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It picks up on an proposition repeatedly made by SmokeyJoe: that portals are a failed experiment, in which only a few have proven to attract readers. Joe has focused on the portals linked from the front page, which each gather over 1000 pageviews per day, and has suggested dumping the rest.
I have sympathy with Joe's idea, because WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers" ... and because the threshold Joe uses is about the same as the pageview count for the head article of most portals (most of them are 1000+).
However, I think that Joe is setting the threshold too high. I think that a threshold of 50 or 100 pageviews a day would be sufficient to weed out a lot of the low-traffic, under-maintained portals, while recognising that some portals which are not on the front page do nonetheless sustain much more credible pageviews than than the mass of unviewed portals.
So while Joe's suggestion would remove 98.8% of portals, I think that';s unlikely to gain consensus.
So my idea is to set a threshold of pageviews, and triage portals into three groups, as follows:
Portals above a given threshold, to be kept.
Portals meeting more than half that threshold, which may be improved to meet the threshold, so should be reviewed again after 12 months
Portals below half that threshold, which should be immediately deleted.
Then offer various options:
OPTION A: Aim to keep only portals which average over 1000 pageviews per day. There are no portals in the 501–1000 range, so delete the remaining 897 portals.
OPTION B: Aim to keep only portals which average over 250 pageviews per day. For now, delete the 848 portals which got <=100 views per day in 2019 Q2, and review again after 12 months.
OPTION C: Aim to keep only portals which average over 100 pageviews per day. For now, delete the 758 portals which got <=50 views per day in 2019 Q2, and review again after 12 months.
OPTION D: Aim to keep only portals which average over 50 pageviews per day. For now, delete the 577 portals which got <=25 views per day in 2019 Q2, and review again after 12 months.
I think that gives a reasonable range of options, but I worry that it may be too complicated.
Keep the top level portals as the only stand-alone portals. Do not delete the next best portals, but merge them into the top level portals. Reduce the content in portals, and put much more emphasis on their role to provide comprehensive navigation to increasingly more specific topics. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:52, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Portal:LGBT, the first after the big step, of not being considered worthy of mainpage presence, clearly belongs within Portal:Society, in my view. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:18, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The hierarchical structural of Portals should share things with the hierarchical structure of the categories. In fact, conceptually, I would like to see the two merged. I also consider categories for user navigation, to also be a failed experiment. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:18, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
From BF:
I think the analysis is good (I would leave out the last two columns in the table for simplicity; no need to invert the data as the previous two columns captures it). Is there an easy way to do the last 6 or even 12 months of views (or is that a lot of analysis); I say that because it would avoid any concerns over a portal having a "bad quarter" of views.
I see editors confusing portals with articles at MfD, and for them, low page views are not necessarily a reason for deletion (e.g page views is a rarely used arguement now at AfD). They don't make the connection that a portal which is not maintained has no purpose (e.g. what would be the purpose of WP Main Page if it was left frozen at say 2011)?
The most compelling arguements are when it is shown the portal, bar the 2018 technical updates by the Transhuminist, has been almost untouched for +5-7 years, and has low traffic. This "double lock" of abandonment and no public interest are the most compelling deletes imho. Is there a metric/statistic like page views, that could capture abandonment (e.g. time since last real edit bar the TH and bots etc.)?
I see when editors engage in the level of abandonment, and that this is not just an "unloved article" issue, but a "frozen Main Page" issue, they are swifter to take action.
Everyone knows I have been a major deletion nominator of Portals, and like BHG I have a few dozen or so more I intend to nominate.
But I actually think once that is done it may be a good time to take a pause, so I would add an OPTION E: Do nothing more for now. One belief I have (a reason I have been so active) is that once the junk is deleted, the viewership of the remaining portals may (and only may: of course no guarantees) actually increase: certainly improvement efforts focused on the remaining portals will have more impact. I am surprised/disappointed more portal fans don't see this as a possibility.
This means the current viewership stats may not really be relevant.
Since there is no deadline, why not take a 12-month break, see where the portal viewership is at that time, and come back to the community then with a proposal along these lines? We have put out the fire, I for one don't see major value at this point of further deletion work in the Portal: space and the drama that would ensue. Why not look at the Outlines instead? UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:28, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
From Hut 8.5
I agree that portals have largely been a failed experiment and I would support getting rid of most of the ones we have at the moment. I'm not sure pageviews are the right metric to use for this though. The only other situation I can think of where we use pageviews to determine whether to keep or delete something is at RfD, where they are sometimes used to determine whether a redirect represents a real search term or not, and even then the use is to determine whether the redirect has any human views at all. Judging from a few clicks on Special:Random most articles would be deleted if we imposed a threshold of 100 pageviews a month. For portals I suspect pageviews are largely a function of how prominently we link to the portal, rather than any particular property of the portal itself.
I suspect a proposal to nominate most remaining portals for deletion will meet with quite a lot of pushback, as you can see from the responses this proposal got. I'd suggest waiting a while and then focusing on the portals which have the least value, such as those in the <25 bracket above. These portals likely have little value and eliminating them would get rid of more than half the remaining portals.
If I had to come up with a suggestion for criteria we should use for having a portal on some topic I would suggest something like this:
A few portals on very high-level topics, such as those linked from the main page at the moment.
I am also very sympathetic to portals which showcase very high quality content, such as Portal:Battleships, as we don't really have anything else which highlights to readers how good these articles are.
First, I thank User:BrownHairedGirl for a useful analysis. Second, I have just proposed that there should be an RFC, but a policy RFC and not a mass MFD. My preference is to proceed with a policy RFC. I share the sadness and concern of BHG about the "sullen passivity" of a group of portal advocates, who continue to say that portal critics are ignoring the expressed views of the community (basing that statement largely on an ambiguous RFC a year ago). So I would prefer that the community be surveyed as to its views again, and that there be no mass deletion of portals until the views of the community are surveyed again. Perhaps the community agrees with User:SmokeyJoe that portals are a failed experiment. Perhaps the community only agrees with me that there have been two failed experiments, partial subpage portals and automated portals.
If we are to triage portals based on pageviews, my preference would be to keep those with 100 daily pageviews and delete those with less than 25 pageviews, which is a hybrid of two of BHG's options that leaves a larger middle zone. However, I would prefer to survey the views of the community with a new RFC.
Robert McClenon (talk) 19:30, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Why are you doing this? The correct form (per the W3C, WHATWG, and MDN) is <br>. This doesn't change the output, so I don't know what the value is in adding the XHTML-style, self-closing <br/>. Is there something I'm missing? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:53, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Unclosed tags break syntax highlighting, which is a pain for those of us who use it. S99% of times I encounter the problem, it's caused by <br>. So when I'm doing an AWB run for other purposes, I add a line to close the <br> tags as <br />. I have it flagged as a minor edit, so the page will be skipped if that's the only change.
Syntax highlighing in... what? Your other changes (e.g. adding a hatnote to the top of the article and removing a deleted portal) are obviously correct and very helpful. Thanks for that. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:05, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
To turn it on, go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, skip down to the "editing" section, and the it's the third item: "Syntax highlighter: Alternative to the default coloring of wiki syntax in the edit box (works best in Firefox and works almost all of the time in Chrome and Opera)".
So long as you have a reasonable powerful PC, I highly recommend it. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 17:16, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the tip. I find syntax highlighting confusing and distracting, so I'm going to pass but I'll see if I can tinker with the code at that tool and fix this tag issue. Thanks as always for your work here and taking the time to educate me. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:42, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You're welcome, Justin. And if you manage to fix the syntax highlighter with a change which is accepted, please let me know, and I will remove the BR fix from my AWB run.
I have had mixed experiences with syntax highlighter tools, but this one is really good. I highly recommend trying it; it's especially valuable when editing templates.
@Koavf:mw:Help:Extension:Linter/self-closed-tag defines several HTML5-valid self-closed tags such as <br/>, <hr/>, <wbr/> (but it's not clear whether Linter flags these if unclosed), and a few more in the Notes section.
@BrownHairedGirl: could you also add <hr/> & <wbr/> to your piggybacked minor changes? I have an ever-growing list of 'global' minor changes that I will add these two to too. ~Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:06, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Tom.Reding, The solution I suppose is to just use templates (e.g. {{hr}}, which I just inserted for a horizontal rule]. We aren't to be using (X)HTML tags in wiki code anyway. One may say, "well, what if we have 2,000 line breaks in a page and we can't have that many templates?" but you should probably ask yourself why we have so many line breaks in the first place. I would recommend replacing the HTML tags with templates and I'll do that myself in the future. Thanks. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:50, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
BrownHairedGirl, The page you linked does not say anything about not using templates. A Ctrl+F of the page only mentions the word "template" in regards to {{nowrap}} and horizontal lists. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:07, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. It does recommend the slash in <br />, but doesn't suggest templates. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 19:21, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
BrownHairedGirl, Sure but only due to syntax highlighting, not because it's actual HTML best practice. If the highlighters could parse the non-XHTML forms, then this problem would not be an issue. I'm not 100% clear on why these are unable to understand self-closing tags without slashes but as your user script notes this is an outstanding bug that should be fixed. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:04, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Justin, if you can fix the syntax highlighters, then all this will be moot. In the meantime, we need this workaround.
The reason is probably that self-closing tags without the slash are much harder to process. Feel free to do the extra programming to handle them. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 19:12, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
To answer your question, and to gently suggest that WP:SOFIXIT applies here. If you don't like my solution, I have pointed you to an alternative. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 19:24, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
After a message from User:Retro suggesting that I strike it, I slept on it overnight and, after further reflection, I do agree that it's a bit too personalised and unnecessarily strident. I hope you'll accept my apology, because it was not meant to be personal in any way. The only mitigation (if one can even justify that term) I have is that, unfortunately, you seem to have become the official spokesperson for the PDT (that's my joke acronym for the "Portal Deletion Team", to counter "Portal Squadron"), and any situation where I become exasperated and want to make a point about the activities of the PDT, your Username seems to emerge from my keyboard. Witness the "Sloppygate incident". It's not much of an excuse, I know, but it's genuinely what happens. I'll try to be more careful in future.
So I hope you can accept my apology and take it as an olive branch of good faith. It's hard enough working here without racking up enemies and acrimony.
We all have bad days, and since that's what this was, let's just put it behind us.
I have a backronym for the PDT: Portal Dissection Toilers. I had hoped that months ago we would be long past finding stuff like Portal:IndyCar, but in the last few days I collected a set of over a dozen more portals which my first two-minute check showed as probably being MFD candidates. So now I am going through them one by one, making notes and then polishing them to take to MFD one at a time if they fail. This phase takes me between an hour or two per portal to get to an MFD, but rarely less than 30 minutes even if I find something which makes me reconsider an immediate MFD. So that's at least a whole day's work just on this set.
Robert McClenon was dong some PDT work too, but has taken a break. After all those 36-hour days, I fear that he may have been busted by the European Union's Working Time Directive cops, and currently be languishing in a cell under the Berlaymont. We can't break him out, because the people around my way who might have taken on the job decommissioned their toolkits under the GFA. So he may be detained indefinitely. Please pray for the redemption of his mortal soul
Thanks again, and hope you have a great weekend ... and if that doesn't work out, enjoy the picture of heaven.
Sounds nasty, Robert. I hope the damage wasn't too dramatic, and the fix not too hard on the hands or the pocket.
And I am v relived to hear that you have no been taken prisoner. I won't have start the "Free The Berlaymont One" campaign after all . --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 23:15, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
All is okay now. The short had earlier been interfering with my watching of association football, which of course is played wearing shorts. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:33, 14 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Football before the shorts fad.Glad to hear it's fixed, Robert. But this idea of football being played in shorts is just a fad. It will never catch on. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 23:57, 14 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
These portals are however getting to me. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:28, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I was at a new job at a strange location, and hadn't been given timesheets for the past two two-week pay periods, and needed to fill them out and turn them in. Something was said to the effect that we had standard timekeeping and that it wasn't necessary to fill in the timesheets, although I was concerned that I hadn't worked full hours and was wondering how vacation would be charged. I was given a sort of pay stub that took the place of a pay check, and was told that I could deposit it at an ATM in the same manner as a pay check. I then put the stub, which was a small piece of paper that was torn off, into the ATM. Apparently either the ATM or the bank knew how much it was worth. At this point the ATM screen was covered with some sort of greasy crud that would have to be cleaned off with a household cleaning spray, and I think it was cleaned off.
Then there was talk about how thousands of visitors were coming to the island, which happened every now and then for some sort of festival or gathering, and made it a difficult place to be. I thought that the alternatives would be to live on the large island of Great Britain and drive to and from the small island that sometimes was overcrowded with visitors. The island, where the work was being done, was in the Strait of Dover and was a waypoint on the channel crossing between England and France. The island was part of England, but was not part of the big island that is Great Britain. The other side was France, but the problem with living there was that would involve crossing the international border to drive to and from work. It occurred to me that I should have my household goods kept in storage rather than delivered. I would be able to go home and find a job in the United States at the next opportunity for home vacation, and then I could have the household goods delivered to a more permanent location in the United States.
Es war ein Traum.
This island wasn't one of the Channel Islands, because they aren't part of England.
It has been pointed out to me that one problem with living on the French side is that I don't know French. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:32, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
While removing deleted portals from several mathematical articles (many thanks for your work on portals), you have moved down the short description. This contradicts WP:Short description, where it is written Put the {{short description}} template as close to the top of the page as possible, for ease of finding it. Also, when one uses the short description gadget for importing a short description from Wikidata, the short description is always placed at the first line. Should these moves be reverted or should WP:Short description and the gadget be modified? In either case, I think that it is to you to do the job. D.Lazard (talk) 02:25, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Any changes to short description are done by WP:AWB's General fixes, which I enable while doing the primary a task. The genfixes come as a package, which I never delve into. I just assume that everything in them has consensus as an appropriate fix; there was a bit of ruckus a year or two back when it turned out that the maintainer had been jumping the gun a bit by adding some genfixes without proper approval, but I think that is all behind us.
I know nothing about WP:Short description, other than that I have seen shortdesc appearing on various pages, and have just read the page now that you kindly gave me the link.
Please can you post a diff or two where you think that my AWB run has got it wrong? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 02:36, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Per MOS:ORDER, short descriptions should come after hatnotes. This was added in April; however, I don't think anyone informed the AWB devs of the change. WP:GENFIXES move various things around based on MOS:ORDER. Currently, I don't think AWB knows anything about short descriptions, so they are probably being considered as some other type of template and being moved accordingly. — JJMC89 (T·C) 07:19, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Here are the cases that appeared on my watch list. Respecting MOS:ORDER: [1]; not respecting MOS:ORDER: [2]. Because of a too fast reading of a move of protection templates, I believed that [3] was a third case. As there was no short description in this third case, I have imported one with the gadget ([4]), and it was placed in the first line, before hatnote and protection template. So, depending on the guideline and/or the tool used, we have three possible positions: first line, between hatnotes and protection templates, after hatnotes and protection templates... D.Lazard (talk) 08:15, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, D.Lazard. It seems that genfixes's idea of order is hatnotes/protectionTemplates/ShortDesc. As JJMC89 kindly noted, AWBgenfixes is following MOS:ORDER.
So I did a little burrowing in WP:Short description, and found this edit[5] on 5 January 2019 by User:CapnZapp. That edit changed the wording from a general note which I paraphrase as "top of the page is nice, but subject to other things which come first" to a stronger "Put the short description template as close to the top of the page as possible." I am sure that was done in good faith, but it seems to me that these decisions need to be made by discussion at WT:MOSLAYOUT.
So AFAICS, Genfixes is doing this correctly, by following MOS:ORDER. WP:SHORTDESC should be amended to reflect MOS:ORDER, subject to any discussions which anyone want to start at MOS:ORDER. Personally, I couldn't care either way, so I won't be proposing any changes ... but D.Lazard, you may wish to start discussions at WT:MOSLAYOUT about whether the current order is OK, and bring WP:SHORTDESC into line with whatever is decided there. And I will continue to let AWB genfixes do what they do. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 12:29, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Just stopping by to say if my edit survived all these months despite a healthy amount of further activity since then it stands to reason that the edit has consensus. If anyone thinks the page requires permission from another page's talk viewers, then the talk page should probably only be a redirect to that other page's talk page. In other words, ignoring a policy page because you don't like it is probably not a good idea. (I have no opinion on the topic discussed here, and I am not claiming anyone is ignoring anything - I was merely summoned here) CapnZapp (talk) 17:16, 14 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Your edit effectively required a change in MOS:ORDER, but the change was not made to MOS:ORDER and not flagged there, let alone discussed there. It was made to a different page, not discussed, and didn't even have an edit summary clearly describing what it was doing.
As to your claim that I am ignoring a policy page because you don't like ... are you a child with learning difficulties, or just a troll?
You know perfectly well that I have set out in the discussion above that this is nothing to do with whether I like it, and that I really couldn't care less which is at the top.
What has happened here is that you have unilaterally made WP:SHORTDESC say something different to MOS:ORDER. Issues of page order need to be set out in one place, because otherwise we could have dozens of pages each claiming that a different item should be at the top. And that one place is MOS:ORDER, which is what the AWB developers are following -- not me.
I am very happy to discuss this sensibly with people who disagree, but I have only contempt for people like CapnZapp who join a conversation only to misrepresent others. Zap, I notified you as a courtesy ... but stay off my talk until you can behave a civil adult. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 17:42, 14 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
All I said was that, not knowing anything of your specific case, if you don't like a policy, change it, discuss it, but don't ignore it and especially don't shop around for the one you like best. If there is community consensus around a specific policy that "violates" a more general one, it doesn't violate it, it overrides it. Otherwise it would be impossible to find something; if you can't trust what you read on a page ("oh that, just ignore it, you should read WP:THISOVERHERE instead.") I do not need to excuse myself for not knowing WP:THISOVERHERE, and again - there was easily half a dozen other editors that didn't change that edit either. So why didn't you boldly edit it if you're so sure it was a mistake, instead of summoning me only to yell at me?
As to your response, I truly suggest you stop considering yourself a mature and civil editor - unless you had a bad day and your reply was merely uncharacteristically uncouth, in which case I shall now heed your request and stay off your talk (unless you summon me again). CapnZapp (talk) 16:01, 16 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Please correct the area wise rank of haryana in india 22 to 21 in starting of page — Preceding unsigned comment added by 106.198.250.96 (talk) 18:17, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hi BHG, this an urgent message could you go to Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Duplicate_categories_by_User:Shadowbryan25 and it's about User:Shadowbryan25 have misuse edits by add the people from categories. For more details please go to the administrators' noticeboard and go to "Duplicate categories by User:Shadowbryan25" and investigate Shadowbryan25's edits. If you see a People from category remove it immediately. I hope you are the one to investigate. Thank you. 24.80.117.27 (talk) 02:03, 14 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No like, you were in the right venue though. Per WP:TFD#NOT, Userboxes should be listed at Miscellany for deletion, regardless of the namespace in which they reside. –MJL‐Talk‐☖ 18:08, 14 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I thought WP:Twinkle must have had a brain fart. But when I had closed the MFD, I saw that User:TenPoundHammer had tagged the template for speedy deletion, so I just went ahead and did that. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 18:11, 14 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
[Thank you for the ping] Huh, I probably wouldn't have wanted to see it speedied since some of the users who transcluded it are still around, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'll let them be their own advocates on that one. –MJL‐Talk‐☖ 18:22, 14 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe, MJL. If anyone objects, I'll undelete it and we can have the MFD discussion. But I am not expecting much upset about the deletion of a user box relating to a long-abandoned and now-deleted portal. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 18:41, 14 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Besides irony or rebellion, I can't imagine either. That sounds like the best plan though. –MJL‐Talk‐☖ 18:48, 14 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Irony might be fun, MJL. Rebellion would definitely be fun, esp today.
Hi. I didn't notice it at first reading, but it seems that there is an out of place word "ignore" in your edit. It's very rare to find a closer who will ignore actually uphold WP:NOTVOTE. —andrybak (talk) 18:03, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Category:Organizations based in Nigeria together with the subcats using 'organis/zations' have been nominated for possible renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. As you created at least one of the categories concerned, you are most welcome to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Oculi (talk) 19:46, 16 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. LizRead!Talk! 01:36, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Have you considered the mop?
Hey, I've seen your name pop up in a bunch of the spaces I edit and honestly what I've seen is the sort of care, attention to detail and neutral attitude that would be perfect for an admin. Have you considered putting up an RfA? If you do, ping me and I'll support it fwiw. Simonm223 (talk) 12:34, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
But no troutings, please. It was a kind thought, and many thanks for posting it. -BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 12:55, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I guess, thanks for being so good at your job that I'd ask you to do it if you weren't already doing it. LOL Simonm223 (talk) 12:57, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Categories
Hi BHG, I wanted to ask you more about the technical limitations of Categories that you brought up at the RFC draft. Do you know what work, if any, has been done? I liked a lot of the ideas you suggested and wanted to take a look to see how hard it would be to add some of these features. Are there any other improvements to categories you think could be done software side? Wug·a·po·des 16:54, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
WP:IECATNAVP is where I set out the start of the idea which was refined on the talk page (WT:IECATNAVP) into what eventually became {{AllIrelandByCountyCatNav}}. I think that in there there is a fairly good summary of my thoughts about the poor state of category software.
If I had to do a quick summary, I'd say that the key things needed are:
I see Newshunter12 recently tried to blame me for attempting to hack your account and I just wanted to tell you that it wasn't me (I did troll him and a few others) and correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't he the one that brought up the fact someone attempted to hack your account a few months ago before you had even said anything about it ? How could he possibly have known about it unless he or one of his cronies did it. 198.8.81.74 (talk) 18:40, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
(I saw this at the AfD) Would you happen to be admitting to being the IP who's necessitated semiprotecting Newshunter12's talkpage? And the same person who left me the charming entreaties to commit suicide visible here? If so, I'll make sure to strike your comments at the AfD, since self-professed trolls who request editors kill themselves, while referring to them as "cunt" and "faggot", are not welcome to edit here. (See User talk:Zzuuzz#Proxy score of 65 from ipqualityscore and the second thread after it for context, I'm sure a CU would've turned up a good hand/bad hand situation) The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:49, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, I have said not one word anywhere about IP 198.8.81.74. I don't know very much about IP addresses, but it certainly sounds like this person is admitting to being behind the socking, death threats, suicide demands, and vile insults sent to me and others under other IP's and username, not to mention block evading right at this very moment. For better or worse, all my edits on Wikipedia are through this account and I've never received worse punishment then a warning for my conduct. Actions speak louder then words, and given your history of abusive and disgusting conduct, attempt at framing me via a now banned sock, and corrupt use of technology, I'd say the person who tried to hack your account at least this most recent time has been unmasked, BrownHairedGirl. Newshunter12 (talk) 02:58, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Important not to let this get overlooked. Given the apparent revelation about just who tried to hack your account, I would like to apologize to you BrownHairedGirl for you being inconvenienced/hurt because of whatever reason that person has for harassing me and others. You and I haven't exactly been getting on, but I would never want you to be hurt in that manner. Gute Nacht! Newshunter12 (talk) 03:22, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think your sad attempt at deflection is fooling anyone Newshunter12 the fact remains you were the one who mentioned the attempted hacking of her account before she even publicly mentioned it how could you have known about it unless you or one of your pals did it ? I'd be willing to bet your history on this site isn't as squeaky clean as you'd like us to believe. 198.8.81.74 (talk) 04:20, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You are the one deflecting. I didn't mention the attempted hacking of her account - I made a joke that by chance or fate happened to near-parallel reality. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died 50 years to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Coincidences happen. You are the one with the known record of both vicious and tech based abuse, no bets needed. Newshunter12 (talk) 04:37, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Just to be clear BrownHairedGirl blamed NewsHunter12 for the initial hacking attempt and the most recent one for the reasons stated above. 198.8.81.74 (talk) 04:40, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Now NewsHunter12 is going around lying claiming that some type of conclusion has been reached to cover his tracks and he's acting like he's been exonerated I don't know if there's any way to prove this but I'm not the one who tried to log or hack into your account and judging by some of the things Newshunter12 has been saying I suspect it's him I mean I know you suspected him already with the wink wink nudge nudge comments he made about hacking but I'm afraid my recent trolling may have given him an alibi and now he might try again and apparently he's convinced Zzuuzz to try and silence me so I hope you read this and take this all into consideration. I'm not sure if this is possible but maybe another admin can try to look up the IP that tried to access your account and prove that it wasn't me. 46.45.138.102 (talk) 09:20, 23 July 2019 (UTC)WP:DENY troll — JFGtalk 13:24, 23 July 2019 (UTC) [reply]
I would be more inclined to unravel the details if I saw either of these two warring sides actually trying to uphold Wikipedia policies. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 09:26, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry about that I just don't want to see your account get hacked and I'm convinced that Newshunter12 was the one trying to do it but I don't know what can be done to stop it I guess you couldn't get the IP of the person trying to hack it yourself ? 46.45.138.102 (talk) 09:40, 23 July 2019 (UTC)WP:DENY troll — JFGtalk 13:24, 23 July 2019 (UTC) [reply]
Some kind of closure
Hello @BrownHairedGirl. I posted in incident report on the Admin Noticeboard, but presumably because the thread has become long-winded, a judgement has still not been made, and it's moved into archive. [9] I scanned the Admin noticeboard, and thought you seemed very sober and thorough in your judgements, so would it be possible to make some kind of ruling on this issue? Otherwise the other party's reverts are likely to continue. To get your head around the issue, just reading the last three posts in the thread (where I sought a yes/no answer from the other party) may save time. Thanks for your assistance. ClearBreeze (talk) 05:29, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hello @BrownHairedGirl. I'm presuming you don't wish to deal with this. Is there a way to get the Admin Board to make some ruling because it's just sitting there and time is moving on. Thanks. ClearBreeze (talk) 13:49, 30 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@ClearBreeze: you should really move on. You're not doing yourself a favour with this kind of behaviour. wikitigresito (talk) 13:35, 3 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@ClearBreeze: sorry, I missed this when you posted it.
Has it not gone beyond a content dispute when an editor refuses point-blank to permit a full-referenced fact in an article, and, as he stated at ANI, refuses to negotiate on that point? Surely it then becomes an issue of conduct? ClearBreeze (talk) 16:36, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Probably not, unless the same conduct is repeated in many venues. There can be legitimate reasons to oppose the inclusion of sourced content, and in this case there hasn't been a proper examination of whether that's the case here. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 16:39, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Would like a favor
I am going away from keyboard for a few weeks. Plus I have a serious real life issue which demands constant attention for several weeks. I have just now added myself as a maintainer for roughly a half dozen portals that either I think I can improve or that I think are important to improve. I'd ask that I be allowed a few months to work with those portals before you nominate them for deletion. I ask that if any portals come up for deletion in which I am listed as maintainer, please email me. Thank you BusterD (talk) 16:38, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
After a decade of systematic neglect of the majority of portals, I have repeatedly been unimpressed by white knights who ride in to "rescue" portals, as if a once-off driveby makeover was some sort of viable substitute for ongoing maintenance. For a portal to fulfill its claimed role as a gateway to the the topic, it needs ongoing involvement from multiple editors with multiple points of view ... and the efforts I have seen come nowhere near that.
[Average daily pageviews of portals on en.wikipedia in April–June 2019] Remember that WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". If a portal has low views and a history of neglect and only one editor promising to do some maintenance in the future, then it's a million miles from the baseline requirements.
Despite the culling of so many of the worst portals, the graph to the right shows the vast majority of portals are simply unwanted by readers. It really is time to stop luring readers to this pile of abandonment ... and for editors to stop kidding themselves that they are doing anyone a service by creating a few more redundant content forks behind a superfluous interface.
I'm sorry to here that you are having troublesome life issues. I wish you luck in resolving them.
So that's a "no"? BusterD (talk) 03:26, 25 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It is indeed a "no".
WP:OWNership never applies, and it certainly doesn't apply to a page where one editor has merely indicated an intention to do something unspecified at some time in the future without even expressing an aspiration to address the fundamental problems.
Hi, I believe you entered the death info for this old hockey player, and I'm wondering how you got Drummondville, November 20, 1985. Official death records for Quebec list DOD as February 14, 1985, but they don't include a city of death. Any info appreciated. Thanks. Researchguy (talk) 19:04, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Your belief is almost certainly mistaken, because I have little interest in sports and believe that the WP:NSPORTS has left Wikipedia with far too many perma-stub articles on minor sportspeople.
If you are referring to the article Maurice Courteau, then you are definitely mistaken. My only edit to that article was to add a category.[10]
Since you like to hide things, I'll try the direct approach.
Now that you've created the epithet the Notorious Portalspammer for User:The Transhumanist, can you come up with one for me? The Burgundy Templater perhaps? (Burgundy ribbons signify Multiple Myeloma, which you seem to find humorous. I've also created 7,570 active template pages.) Yours aye, Buaidh talkcontribs 00:04, 29 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Buaidh: if you ever showed even a small fraction of the analytical capability that TTH displayed, I might consider it. But TTH is way out of your league.
Your attempt at flattering him as a portal creator two months after he wrote that portals are becoming redundant was a piece of comedy.
Now to the serious bit. Please keep discussion at XFD focused. That's what I collapsed your attempt to use it as a caht room
On every previous occasion when I have nominated at MFD portals in which User:Buaidh has an intrest, they have responded with an extraordinary range of misconduct including: sustained personal attacks, spamming messages, blatant canvassing, and flooding the discussion with multiple walls of text, and maliciously false allegations of harassment. I urge Buaidh to refrain from that, and to discuss the substantive issues at the MFD. If there is any resumption here of such disruption, I will go straight to ANI, without further warning. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 00:12, 29 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I know you think me stupid, but I was employed for ten years as an unchallenged Expert witness. Yours aye, Buaidh talkcontribs 00:24, 29 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I would find that assertion more credible if your activities on Wikipedia amounted to more than robotically creating convoluted sets of pointless pages, and if you demonstrated an ability to participate in reasoned discussion without so rapidly resorting to multiple forms of disruptive conduct to disguise your lack of substantive argument.
But there again, I have long held the view that the existence of expert witnesses in court proceedings (especially if unchallenged) is a perversion of basic and vital principles of evidence and of jurisprudence. Your evident unfamiliarity with the conduct of reasoned debate, and your reluctance to participate in it, reaffirms my view. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 00:47, 29 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That certainly constitutes harassment since you have no basis of fact. You really like to malign. Do you have any non-Wikipedia credentials? Buaidh talkcontribs 01:45, 29 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Buiadh, please stop behaving like a whiney eejit.
I didn't ask to have this conversation. I didn't ask you personal questions. You chose to come to my talk page try to flash credentials at me. I told you why I am unimpressed.
If you don't want to hear my response, then stick to discussing the substance, and drop your tediously pathetic efforts to personalise everything. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 02:13, 29 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I saw this section linked from another talk page. I feel that "if your activities on Wikipedia amounted to more than X" can rightly be perceived ad hominem, because it seems to disqualify any argument made by a certain (kind of) person, probably implying that they are "people without the necessary personal attributes", as said below. Similarly, "Do you have any non-Wikipedia credentials?" sounds like a personal attack. I personally appreciate the energy BrownHairedGirl has put in the effort to clean up the portals and I admit I chuckled at several of her strongly worded arguments on deletion discussions, but I wish we could avoid such unpleasant personal interactions. Sadly, it might be impossible. Nemo 07:43, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Portal:South America
On a completely serious note, I am concerned about your redirect of Portal:South America to Portal:Latin America. Of the 27 countries of Latin America, only 11 are located in South America. Eight are located in the Caribbean, six in Central America, and two in northern North America. You wish to delete Portal:Americas, so that would leave no portal for South America. Seriously, what would you propose? Yours aye, Buaidh talkcontribs 02:04, 29 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Buaidh: Most of the navbox-clone portalspam was deleted in April in two mass deletions of similar portals (one, and two), and the rest in smaller groups. Whatever else happens, your creation of a new automated junk portal is no benefit to readers. That's why I reverted. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 02:16, 29 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. - I'm not really sure how we got into this mini-feud since we both desire the same basic things for Wikipedia. You think deletion will get us there, and I think a few things should be preserved. Could we end the name calling? Yours aye, Buaidh talkcontribs 02:04, 29 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Buaidh: I have been trying for months to persuade you to do exactly that, to desist from your endless personalisations and other forms of disruption. Yet even today, you were at it again, playing factionalising games by badmouthing me as you tried to suck up to the topic-banned portalspammer TTH.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:49, 29 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@BrownHairedGirl: you were also the creator of a bunch of the portal redirects in the Caribbean, so may want to consider G7 deleting those as well. UnitedStatesian (talk) 17:50, 29 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You might be interested in how I came to create all those redirects, because it's kinda part of how I came to learn about portals, having ignored them in my previous ten years on WP.
In January 2017, I was working on Template:Year in country category and several related templates, trying to make them automatically add a link to the country portal and relevant year/decade/century portals. This was because there were a few editors doing big AWB runs adding the portals manually, and that seemed silly. The AWB runs inevitably had some errors, but even the accurate ones seemed to me to a be a task which could and should be automated.
Inevitably, it wasn't as simple as I had thought. One of the first problems I encountered was that a number of countries didn't have portals, so just adding {{Portal|CountryName}} was generating redlinks. So I started creating redirects.
As I proceeded, I realised that colonisation/decolonisation and country name changes made the whole map quite complicated, so instead of piling up the redirects I created Template:YearInCountryPortalBox to allow a more complex mapping of countryname to multiple targets to better reflect the imperial age. The lookup table at Template:YearInCountryPortalBox/parse got rather big, but it did allow me to set vast numbers of categories to automatically link to portals.
As I did that, I paid little attention to the portals themselves. I was just making links.
But as the months went by, I began to follow through by looking at the pageviews for the portals to which these categs were linking, and was astonished to see that the were still abysmal. And after that I began to look at the actual portal pages, and see how poor they are. And later I began to follow through on that observation.
So the redirects are no longer needed, and and in most respects they are a positive menace. So I will delete them. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 21:07, 29 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I am working on a new Wyoming portal, so I am requesting for you to please stop removing links to the portal from various pages. When a portal is deleted, the links go blank anyway, so it's not a big deal. When I publish the new, revised, updated and maintained portal, it would be nice for it to already have links to it, rather than having to redo all of them again. North America1000 08:22, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree, because with entirely new content, particularly articles, say 40 or so to start, G4 wouldn't be applicable; the content would significantly differ from the deleted version. Sure, some of the box header titles would be the same, and the lead would be the same, the categories would be the same, but the articles would not. North America1000 08:57, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@NA1K, the portal was deleted because it fails the WP:POG requirement that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers".
The fact of one editor doing some one-off work will not alter that underlying problem. Your sudden burst of energy does not and cannot amount to sustained maintenance by a "large number of portal maintainers".
If you disagree with the MFD outcome, you know where DRV is.
On a broader note, it is disturbing that you persistently refuse to respect the simple words of POG, which require that portals be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". Your various exploits have included serial attempts to misrepresent the guidelines by omitting the relevant text, and even more bizarre attempts to claim that "large numbers" doesn't actually mean large numbers.
The portal was not salted. The portal has potential to receive better page views, because it is possible that portals with lots of content may attract more viewers who check-in from time-to-time, particularly if they're updated with new content from time-to-time. It does not appear that you will stop removing the portal links, which then becomes a vicious circle, as you are working to keep page views down for a new portal before it is even created. Bummer. Less visible links is obviously correlated with lesser page views. Well, I tried. Guess I'll have to re-add the links if I create a new portal. North America1000 09:14, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@NA1K, the bummer is that you remain in such deep denial of well-documented facts and policies that you must have either severe reading comprehension problems or a deep-seated aversion to acknowledging reality.
Please note that POG really does require that a portal be likely to attract a large number of maintainers. I note that you do not even attempt to advance any rationale for why we might expect more maintainers to appear for a small state.
And you also remain in denial about the fact that G4 allows speedy deletion for cases where the deletion reasons still apply, as they do in this case. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 09:33, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It also states at WP:AWBRULES, "Do not make insignificant or inconsequential edits. An edit that has no noticeable effect on the rendered page is generally considered an insignificant edit. If in doubt, or if other editors object to edits on the basis of this rule, seek consensus at an appropriate venue before making further similar edits." When portals are deleted, portal links are blank on pages. So, your deletion of the links consists of a long series of inconsequential edits. They aren't necessary, and are only creating more future work for others, for no good reason, other than that you apparently don't like portals for whatever reasons. North America1000 09:34, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Per the "if other editors object to edits on the basis of this rule" part of the rules, and since I obviously object, please cease and desist using AWB to remove portal links that have no noticeable effect on the rendered page. North America1000 09:36, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
NA1K, your objections are clearly founded on your rejection of the consensus at MFD. I would be willing to explain in detail my reason for removing the redundant links if you both accepted the MFD consensus and if I was discussing this with an editor who did not open with a bad faith statement that I apparently don't like portals for whatever reasons.
Please stop your attempts to game the system to circumvent consensus. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 09:43, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No gaming here. Again, the portal was not salted. Consensus was for deletion of that version of the portal, not for permanent deletion of a Wyoming portal forever. There was no bad faith intended in my statement, so sorry if this offended you. At WP:ENDPORTALS you stated in part, "My ideal solution would be too keep about 20 major portals(art/science/etc plus continents), and delete the rest. But given the unhelpful binary nature of this proposal, I'd prefer outright deletion..", and at Wikipedia talk:Portal/Guidelines you posted a long essay about your term "portalistas" (diff), which comes across as a bit negative toward portals and portal editors. Per all of this, I surmised that you don't seem to like portals that much. So, again, sorry if you were offended, and if my impression is incorrect. I would still like for you to stop misusing AWB, though. Please seriously consider this. North America1000 10:08, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@NA1K, your assumptions of bad faith run as deep as your denials of the plain English in guidelines.
WP:SALTing a hard barrier to prevent disruption. Lack of salting is not a license for you to ignore the consensus that the topic of that portal (not its content) fails POG.
You continue to deliberately and misleadingly take snippets of my my views on the ideal policy for portals, and misrepresent then as some sort of lack of commitment to work within the existing guidelines unless and until they are changed by consensus. This is a fundamental issue of how Wikipedia works: it is expected and required that editors uphold a consensus even if they disagree with it, and that is what I am doing here.
I think that am probably responsible for creating more links to portals than any other editor on Wikipedia. By adding portal links to category header templates such as {{EstcatCountry}}, {{EstcatUSstate}} and many others I have created hundreds of thousands of links to portals. I have put significant time and energy into developing mechanisms to do this, such as Template:YearInCountryPortalBox/parse, which took about a full week of my time to get to a working solution.
So your ABF decision to view this as some sort of effort by BHG to dismantle links to live portals is as fact averse as the rest of your arguments.
There are tracking categories in place to allow detection and repair of links to non-existent portals: see Category:Portal templates with redlinked portals and Category:Portal templates with all redlinked portals. Those tracking categories became unusable when they were overwhelmed and overloaded by the calls to deleted portals. The deleted portals overwhelmed those tracking categories, which is why last month I began removing the deleted portals in order to allow the categories to achieve their primary purpose of tracking and fixing errors. You desire to permanently clutter these tracking categories with entries arising from portals deleted by consensus would make it impossible to do the actual maintenance, because the signal-to-noise ratio would remain at the insanely low level it was at before I began the cleanup.
I assume that you do not want to impede the fixing of misnamed links to portals. If so, please support and assist this cleanup. And if you don't support link fixing, please explain why you wish to impede my longstanding and ongoing efforts to improve links to portals. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 10:40, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
A short reply: First of all, I have no bad faith whatsoever, so sorry if you feel otherwise. At Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Wyoming your nomination states nothing about topical broadness, and nor do any of the delete !voters. After quoting WP:POG, where broadness is mentioned within the quote from the page, you provided no subsequent qualification for deletion based upon this, instead stating, "But in practice, this portal has not attracted maintainers for over a decade, and it also has almost no readers..." (et al.). Your subsequent comments in the discussion say nothing about topical broadness. You state above that you feel that the discussion led to a "consensus that the topic of that portal (not its content) fails POG", but none of the delete !voters qualified deletion based upon this. Rather, those for deletion stated reasons regarding page views, lack of updating, being outdated, not having enough content, and the like. Since User:Scottywong closed the discussion, pinging them for their take regarding why the portal was deleted. Perhaps the close can be addended, if need be. North America1000 10:54, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
(TPS) If a portal is not maintained (left incomplete, outdated etc) over a long period (e.g. years) then that's evidence that the portal's topic fails to meet the POG requirement. DexDor(talk) 11:59, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@NA1K, I really hope that you take some time to re-read and reflect on your post of 10:54.
As you say, I quoted the guideline saying that it requires X as measured by A and B, and then shows how it didn't meet A and B.
The whole point of A&B is that they are the test for X. Yet you seem to somehow regard them as wholly unrelated to the reasons for deletion. I really, honestly don't know how you can say that, because the connection is set out the start. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 13:37, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As User:Northamerica1000 said, he pinged my talk page and is asking for clarification on why Portal:Wyoming was closed. I've read through the discussion above about re-creating the portal, and here's my take. Overall, the portal was deleted because it didn't live up to the requirements at WP:POG, specifically the requirement that "portals should be about broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers. Portals which require manual updating are at a greater risk of nomination for deletion if they are not kept up to date." The way I interpret this guideline, the measure of a subject's "broadness" is whether or not its portal attracts "large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". So, I believe that the MfD provided an implicit consensus that the subject isn't broad enough (based on the clear consensus that the portal had virtually no maintainers or readers), but there wasn't much explicit discussion about that point at the MfD. NA1k seems to be saying that the lack of explicit discussion on the "broadness" topic gives him an opening to re-create the article. However, I would regard this as a dangerous foundation on which to build a case for re-creating the portal after it was deleted.
It would be a shame to go through all of the effort to re-create the portal, just to have another MfD where the consensus is that the topic is not sufficiently broad. It would be far more preferable to have that discussion before the work is done to re-create the portal. What will you do differently this time to ensure that the portal attracts a team of interested maintainers, and a significant number of interested readers?
To quickly re-create the portal so soon after the MfD was closed, without considering the above points, would be irresponsible in my view. While you might be able to technically wikilawyer your way out of an immediate G4 speedy, the chances that the new portal will survive another MfD are low if the above problems aren't first solved. And, if a solution doesn't exist to the above problems, then that's a good sign that the portal shouldn't exist at all. ‑Scottywong| confess _ 18:58, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, @Scottywong. As I noted above, even the most-viewed Portal:California got only 46 pageviews/day. Wyoming has less than one 68th of California's population and only 1/78th of its GDP, so it's implausible to think that Wyoming could come anywhere near even California's lamentable figures.
As to the required "large number of maintainers", the MFD was open for 35 days and nobody volunteered to maintain the portal. The answer looks clear to me. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 19:10, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Scottywong: Thanks for providing your perspective. My view, and the view of many others at various MfD discussions through the months, is that a subject's broadness is a measure of the breadth of a particular subject, or overall available content on Wikipedia about a given subject. For example, the guideline page does not say "portals should contain broad subject areas, it states that they should be about, or based upon, broad subject areas. As an example, see Category:Wyoming and its many subcategories for an overview of available topical coverage about the state. In my view, this is sufficient to meet the broadness criteria of WP:POG. Many portals have been deleted at MfD in part per the rationale that the depth of coverage about a given topic did not qualify the existence of a portal, and in many cases, correctly so. For some examples, see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Lake Van and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Albany, California. Many more examples exist, which can be found at recent MfD archives. However, while the Wyoming portal was certainly qualified for deletion per lacking adequate content, it does not mean that the content itself is nonexistent on Wikipedia, the portal just wasn't expanded to include various content. North America1000 23:09, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@NA1K, it is utterly extraordinary that your reply makes no mention or acknowledgement of the fact WP:POG explicitly ties the question a topics' breadth to readership and maintainers.
As you know, evidence was presented at MFD that this portal has neither readers nor maintainers, but you plough on as if the guideline didn't exist or the evidence had not been presented.
What is wrong with you? What on earth are you trying to achieve by continually misrepresenting both the guideline and the discussion? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 23:20, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The guideline page simply states several factors in one sentence. It does not state that if a portal does not attract readers or maintainers, then a subject itself is not broad enough, it states, "portals should be about broad subject areas, which are likely to...". In other words, broad subject areas are likely to attract said users, but a lack of said users does not mean that a subject area is then inherently not broad enough per a lack of said users. I get what you're saying, but the way the guideline is worded, it is a syllogism of sorts. North America1000 23:31, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@NA1K, when a topic has failed to attract both readers and editors for a whole decade, then it is clear not "likely" to attract them.
It's very simple, in my view, a subject area is defined as the overall scope of available coverage on Wikipedia about a given topic. A subject area's broadness should not defined by the number of readers or maintainers a portal has. Makes perfect sense, really. For example, per its present Revision history, the Physics article on Wikipedia does not attract a large number of maintainers, but it is certainly quite broad in topical scope. People would laugh heartily if the Physics article was nominated for deletion as lacking topical broadness because it is not edited regularly. Now, I know, I know, it's an article, but still. The syllogism at POG is a bit absurd. North America1000 00:01, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Northamerica1000: It seems like what you're saying is that Portal:Wyoming failed to attract visitors and maintainers, not because the topic is too narrow, but for some other reason. And you seem to believe that if you create the portal differently (i.e. better content, links to more articles), it will begin to attract a significant number of readers, and an army of maintainers will join you in regularly maintaining the portal. Is that a realistic belief? ‑Scottywong| express _ 01:31, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Scottywong: The portal lacked sufficient content, so people would likely visit it, realize there's not much there, and then likely not go back. I feel that a potential exists for a functional portal to be created, with adequate content, say 40-50 articles, 20 images, etc. as a start. I feel that this would encourage readers to utilize the portal more compared to its previous state. Regarding your notion of an "army of maintainers", the guideline page states that portals should be "likely" to attract maintainers, not that hundreds of maintainers are absolutely "required", but I digress. Unfortunately, creating such as functional portal would now be even more uphill, since BHG has hurriedly, unilaterally, and rather eagerly continued to remove many links to the portal from various pages. At this point, it would take too much time, work and energy to start over from scratch, at least for me, so oh well, nevermind. North America1000 01:41, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Average daily pageviews of portal on en.wikipedia in April–June 2019@Scottywong is probably well-bored with this by now, but if Scotty hasn't already given up, here's the problem: NA1K is conducting a prolonged exercise of deep denial of two simple realities: that most portals are almost unread, and do not have enough editors willing to sustain them. This is a long-standing problem, which both reflects the basic redundancy of portals, and the long-term decline in the ratio of editors to pages.
NA1K's denials of both the realities and of the relevant guidelines are so severe and so persistent that it is not possible to describe them accurately without appearing to cross boundaries of civility.
As of Feb 2018, there were about 1500 portals. Most of them were abandoned and almost unused.
That's what led to the WP:ENDPORTALS RFC, which proposed deleting all of them. The proposal to delete the lot was rejected as too extreme, but no alternative RFC was made for how to fix the problem.
So the solution adopted was to convert the portals to automated clones of navboxes. About 1/3 of the 1500 existing portals were converted to an automated format, and a further ~4200 automated pseudo-portals were created as spam, some of them just for the heck of it.
Unfortunately the automation created clones which added no value to the navboxes. So the instigator of the automation was topic-banned, and a moratorium was imposed on the mass creation.
The community narrowly failed to reach consensus on a proposal to speedy delete the spam (it got ~65% support in a RFC). Most of the navbox-clone portalspam was deleted in April in two mass deletions of similar portals (one, and two), and the rest in smaller groups.
The converted portals were reverted to their old, abandoned state.
Since then MFD has continued to delete abandoned and underused portals, leading the total number of portals to be reduced to below 900 by late July 2019.
However, there are still many many portals which ave been abandoned and unused for years, and those are still being brought to MFD. This has caused NA1K and a few other portalistas to panic as the number continues to fall, so they are mounting various forms of excitable rearguard action o try to defend remaining portals, even when those portals are junk.
NA1K's chosen solution is a form of deep denialism. I can't tell for certain whether NA1K's denial is based on deep mendacity or on severe reading comprehension problems, but there is so much creative art involved that mendacity seems much more likely. But whatever the cause of the dysfunction, it is very clear that NA1K is engaged is systematic campaign of FUD to obscure the simple fact that the hard data shows that most portals have never reached a critical mass of readers and editors.
Note that graph of pageviews: most portals have abysmally poor readership. Across many hundreds of topics, readers simply don't use portals. Even the richest and most populous US State portal, California, gets only 46 pageviews per day.
NA1K writes I feel that a potential exists for a functional portal to be created, with adequate content, say 40-50 articles, 20 images, etc. as a start. Obviously, a lone enthusiastic editor can create a functional portal of decent quality. That isn't hard. The problem is that portals don't just require creation; they require ongoing maintenance, and the history of portals such as this is that the initial enthusiastic creation has very often not been followed up with maintenance.
NA1K writes I feel that this would encourage readers to utilize the portal more compared to its previous state. Note the lack of any evidence or metrics to support NA1K's assertion: we are asked to trust NA1K's "feeling", and implicitly asked to ignore the hard evidence that portal on this sort of topic (small US population states) simply don't attract readers or maintainers. NA1K offers precisely zero evidence that the proposal for a one-off upgrade will magically attract readers and editors, and ignores the fact that any older portals have already been through a cycle of upgrade followed by continued decline.
The bottom line here is that NA1K simply doesn't want to acknowledge that:
portals are tools, not content, and are pointless unless the attract a decent number of readers. That's one reason why the guidelines have always required that portals be chosen to attract high reader numbers
Without high readership, a portal is unlikely to attract maintainers. That's the other reason why the guidelines have always required that portal topics be be chosen to attract high reader numbers
The pageview data consistently shows that only very broad topics consistently attract large number of readers and editors.
NA1K's endless wikilawyering deception is all just part of a NA1K's determination to ensure that Wikipedia retains large numbers of unmaintained, almost unread portals.
It's also sadly typical of NA1K's snarky mendacity that their comment closes with the remark BHG has hurriedly, unilaterally, and rather eagerly continued to remove many links to the portal from various pages. I was discussing those removals above with NA1K, and at 10:40 yesterday I wrote long reply explaining why I was doing so. NA1K hasn't even acknowledged that reply, and has instead deployedthe usual NA1K tactic of avoiding specifics and instead casting unfounded aspersions.
Far from rushing to remove the backlinks, I did no systematic removal of them (other than some manual edits to templates) until early July, which was 5 months after the portal culling began. I began clearing the backlog in early July because the tracking categories Category:Portal templates with redlinked portals and Category:Portal templates with all redlinked portals had become swamped and overloaded with thousands of entries. Having cleared most of the backlog, I now try to keep on top of it by promptly removing backlinks to deleted portals. It's a tedious maintenance job, which I undertook because nobody else was doing it ... just I undertook the job of creating hundreds of thousands of automatic links to portals, because nobody was doing that either. By sadly, the serial liar NA1K prefers fantasies over facts, and prefers smears rather than honest dialogue. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 10:38, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I've been lurking on WP:MFD for a little while now, and I have to say, I really have a problem with you repeatedly calling NA1K a "serial liar" and coyly suggesting "severe reading comprehension problems", no matter what the context behind it may be. Most editors wouldn't get away with that. For the sake of maintaining a relatively civil editing environment, please tone it down a bit.--WaltCip (talk) 12:27, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
But NA1K's serial lies are unpleasant and disruptive, and consensus-forming processes break when editors like NA1K repeatedly try to subvert them by lies, half-truths and FUD. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 13:42, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I somewhat agree with WaltCip. I'm certainly not the civility police; I'm not offended by naughty words or heated conversations. And I understand that there's a long history behind this situation that is likely very frustrating, and you probably want to express that frustration. But, if your goal is to convince people of your point of view (whether it be NA1K or others), being a rude asshole to them is generally not the most effective strategy for getting people on your side. And I'm speaking from experience... hell, I was even blocked back in 2012 for a whole 24 minutes, for incivility and personal attacks. ‑Scottywong| spill the beans _ 16:10, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The problem, Scotty, is that the persistent pattern is that for the many months when I responded with civility and openness to NA1K's fantasies, it just meant that NA1K's campaign of mendacity, deception and gaming-the-system continued unchallenged. (To give you an idea of how far NA1K is willing to go, their campaign of disruption extended even to stealthily depopulating the key tracking Category:All portals because it was "used by deletionists").
So I have taken now to directly and explicitly challenging and confronting NA1K's disruptive mendacity. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 16:43, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I have no intention to belabor the point, just saying that it's possible to challenge someone while being civil. They're not mutually exclusive. Of course, it's entirely up to you to decide how you'd prefer to interact with other people. ‑Scottywong| prattle _ 20:16, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
On the AWB edits to remove portal-inline links and the like (which are what brought me here), I'll note that I would prefer if an actual bot performed them, in fully automated mode. This would solve any issue with perceived inconsistency with the AWB-related guidelines and allow to specify more fine-grained conditions for the removal, if desired. Nevertheless, as long as there's no active bot doing the job, such edits are an improvement. Nemo 07:23, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO
Here it's written:
"The US/UK side claimed that this would undermine the authority of the alliance, and they noted that Russia and China would have exercised their Security Council vetoes to block the strike on Yugoslavia, and could do the same in future conflicts where NATO intervention was required, thus nullifying the entire potency and purpose of the organization."
NATO intervention was NOT required, thus nullyfing the entire potency and purpose of the UN.
Bombing other sovereign nations is not NATO's mission nor obligation as Serbia was answering only on attacks from Albanian paramilitary forces in Kosovo. Bombing Serbia should be under Controversy section of this article as they were also intentionally destroying state-owned factories and infrastructure, targeting civilians and helping ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Kosovo by killing people for organ transplants. Also they were using cluster bombs which are not allowed by Geneva's war convention.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. –MJL‐Talk‐☖ 21:16, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't consider you involved in this since you created the page as an admin action to enforce a close, so feel free to be the contesting admin if you so incline. –MJL‐Talk‐☖ 21:18, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No objection from me, @MJL. I created it to avoid a redlinked category. But if it's an empty category, it should be deleted.
Thanks for removing links to deleted portals. However, I've noticed that the way you do it does not unlink them from {{Subject bar}}. Can you take a look at it? (see something like Saint Peter#External links for syntax). – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 12:24, 2 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for following this cleanup, and for spotting that glitch.
I was aware of it, but hadn't found a solution until today. The problem is that the other portal-linking templates (e.g.{{Portal}}) use unnamed parameters, so it's easy to just rip out an un-named parameter which matches the name of a deleted portals. I have one regex which does all such templates.
However, {{Subject bar}} uses named parameters, which would need a different regex. I only found out earlier today that it will tolerate gaps in the numbering sequences, which means that I can do it by just ripping out the whole portal3=John Smith code, without having to renumber any higher-numbered parameters.
So some time soon I will take the monster regex I have accumulated of deleted portal names, and I'll rework it to do a pass through pages susing {{Subject bar}}. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 13:01, 2 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Sure thing! I just wanted to make sure you were aware of this. Thanks again! – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:53, 2 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Errors in portal-inline
Thanks for your work cleaning out portals. However, in case you are planning to do more edits like this, leaving {{Portal-inline|size=tiny}} in the article gives "Lua error in Module:Portal-inline at line 16: attempt to perform arithmetic on local 'root' (a string value)", see Johnny Cash#See also. I could fix the module so it outputs nothing, but that would leave an empty asterisk in an empty see also section. It's probably better to remove the see also altogether. There are currently 56 articles in Category:Pages with script errors and I think most of them are due to this problem. I could put a more convenient list of the 56 articles somewhere if wanted. I can fix these if you like but you are much more familiar with the state of portals. For example, I don't know if there are plans to insert something in the blank templates in the near future. Johnuniq (talk) 04:06, 3 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks for being on the case here. This is really helpful.
I have had various attempts at eliminating the residual {{Portal-inline|size=tiny}} (and variants), but hadn't quite cracked it. Your msg spurred me on the fix that, so I ran the fixes across all the articles in that set, and fix them all in these edits.
The result of my new setup for doing the main removal of {{Portal-inline}} is that there will be some empty "see also" sections. I think that's probably best left that way, because I haven't figured out a regex which would reliably remove only empty "see also" sections without false positives. I am also not too worried about it, because a clearly empty section is an easy manual fix, whereas most editors wouldn't have known what to do with a {{Portal-inline|size=tiny|Foo}} which produced no output.
Following a research project on masking IP addresses, the Foundation is starting a new project to improve the privacy of IP editors. The result of this project may significantly change administrative and counter-vandalism workflows. The project is in the very early stages of discussions and there is no concrete plan yet. Admins and the broader community are encouraged to leave feedback on the talk page.
Since the introduction of temporary user rights, it is becoming more usual to accord the New Page Reviewer right on a probationary period of 3 to 6 months in the first instance. This avoids rights removal for inactivity at a later stage and enables a review of their work before according the right on a permanent basis.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:42, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Consider avoiding invective tones
Regarding some of your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Golf, surely you can convey your points about the strength of other editor's arguments without referring to them as "portalistas" or "liars". Even where legitimate rebuttals are made, the use of terms intended to describe the person being rebutted can overshadow the rebuttal itself. I would stress, in fact, that even if someone is a liar, the more effective counterargument is to treat their misstatements of fact as products of ignorance than of malice. Cheers! bd2412T 03:55, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If I were to contribute to these discussions, I would be doing so in close agreement with BHG’s detailed points and broad rationales. However, I find the abusive debating style repugnant. I think the damage to other editors exceeds the improvement to the project by removal of these pages. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:50, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@BD2412 and SmokeyJoe: Unfortunately, we have a serious problem. A bunch of editors who want to retain even abandoned junk portals (i.e portalistas) have taken to trying to sway MFD debates by repeatedly asserting as fact points which are demonstrably untrue and which they demonstrably know to be untrue.
I have taken to calling this out per WP:SPADE. But of course, I am open to suggestions of other ways to challenge these attempts to use mendacity to subvert consensus formation. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 09:01, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
1. It saddens to see good people bickering. Try formal civility and bd2412’s suggestion.
2. I admit to not being able to understand the perspective of the portal enthusiasts. The method of arguing for the opponent can be very useful in these situations. It would mean asking them to help. I understand that you might consider this a waste of time delaying an already tedious process.
3. Guideline development I think is the way to go. I think you might become amenable to guideline work after you’ve eliminated portals clearly failing even the very loose requirements. Maybe another six months.
4. I find RfCs so hopelessly unformailised as to make them very unlikely to lead to progress. So many are opened with too-broad and unimportant questions, unilaterally. Let me know when they close. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:02, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@SmokeyJoe, the problem is that all these processes rely on editors acting in good faith.
Unfortunately, what we have here is a small clique of editors who persistently fail to act in good faith. They have decided that: 1/ all portals are inherently a good thing; 2/ The guidelines which require that portals should be used and maintained should simply be ignored; 3/ That deletions are inherently bad, and may therefore be legitimately impeded by strategic lying.
The main practitioners of the strategic lying are currently NA1K and Hecato, tho one other appears to be warming up. Wikipedia's policy of AGF makes it relatively easy for such mendacious people to game the system. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 10:11, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I know that there are often groups of editors who come together to press incorrect policy ideas with respect to certain issues. However, the outside observer sees a dispute wherein one participant appears to be calling other participants names, which these other participants can then complain about rather than needing to address salient points raised. I would just say to focus on the salient points, the evidence of a lack of interest in the portal proposed for deletion. At the end of the day, you are writing to persuade the closing admin of this, not other editors whose mind is already set against the existing state of fact and policy. bd2412T 13:14, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
First, thank you so much for diligent hard work to vastly (and I mean VASTLY) improve the portalspace. That said, I would echo the above encouragement: it saddens me to see to see WP:SPADE invoked, because the result is often hurt feelings that do not provide a net benefit to the project in the long run, so I would encourage kinder language that focuses on the edits, not the editor. (Especially since I don't think it has resulted in a single MfD closing as delete that would have otherwise closed as keep had invective been absent). If the editor is not an obvious active vandal (and none of the current MfD participants are) I try to put myself in the other person's shoes to support my continued assumption of good faith. Doing that here, here's where I get on your 3 points above: both 1/ and the first half of 3/ are valid opinions good faith editors can hold (I don't hold them, but that's not relevant here). On 2/, the key words (for them) from the guideline are likely to, and I have this analogy: is the Sun likely to expand to a red giant and engulf the inner planets? Yes, it just needs enough time. And so "likely to" enables certain portal editors (again, not me) to, in good faith, believe a portal meets the "used and maintained" part of the guideline: they view the portal's past history, like the Sun's, as irrelevant to what they, in good faith, believe is likely to happen in the future. Because there can be good faith differences of opinion on what constitutes "likely", "broad subject area", and "large numbers" (all terms from the WP:POG guideline), we should be able to have invective-free discussions about where a given portal falls on either side of the judgement calls for those term (just like we do elsewhere on what constitutes a reliable source, for example). UnitedStatesian (talk) 14:10, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
But we have a systemic problem here which some day will need wider attention. It goes like this:
Portals are a largely unscrutinised adjunct to Wikipedia.
Portals have been built without regard to basic content polices, or with guidelines/conventions specifically excluding them. For example, WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:TRIVIA, WP:WEIGHT, are all systematically flouted in portals.
A few portals are maintained by editors who also build and maintain encyclopedic content. But many (maybe most) portals have been built and/or maintained by editors who work only on portals. Few of these editors have any significant track record of creating encyclopedic content. One has created lots of DYKs, but I have found none of the portalistas who claims credit for a GA or FA. Some of the portal creators have difficulty in basic communication: e.g. Happypillsjr, who created over a hundred automated portals, has repeatedly written such aysmally incoherent contributions to discussions that I am simply unable to believe their claims that English is their first language.
At least one of the portalistas joined en.wp for the sole purpose of working on portals. A significant number of the other portalistas have stated that will retire if they don't have portals to work on.
So what we have here is a clique of editors who are WP:NOTHERE to build an encyclopedia. Some of the portalistas do have interests elsewhere in en.wp, but there is a significant group who are only here for the portals and lack interest and/or ability to contribute to actual encyclopedic content.
The result is in some ways a akin to a group of desperadoes, who feel that cornered in the only part of Wikipedia where they have a place ... so they fight with whatever means possible to defend any old junk portal, simply because it's their last piece territory in this site.
So even back in February when there was discussion about deleting the automated spam portals, there were howls of pained outrage. On prominent portalista declared even the spam removal to be a "war on portals".
This battleground mentality which the portalistas have adopted since February has had various manifestations. There has been a persistent barrage of personal attacks on editors supporting the deletion of abandoned portals. There has been active sabotage of tracking categories. There have been attempts to rewrite the portal guideline to remove all quality standards. There have been malicious allegations against MFDs nominator of racism, religious prejudice, prejudice against non-European topics, vendettas against portals of interest to particular editors. You name it, it's been thrown.
I had thought that this cleanup phase would have been over long ago. I repeatedly said I doubted we'd go below 1400, 1300, 1200 etc ... but now we have fewer than 900 portals, and still there seems to be no shortage of abandoned junk like Portal:Harry Potter and Portal:Armenia. I have another few dozen lined up for MFD.
So as the number of portals continues to plummet, the portalistas are looking at a massive shrinkage of the only part of this site most of them are interested in and/or capable of contributing to. So they are getting desperate, and are now tag-teaming MFD with barrages of co-ordinated, flat-out lies.
I don't think that ordinary rebuttal is sufficient to rescue consensus-building in the face of the lying campaign by the portalista desperadoes. Sooner or later, this will have to be dealt with at a more systemic level. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 15:43, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
On that question of "likely", I think you are being far too generous to the portlistas.
The reality in most off these cases:
Long-term neglect of the portal
Long-term low pageviews
Long-term decline in pageviews
There is hard data on all of those points.
Similarly, that there is hard data that ratio of active editors to articles continues to fall, so the availability of potential maintainers continues to fall.
All of that data demonstrates that it is not "likely" that the trend of portals being unmaintained and unread will be reversed. It is of course possible that unexpected events or trends may emerge, but it is not likely.
That it is why I have challenged them for actual evidence to support their claim of likelihood, and they have none. This is where we disagree about their good faith: there is zero evidence on their side, and a mountain of evidence against them, so their claims are not a matter of interpretation or of weighing conflicting data: they are simply counter-factual.
Please remember that this is not a social club or a web forum. We are here to build an encyclopedia, and we have a right to demand that those who want to participate in that process uphold relevant standards of analytical capacity and integrity. Insisting that something is "likely" when all the evidence presented points the other way is a pretty good marker of stupidity or mendacity or both.
For over a decade, portalspace has been the corner of wikipedia where low standards of integrity and competence have been institutionalised. We are now seeing the consequence of that, as people without the necessary personal attributes resort to anger and deception as their only tools to defend the only sandpit they can play in. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 16:04, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
User:BrownHairedGirl, NA1K is not acting in good faith, and that he is repeated lying? This needs to be resolved. Is the editor lying at MfD. If no, then what, and you should stop repeating the allegation. If yes, then the community should take action, because lying is disruptive. I think if you feel justified to accusing an admin three times of lying in a formal discussion (eg an MfD), then it needs to go to WP:AN. It is not OK to have one admin routinely accusing another of lying. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:13, 5 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It's a pity that portals should cause such civil wars. If only the famous RfC had not received such a desperate response, the community could have found consensus on an ordinate disbanding of the unwanted portals, instead of the street by street urban warfare forced on us by the necessity to discuss deletion one by one. Nemo 07:30, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Error and Lying
User:BrownHairedGirl I agree with User:bd2412 and User:SmokeyJoe in particular as to the allegation than NA1k and others are lying. In English, there is a clear distinction between lying and the statement of seriously incorrect facts. We really should stretch the Assumption of Good Faith a long way for them. We know that they can't explain why they want portals, and the least unlikely explanation is that they believe things that we either can't understand or are just plain wrong. So I really believe that when they are saying things that are not true, they are not lying, but they have confused themselves or persuaded themselves of serious error. They aren't lying. Give them that assumption of good faith. Their stated facts are bunk, but they are bunk that they believe. (A Flat earth believer isn't lying when they say the Earth is flat. They believe it. It is just absurdly wrong. Similarly, the portal advocates have their own facts, and a man or woman is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts, but that doesn't make the non-facts lies.
Dropping the use of the allegation of "lying" would improve civility. Robert McClenon (talk) 11:48, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
On reading NA1K’s RfAs, I got an unexpected new perspective. He has a history of judgement difficulties and an affection for trivia? I think it is a conflict for WP:AN resolution. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:47, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Discussions of administrators at WP:AN either get nowhere or get sent to the ArbCom, and there is nothing so blatant about NA1k that the ArbCom is likely to take a case. (Well, I did try to file an ArbCom case.) Robert McClenon (talk) 20:36, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Your ArbCom case was ill considered, there was no chance of them solving this obviously content-centred issue, and earlier steps of dispute resolution had not been attempted. If BHG’s allegations are true (I suspect that they basically are, although overegged in parts), then as a distasteful display between admins, WP:AN (or ANI Not sure, but I don’t think ANI’s 48 hour timeframe is right) is the right venue, and options on the table should be: Warning(s) about lying or accusation of lying; TBan from Portals; TBan from MfDs on portals. Alternatively, an RfC could be used, but not a half baked ill considered brain fart like the several currently muddying the water. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:33, 8 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
User:BrownHairedGirl - I see that the most common issue involved in allegations of lying is what the portal guideline, if it is a guideline, says. The advocates of portals actually believe that the noun phrase is meant to be the full statement of the rule and the qualifying clauses are merely detail. That is probably good marketing. It isn't good computer science or requirements engineering. I don't think it is good legal reasoning, but that depends on the school of legal reasoning. I was wondering whether it is good analytical philosophy, but I think that an analytical philosopher will develop a complex rule as to when the qualifying clause actually limits the noun phrase. A requirements engineer or computer scientist says that the qualifying phrase wouldn't be there unless it was part of the rule.
It is frustrating to argue with editors who have a different way of interpreting a statement than we do, but they are not lying. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:36, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Portal Harry Potter MFD correction
Hi. In your nom at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Harry Potter (2nd nomination) you say that on the portal's talk page an editor "asked whether this abandoned portal should be deleted". That's incorrect; the editor was referring to an unused subpage of the portal. It might be a good idea to strike that part of the nom. DexDor(talk) 06:17, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, I came across your above discussion on abandoned portals and became very intrigued about the topic. As you know, I participated in the Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Harry Potter (2nd nomination) discussion after reading your thorough analysis and investigation of that portal, and reading the portal myself. I once spent a significant amount of time cleaning up pages for a different fandom, Fruits Basket, which included removing long abandoned junk articles like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kyo Sohma, cleanup like this and more. It was all stuff created during the years the manga was still coming out, but editor interest sharply withered within a year or two of the manga's end. A new anime series based on the manga is actually currently coming out so there is some renewed interest now.
It seems like your portal cleanup is very similar in nature to the cleanup I did for Fruits Basket, so I am interested in understanding the portal cleanup effort. Is it just you who's undertaking this and what is the end goal? Where precisely would you ideally like to see the portal section of Wikipedia end up? I don't see myself nominating any for deletion, but would like to contribute to the cleanup effort now that I know there is a mess. (Since some people have been causing a lot of trouble in this sphere, it seems prudent to say that if I end up at any more MfD's, I'm doing so of my own accord, so no one can justly accuse BHG of canvassing me.) Thank you! Newshunter12 (talk) 22:56, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your msg! Several big questions, which deserve a longer answer than either of my braincells can give in the small hours. So I will reply properly in the morning.
In the meantime, some of my friendly talk page stalkers may choose to comment. And you might find it helpful to look at two essays by @Robert McClenon: WP:PWP and WP:GODOT. Robert and I have chewed over a lot of the issues with portals, and there are many areas where our thinking overlaps.
User:Newshunter12 – Thank you for asking about portals. I will try to add a little to what User:BrownHairedGirl has written. Portals are a feature of Wikipedia that can be used for showcasing, navigation, instruction or promotion, and for fun. Th.ey have always been a feature of Wikipedia, and, since 2006, have been in Portal space. Some editors are very enthusiastic about portals. I have never known exactly why, and I am inclined to think that, because they can't explain clearly what the advantages of portals are, they must be something that are liked because they are seen as technically neat. (I once worked on testing a computer system that may have had a lot of leading-edge software components that were selected because they were technically neat. It was a technical mess.) I don't know what value the advocates of portals think that they add, so I think that they must be seen as technically neat, rather than as functionally valuable.
As the essays that BHG has listed explain, portals are intended to be maintenance-intensive, but normally they are not maintained. I think that the advocates of portals, whom some of us call portalistas, are denying the need for maintenance.
In any case, early in 2018, when there were just under a thousand portals in existence (I think – I haven't checked my notes for the numbers), there was an RFC to delete all portals. It was closed with a consensus not to delete all portals, but with no other specific conclusions. Then a task force that I call the portal platoon decided that we (English Wikipedia) needed more portals, and decided to create thousands of more portals. They did this more or less quietly, and had created a total of 5700 portals, and most of the new portals were just automated crud. I then reported the thousands of portals at WP:AN, and since then some of us have been bringing portals to MFD for deletion. The portalistas have been claiming that we are waging a "war on portals". (I think they conducted a sneak attack by creating thousands of them, but that is only my opinion.) Most of the portals that were created in the wave of reckless portal creation were deleted in two bulk nominations to MFD that were expertly submitted by User:BrownHairedGirl. But since then, she and I and a few other editors who are skeptical about how much portals add have been working slowly to nominate some of the abandoned portals for deletion. We have the number of portals back down below a thousand now. Many of the portal deletion debates are bitter and unpleasant. Obviously the portalistas and portal platoon think that portals are valuable. I really don't understand what the value is, other than being technically neat.
Any informed assistance that we can be given in checking the status of portals and deleting the cruddiest ones will be appreciated. I don't think that we have a specific endpoint. I think that some of us who are trying to clean up portals would like to see a few hundred high-quality portals, and some of us would prefer to see more like twenty, or to delete all of them except for the main page, which is a super-portal and is labor-intensive. Do you have any specific questions at this point?
Robert McClenon (talk) 18:57, 5 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Robert McClenon Thank you for this very informative and descriptive breakdown of the situation, and information about portals in general. This, coupled with the information BHG provided and what I've picked up at MfD has pretty much brought me up to speed and I have no further questions about portals. I'm certainly interested in keeping an eye on portals at MfD and if I find time, will look for dud portals to funnel towards MfD. Thank you again so much for your detailed response. I can't emphasize that enough. Newshunter12 (talk) 02:24, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Helpful summary indeed, I had lost track of the discussion until I recently saw the removal of all those hideous links to portals from articles. I took the liberty to add some links and I wish this could be depersonalised and copied to some page in project namespace, possibly Wikipedia:The Problems with Portals. Nemo 08:03, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you
Hi BrownHairedGirl,
I stumbled across your page on Boleslaw Limanowski while doing a google search on myself and my family members. I couldn’t believe it when I saw my grandfather’s name come up in Wikipedia! Then I started reading and realized this was actually my grandfather’s grandfather, whom he was named after. I don’t know very much about this side of my family, so it was really amazing to see this information and to find out a little more about my ancestors. So thank you for publishing this article, it has given me real joy that I can’t wait to pass on to the rest of my family and hopefully one day future Limanowski’s too.
BrownHairedGirl and Robert McClenon, I recommend Portal:Land of Oz be brought to MfD. It has essentially been abandoned for a decade (the creator only touched it for about a week and his last edit to Wikipedia was in 2007). The DYK section was last constructively updated in 2008. The Oz books section has been touched twice since 2009, the last time in 2015. The things to do section last touched in 2012. The wikiproject section untouched since creation in 2011, while the associated wikiproject is long dead. The categories section last constructively edited in 2011. There was a rename in May and an editor claimed they were going to do a lot of work on it, but didn't follow through. All these little sub-pages got title updates in May, by the way. The page view count is abysmal. From June 1 2019 until July 30, there was an average of 3 visits per day to the main page. The long term trend is even more stark, given that per day rate in July and August 2015 was 20 per day.
As you know, this is my first time evaluating a portal and I did the best I could. I hope you find this helpful and please let me know if/how I can better prepare portal reports for your evaluation. Newshunter12 (talk) 18:44, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I will be nominating it. It's a shame. I'm a fan of the literature, but the pageviews (nonpageviews) are conclusive. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:08, 9 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, @Newshunter12. That's a good analysis. And great to know that @Robert McClenon will be doing the MFD nom.
Thanks guys. Glad I could help with this effort. Good luck crafting the MfD, Robert McClenon, and with your work, BHG. Just try to channel Thomas the Choo Choo Train, BHG. I think I can, I think I can - maybe there's even a portal for that extensive topic? Newshunter12 (talk) 05:11, 9 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
dab page for Portal:New York
Hi BrownHairedGirl,
I understand that the New York page is a dab page, however, I believe that Portal:New York should remain as a redirect to Portal:New York (state), because changing it to a dab page would "break" or at least cause confusion to hundreds of pages that use this Portal. I suppose we could change all the pages that pages that use this portal, most of which are meant to go to the New York state portal. Natg 19 (talk) 20:14, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Additionally, it seems that the Portal template for "New York",
AFAICs, there is no primary topic. So that means that we use a dab page.
Nothing is broken by pointing to a dab page. Links will be disambiguated as and when editors are interested in doing so. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 20:37, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If it were up to me, I'd merge them and have a single portal for the city and state (the city being in, and the most prominent element of, the state). The separation of the articles in mainspace is not binding on their treatment in portal space. bd2412T 20:51, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@BD2412: I wouldn't oppose a merger. But some editors would have strong views, so it would need some sort of discussion.
Wouldn't this be a WP:surprise for users who see the flag of NY state and are pointed to a dab page? For a normal end user, that would seem to be unhelpful. I am typically for dab pages, but not when they break or change behavior for hundreds of other pages that use this Portal. Natg 19 (talk) 21:19, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The state flag now displays only for the state. If you want to suggest an icon for the dab page, it will take seconds to put it in place. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 21:27, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:47, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
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