they?

PS. During my time here, I contributed over 50 DYKs (see this, find me as Küñall, my former username), several good articles and tons of new articles.

• Nope - I'd just finished writing out a conditional unban (based on someone checking his claims) when a check on his spanish wikipedia activities realised that he received a week-long block...just 15 days ago. Spanish Block Log. A week-long block as a functionally new block (5 years after your last block on that wiki) indicates something significant. I would appreciate it if someone can look at those diffs (my computer won't load them), just so we can see what is what. Nosebagbear (talk) 21:40, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
  • I don't know if I can comment here since I'm not an admin. But as I can see in the diffs, the user was involved in an editing war regarding the political positions of José Antonio Kast and the user was blocked for one week for using bad and defamatory language breaking the es.wiki etiquette rules. (If I'm not allowed to comment here, please revert my edition)--SirEdimon (talk) 21:54, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
• User's Response (Copied over from Talk Page) - "@Nosebagbear: I would appreciate if you could copy this over to the noticeboard. Indeed, as you note, I was blocked not long ago at the Spanish Wikipedia, as SirEdimon says, over a dispute on the José Antonio Kast article. I disagreed with one of the users, who is their supporter, for pushing a version of the article which is very favorable to the politician, a very controversial one in Chile, specifically for being a far-right politician, using several references to support this fact. As I saw their proposal, I used a mean word, related to sex (intended to mean it was self-pleasing) to describe their changes. I did not contest the block, mainly because it was really short, and because I also agreed it was not a great word choice to describe my opinion. Anyway, I apologized to the user in question. During my block, however, they kept pushing some changes favorable to Kast. You can have a look at the article talk: several other users have agreed that this user (Juan Villalobos) took advantage of my block to keep on pushing these POV-ish changes, and there is (some) consensus that Villalobos' edits should be reverted. Explaining this, I want to mean that I was blocked just for an unhappy word choice, not particularly for the editorial dispute. I hope this can clarify this situation."

@SirEdimon: - Yep, you (and I!) are absolutely entitled to edit on the general AN board. Nosebagbear (talk) 22:05, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying. I didn't know if I could, but as I can read some Spanish I thought my contribution would be helpful in this case--SirEdimon (talk) 22:17, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes indeed, that kind of help is valuable, thank you. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:46, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

• No How is the behavior for the block just given on Spanish wiki any different than the behavior that resulted in the English wiki ban? It seems like the edits that just got this user blocked over at es.wiki are exactly the same sort of edits that resulted in the ban here, and the explanation for the block that was given doesn't mitigate that fact in any way. Grandpallama (talk) 10:10, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

User:94.118.5.226

They have some threating stuff to Delta Quad on their talk page. Please do something about it — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.118.19.165 (talk) 09:32, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

I've dealt with it, thanks. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:36, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

S. Kalyanasundaram

Can some admin take a look at this and figure out the best way to deal with it? The intent of the creator Kailash29792 might have been good, but bad articles shouldn't really be created as way to stop disruption on another Wikipedia page. The problem was that Ntkkalyanasundaram kept trying to create this article at Kalyanasundaram (a diambiguation page). This was wrong, but it was likely a mistake being made by a new editor not familiar with Wikipedia. At best the "S.Kalyanasundaram" might be OK to WP:USERFY or even WP:DRAFTIFY if Ntkkalyanasundaram wants to continue working on it, but it's doesn't belong in the article namespace and it shouldn't have been put there. -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:01, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Someone may protect the DAB page since Ntkkalyanasundaram doesn't appear to respond to talk page messages, and therefore may continue his disruptive editing. --Kailash29792 (talk) 08:10, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

WP:RPP would've been and is still an option, but there was really no reason for you to create an article that you knew was going to quite quickly deleted to try and indirectly "protect" the dab page. -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:18, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected the DAB and G11ed the "article", which was essentially a campaign webpage. Ditto for the userpage. Have warned Ntkkalyanasundaram about writing autobiographies; a WP:NOTHERE block would be justified if they continue. Kailash29792's creation of the article was non-ideal, but would cut them slack for action born out of understandable frustration. Let me know if I missed something. Abecedare (talk) 08:21, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Actually, I thought he would properly develop the article if it existed, that is why I created it. I should have known better, so I apologise. --Kailash29792 (talk) 08:27, 4 April 2019 (UTC)