Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals

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General discussion threads

Guideline discussions announcement

• Wikipedia talk:Portal guidelines#Second sentence contradicts WP:NOTCOMPULSORY policy, and should be removed
• Wikipedia talk:Portal guidelines#Concerning the inclusion of "Related portals" section
• Wikipedia talk:Portal guidelines#Concerning the inclusion of "Selected article(s)" section
• Wikipedia talk:Portal guidelines#Concerning section: Recommended
• Wikipedia talk:Portal guidelines#Concerning section: Article selection
• Wikipedia talk:Portal guidelines#Concerning section: Required

Proposal to shut down or reform this WikiProject

The discussion has been closed and archived to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive307

I know, me proposing shutting down a WikiProject I'm in? What am I thinking? Well, I mainly joined to make sure things would go smoothly after that RfC to delete all portals - clearly it has not. As thus, I think a solution (among the others) would be to shut down the WikiProject responsible for many of the bad portal creations. Right now it appears all its doing is creating new portals, not maintaining or improving them - which is what a WikiProject is supposed to do. However, a less extreme solution would be to reform the project to actually maintain and improve the portals it creates, and creates portals sparingly. I'm fairly certain a task force making sure portals meet standards would be beneficial to the issue, and also making it clear that not everything needs a portal. I'm going for the latter option to reform - however, I'm going to leave the shutdown option up in the air in case people find good reason for it to be considered. Addendum 13:48, 15 March 2019 (UTC) - Since I forgot to clarify ( Self-trout) here's two examples of reforms I could see being useful: A quality scale for portals, like we use for articles - this could help with knowing which portals are good and which ones need improvement Dividing the Project into task forces to make sure necessary tasks for the maintenance of portals are completed, as right now they clearly are not Sub-reform for this would be to make a task force that deletes bad portals that don't meet quality standards and are not needed Hopefully this can help clarify this proposal somewhat - if none of these can be done reasonably (which I doubt they can't) the shutdown option should be considered. Kirbanzo (userpage - talk - contribs) 23:01, 14 March 2019 (UTC) Survey on sub-proposal to shut down WikiProject Portals SNOW No The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. Neutral as per above. Kirbanzo (userpage - talk - contribs) 23:01, 14 March 2019 (UTC) Strong oppose firstly this is the wrong forum, secondly there is nothing in the nomination that explains why this is needed, or how it will result in an improvement to the encyclopaedia. Thryduulf (talk) 01:04, 15 March 2019 (UTC) Oppose. Abyssal (talk) 01:35, 15 March 2019 (UTC) Support: might as well. --K.e.coffman (talk) 02:23, 15 March 2019 (UTC) Oppose. There is consensus to keep the portal system but it has many faults, so a focus for improving it seems sensible. Certes (talk) 14:36, 15 March 2019 (UTC) Strong oppose. Not necessary and not the best way to fix Wikipedia’s portals. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 19:49, 15 March 2019 (UTC) Oppose – Would amount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. North America1000 01:19, 16 March 2019 (UTC) Oppose For the same reasons. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 19:48, 16 March 2019 (UTC) Oppose For the same reasons. Bermicourt (talk) 22:37, 16 March 2019 (UTC) Support Incompetent project that doesn't want to deal with the crud their members create. CoolSkittle (talk) 18:07, 17 March 2019 (UTC) Invalid rationale. See Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions#Surmountable problems.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:58, 17 March 2019 (UTC) Oppose as ad hominem vindictiveness. The only rationale for deleting such a project would be a proper community-wide decision to eliminate all portals. This is not the venue for that; WP:VPPOL is. And this is not the venue for deletion of a wikiproject; WP:MFD is. WP:Process is important, most especially in deletion discussions and related matters, because damned near zero people are going to look for such discussions in an admins' "house organ" page like this. Hardly any non-admins watchlist this page or pay any attention at all to what is said here. It is not intended to be a venue for community-wide concerns in the first place, and even with belated addition to WP:CENT, discussing such matters here is a special kind of forum shopping, namely an attempt to appeal to a small cadre of specialist editors whose concerns about maintenance (and cop-like role of "going after" people for alleged behavioral flaws, often with little oversight, especially compared to WP:ANI process) will colour everything they do and say about the matter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:58, 17 March 2019 (UTC) Widely misleading arguments. This is a widely advertised and widely participated discussion. It came from a VPR discussion, linked from the very beginning. There are far more non-Admins than Admins involved here. Try to stick to facts. Legacypac (talk) 23:23, 17 March 2019 (UTC) Support [non-admin comment :] opposed to portals, they harvest legitimate contributions yet the creators expect them to be automatically protected as legitimate contributions and outside of normal guidance on creation. There are cadres of users who think this is what wikipedia is about, or at least it is a way of making a big splash without knowing anything but how to tweak code (and then wikilawyer when challenged). cygnis insignis 06:10, 18 March 2019 (UTC) Oppose Punishing a whole community for the actions of one person is not reasonable. WaggersTALK 16:49, 18 March 2019 (UTC) Oppose per above. It's getting cold out... SemiHypercube 16:52, 18 March 2019 (UTC) Oppose In the grand scheme of things I'd like to see portals deprecated, but doing so is not where the community is at right now. If there is consensus to keep portals, having a wikiproject to maintain them seems like a good idea. I also feel cold... Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 06:47, 19 March 2019 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. Survey on sub-proposal to reform WikiProject Portals Support as proposer and per above. Kirbanzo (userpage - talk - contribs) 23:01, 14 March 2019 (UTC) Oppose as the proposal is in the wrong forum and contains no details of what reform is being suggested, let alone how these reforms would solve the issues identified. Thryduulf (talk) 01:05, 15 March 2019 (UTC) This is related to the discussion as the WikiProject is headed by the user being discussed here. Kirbanzo (userpage - talk - contribs) 13:48, 15 March 2019 (UTC) Wikprojects are a collection of editors, not just one person. There is no evidence presented that there is any admin action required regarding the WikiProject as a whole collectively (not that I can immediately think of what that action could look like if it were), and there isn't even consensus that admin action regarding the single editor is required. Thryduulf (talk) 13:57, 15 March 2019 (UTC) Fair point, but considering the discussion below it should still be considered. Kirbanzo (userpage - talk - contribs) 14:00, 15 March 2019 (UTC) Support. I’ve been doing some reform work of this type by creating a page to clean up some of the damage done to the older portals. WikiProject Portals has an assessment page but I’m not sure how much it gets used. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 19:49, 15 March 2019 (UTC) It took quite a lot of discussion to form a consensus for those assessment criteria. Any portals would need to be evaluated against them to ensure they meet at least minimal quality standards (not including the other criteria in the portal guidelines). It will take a while to go through all of the portals and rate them on the quality scale, and that is one of our backlog tasks. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 19:48, 16 March 2019 (UTC) Support in theory. It makes more sense than the above "I disagree with you so I will try to just erase you" bullshit. However, it's not at all clear that the wikiproject, as such, needs any "reform"; rather, some specific decisions and actions taken by its participants have turned out to be controversial, and the community will discuss that (hopefully in a more sensible venue like WP:VPPOL), and the wikiprojects should abide by the result of that process. We don't have any indication this would not happen, so there isn't actually a "reform" to perform, nor is there yet any consensus of what form that should take anyway. Some people here seem to be under the impression that WP is going to come out against portals; others that it'll be against automated portals; others that it'll be against portals on minor topics (and sub-sub-sub-topics) that people aren't likely to seek a portal for; others that nothing is actual broken; others that .... There isn't a single direction of "reform" being proposed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:03, 17 March 2019 (UTC) Oppose The way to reform a project is to get involved with it. We've already had multiple discussions about how the project should be structured and how it should operate on the project pages themselves, and further suggestions there are always welcome. But proposing "reform" without specifying what particular changes are being suggested isn't exactly helpful. WaggersTALK 16:53, 18 March 2019 (UTC) Exactly right, Waggers, exactly right. You've hit the nail on the head. ~Swarm~ {talk} 18:22, 20 March 2019 (UTC) But is you see little need for portals why get involved? Legacypac (talk) 23:18, 21 March 2019 (UTC) Nominating hundreds of portals for deletion is getting involved. If you see little need for them then fine, live and let live, they're not doing you any harm. The community has decided to keep portals, so either you respect that consensus and ignore them, or you respect that consensus and get involved with resolving whatever problem you have with them. WaggersTALK 12:58, 3 April 2019 (UTC) Qualified support. The current project is far from perfect but it's hard to give unqualified support without a statement of specific reforms. We don't want thousands more portals, but last year's RfC shows that it would be equally inappropriate to "reform" into WikiProject Nuke All Portals From Orbit. I removed my name from the project's roster when portal creation grew rapidly. Since then I have done some maintenance but I see little point in improving pages that other editors are working so hard to delete. I could rejoin a project that combined improved existing portals with the right blend of identifying poor, narrow portals for deletion and creating portals in small numbers where clear gaps exist. Certes (talk) 13:32, 29 March 2019 (UTC) Qualified support per @Certes:. As a participant in the Portal project, I would encourage them to adopt a more rigorous process for creating new portals, including qualifying criteria, and also for the maintenance of portals by the relevant project members. I'm disappointed that, while this discussion is going on, at least one portal that I help with has been nominated for deletion (it's not one of the automated portals created by TTH which is subject of a deletion nom that I support). Bermicourt (talk) 11:45, 13 April 2019 (UTC) Discussion on proposal to reform WikiProject Portals Query @Kirbanzo: - do you have any early thoughts about what some good reforms would be to shift the primary focus of the project towards maintenance/improvement over creation? Nosebagbear (talk) 23:11, 14 March 2019 (UTC) See addendum. Kirbanzo (userpage - talk - contribs) 13:50, 15 March 2019 (UTC) Transcluded to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 23:36, 14 March 2019 (UTC) No, do not transclude important discussions from AN to the relevant talkpage. Hold the discussion on the relevant talk page. Transclude to here is there is good reason, which there is not. Holding hte discussion here means watchlisting it doesn't work, and it wont be archived in the right place. Shutting down a WikiProject is not in scope for WP:AN. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:20, 15 March 2019 (UTC) The Portals Wikiproject members can't even come up with a proper new guideline for what topics get a portal even when faced with a village pump imposed moratorium. The discussion is all over the place with no focus. Heck they did not even follow their old guideline about picking subjects broud enough to gain reader and editor interest. The only thing they appear to agree on is MORE MORE MORE and using WP:VITAL as a to do list. Their newsletter said they are pushing to 10,000 portals (off a base of 1500 old line portals). Now the number of portals will shrink until and unless they get new guidelines passed by an RFC. Legacypac (talk) 09:57, 15 March 2019 (UTC) That old guideline wasn't generally followed, ever. That's because portals (except those on the main page) get about 1 to 3 percent of the amount of traffic that their corresponding root articles get. In other words, "not a lot". That's because almost all their traffic comes via WP internal links. Almost nobody googles "Portal". So, for the vast majority of topics, large numbers of readers and editors will never be forthcoming, and never were. Out of the 1500 portals, about 100 had maintainers (maintained by around 60 editors), and maybe 20% of them regularly edited the portals they maintained. The WikiProject, and the community, need feedback in the form of hard numbers, in order to get a sense of what will even get used. How hard would it be to make a chart listing all the portals in one column, and their page views for the past month in the second column, and then sort the chart by the second column? That might provide some insight.    — The Transhumanist   11:05, 15 March 2019 (UTC) Sigh. :TTH, you had this data already. You know that portal pageviews are miniscule. At the RFC on deleting the portal namespace, stats were posted on pageviews, and not even all the portals linked from the front page had decent viewing rates. Yet despite knowing all that, you personally created thousands of new portals, despite having all the evidence in front of you that they are useless. And when I presented the evidence to you again, and asked you to desist, you were furious. Instead of assessing the issues, you posted multi-screenfull unfocused ramblings replete with shouts of "bias", "personal attack" etc. The problem is not any shortage of information. The problem is that as @Legacypac notes above, the discussions in the WikiProject have no focus, no regard for available evidence, and no respect for community consensus. Legacypac and usually disagree, but in this case we see exactly the same problem: a WikiProject which has a long and sustained track record of being utterly incapable of acting responsibly wrt the page within its purview. This is not solely TTH's doing. TTH bears by far the highest responsibility because TTH has been both the most prolific creator and the most angry objector to calls for restraint, but several other regulars at WikiProject Portals have been equally unfocused and equally bonkers. For example: Only 15 days ago, WT:Portal/Guidelines#Portal_creation_and_deletion_criteria_proposal_5: a proposal to create portals up to VA Lelevl 5, when even VA level 4 would be about 10,000 portals. 17 days ago, WT:Portal/Guidelines#Portal_creation_and_deletion_criteria_proposal_1: a proposal for portals to have minimum of only 20 articles. Precisely the sort of microportal of which the community has had enough. So the community simply cannot rely on this group to set and uphold resposnsible guidelines. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:53, 15 March 2019 (UTC) @BrownHairedGirl: I make the proposal 5. And it was a proposal. I Support a reform in WikiProject Portals. My idea is the existence of approximately 1000(level 3) single page portals layout, directly linked in tree model with the main page. The role of the wikiproject should be to organize this tree and develop tools to transform all portals into single-page layout portals.Guilherme Burn (talk) 12:11, 15 March 2019 (UTC) @Guilherme Burn, no technical diversions. My point is not about how the portals operate; it's about their scope. And 20 pages is insanely narrow. A 20-page portal is just an bloated navbox. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:36, 15 March 2019 (UTC) @BrownHairedGirl: I'm trying to figure out how you've come to the conclusion that WPPORT completely ignores evidence and consensus. The project discussions I've participated in have been rational and reasonable, and far from unfocused. Also, please try not to conflate individual editors' behavior with the project as a whole. I've seen no evidence that the WikiProject has acted irresponsibly regarding the Portal system. If you're referring to the several thousand new portals created by TTH, you should keep in mind that WikiProjects don't have any actual authority to dictate who can and can't create something (even if we were opposed to creating new portals). That's what guidelines are for. We've been working to develop updated criteria for the Portal guidelines since November (rebooted from even earlier discussions in April) - which you already know, since you've participated as well. We're still working on the guidelines so that we have better, more concrete criteria to judge new and existing portals against (and which would make MfD easier for those that fail). Once we've developed consensus on these, they can be applied to the namespace to fix the portals that can be fixed, and remove the ones that can't (new or old). (Side note: Anyone with input or ideas is welcome to participate at WT:PORTG.) Actions in the Portal namespace itself (for most of us, it seems) has mostly been technical fixes and tweaks to our tools. Also, your not agreeing with particular proposals does not make those proposing them irresponsible or incompetent. Talk pages are a place to discuss new ideas so that we can find the benefits and drawbacks of each. If we constantly had to worry about being labeled as irresponsible or incompetent for suggesting something, we'd never have any new ideas or get anything done. I've made plenty of suggestions that didn't pan out later, as I'm sure you have, and everyone else here. That's how we learn what works and what doesn't and build a better encyclopedia. In the end, that's what we're all here for right? — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 19:48, 16 March 2019 (UTC) @AfroThundr3007730: that's not at all how it looks from outside. Last year, the project began developing automated portals, whose advocates claimed need little or no curation. No attempt was made to hold an RFC to determine whether the community found these automated portals to be a worthwhile addition. (I think I see an emerging consensus that they are not useful, or maybe useful only in some curcumstances) Following the WP:ENDPORTALS RFC which decided not to actually delete the whole portal namespace, the project decided to massively expand the number of portals, despite the clear evidence at RFC that many editors wanted fewer portals. At no point did the project initiate an RFC to establish whether there was a community consensus for the project's enthusiasm to bizarrely interpret "don't TNT the lot" as "create thousands more". You are right that a WikiProject has no powers of restraint on an individual editor. However, the project does have an ability to watch what is done, and to act a venue to monitor inappropriate creations, and to initiate cleanup as needed. I see no sign at all that the project has done any of that ... and on the contrary, when outsiders have challenged TTH's sprees of portalspam, other project members have rallied to TTH's defence. Even now, as a cleanup is underway, I see next to no assistance from project members. V few even comment in the MFDs. For example, take the most extreme case so far: MFD Portal:University of Fort Hare, an utterly absurd creation for which there exists precisely zero relevant selected articles ... yet none of the project regulars is visible. In my view, a WikiProject which shows zero interest in removing inappropriate pages within its scope is dysfunctionally irresponsible. The project's efforts to develop guidelines have been exceptionally poor. The discussions have been rambling and unfocused, with a persistent failure to distinguish between factors such as technical ability to create, availability of editors to maintain and monitor, actual usage data, etc. Above all, none of the proposals has been put to an RFC to gauge community consensus, so the guideline discussion have effectively been the work of a small group of editors who are united by a common desire to massively increase the number of automated portals. The result of this failure has been a walled garden of thousands of micro-portals, sustained only by the enthusiasm of the portal project ... and the absolutely inevitable massive shitstorm at the village pump. What this needs now is a structured RFC, which brings together some or all of the proposals made at the project, adds proposals from outside the project, and seeks a community consensus. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:18, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Template:featured portal

With the recent exclusion of portals tagged with {{featured portal}} I don't see sense in keeping the old featured portals with this template.Guilherme Burn (talk) 19:57, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

The historical reference function can best be fulfilled by Template:WikiProject PortalsGuilherme Burn (talk) 22:00, 5 July 2019 (UTC).

I'd oppose this. It states that the portal was peer reviewed in the past, and forms a visual reminder to MfD nominators & participants, most of whom would not look at the portal's talk page. A comparison with de-featured articles is not apt, as these are +/– never targeted for deletion after de-featuring. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:21, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Also Oppose. WHY?? , there's no need to remove information that's relevant to the Portal history.

This is just more absurd deletionist nonsense and superfluous to our encyclopaedic aims. Why don't you go and do some useful work instead of suggesting ideas that would screw up the Portals history?worthwhile for a change. --Cactus.man ✍ 00:48, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Oppose per Espresso Addict. and yes, per Cactus.man, I agree that no need exists to remove relevant portal history. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 13:14, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Maybe the first step to a "new featured portal" is the re-exam of the old one, so I brought it to discussion. I do not understand the irritation in certain comments.Guilherme Burn (talk) 19:10, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

It is the interaction of your suggestion with the ongoing portal deletion efforts that I think is generating irritation. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:13, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

@ Guilherme Burn I have just read your post this evening, and I think it may be directed at my comment? Espresso Addict sums it up perfectly for me. It's a case of extreme irritation that, despite Portal deletion nominations having died down recently to a trickle, there was this sudden outpouring of (IMHO) nonsensical proposals (merge all Portals into subsets of the Portals listed on the mainpage, then your suggested deprecation of the historical marker shown on Portals that were once Featured). Its as if there's nothing else going on right now than needs attention. I got a little bit too riled up, and realise now, with hindsight, that my comment was a bit over-aggressive. I was not intending to suggest that you don't do any other useful work and I apologise if that's how it came across to you. I have re-factored my comment to be a bit less confrontational. Best wishes. --Cactus.man ✍ 18:34, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

It's all right @Cactus.man:;)Guilherme Burn (talk) 12:24, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Oppose. I'm similarly irritated with the relentless and enormous movement of goal posts here, so don't feel alone User:Cactus.man. There are serious questions which deserve to be raised and fully discussed about portals. This is not one of them. BusterD (talk) 18:53, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Oppose. for the reasons outlined by Espresso Addict. For the record, I am also irritated by this unconstructive proposal. Voceditenore (talk) 06:10, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

• Delete. Guilherme Burn is right. We shouldn't be tagging the face of pages by an assessment process which has been discontinued. Portals require regular updating, so a portal which met FP standard two years may be well below that standard now. The best solution would be to tag the talk pages with something like a Template:Former featured portal, so the fact of it being a former FP is recorded .... but it's completely wrong to keep it on the face of the portal. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:08, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

• TFD nomination. I have formally nominated the template for deletion, at WP:Templates for discussion/Log/2019 July 9#Template:Featured_portal. Thanks to @Guilherme Burn for raising this issue. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:54, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

• Pinging all users who have participated in this thread, regarding the new TfD discussion (except the nominator, who is already aware of it): @Guilherme Burn, Espresso Addict, Cactus.man, BusterD, and Voceditenore: (yes, I'm aware that some have already contributed there, but it's best practice to ping all). North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 00:26, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

• Nb. The TfD discussion was closed with a keep result. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 08:19, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

There was a strong consensus for maintaining the template and its usefulness, but I believe this issue will still need to be revisited in the future. It would be best to move many pages and templates related to "featured portals" to "former featured portals" and remove the {{historical}} template. We cannot maintain the status "featured portal" ad infinitum in the absence of constant review and possible delist. Yes, this leads to confusions for readers, for example the interwiki provided by wikidata which continues to tag with a star the old featured portals.Guilherme Burn (talk) 01:25, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Removal of portal links after deletion

On 30 July 2019 (UTC), Portal:Vermont was deleted per the discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Vermont. Firstly, I entirely understand why the portal was deleted, particularly per it not having been updated and not having much content. Regarding page views, it's possible that the portal didn't receive many page views because there wasn't much content for readers to go back to see from time-to-time, but I digress.

Part of the nominator's deletion rationale stated, "this portal should be deleted without prejudice to re-creating a portal maintained by a volunteer..." (et al.). By inadvertently clicking on the "contribs" button of an !voter at the discussion, I noticed that shortly after the portal was deleted, the user has removed many portal links to the Vermont portal. When a portal is deleted, the portal links simply go blank on pages, so it's not particularly necessary for them to be quickly removed.

The topic itself (Vermont) meets WP:POG in terms of being broad enough in scope to qualify for a portal, so I find it concerning that many links to it have been quickly removed. If anyone were to re-create a new, updated, maintained Vermont portal, the removal of the links to it simply creates a bunch of unnecessary extra work that will need to be redone. Also, if the portal were to be recreated, and the links are not re-added, it could naturally lead to lesser page views, which could then lead to a vicious circle of it again qualifying for deletion per low page views.

Interested in other's thoughts about this matter. Should links for portals that meet WP:POG's broadness criteria remain in place when said portals are deleted? I think they should. Cheers, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 08:02, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

• By inadvertently clicking on some links, I got the impression that circa 350 articles/categories/whatever were spammed by a link to the late Portal:Vermont. May be nobody was looking at Category:Basketball coaches from Vermont or at Bridge 6 (Johnson, Vermont). Alternatively, maybe each reader of these files wasn't caring about a link to a portal (yet another probable shit, as taught by experiment). As a result, page views of the portal were abysmal low. Before recreating such a portal, better think why readers have such avoidance of portals, despite the "keep them all" campaign of User:Northamerica1000 and some other. Pldx1 (talk) 11:11, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• I have no "keep them all" campaign. Fact is, I nominated a portal for deletion at MfD a couple of days ago. If you're going to state that user's have some sort of "campaign", at least get it right. Really now. I assess portals on a case-by-case basis. Regarding the Vermont portal, it is my view that a portal more fully loaded with high-quality content would have naturally attracted more readers, compared to a static portal, whereby users realize there's not much there and don't go back. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 12:12, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

There is no "keep them all" campaign. Hundreds of portals have been deleted with virtually no opposition. However, there is currently a deletion campaign which shows little sign of letting up. It's hard to work out if its participants are in the "delete all portals" bracket or "delete as many as possible down to my personal threshold before someone stops us". Now that the spam portals have been deleted this seems, unreasonable in the light of the ongoing community discussion on new and better guidelines for portals. As is the criticism that portals aren't being maintained - of course, they're not - editors aren't going to waste time keeping them up to date knowing that, around the corner, another AfD could appear. It's all a good example of how ineffectual Wikipedia's processes are. Bermicourt (talk) 12:26, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

This is not an issue just with deleted portals. We need broad community consensus as to whether Article-to-portal links should 1) not exist at all (i.e. be limited strictly to talkpages: note the hundreds of talkpage links to Portal:Vermont could be restored with a single edit); 2) exist only on the head article; or 3) be placed on hundreds of articles that relate to the portal's topic. To my knowledge such broad consensus was neither sought nor obtained. UnitedStatesian (talk) 12:46, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

You're right but it's only the tip of the iceberg. We desperately need to reach a consensus on the purposes of portals. Once that's agreed, we can work out how best to achieve that. If portals are a project tool then no links are needed from mainspace; if they're also a showcase, they need lots of relevant links to be effective (and appear in the search window, which they don't). In the meantime we're just engaged in a "love them/hate them" or "keep them/delete them" battle which is unconstructive and divisive. Bermicourt (talk) 18:48, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• One of the prime benefits of portal deletion is to rid articles of confusing links, so I think all such links should be immediately removed by bot after a deletion. Nemo 08:09, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

  Nemo bis, the "confusing links" go away the moment the portal is deleted, without any bot action. See Template:Portal. —Kusma (t·c) 09:41, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

  Irrelevant, because that still leaves the template links. Nemo 10:20, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

  Sorry, I don't understand what you mean.

Vermont portal

Or are you talking about the wikitext? —Kusma (t·c) 10:23, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

• Another matter is that some MfD discussions for portals have been closed with no prejudice against recreation (e.g. such as for a maintained, curated portal). The links to these should remain in place: they're already invisible on article, talk and category pages when a portal is deleted, and their removal only creates much more unnecessary busy work for users who may later re-create such portals. Makes perfect sense, really. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 07:58, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Duplicitous forum-shopping above; actual backlinks issues below

The section above is yet another example of the duplicitous techniques used by the prolifically mendacious editor @NA1K.

The discussion on this page was opened[1] by NA1K at 08:02, 31 July 2019.

Only 13 minutes later, at 08:22, NA1K opened[2] a similar discussion on my talk page.

Both discussions continued for several days, but at no point in either discussion did NA1K post a note in either discussion about the other one. And at no point in this discussion did NA1K even allude to the fact that I had given some counter-argument in reply. NA1K's summing-up comment of 07:58, 8 August 2019 is a classic example of NA1K's practice of mendacious omission. Written a week after my reply elsewhere to NA1K, it simply pretends that NA1K is unaware of the counter-arguments.

If NA1K's aim was to game the system by creating here on this page a fake consensus, by involving only NA1K's own cronies, then this was a great way to go about it. And given the length of NA1K's experience on Wikipedia, the failure to cross-notify is inexplicable in any good faith sense. An editor who wants to actually build a consensus will actively seek out those who might hold a different view and try to involve them in a centralised discussion; but I am sadly unsurprised that NA1K failed to do so. Such duplicity is simply a parallel to NA1K's serially-repeated mendacity at MFD, where NA1K repeatedly tries to manipulate consensus-formation by strategically misrepresenting the POG guidelines.

The reality is that removing backlinks is a routine part of any XFD close, and in most cases the closers use scripts to remove backlinks (e.g. WP:XFDC). Owing to the way that portal backlinks are nearly all formatted using templates, those tools do not extend to portals ... but that is a technical limitation, rather than any decision to retain backlinks to deleted portals.

Until late 2018, {{Portal}} displayed all links, red or blue. A Nov 2018 request by me to make non-display of redlinks an optional mode was implemented by User:Dreamy Jazz as the default mode, but there was never any decision or discussion anywhere that it would be used as a way to permanently store backlinks to deleted portals.

By the time the portalspammer's mass-creation spree was brought to an end in Feb 2019, there were 5,705 portals. As of right now (04:13, 14 August 2019 (UTC)), Category:All portals contains 835 portals. There is simply no way that any but a handful of the 4,870 deleted portals will re-created. So it makes no sense to retain tens of thousands of backlinks to the thousands of portals which existed only as automated spam.

Similarly, it makes no sense to retain tens of thousands of backlinks to portals which have been deleted because for a decade they have languished without readers and with so little maintenance that many of them were simply abandoned junk. (It remains a shameful indictment of the general uselessness of the portals project that it made absolutely no effort to even systematically identify and tag these abandoned junk portals, and has instead left the cleanup to outsiders).

It is true that in the early day of the current portal cleanup process, most nominations were made "without prejudice" to re-creation. I myself initiated that in the two mass deletions of portalspam (one, and two).

However, that was nearly 4 months ago, and much has changed since then. The crucial factor is scrutiny.

Back in March, the portalistas thought they were being very clever in gaming the system by the requiring to community to have a full MFD deletion discussion on each of the 4,200 portals, rather than speedy-deleting them. The portalistas were very well aware that the spam portals had been created a rate of more than one every 2 minutes, and that their pal the portalspammer had spewed out automated pseudo-portals just for the heck of it ... but they still insisted that the community devote huge multiples of that time scrutinising each piece of the spam.

It was fairly clear from the ongoing outrage from portalistas that when the community nonetheless worked its way through the whole spam mountain and deleted the lot, that wasn't what the portalistas had expected. Their attempt to game the system had failed.

But more than that, the attempt had backfired badly. By requiring so much scrutiny, the portalistas had ensured that there were now several editors well-versed in portal guidelines and skilled in examining portals. And those scrutineers had found that as well as the spam portals, there were also a lot of abandoned junk portals which failed POG.

So junk portals which were no longer automated, or had maybe never been automated, began to be MFded too. And as the discussions moved on, it became clear that POG was right to require a large number of maintainers. Scores of portals appeared at MFD with clear signs that they had been built in a spurt of enthusiasm, rebuilt or rebooted a few years later in a spurt of someone else's enthusiasm, and then rotted because they had not attracted enough maintainers to sustain the maintenance. It is very clear from MFDs in the last two months that the ability to retain a large set of maintainers is a crucial criterion of a portal being kept, and that we have clear evidence that most of the deleted portals failed that criterion.

So for all those MFDs where I proposed "that these pages be deleted without prejudice to recreating a curated portal not based on a single navbox, in accordance with whatever criteria the community may have agreed at that time", its clear that nearly all would fail the community's current criteria place high emphasis on active maintenance.

The result of all these deletion was that by early July, there were well over 100,000 pages with links to non-existent portals, which were overwhelmingly to deleted portals. This cluttered article and category pages with redundant markup, and it also flooded the tracking categories, making it impossible to use them to identify mis-spellings etc which should be what's collected in Category:Portal templates with redlinked portals.

So I set about removing the backlinks, which a non-trivial task. I finally finished it on Tuesday 13th, having cleared up the deleted portals and finally got a clear run of hundreds of errors: mis-spellings, synonyms, foreign languages etc, which I have all fixed. All in all, I'd say that over the course of the whole run, I fixed about 2,000 broken links. Which I think is a useful pay-off.

I do understand that there is here a small clique of disgruntled editors who still bemoan the demise of abandoned junk portals, and want a return to the glory days when a single editor could run around creating lots of portals without regard to whether the topic meets the POG requirement of being likely to attract a large number of maintainers. And I do understand that for some of these drive-by portalistas, the task of spending a few minutes making a request at WP:BOTREQ for someone to make link to new portals from the relevant articles seems to be an intolerable burden.

But y'know what? It's now v clear that the community has had enough of drive-by portal makers, so I see no reason to assume that it would want to facilitate them by setting aside normal practice on backlinks.

If you disagree, then feel free to start an RFC in which you link to this post and to the discussion on my talk. But in the meantime, the forum-shopping exercise above is simply the uncritical groupthink of a cosy clique, and not any sort of consensus. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:13, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Request for improvement: Portal:Northern Ireland

Portal:Northern Ireland would benefit from the following improvements:

• Converting the layout of articles in the portal to be included directly on the page, rather than using WP:SUBPAGES, using {{Transclude random excerpt}}. This makes it much easier to expand the portal, update it, and change selections.
• Converting the layout of images using {{Random slideshow}}, for the same reasons as above.
• After the above, significantly expanding its topical focus. Portal:Northern Ireland/Selected article presently only has 3 selections, Portal:Northern Ireland/Selected picture has 6, and Portal:Northern Ireland/Selected biography has 5. Not enough at all to attract readers. It is likely that people may check out the portal, realize that it doesn't have much content, and then move on, without stopping back by from time-to-time.

The topic itself is rich, as Wikipedia has a great deal of content covering Northern Ireland. See Category:Northern Ireland for a general overview of topical coverage available. I have performed some work to improve the portal, but it would benefit from more. It would be nice if it had around 30 articles, 20 images, and more selected biographies, as a better start. This could lead to more readers utilizing the portal, as having a greater amount of diverse content may captivate readers to explore it more. Cheers, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 17:17, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Why?

. It's a non-sovereign province less than 100 years old, and it doesn't get much outside attention apart from its political divisions (which lead to very imbalanced coverage). With a population of only ~1.5 million, it's smaller than several English counties, and smaller than nearly all US states, including several which have been deleted due to abandonment.

So it's unsurprising that in January–June 2019 it averaged only a miserable 20 pageviews per day. That number is about what I would expect for that size of region.

More importantly, POG requires that a portal should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers".

In this case, it has narrow scope, few readers, and almost no maintainers.

WP:WikiProject Northern Ireland (WP:NIR) has been moribund for years. There is no discussion at WT:NIR, and has not been for years.

What NA1K is doing here is approaching a portal on a highly controversial topic area in which they have no background, and and trying a one-off-update to attract readers. NA1K knows very well that POG requires the portal be likely to attract large number of portal maintainers, but has neither identified any maintainers or tried to recruit any. NA1K has not even posted at WT:NIR about this update plan, let alone had any positive responses.

So NA1K's actions here seems to me to be at best a severe misjudgement, and at worst a gaming of the system. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:45, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Ooohhh "Northern Ireland is hardly a broad topic" - that's a bold statement! I'm sure there will be a few people who disagree with that one! And you've introduced new criteria too: population and geographical size. Why not argue those as part of a new guideline for portal notability? You've been a champion for the constructive debate over portals in the past, please don't give up - we need editors like you on board. Bermicourt (talk) 09:21, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

The claim that "Northern Ireland" is a narrow scope is just absurd. Also, what do you mean by a "large number of portal maintainers"? As portals go, I would say one is normal, two is healthy, and three is a large number of maintainers, but not really necessary. —Kusma (t·c) 09:51, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Yay!

Plenty of great content exists on English Wikipedia to expand Portal:Northern Ireland. The claim here of Northern Ireland being a narrow topic is quite subjective, at best. If anyone's interested in improving the portal, great, if not, then that's the way it goes. Welcome to the Portal WikiProject. Yay! North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 12:44, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

I Agree with Bermicourt, Kusma & Northamerica1000 above. Northern Ireland is, in my opinion, a sufficiently broad topic to justify a Portal.

@Northamerica1000 I'd be willing to join a collaborative effort to expand the Portal because there does seem to be significant material out there. As a first step, I've added a "Recognised Content" section to the Portal Talk page which will trigger JL-Bot to populate it with recognised content. That will generate a suitable central location to select decent content from. I welcome any and all additional participants. Time to stop the rot, and start saving some potentially worthy Portals.

I also think one of the greatest weaknesses currently (apart from the meagre selection of content being displayed) is the extensive use of forked content on the intro and the various subpages. I think these should be modified ASAP to use transcluded content. so that they are always up to date and minimise the vandalism risk. I'll start work on that in the next couple of days. --Cactus.man ✍ 17:29, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Update: I've left a notice / invitation for interested volunteers at WT:NIR --Cactus.man ✍ 17:58, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

• Hi Cactus.man: Glad to hear it. For starters, I have:

• Upgraded the portal's markup to use article transclusions for the selected article and selected biography sections.
• Upgraded the portal to use modernized image layout for the selected picture section
• Added more FA and GA class articles to the selected article and selected biography sections, as well as some other articles.
• Used a transclusion for the portal's introduction section, which keeps the intro up-to-date relative to content in the main article.

Look forward to working with you and others to further improve the portal, and thanks again for replying and for your interest. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 00:40, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

• I've also expanded the selected picture area, adding two Wikimedia Commons Featured pictures and a two Wikimedia Commons Valued images. Of course, this section can also be further expanded. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 01:35, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Great job guys. Disregard any naysayers do what you think is best.--Moxy 🍁 03:24, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

I looked at what has been done. Moxy's cheerleader assertion that this bizarre selection of topics is a "good job" will be hysterically funny to anyone who knows much about Northern Ireland, a group which clearly does not include the drive-by portalistas who made this comedy.

The portal as it stands is a poster-child for the POG requirement that an active Wikiproject be involved. Because when you are trying to create an encyclopedic overview of a topic, it helps to have more than 5 minute's acquaintance with it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

Have you no shame?

Bermicourt, please don't play smart-alec games which try to misrepresent me and deflect the point of substance. It's very clear that I was posing population size and geographic area as some measures for comparison with other deleted portals, rather than as absolute criteria (which I'd oppose).

It is quite extraordinary to see yet again the determination of portalistas to simply lie, lie and lie again in their mendacious determination to ignore POG. This time, it's not just NA1K; it several of the groupies coming out to lie in chorus.

In this case, there is very clear evidence that the portal has simply failed to attract either a large number of readers or a large numbers of maintainers. It is also clear that WP:NIR is at best dormant, and more likely defunct. POG says "the portal should be associated with a WikiProject (or have editors with sufficient interest)[1] to help ensure a supply of new material for the portal and maintain the portal." A defunct WikiProject is no assistance.

I note that no editor above offers to commit themselves to long-term maintenance of the portal, and that no other maintainer has been identified.

These requirement for readers, maintainers and a WikiProject are core points of POG, devised and worded long before I ever set eyes on POG. Yet once again, a discussion on this project page is being dominated by a bunch of editors who claim to be in favour of portals ... but who simply engage in tag-team lying in order to evade their own project's guidelines.

Have you no shame, any of you? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:14, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

BHG, your criticism of other editors is becoming more extreme and personal. Frankly most of us are trying to act in good faith and encourage what is good and positive about portals and you are simply demonising us because you don't like them. The shame is on you: as an admin, you should be setting an example, demonstrating patience and helping us all to reach a consensus over the direction of portals. Bermicourt (talk) 06:41, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

@Bermicourt, I have demonstrated extraordinary patience, for months on end. But sadly, the mendacity of a few portalistas has become both more extreme and more persistent.

I disagree with you some of you about the desirability of portals. Reasoned and legitimate disagreement is the basis of consensus-forming discussion, and I don't object to that. What I do object to, and strongly, is the way in which some portalistas are now tag-teaming to simply ignore part of the guidelines which don't suit their agenda even when they have been made aware of the relevant issues.

That is the mendacity which I am referring to. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:18, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Please try to assume good faith. Not everyone disagreeing with you is a "mendacious portalista". From my end it looks like your desire to fight against portals is becoming more extreme, and your continued pursuit of this fight is not helpful. I really can't see how some people coming together and collaboratively improving a portal about one of the constituent countries of the UK could be a bad thing. If you have better suggestions about the choice of topics, you could join in and help improve this portal. —Kusma (t·c) 10:56, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

@Kusma, the problem here is that:

1. the editors who you say are coming together have demonstrated zero knowledge of the topic. It is utterly irresponsible to try to build a portal from a position of ignorance of the topic.
2. the editors involved are clearly ignoring the portal's incompatibility with WP:POG, despite the problems there having been identified to them

This is not the conduct of good faith editors, and I am not required to assume good faith in the face of clear evidence to the contrary.

As to your suggestion that I "join in" ... I despair. I cannot commit to long-term maintenance, and per POG what the portal needs is long-term maintenance. I absolutely will not become involved in the pointless busywork of a driveby update unless the other conditions are in place. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:31, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl, you may believe that the Northern Ireland portal fails the portal guidelines, but that view does not seem to be widely shared. If you do not have anything constructive to contribute to the discussion of this portal, please find something else to do than posting in a thread about "pointless busywork" that apparently isn't worth your time. If you have evidence of bad faith editing, please pursue that through the relevant channels (WP:ANI, WP:RFAR) instead of derailing constructive threads. —Kusma (t·c) 13:53, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Kusma, that view is not shared by a clique of portalista editors who have a track record of simply ignoring the parts of POG which do not suit their agenda.

It is highly constructive and highly relevant to point out that their selective and mendacious approach to established guidelines is producing bad results.

There is nothing at all constructive in this flouting of guidelines. It is the same sort of pointless makework which left wikipedia with the hundreds of abysmal-quality portals which have been deleted in the last 6 months, mostly in the face of irate opposition from some of the editors who are cheering on this junk. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:08, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Your insinuations of bad-faith "portalistas" and your personal attacks therein are not constructive either. If anything, it's causing editors to avoid portals. Vermont (talk) 14:23, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Vermont, I m not insinuating. I am directly asserting.

If my remarks cause portals to be avoided by editors who would refer to flout established guidelines, then that is a benefit to Wikipedia. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:28, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

The issue is that people disagree with you on what the established guidelines say. Your continued argument that it's just "portalista" bad-faith users trying to push portals is not helpful in civil discussion. Vermont (talk) 14:52, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Vermont, if you or any other portalista seriously wishes to deny that:

1. WP:POG says that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers"
   or that
2. POG says "the portal should be associated with a WikiProject (or have editors with sufficient interest) to help ensure a supply of new material for the portal and maintain the portal."

... then we can have that discussion. Do you want to be the one who claims that those words do not exist? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:58, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

I was referring to Kusma's comment above about other editors disagreeing with you about whether the Northern Ireland portal meets portal guidelines. Further, please stop referring to me as a "portalista". Your nicknames for people who disagree with you isn't relevant here, and it's insulting. Vermont (talk) 15:42, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

If it's a disagreement about points of fact rather than about the guideline, please clarify which of the portalistas disputes that:

1. WP:NIR is either dormant or defunct
2. Portal:NI has failed for years to attract large numbers of maintainers.

I look forward to seeing who wants to move beyond the usual portalista tactic of simply ignoring inconvenient realities, and actually deny these realities. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:54, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

think it may be time for an interaction ban. Will look in to what can be done.--Moxy 🍁 16:06, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Beware of WP:BOOMERANG, Moxy. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:39, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Was disappointing is that you seem obvious to the problems raised about your behavior by a dozen editors. --Moxy 🍁 21:39, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Moxy, I have not been in any doubt that there is a small set of editors who will use any means to express their anger at the deletion of abandoned junk portals, and they they are happy to try to shoot the messenger when their tactics are challenged.

It is disappointing that you and the other members of the defend-any-old-junk brigade continue to reject the established guidelines, ignore the consensus of dozens of MFDs, and deny the realities of unmaintained, unviewed portals. But at this point, it's sadly unsurprising. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:01, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

It would really help if editors here stopped giving pejorative labels to those who don't share there point of view as if there were only 2 positions: 'portalistas', 'portal lovers' or 'portaleers' who supposedly love all portals regardless of quality and 'anti-portaleers', portal haters' or whatever other epithet we wish to stick on them who hate all portals regardless of quality. Of course, these labels do enable us to take a simplistic worldview and proceed to rubbish anyone who disagrees with us, but they just ignore the truth and antagonises one another. The truth is that we're probably all somewhere on the spectrum and [almost] no-one is 100% pro- or anti-portals. I know it's more difficult, but it would be far better in the long run if we focussed on re-drafting the guidelines to achieve a consensus that would make assessment of portals far easier. Otherwise every time we discuss Portal:X the same tired old arguments are trotted out and the points of disagreement are the same. Except that it gets more and more vitriolic and polarised as we lose patience with one another. Please can we try a more orderly and mutually respectful approach? Bermicourt (talk) 18:20, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

@Bermicourt, if someone wants to start an RFC proposing that unmaintained portals should be retained, they are free to do so. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:19, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

I think that's a red herring. No-one is suggesting that AFAICS. Bermicourt (talk) 06:37, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

@Bermicourt, I am glad you are not suggesting that. Sorry that i misunderstood you. It seemed to me that was where you were pointing, but I am happy to be corrected.

A proposal to that effect was made at WT:Portal/Guidelines#Pageviews, and resoundingly rejected. So portals continue to be deleted because they are neglected and/or unused. Most of the acrimony comes from those editors who get irate about the deletions made on that basis, and who have waged a long a campaign of aggressive obstructionism which for six months has been placed with angry personal attacks against those advocating deletion. That campaign eventually met with strong rebuttals, and some of those who have normalised abusive aggression don't being called out.

I agree that the guidelines need re-drafting. But there are huge underlying issues of principle to be resolved before any redraft. I don't see anything remotely resembling a consensus on what purpose is actually being served by a portal, and from what I can see the overwhelming benefit is to the editors to like creating them. I don't see any evidence that readers actually want them, or that any of the current models of portal actually add enough value to justify creating a separate portal page. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:41, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Great comment Bermicourt, I agree.Guilherme Burn (talk) 14:09, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Guilherme Burn thanks. BrownHairedGirl you've homed in on the key issue: the purpose of portals. It's easy to rubbish them if you pick a purpose that they're not currently achieving; and reader views are the prime example. But I and other are saying they have other, wider purposes - navigation, topic range and coverage. We're also saying they haven't reached their full potential by a long chalk, because the guidelines are over a decade old and have never been updated - they date to an era when Wikipedia was still in its infancy. German Wikipedia, on the other hand, has a more sophisticated and tightly controlled management of portals. You'd love it! You can't even launch one without it going through a peer review and consequently there aren't many of them. You've seen some of the ones I've imported and translated and they're generally pretty good navigation tools as well as being attractive showcases as a spinoff. In addition, I and other editors have used them to expand and improve the coverage of topics far quicker than would have happened otherwise. But, as I say, we aren't there yet and I'd like to see portals owned responsibly by projects who maintain them collectively but, much more than that, use them to give an at-a-glance indication of coverage and quality, articles that need upgrading, creating, etc. That necessarily limits the numbers because project teams will have a finite capacity and unmaintained orphan portals should be deleted if non-notable or moved to project space (and delinked) if projects feel they have future potential, but don't have the time to work on them due to higher priorities. I'm still willing to work with editors on this, but only if we can agree to stop the war, declare a ceasefire and work together in a spirit of cooperation. Bermicourt (talk) 18:00, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

@Bermicourt, it's good to have dialogue, but there is no war to end -- just an ongoing process of removing abandoned junk. And in the last two months, only a small minority of the portal MFDs have been launched by me.

The portals which are being deleted are so woeful that they don't provide any platform to build on. If there was a consensus to build something on those titles, it would be much better to start from scratch.

I do understand where you are coming from wrt the German model. But my understanding of German wp is that it is culturally very different to en.wp. So processes which work well there may not translate well to en.wp. Sure, I'd like to see portal creation being subject to pre-approval and WikiProject involvement, but I fear that might not be feasible in the more freewheeling WP:BOLD culture here. Plus, the overwhelming majority of en.wp WikiProjects are dormant or dead, and a requirement for pre-approval by zombies would be a de facto ban.

I disagree strongly about page views. I think they are v important, for two reasons:

1. Portals are a tool. There's no point in building these elaborate tools if nobody is using them, as is the case with most en.wp portals.
2. Each viewer is a potential maintainer. If a portal isn't being viewed, it won't be on the radar of any potential maintainer . And low page views mean that any possible maintainer may reasonably conclude that the portal is a poor use of their time.

So leave aside the guidelines for now. They can be developed if there is agreed direction.

The big issue I see that portals seem to be a solution in search of a problem. None of the things they provide is in much demand, and most of it already done better elsewhere. Few things are more revealing than the tsunami of apathy which greets most portal MFDs: the objectors are nearly always the same small crew of portal-focused editors, while the editors creating and maintaining the encyclopedia's content on that topic stay away.

The navigation and showcasing functions are provided very effectively by articles and navboxes. For an examples of the power of navboxes and navbox series, see Mayo (Dáil constituency): it's only 2 clicks away from any other article on any constituency in Ireland in the ~10 parlianents which have existed in the last 500 years.

Most of the rest of portals is fluff: the DYK trivia, the crude and slim news sections, the quotes boxes, the largely-redundant image galleries. Those are ornaments to add to a portal, but too inconsequential to justify the portal's existence.

For months, it seemed to me that the one function which portals could actually fulfil was the mega-navbox format which you have deployed so diligently, and whose cause you have eloquently championed. But the more I look at it, the problem is that it doesn't seem to me to be meeting any need. Comparing the views for Portal:Germany with other major European countries (see comparison), it doesn't seem to serve more readers. And the view for the regional German portals are pretty dire. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:53, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Section break

Nb. Regarding Portal:Northern Ireland, I initially avoided adding much content about The Troubles to it, because there's so much content about The Troubles, I didn't want the portal to become a "The Troubles" portal. More recently, I have added more content about The Troubles, while of course including other topical content to keep the portal balanced. For those interested, please feel free to further expand the portal. It is okay to improve Wikipedia's content for the encyclopedia's WP:READERS. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 13:52, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

English Wikipedia portals with least editors

Useful query, I think, to go beyond pageviews: quarry:query/38221. You can download the spreadsheet and divide the number of edits or editors by the number of years, or whatever.

It also helped me find some orphan subpages (1, 2, 3). Nemo 10:19, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Redundancy between Portal:Contents subpages and portals

Hello. I was studying how the portals are organized and I realized that the subpages of the Portal:Contents are performing the function they should be of other portals.

Topic	Contents subpage	Page views (08/2018–07/2019)	Page creation	Portal	Main page portal	Page views (08/2018–07/2019)	Page creation
Culture	Portal:Contents/Culture and the arts	231	December 2007	Portal:Culture/Portal:Arts		57 / 1606	June 2005 / February 2005
Geography	Portal:Contents/Geography and places	165	December 2007	Portal:Geography/Portal:Places	yes	1258 / NA	May 2005 / NA
Health	Portal:Contents/Health and fitness	154	December 2007	Portal:Health/Portal:Fitness		NA / NA	NA / NA
History	Portal:Contents/History and events	164	December 2007	Portal:History/Portal:Events	yes	2146 / 0	April 2005 / June 2006
Mathematics	Portal:Contents/Mathematics and logic	144	December 2007	Portal:Mathematics/Portal:Logic	yes	1403 / 1407	February 2005 / June 2007
Nature	Portal:Contents/Natural and physical sciences	157	December 2007	Portal:Nature/Portal:Physical Sciences		NA /NA	NA / NA
People	Portal:Contents/People and self	384	December 2007	Portal:People(Portal:Biography)	yes	2237	May 2005
Philosophy	Portal:Contents/Philosophy and thinking	132	December 2007	Portal:Philosophy/Portal:Thinking		132 / 57	November 2005 / June 2006
Religion	Portal:Contents/Religion and belief systems	173	December 2007	Portal:Religion		86	February 2005
Society	Portal:Contents/Society and social sciences	128	December 2007	Portal:Society	yes	895	June 2005
Technology	Portal:Contents/Technology and applied sciences	156	December 2007	Portal:Technology	yes	1531	June 2005

If it is worthy of analysis I complete the table.

This divides the attention of readers and editors which in my opinion is a problem. What is your opinion?Guilherme Burn (talk) 19:22, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this, @Guilherme Burn. The portals listed above are mostly main page portals, and as such they are among the very few portals which achieve enough page views to justify their existence.

It seems to me that it would be a good idea to investigate how to remove the redundancy identified here. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:30, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Interesting, thanks (and thank you BHG for working on pageviews)! The subpages of Portal:Contents seem to me to be not very attractive, long and dull lists of lists. Portal:Contents/Geography and places links first to all countries, then to all outlines of countries, then to lists, then to the country portals, and then indices. I don't like outlines, which take up quite a bit of screen real estate here. The indices are possibly even worse. BTW outlines and indices are both usually not very well maintained and less popular than portals. Not sure how alive Wikipedia:WikiProject Contents, who may or may not be the natural "owner" of these pages, is. —Kusma (t·c) 19:51, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Certainly Portal:Mathematics is more attractive and much better maintained than its "Contents" brother. —Kusma (t·c) 19:53, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

The existence of this redundancy is a strong argument for ENDOFPORTAL. If there can be a page Wikipedia:contents/topic/subtopic, why are there portals? I am a enthusiast of single-page layout, in my opinion portal subpages should be deleted.Guilherme Burn (talk) 19:55, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Do you have a good single-page substitute solution for Portal:Germany/Anniversaries and its 378 subpages that makes editing easy and saves browser memory? —Kusma (t·c) 19:58, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Germany/Anniversaries and its 378 sub-pages could easily be consolidated into a single page with links to sections. That would be much easier to read, and much easier to maintain. Selective transclusion could allow transclusion of a month's anniversaries sat a time.

Note that the individual sub-pages are almost unused: e.g. Portal:Germany/Anniversaries/April/April 1 got a grand total of 18 pageviews in the whole of year Aug2018–Jul2019. (Note: 18 is not a daily average, but the annual total. The daily average is 0.05). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:19, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl, I am open to other ways of displaying this content. What I like about the current system is that there are "edit" links on the main portal page that allow you to edit the entry for an individual day. If we move to a single-page system, I would like to keep this function. I haven't had difficulties maintaining this system for more than 10 years, so I am biased in finding this easy to work with. The individual day pages are clearly used, but only once a year, when they are transcluded on the main portal page (which doesn't count as a pageview). I am surprised that they get pageviews at all from anyone but me. The monthly pages and the /All page exist mostly for maintenance convenience (while still making sense to readers).

BrownHairedGirl, I don't think the subpage viewership statistics are accurate or relevant, because the subpages are transculded onto the main portal page, and get viewed via transclusion; those views are not captured in the statistic. By design, the dated page gets the same number of views as the portal on the date (none of which are counted), and zero views every other date. UnitedStatesian (talk) 06:18, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Also, whether to have subpages or not is in my opinion mostly a technical decision on how a portal should be implemented. I fail to see how the presence or absence of subpages has a significant effect on portal quality or maintenance status. —Kusma (t·c) 20:01, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

• Sub-pages have a massively negative effect. They make portals very hard to maintain, modify or even watchlist. Their existence is an antiquated relic of the failed model of monthly-magazine style portal, which was mostly abandoned by 2010. That model's successor is the rotating-excerpt style of portal, which is a usability nightmare and redundant to the built-in preview-on-mouseover. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:10, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Preview on mouseover is another way to get an x-ray view of linked pages; it has drawbacks, though. From an accessibility standpoint, not everyone possesses the fine-motor skills to accurately position the mouse pointer with the necessary degree of precision. Even for those who do, it becomes an Easter egg hunt interface, with a lot of mouse pointer movement involved. It also lacks any curation. Accordingly, I don't see this preview ability as a straight replacement for portals. isaacl (talk) 21:38, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

• Sure, preview on mouseover has its flaws, as you describe. But while mouseover lacks curation and is vulnerable to technical issues, the idea of curating tens of thousands of sub-pages across ~1000 portals has been proven to be utterly unsustainable given the tiny number of editors interested in devoting their energies to portals which readers don't want. (The data to support that assertion is available in abundance.)

It seems to me that much of the design of portals is based on assumptions which had some validity in 2006/7: that a huge and ever-growing set of active editors would ensure that even the most labour-intensive processes and structures worked. The subpage model of portals is explicitly based on the model of a mini-mainpage. However, the mainpage requires several huge teams of busy editors to sustain it, an even on the smaller scope of a portal that model still requires a lot of ongoing work. That's why POG requires "large numbers" of maintainers.

Sadly, the reality has been the number of editors has declined markedly, and the ratio of articles to active-editors is now about a quarter of what it was a decade ago. So not only do we have abundant evidence that the content-forked-sub-page model has failed for all except a small number of portals, we can see the structural reasons for why it failed, and will continue to fail.

If portals are to survive at all, the design choices need to be made between models which are actually sustainable by the small number of editors willing to work on those portals. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:44, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl, whether a portal has subpages or not seems irrelevant compared to the question whether it is maintained or not. Having subpages has advantages and disadvantages (also depending on what the subpages are used for). Something like the Anniversaries pages required a bit of effort to set up 12 years ago but from experience I can tell you they are essentially trivial to maintain (mostly, I have to replace deleted images once or twice a year). The practical maintenance effort would not become any smaller by moving this to a single page. Anyway, portals need maintainers, no matter how they are designed, and I have agreed with you before that any portal creator should be aware that they will need to continue to invest time if they want the portal to not become an embarrassment. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kusma (talk • contribs) 18:16, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

• @Guilherme Burn, I agree with some of what you say, but not with your conclusion that this points to ENDOPORTAL.

Instead, it reinforces my tendency to agree with @SmokeyJoe's preference for keeping the big 8 portals. and deleting the rest. Call it CULLPORTAL. Except that now I see how they could be integrated into Portal:contents, which would give us an integrated system with multiple points of entry.

The whole one-item per-subpage style of portal is a failure, and I'd happily see guidelines changed to ensure that such portals are deleted or converted. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:05, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

So what is your conversion suggestion? And anyway, Special:Relatedchanges/Portal:Germany/Anniversaries is a very easy way to watch 378 subpages. Please explain to me why this is a failure. —Kusma (t·c) 20:34, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Relatedchages is a failure because it requires a specific proactive check. By contrast, watchlisting is simple generic tool which editors use to track all pages in their interest areas, without needing to do individual checks for each one or each set. There is a reason that we have watchlists.

As to the conversion suggestion, I explained it above: Portal:Germany/Anniversaries and its 378 sub-pages could easily be consolidated into a single page with links to sections. Setting up the skeleton page with substed transclusions would be less than an hour's work with skilled use of a decent programmer's text editor such as Notepad++ or Kate. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:11, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

The discussion deviated from the main focus, how to solve this redundancy?Guilherme Burn (talk) 14:02, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

• This overlap doesn't bother me. Portal:Contents (which is not really a portal) serves a different purpose than the individual subject-area portals. Just as there we live with duplication/overlap between categories, lists and navboxes, we can live with overlap here. It does bother me that so much of Portal:Contents is unreferenced, though. UnitedStatesian (talk) 14:38, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Is automation dead or alive?

In April many portals that were automated just two months before were reverted to their manual versions as a result of a discussion on this page. I am a relative newcomer to the portal debate, but I've noticed recently some portals (e.g. Portal:Vietnam that have come up for deletion have been saved from the brink by single-page automation. Is this evidence that opinion is turning in favor of automation? Should automation be the default position? Mark Schierbecker (talk) 03:40, 26 August 2019 (UTC)