Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Painting

Portal:Painting

Portal:Painting (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Portal:Painting is an almost unviewed portal. This portal was created by The Transhumanist, in September 2018, as a portal with multiple excerpt slideshows, in the process of creating thousands of portals, most of them useless. Because this portal did not satisfy any of the specific design patterns that were used by User:BrownHairedGirl to identify more than two thousand portals for mass deletion, it still exists.

• • The intended Portal Guidelines were never approved by a consensus of the Wikipedia community, and we have never had real portal guidelines. We should therefore use common sense, which is discussed in Wikipedia in the essay section Use Common Sense and in the article common sense. The portal guidelines were an effort to codify common sense about portals, and we should still use common sense. It is still a matter of common sense that portals should be about broad subject areas that will attract large numbers of viewers and will attract portal maintainers. (There never was an actual guideline referring to broad subject areas, and the abstract argument that a topic is a broad subject area is both a handwave and meaningless.) Common sense imposes at least a three-part test for portals to satisfy common sense: (1) a broad subject area, demonstrated a posteriori by a breadth of selected articles (not only by an a priori claim that a topic is broad) (the number of articles in appropriate categories is an indication of potential breadth of coverage, but actual breadth of coverage should be required); (2) a large number of viewers, preferably at least 100 a day, but any portal with fewer than 25 a day can be considered to have failed; (3) portal maintenance, (a) with at least two maintainers to provide backup, with a maintenance plan indicating how the portal will be maintained (b) the absence of any errors indicating lack of maintenance (including failure to list dates of death in biographies). Some indication of how any selected articles were selected (e.g., Featured Article or Good Article status, selection by categories, etc.) is also desirable. Any portal that does not pass these common-sense tests is not useful as a navigation tool, for showcasing, or otherwise.
  • In the first half of 2019, the portal had 5 average daily pageviews, which is no more than noise, as opposed to 1605 pageviews for the article, Painting.
  • The portal is a single-page design, and has two embedded lists, one of general painting articles, and one of painting techniques. There are a total of 187 articles in the two lists, which is a large selection, and is not subject to content-fork rot.
  • Any backlinks to this portal can be redirected to Portal:Arts, which is a main page portal.
  • The portal is almost unviewed. Maintenance includes the removal of links to excerpt articles that have been deleted. Robert McClenon (talk) 07:01, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

• Keep for now - The portal is an interesting case of single page layout, and it has a number of views proportional to your theme depth. Portal:Arts -> Portal:Visual arts -> Portal:Painting. The problems cited by the nominator are general problems of the entire Portal: space , not exclusive to this one.Guilherme Burn (talk) 11:58, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
• Keep, instead of deleting a portal for a prominent subject please work on it to fix what is seen as wrong. Instead of being "almost unviewed" the portal is now viewed on average 34 times a day (or well over 12,000 times a year). Notifying the appropriate Wikiprojects is the way to go, and should have been included in every portal deletion discussion (there have been far too many to "argue" every one, but painting? Of course this should be kept and improved). Randy Kryn (talk) 12:10, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
• Keep per arguments raised by Guilherme Burn and Randy Kryn. Coldcreation (talk) 12:39, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
• Keep the issues raised are common to most if not all portals. ɱ (talk) 16:03, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - User:Randy Kryn states that the portal is being viewed over 12,000 times a year, by extrapolating a recent period of two weeks, when portals have been much viewed due to their deletion discussions. In the period of October 2018 to September 2019, which is one year, there have been a total of 3205 viewings. That is better than the first half of 2019, but it is closer to an average of 9 pageviews a day. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:49, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
  • I made several changes to publicize this portal, example [1]. These changes seem to have had an effect. It seems to be one argument that links in better visualized portals attract more readers than links in articles. So I request to keep this portal for now, it is an interesting case study. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guilherme Burn (talk • contribs)
• Weak delete: While Guilherme Burn's claim above is somewhat true (average daily pageviews last month were at 31), that still isn't really enough to keep the portal alive. Portals need to have loads more pageviews than that to be considered successful (preferably more than 100), and making it a subportal of another more widely-viewed portal can only have so much of an actual effect. ToThAc (talk) 20:44, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

• Please point out the policy that states how many views a portal needs to have. This one, with the changes mentioned above, will get 12,000 a year and counting upward. Seems like a personal opinion about page views, one which does not take into account 12,000 Wikipedia readers a year who are interested in what the encyclopedia has to offer on the topic. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:47, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

  @Randy Kryn: It not a matter of policy, it's a matter of common sense. It's actually quite common that a portal gets deleted after multiple nominations. Also, I'm calculating the average pageviews per day, which is unmistakably different from total pageviews per year. ToThAc (talk) 01:52, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

• It's a matter of WP:COMMONSENSE to keep the portal on painting. Hundreds of good portals have been deleted rather than the nominating and 'delete' editors taking the time to fix them. Let's withdraw this one and let an improved portal continue to educate the many readers who seek it out. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:59, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

@Randy Kryn: Alright, I'm going to be frank here: I respectfully think the burden of proof of portals actually helping anyone is on you. Just look at the recent deletion discussions about portals and you'll see. ToThAc (talk) 02:21, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

@ToThAc: The burden of proof is on those who nominate for deletion to show that a portal is not useful. Coldcreation (talk) 13:22, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

@Coldcreation: I've already statistically proven multiple times why similar portals were objectively useless in the past, and I'm also not advocating that all portals should be deleted. Remember that portals aren't content, so deleting them would result in zero net information loss. ToThAc (talk) 22:51, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

"Zero net information loss". Tell that to the potential 12,000 plus people who will view it in the next year. Maybe on this one we can all work together to fix and improve the portal and make it shine like an artistic beacon. I've added the portal to the Art World template, which will possibly up viewership a little. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:46, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

@Randy Kryn: Please don't cite data you can't provide. For all you know, that number could be as low as one thousand, thus that argument has no place in deletion discussions. I advise you to use a better argument.

Also, the reason I said "zero net information loss" is because users may be better off using the head article or the more broad subject portal instead. ToThAc (talk) 23:48, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

• Keep - I find it hard to believe that we don't have multiple FA and GA articles that can be presented on the portal. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 19:17, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
• Note to closing admin. I don't want in any way to prejudge the outcome ... but if you close this discussion as delete, please can you not remove the backlinks? I have a bot (BHGbot 4) which allows me to easily replace them with links to the next most specific portal(s), without creating duplicate entries.

in this case I think that the appropriate new links would be to Portal:Visual arts. Alternative suggestions welcome. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:48, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

• Comment - The supporters of this portal are making a case that it is being better viewed in other periods than were the basis of my nomination. My main reason for nominating this portal for deletion was low viewing. I am willing to Withdraw this nomination and revisit this portal in 90 days if the supporters are likewise agreeable to revisiting it in 90 days. (That is of course based on the assumption that other things are equal, such as that there is no moratorium on portal deletion discussions.) Robert McClenon (talk) 05:19, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
• Keep per KnowledgeKid87 and I don't really think we should be putting so much emphasis on page views. If a decent portal can be constructed, there's no need for deletion. Lepricavark (talk) 20:34, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
• Note to closing admin. I am have just finished a preliminary analysis of this portal. Contrary to appearances, it is in fact spam. I am now writing up my notes, but there's a lot of detail involved, so it may take another hour or so to collate the evidence. Please can you leave this open a it longer? Thanks. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:51, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

• It's a portal, not spam (insults as argument). If you just now, at this late stage in the discussion, started to look at the portal, and see faults, maybe consider improving it rather than supporting deletion. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:18, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

• Randy, I did not use the term "spam" as an insult. I used it as description of the indiscriminate way in which this particular portal was built by an editor who also has a long history of creating spam portals.

And, I did not just now, at this late stage in the discussion, started to look at the portal, and see faults. I first examined it shortly after opened, but owing to another on-wiki issue which in have been involved, I have found it hard until now to make time to write the detailed explanation which this needs in order to make sense to those not fully versed in portal technicalities. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:26, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

• Delete as textbook example of the failure of the portals created with the Module:Excerpt progeny of templates (which I may even support in principle) without actually checking the results. I'm talking about {{transclude selected recent additions}} in particular, here invoked as {{Transclude selected recent additions | Painting | months=36 | header={{Box-header colour|Did you know... }}|max=6}}: Every Frame a Painting may be a nice piece of trivia about copyright or the internet industries, but it's questionable whether it should be advertised for the next 36 months to people who are looking for information on painting. Whether this irrelevancy was intentionally accepted by the creator, or merely ignored due to the "black box" nature of those Lua templates, the result doesn't change that the portal is ineffective at best and harmful at worse. Nemo 12:43, 17 November 2019 (UTC)
• Comment, may I note that the reopening of this discussion, which had been closed as not delete, has been asked to be overturned at the closer's talk page. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:20, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
• Note from Previous Closing Editor: Since Randy Kryn has made mention to my talkpage discussion, I have re-opened this discussion for two reasons:

1. Given the controversial nature of the portal namespace, per WP:NACPIT, it was probably best left to an administrator; and,
2. As BrownHairedGirl had been in the process of composing a lengthy reply, with new evidence in support of a particular position, per how consensus works, it seems inappropriate to not allow that evidence to be submitted, particularly since, a deletion review was a likely outcome. This would only needlessly delay finality in arriving at a decision. So, as I said, I re-opened this discussion for those reasons and those reasons alone. I take no position one way or the other. Doug Mehus T·C 03:37, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

• Thank you, Doug. It is more productive to have the substantive discussion here than to go to DRV for a procedural diversion. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:41, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
• This discussion was closed as not deleted. It was a good close, and would hold up on review. It was reopened after a claim of new evidence was presented to the closer. Once closed, then reopened on that basis, means that any claim by an editor that they have new evidence would automatically reopen any decided deletion close, whatever the decision. This may be creating a precedent which can reopen any former close by claiming new evidence. Is this creating precedent, or is this a common practice in closings and reopenings? Randy Kryn (talk) 04:10, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

• Delete, with prejudice against re-creation. This is pure portalspam (i.e. indiscriminate, drive-by, semi-automated portal-making) by the notorious portalspammer User:The Transhumanist (TTH)), though not of his usual common navbox-clone variety. It has

• It has a pair of article lists made by a driveby scoop of Category:Painting and Category:Painting techniques, which is stuffed with stub-class and start-class articles.
• It includes zero paintings, and only one painter (and that only as a result of a redirect after the page was created).
• Its image gallery is a pointless clone.
• It has a good structure, but it is wholly uncurated.
• It has low pageviews (tho they are rising), and zero discussion at Portal talk:Painting. A check of from WikipediaTalk namespace shows that the only topic project talk page to have a mention of this portal is WT:WikiProject Visual arts, and that is only the MFD notice at WT:WikiProject_Visual_arts#Nomination_of_Portal:Painting_for_deletion plus multiple comments by one editor. The only links from user talk pages relate to this MFD.
• So apart from this MFD, there has been zero discussion of this portal. Even with the MFD open for ten days, only one editor anywhere has expressed any interest in maintaining the portal, and that's not enough to sustain a portal. The history of MFD is littered with the ghosts of many hundreds portals where one enthusiastic editor built or maintained a portal, but then gave up editing or moved on to other topics, and the portal rotted for years. WP:NOTCOMULSORY, so any editor is fully entitled to move on without reproach, but that's no basis on which to sustain a portal. We have already seen that with this very portal, which as existed for over 14 months, was promptly abandoned by its creator ... and in those 14 months, nobody spotted that it was spam.
• Painting is only a level 3 vital article, which places it in the 100–1000 range of top priority topics. There are currently only 512 extant portals (yes, Category:All portals reports 546, but that is due to bug phab:T18036; the correct figure is available via a simple Petscan query or by using WP:AWB) So this topic of painting is right in the middle of the grey zone where some portals survive, and others fail; and this one fails.

Image gallery

As with other TTH-built spam portals, this one has no curated list of images to display. Instead it uses the template code {{Transclude files as random slideshow | Painting | History of painting | }} to make its image list simply by combining the sets of images used in the two articles Painting and History of painting, and then doing lots of processing to prepare a subset to use in the portal (which is why the portal takes so long to load).

This redundancy is pointless, because the two articles concerned:

1. shows the full set of articles
2. has a built-in image gallery for logged-out readers (i.e. the vast majority) which displays the images at nearly full-screen resolution, instead of the the tiny box on the portal. If you haven't seen it in action, right-click to either of these links to Painting of History of painting, select "open in private window" or "open in incognito window" (difft browsers use difft terminology), and when the page loads click on any image to start the gallery.

Structure

I usually find myself in agreement with Robert McClenon, but in this case he seems to have misunderstood how the portal is constructed.

It's structure is actually what I think is one of the best portal designs in use anywhere. It uses the same technique as is used in Portal:Wind power: plain wikilinks in two defined sections, which are then used by the template to build the rotation. The use of the plain wikilinks as the source makes it very easy to use (because there's an alternative to the redundant excerpts), very easy to edit, and very easy to check for problems in the list.

Spam

However, the way in which the lists were created is pure spam. After 8 months of forensically examining about two thousand portals, I know some telltale signs. The first thing I noticed about this portal's history was that it was created at 11:26, 15 September 2018‎[2], and only seven minutes later at 11:33 the next edit[3] added a list of 191 articles. Seven minutes is a tiny fraction of the time needed to make a proper assessment of that many articles, and in all but one such case in a TTH creation I have found that the list was simply scooped indiscriminately from somewhere else. TTH didn't do diligent creation; his portal creation was all about speedily grabbing lists from some existing source, and he posted several times about his quest to reduce that time to below one minute in all cases.

Topics/General painting topics = spam

The list in the section Topics/General painting topics was a straightforward scoop of the Category:Painting. Using AWB's list comparison tool, I found that of the 74 articles listed in the "General painting topics" section, 72 are currently in the Category:Painting, and of the remaining two: one (Pliage) was redirected in 2019, and the one is still in the category, but has appeared as an exception because it has been renamed: Blue Star Coloring, moved in October 2019‎ to Blue Star Press.

Of those 74 articles:

• 6 are tagged as stubs (using {{stub}} or one of its many narrower alternatives)
• a further 9 of the 74 are assessed on their talk page as stub-class
• a further 29 of the 74 are assessed on their talk page as start-class

The former guideline WP:POG was a little contradictory on quality requirements. It explicitly forbade stubs, but also said articles "high quality, either a featured article, a good article or one which deals with its subject substantially or comprehensively". So it's unclear whether start-class was forbidden, and of course now have no portal guideline. But I seen have no support anywhere for including stubs, and little for including start-class. If we just say "no stubs" that means that 20% of TTH's Painting techniques list shouldn't be in the portal; if we say "no start class", that rises to 59% (44/74 are stub or start-class).

Topics/Painting techniques = spam

Similarly, the list in the section Topics/Painting techniques was a straightforward scoop of the Category:Painting techniques. Using AWB, I found that of the 113 articles listed in the "Painting techniques" section, 110 are currently in the Category:Painting techniques, and of the remaining three: two were in that categ until removed a few days ago (Ian Cook (artist), Michael Dupille) and one is still in the category, but has appeared as an exception because it has been renamed (Theorem Stencil, moved in March 2019‎ to Theorem Stencil as a capitalisation fix.

Of those 113 articles:

• 30 are tagged as stubs (using {{stub}} or one of its many narrower alternatives)
• a further 9 of the 113 are assessed on their talk page as stub-class
• a further 46 of the 113 are assessed on their talk page as start-class

If we just say "no stubs" that means that 35% of TTH's Painting techniques list shouldn't be in the portal; if we say "no start class", that rises to 75% (85/113 are stub or start-class).

Bad choice of categories

Even if category-scooping was an appropriate technique, the choice of categories is very poor. Category:Painting is a mix of key topics plus random articles which have not yet been diffused to sub-categories. Similarly, Category:Painting techniques has a set of subcats which are not included. So the use of just these two categories excludes all paintings and all painters and all galleries and all art movements unless they have been miscategorised. AS a way of making a list of quality articles on key topics in painting this is not been abysmal; it's 100% complete fail.

Lack of scrutiny

Doing and documenting this detailed analysis has taken about 6 hours of my time (most of it in failed list comparisons and double-checking). Very few editors have the time to do that, or the experience of doing this sort of analysis to thousands of portals (most of which were thankfully much more straightforward). But the result is that at 11 other editors have commented on this portal, and most saw no problem; User:Nemo bis came close, but missed a lot.

I intend absolutely no criticism of the skill or good faith of any of the other editors. They simply didn't manage to overcome the huge barriers to analysis created by the baroque Rube Goldberg machine structure of portals, and the usual lack of any ongoing systematic analysis of the article lists of portals, and of any documentation of how the list of articles in a portal is created. Even in this case, with a visible list of articles, analysing them is just far too much work even if you are (like me) an old cow who has spent far too much time AWB-mongering. Without AWB, forget it; how can a mortal individually assess 184 articles without spending half the day at it?

The result of this obscurity is that while nearly all portals have a pretty design, most of them have little or scrutiny of their core component: the list of articles. That's why when they do get detailed scrutiny at MFD, the outcome is often very different to what might have been expected. And that's why drive-by spam like this has been in place for 14 months, and why so many experienced, good faith editors failed to spot that it is spam. There are dozens of well-maintained, well-curated portals ... but even then, it is usually very hard for a newcomer to the portal to assess the quality of the list. That is not, as some claim, an argument for deleting all portals. But it is a strong argument for deleting those portals which don't have a team of hard-working editors diligently scrutinising and balancing its list.

Meanwhile, there are links to this portal from 603 articles or category pages, and in the 12 months to the end of October 2019, it had a total of [https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&start=2018-11-01&end=2019-10-31&pages=Portal:Painting 3,456 pageviews. Over three thousand views of pure spam, undetected even after scrutiny by ten editors. Please can we just delete this junk? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:01, 18 November 2019 (UTC)