Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals

Requests for Admin assistance

• Delete subpage Portal:Slovenia/New article announcements, which has not recieved special attention since 2012. — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)  23:07, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
• Comment – As this is a detailed page that has received a fair amount of edits, it may be better to tag the page atop with the {{historical}} template, which would serve to demonstrate the work that occurred to this aspect of the portal in the past, as well as to retain the page as a general historical reference. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 06:15, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
• Delete subpages of Portal:Sports/Selected picture, as they are no longer needed. The "Selected pictures" box for Portal:Sports is now generated by a single page: Portal:Sports/Selected picture. —⁠andrybak (talk) 14:29, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Ditto for subpages of Portal:Fish/Selected picture. —⁠andrybak (talk) 21:33, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
• Subpages of Portal:Russia/Selected picture, from Portal:Russia/Selected picture/5 till Portal:Russia/Selected picture/25 – they were replaced using {{Portal pictures}} or removed as off-topic, see Special:Diff/989855590/989955952 and Special:Diff/989956373. Note that subpages one through four are still in use. —⁠andrybak (talk) 23:57, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

In the previous discussions in 2019 it was understood that the exclusion of subpages must be by MfD. I believe that this section "Requests for Admin assistance " should be removed from this talk page.Guilherme Burn (talk) 12:02, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Do you have a link to that consensus? My view is that it's legitimate to request assistance for technical changes, such as when replacing Portal:Foo/Articles/1 to /99 by a template in Portal:Foo which produces similar excerpts, but not as part of demolishing a portal (for example, after quietly replacing its main page by a redirect to a broader portal). Certes (talk) 13:11, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't have the link, I can search for discussions, but this is unnecessary. @Certes: you are a witness, like me, of the thousands of excluded subpages that were restored. I think it is better not to repeat the same mistake again, or we exclude via MfD or leave them in limbo for a while.(Or we propose a new criterion for speed deletions)Guilherme Burn (talk) 14:01, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Bug collection

This section is only for tracking bugs and feature requests, in the MediaWiki software itself, which affect portals. For general technical help with portals or portal-related templates, create a new section on this talk page.

 Do not report new bugs or feature requests in this section – only list them here after a Phabricator task has been created.

• T196722: Gallery slideshow controls take up more than one line on narrow displays
• T196723: Gallery slideshow flickers when changing images
• T194887: Mode slideshow of gallery tag is not working in phone screens
• T199126: Scribunto/Lua should have a built-in method for retrieving category members

Mass removal of portal bars from biographical subjects

My watchlist brought these edits to my attention. While I'm out of position at this time to revert all these changes per BRD, I was wondering how others felt about this? BusterD (talk) 20:53, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Biographies are not my area of expertise, but mass changes should not generally be carried out without prior consensus. Bermicourt (talk) 21:10, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying the user. I for one am against such mass deletion; such deletion is very much inline with the anti-portal movement that culminated in the Arbcom case. It is our fault we haven't agreed to a fuller set of new portal guidelines. Based on earlier discussion, the portal bars serve a valid navigation function, bringing interested readers to the portals in question. If all links to portals were allowed to be removed from articlespace, we'd have exactly zero portal views. Opinions? BusterD (talk) 22:18, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Hello, wasn't notified exactly where this query was being held. As I said on my talk page in response to BusterD, I found what appeared to be random portal links at the bottom of actor pages. These included Portal:United States and state-related portals like Portal:New York or Portal:California. Angelina Jolie's article even included Portal:Africa (I'm guessing only because of her philanthropy)... which I just think is farcical. I mean, these articles even included a link to the Portal:Biographies because they are BLP articles... This just seem very silly to me. And I found that each of these portal bars were added into a variety of actor articles by a single user. Some of the bars were removed, some not.

It just doesn't seem appropriate to add exceptionally broad portal links like Portal:United States when the only connection is that the subject of the article is American or lives in the United States; that's almost akin to adding Lists of actors or some other broad aspect to the See also section of an actor article. These portal bars and links make the most insignificant connection to the article subject. Connected? Sure. Relevant? Likely not. Again, I noticed that these were added by one user, half of their bars were deleted, half of them weren't. If we are to keep these portal bars in those articles, why not add portal bars including Portal:Politics to every elected official article, or Portal:Biographies to every BLP article. I think that's absurd, but maybe I'm completely off base here. -PerpetuityGrat (talk) 05:13, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

@BusterD: that's exactly right. One of the reasonable criticisms of the anti-portal group was that portals weren't used much. But that was down to the fact that there weren't many links to them; so the low hits were unsurprising. For portals to be utilised they need to be well linked otherwise people don't know of their existence. It would be useful to include some portal guidelines on this. Bermicourt (talk) 07:07, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

User:PerpetuityGrat you are not completely off base here. I apologize for not bring this straight to your talk and I appreciate Bermicourt communicating with you. I was traveling and was unable to revert your edits effectively. So I brought notice here, thinking like-minded editors would have an interest in your removals. Thanks for engaging and discussing your motivation. When I saw a large number of various portal links go poof, I got concerned. If I sounded alarmed, it's because I might feel a tad more defensive of portal space than I used to feel. There's some history which is unimportant now; briefly, in the last three years we've seen a fair number of worthy portals deleted at Miscellaneous for Discussion (and some drek, I'll concede). Some of those deleted portals might have served the articles you edited a bit more accurately. I'm not certain which editor you discovered inserted the portal bars. Would you continue to pause before more removals? I work on many American History articles and it's not unusual for me to add American Revolutionary War portal and American Civil War portal links on some of the relevant pages. BusterD (talk) 08:28, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

BusterD there aren't any more edits from what I found from that user that include those bars, so I won't be deleting any other bars from here on out. I noticed that Donald Trump and Joe Biden have their own portals... but I won't dare touch those pages lol. I'll try to track them down. Also not too familiar with the portal/anti-portal history, but I'm happy to learn. -PerpetuityGrat (talk) 12:57, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Just to continue the discussion, in the name of improving Wikipedia, I stumbled across the article Minnie Driver——I did not go hunting for this article, as I usually edit state political BLP articles. Anyway, I'm just so confused by the portal bar. It includes a biography portal link (because it's a BLP article) and a London portal (because she was born there, no other connection to London). I won't edit it, but looking for some clarity on this. At a glance, portal links seem more relevant to historical articles and national leaders rather than actors and most other BLPs. -PerpetuityGrat (talk) 13:10, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Some of the portals deleted in 2019 had their incoming links diverted to a surviving portal on a parent topic. For example, an article which once linked to Portal:North Carolina might now link to Portal:United States. The broader portal may be less relevant. Certes (talk) 18:16, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

I had not paid close attention before, but I must confess I like the portal bar concept, style and appearance, as opposed to the older "See also" links previously attached. Is there a bot out there making these transitions? If not, why not? Again, I prefer the new style but that doesn't mean much if the style isn't working for less attached editors. BusterD (talk) 20:31, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Unusual issue with our portal project banner on Portal talk:Belize

I call attention to this edit, to repair a strange "scripting" effect when Template:WikiProject Portals is applied to Portal talk:Belize. This issue becomes apparent when after visiting the diff linked, one was to back up one iteration. I tried using the identical code on another portal and didn't see the defect. Is this something I'm staring straight at and still missing? BusterD (talk) 00:04, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Module:Portal maintenance status seems to be transcluding the portal repeatedly. Evad37 may be able to help. Certes (talk) 00:35, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

I vaguely remember that certain templates only work when they come first on the page. This may or may not be relevant. I tried swapping the templates over; predictably, things appeared in the wrong order, but it didn't fix the error. Certes (talk) 01:42, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Restoring Portal:Peak District to mainspace

During the Great Portal Cull, I moved Portal:Peak District to project space so that at least it could be available to WikiProject England. Now that the dust has settled, would it be acceptable to restore it to mainspace and begin linking Peak District articles to it? Or is it likely to become another candidate for deletion? Bermicourt (talk) 07:42, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

I like the idea. We probably want to avoid resurrecting portals deleted through process at this time, but since this one has not been "adjudicated" yet, I see no compelling reason why anyone would object. If you need help feel free to call on the project (or at least me). I know there are many of us who'd like to do more than merely defend portalspace. BusterD (talk) 08:24, 1 July 2021 (UTC)