Wikipedia talk:Portal/Guidelines/Archive 11

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"Good number" for article selection section

In the Article selection section, I have restored a portion of the text to its long-term previous wording, to state, "Good number means about 20 articles, though this figure may vary from case to case and is intended as a rough guide rather than a hard principle." (diff). A change was previously unilaterally performed by Legacypac to state, "Good number means a bare minimum of 20 non-list, in topic articles." (diff). However, from searching the talk page archives, no consensus was obtained for the change that the user performed. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 20:31, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

I can confirm this statement. LP inserted the change unilaterally. Without discussion on this p. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 21:55, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

It may be prudent to propose changes on the talk page before any unilateral changes. In this vein, how about proposing such a change here. For example, propose "Good number means about 20 articles, though this figure may vary from case to case and is intended as a rough guide rather than a hard principle.". --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 21:55, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

It may be prudent to revert the diff in the interest of gaining consensus for User:Northamerica1000's proposal first. Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 22:03, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

This protocol might appropriately be taken as a proposal in good faith. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 22:06, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

• The wording that I reverted to had been in place since May 2009 (diff). My reversion to what has been in place is not a proposal, it has been the status quo and precedent for the page for over a decade. It seems clear that having been in place for over ten years, consensus is rather implied, as it appears that the matter had not been discussed on this talk page afterward. Also, the changing of the wording relatively recently to "Good number means a bare minimum of 20 non-list, in topic articles" was posted by a user who had been nominating many portals for deletion at MfD. The change by the user making the note stricter presents a clear conflict of interest: the user for deletion of many portals changed the goalposts to make it easier for their goals of deletion to be attained. Changes to wording on the page regarding specifics that have been in place for over ten years should be performed via discussion and consensus, not by a (now blocked) user with a COI that strongly favored deletion of portals. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 06:46, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Comment - At a time when we are looking for new portal concepts define a number of articles in "article selection section" is unnecessary. The "Article selection section" (based on subpages or transclusions) is obsolet after tool development like mouseover.Guilherme Burn (talk) 22:22, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

@Guilherme Burn Consensus about something is a better goal. Might we seek that something, first? --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 22:48, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

@NA1K has repeatedly reinstated an old definition "good number" as:

• about 20 articles, though this figure may vary from case to case and is intended as a rough guide rather than a rather than a hard principle

... replacing newer text ...

• Good number means a bare minimum of 20 non-list, in topic articles.

Why?

Why on earth would anyone want to suggest that a portal with less than 20 selected articles is worth having?

20 articles is the size of a small navbox, with about 3 or 4 lines of links. Why make a portal with less than that?

I agree with Guilherme Burn that the whole subpage game is redundant. But so long as we retain some portals with this structure, why on earth tolerate less than 20? --

Should nomination pages exist? (Template:Random portal component with nominate)

Is there any reason at all for Template:Random portal component with nominate to exist? Readers don't seem to be using these pages to nominate, and in any case these pages are not likely to be monitored. Less than 100 portals use this template and I'm not seeing any that get enough traffic to justify this. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 02:09, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

• An easy workaround is to simply remove the "with nominate" part of the template, which changes it to the {{Random portal component}} template. Then, dated nomination areas that have not been used in years can simply be marked with the {{Historical}} template. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 05:06, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

I've replaced a few dozen "with nominate" templates today. My question is whether the template can simply be redirected to the ordinary one without causing any technical problems (no sense keeping the nomination pahes around either. Most are completely blank.) Mark Schierbecker (talk) 08:18, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

WP:POG is quite unrealistic in its present form

WP:POG was written with unrealistic expectations relative to how Wikipedia functions. The guideline states that portals should be about broad topical areas, which makes sense, but then goes on to state that they should be "likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". While I believe that portals should be complete, have an adequate amount of content relative to the guideline, and hopefully be updated from time-to-time, the problem with requiring a likelihood of portal maintainers is that most of Wikipedia's content in the various namespaces never meets this requirement, so why should portals have such stringent standards? Furthermore, per WP:NOTCOMPULSORY, a Wikipedia policy, the notion of insisting upon large numbers of portal maintainers is against Wikipedia policy from the start.

Also, the way the guideline page is written, it comes across that every aspect of the page is to be met, and if not, then a portal qualifies for immediate deletion. Guidelines such as WP:GNG are clear-cut and concise, however, this guideline page is not. The result of having unrealistic expectations for the guideline is that hundreds of portals are being deleted based upon not meeting one or more aspects of the guideline page. Conversely, as an example, we have Secondary notability guidelines (SNG) for other namespaces, (e.g. WP:CREATIVE), in which a subject need only meet one or more criteria to potentially qualify for notability. Perhaps the guideline page should be worded in a manner such as a SNG, in which all of the various criteria are laid out in bullet form, and then if a portal meets a certain number of the criteria, it is then qualifiable to exist.

As it's worded now, the unrealistic expectations of the guideline page has essentially turned the page into a guide for deletion, making it very easy to get portals about important, broad topics quickly deleted. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 14:23, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

• While I'm not touching your entire argument in this response, I think there’s two points here I'd want to make: one, large swaths of Wikipedia’s content doesn’t actually need lots of attention or maintainers (how many userpages/essays/etc are out there?), and two, that other content doesn’t have this attention is a good argument for their consolidation or deletion, not for reducing scrutinyhere. The Outline of… project is a waste of basically everyone’s time creating a shadow Wikipedia that is not used much at all (best percentage I could find with some quick checks is a max 3% of the main article it mirrors), and should probably be consigned to the rubbish bin. The only justification per our mandate of what we need is encyclopedia articles themselves, and even there I am of the opinion it’s often better to consolidate barely-notable stuff into more cohesive and comprehensive wholes when appropriate (permastubs, etc.) Your point about WP:NOTCOMPULSORY I think can equally apply to these types of projects, because by creating stuff other people are expected to maintain you are adding to the weight of stuff people have to consider and taking away time from everything else, e.g. the entire slow-moving nature of removing content from Wikipedia of any kind versus adding it in the first place. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 15:10, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
• I don't think the guideline page comes across as mandating that everything it covers be present immediately to avoid deletion. Since these are guidelines and not mandatory rules, not having some of the suggestions isn't a strong reason for deletion. I think the failure of a portal to have some of the required elements after being in existence for years is being used as a sign of lack of upkeep (I've already given my opinion elsewhere on the issue of maintenance). But I don't think anyone is saying "no browsebar—delete". isaacl (talk) 16:35, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
• To quote the sentence in question: Please bear in mind that portals should be about broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers.

I think it is poorly worded if you use it as a deletion guide, which is how it is used nowadays. I think it was originally supposed to help portal creators. Tell them how they can garner viewers and maintainers so they do not waste their time and energy. That is how it is worded and it probably actually does a good job in that regard. If it was a demand for X amount of daily viewers and Y amount of maintainers (under threat of deletion), then it would have been clear about it. It is somewhat ridiculous how that innocent lead section gets stretched and bent into shape to justify the "portal purge" as it is called by certain users.

If you read it carefully then it actually just demands a broad subject area and nothing else. Apparently the rest will just follow automatically. It really does not serve well as a deletion guide. How do you even measure a broad subject area? Articles in the scope?

If you take that sentence absolutely literally, then it also leads to some absurd conclusions. Like a broad subject area for a portal will with a high likelihood lead to large numbers of pageviews and maintainers. And if it does not, then this must mean it was not about a broad enough subject area. Even if the portal was created two days ago. No viewers? No right to exist. Which is of course nonsense. Many other factors are in play when it comes to the success of a portal. Like the visual quality of the portal, its utility and how well it is linked to from its article scope. Viewers and Maintainers do not just fall from the sky even if you make a portal about the universe itself. --Hecato (talk) 17:07, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

The sentence should be "portals should be about broad subject areas". Period. Cut the rest. Cambalachero (talk) 17:23, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

That would just beg the question of how do you define a broad subject area? DexDor ^(talk) 17:30, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

• I agree that it's unrealistic, and it's leading to mass-deletion of portals, plenty of good work by Wikipedia standards. ɱ (talk) 20:51, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

• I strongly disagree with the above statement that the need for a portal to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers is an "unrealistic expectation". A core problem is that Wikipedia has hundreds of abandoned portals that neither editors nor readers want anything to do with. Unlike a Wikipedia article, an abandoned portal is a real problem (e.g. out-of-date and even forked content; makes Wikipedia look like a failed project), and the portal guidelines, as written, correctly anticipate this issue.

Having thought about this more from participating in MfDs, I can't see how Wikipedia portals can ever compete with portals on Facebook (and other platforms); Wikipedia's rules around copyright (and particularly for images), means that it is far better to run a portal from Facebook and link into Wikipedia articles as needed, than try to use Wikipedia as the main portal platform. There is just no contest and the lack of interest by editors or readers in Wikipedia portals bears this out. Britishfinance (talk) 21:32, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Proposal to update and clarify the lead of WP:POG

WP:POG is presently worded (link) as:

This page outlines general guidelines and best practices for portals.

Please bear in mind 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. Do not expect other editors to maintain a portal you create.,

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. 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, rightly 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 some portals are certainly qualified for deletion per lacking adequate content, it does not mean that the content itself is nonexistent on Wikipedia. Sometimes, portals just are not expanded adequately to include various topical content.

As it's presently worded, the guideline page states several factors in one sentence, which is being interpreted at times to mean that a lack of readers or maintainers is then a qualifier of a given topic not being broad enough in topical scope. However, the guideline does not state that if a portal does not attract readers or maintainers, then a subject itself is then therefore not broad enough, nor should it. 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. The way the guideline is worded, it is a syllogism of sorts.

Furthermore, the "large numbers" aspect in the lead is misguided. For example, no portals attract "large numbers" of maintainers. It's unrealistic to continue to have such unattainable expectations in a guideline.

I propose the following changes to the lead of WP:POG, to be rewritten as below, using bullet points:

This page outlines general guidelines and best practices for portals.

• Please bear in mind that portals should be about broad subject areas. A subject area is defined as the overall scope of available coverage on Wikipedia about a given topic. A subject area's broadness is not defined by the number of readers or maintainers a portal has.
• Portals should be likely to attract interested readers.
• Portals should potentially attract portal maintainers.
• Portals which require manual updating are at a greater risk of nomination for deletion if they are not kept up to date.

– North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 23:52, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

• Support as nominator. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 23:52, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per above, the core problem is that Wikipedia has hundreds of abandoned portals that neither editors nor readers want anything to do with. Unlike a Wikipedia article, an abandoned portal is a real problem (e.g. out-of-date and even forked content; makes Wikipedia look like a failed project – E.g. if the WP Mainpage (a top portal), never had an edit for 7 years, and was hardly visited by readers, which is the status of most portals on Wikipedia, it would be deleted), and the portal guidelines, as written, correctly anticipate this issue. Watering down these guidelines, only exposes Wikipedia to the arbitrary re-creation of hundreds of abandoned portals, which does not benefit the project. Britishfinance (talk) 00:18, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
• Comment I would remove point 2 and 3. "Likely" and "potentially" is the kind of vague language that already irked me in the old guideline. I would add the requirement of portal maintainers at the end of point 4, because that is the instance where constant portal maintainers are actually necessary. --Hecato (talk) 07:51, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per the comments hashed out repeatedly in the sections above. The language is dealing with the reality of portals, not how people wish things were. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 11:42, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose largely per Britishfinance's comment above. I find the argument in NA1K's "As..." paragraph completely unconvincing; if a portal has been left unmaintained (incomplete, out of date, vandalised etc) for a long period then that does indicate that the topic is not broad enough to attract portal maintainers. I might support rewording to fix the problem identified in the "Furthermore..." paragraph. DexDor ^(talk) 19:49, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose The idea that portals should have maintainers has been part of portal policy since 2005 before there was even a portal namespace. I don't see a reason to move away from that given the number of unmaintained portals in recent years. Wug·a·po·des​ 05:47, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose I don't find either argument convincing that there is a problem with the current language. I read the current guideline as requiring 1) a large number of readers and 2) portal maintainers (i.e. not a large number of portal maintainers: large number applies only to readers, not maintainers). I can see how others would mistakenly think otherwise, so I would support the requirements be flipped, so that it reads "likely to attract portal maintainers and a large number of readers". UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:54, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. Just a tiresome WP:POINTy effort by NA1K to wikilawyer ways to retain or re-create unread, abandoned junk portals.

After 6 months of culling portalspam and abandoned portals, and nearly ~4870 portals deleted, how log will it take for some portal editors to grasp that the community doesn't want this pointless abandoned junk? It's like a dark remake of Groundhog Day, in which one of protagoanist struggles to avoid learning anything. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:57, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

"Good Number"

The time-wasting editor who directed me to discuss this issue had decided to play a guessing game rather than link to Wikipedia talk:Portal/Guidelines#"Good_number" for article selection_section. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

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.

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Wikipedia:Portal/Guidelines#Article_selection says "For the Selected article, Selected biography or other Selected content items, find a good number[1] of articles, as many as you can, that could be showcased on the portal".

@NA1K has repeatedly reinstated an old definition "good number" as:

• about 20 articles, though this figure may vary from case to case and is intended as a rough guide rather than a rather than a hard principle

... replacing newer text ...

• Good number means a bare minimum of 20 non-list, in topic articles.

Why?

Why on earth would anyone want to suggest that a portal with less than 20 selected articles is worth having?

20 articles is the size of a small navbox, with about 3 or 4 lines of links. Why make a portal with less than that? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:21, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

• Nb. Note that this is already being discussed above, at Wikipedia talk:Portal/Guidelines § "Good number" for article selection section. It seems best to keep discussion about the topic in one thread, rather than having two simultaneous threads about the same topic occurring on the page. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 00:27, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

For goodness sakem @NA1K, if you had already opened a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Portal/Guidelines#"Good_number"_for_article_selection_section, why not include the link in the edit summary of your revert?

Instead you just said discuss it, and left me to open the discussion before you come along to say effectively na na na na na fooled you.

Playing guesing games doesn't help build consnesus. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:40, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

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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.

While a link would have been helpful, the edit summary did say This is being discussed on the talk page. isaacl (talk) 01:45, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

In light of the détente that was referred to recently at the administrators' noticeboard, perhaps the closing summary can just be removed? isaacl (talk) 01:49, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

In light of the détente that was referred to recently, I hope that NA1K would like to apologise for wasting my time. But I am not holding my breath. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:59, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Portal deletions continue

More and more portals continue to be put up for deletion under current portal guidelines even as we continue to discuss them. See below. Bermicourt (talk) 07:00, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Portal:Eifel

Portal:Eifel, a page related to this project, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Eifel and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Eifel during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Bermicourt (talk) 07:00, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Portal:Ore Mountains

Portal:Ore Mountains, a page related to this project, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Ore Mountains and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Ore Mountains during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Bermicourt (talk) 07:00, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Portal:Elbe Sandstone Mountains

Portal:Elbe Sandstone Mountains, a page related to this project, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Elbe Sandstone Mountains and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Elbe Sandstone Mountains during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Bermicourt (talk) 07:00, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Portal:Westerwald

Portal:Westerwald, a page related to this project, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Westerwald and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Westerwald during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Bermicourt (talk) 07:00, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Portal:Lüneburg Heath

Portal:Lüneburg Heath, a page related to this project, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Lüneburg Heath and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Lüneburg Heath during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Bermicourt (talk) 07:00, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Portal:Palatine Forest

Portal:Palatine Forest, a page related to this project, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Palatine Forest and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Palatine Forest during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Bermicourt (talk) 07:00, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

How often to update? section

This section seemed to be completely out of date, still talking about monthly selections that have gone out of fashion ten years ago. From recent MFDs, it seems that community consensus is to require active maintenance, so I started a section about what kind of maintenance is expected. Please add to that so the guideline reflects community practice. On a related note, maybe we should flag up non-maintenance of portals before we get to MFD. Maybe tag any portal that hasn't been maintained for a year and MFD it when there has been no new content in a couple of months after? If portal maintenance status is important at MFD, our guidelines and processes should conform to that. —Kusma (t·c) 14:22, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

@Kusma, I reverted[1] your change. Please Please changes and discuss them, rather than unilaterally making changes controversial changes.

Raising two separate issues in one section isn't helpful. So I will reply in two parts:

When to update.The guidance specifically refers to portals which do not have automated rotations. There are still many portals using monthly selections, and many more which have no rotation of pages. The guidance there is for monthly updates, preferably week, which seems sound.

Tagging Even though there are only 830 portals within the scope of WP:WPPORT, 75% of them have not even been assessed (see Category:Unassessed Portal pages). If the portals project wants to change the habits of a decade and start assessing portals against community-agreed criteria (not just fandom), then that would be great. WP:WPPORT has been in existence for 13 years, and this utterly basic task hasn't happened.

It would also be great if portal fans began systematically tagging abandoned portals. I have seen that idea raised repeatedly at MFD as a plea to stave off deletion off abandoned junk, but those who propose never seem to do take any interest in the idea other than as a device to prolong the life of a page which has been abandoned for up to a decade (and sometimes more).

But I strongly oppose an attempt to make such tagging delay any MFD. After a decade of neglect, an abandoned portal with sod all readers and an inactive Wikiproject isn't going to rise from the dead like Lazarus just cos someone has stuck a tag on it.

This tweaking of guidelines radically misses the point of what's been happening these last few months, which is not complicated:

1. No barriers have been placed in the way of creating portals, so lots of editors created portals of portals, because creating lots of portals is fun. Few of those editors maintained those portals for long (if at all), and few other editors took over the maintenance. As the number of portals grew, the number of active editors declined, and the number of active WikiProjects shrank even more dramatically. So the ratio of potential maintainers to portals has plummeted.
2. So most of the portals rotted. As a result, 45% of the portals which existed before portalspam era have been deleted as abandoned. At least a hundred more meet the same deletion criteria, and remain in existence only because the editors who bring them to MFD need time to scrutinise and describe them.
3. As even portalspammer TTH noted in his final newsletter, some of the functionality of portals has been replicated by built-in features of the Wikimedia software. Other tools such as navboxes has developed massively in the past decade. It's increasingly hard to see what problems are intended to solve.

It really saddens me to see that after 6 months of pruning, so much of the discussion here remains about how to keep and/or update the abandoned portals. That's looks to me like denialism, hoping that pushing back hard enough will change the realities above.

The questions the portals project needs to ask are:

A. How can portals actually add sufficient value to justify their existence?

B. What types of types generate actually attract enough readers and maintainers to make them viable?

But so long as these pages are filled with trivia like update guidance, rather than asking the fundamental questions, the decline will continue. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:31, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

I didn't know my change was controversial; I thought it was an improvement. I am sorry to see that you prefer the previous version. The vast majority of portals I see do not use monthly selections (in the sense of "a new page every month", not "the same page every July, for ten years"). Anyway, this is a wiki, so my approach to change is WP:BRD. If you have ideas to improve this page, please do so. —Kusma (t·c) 05:46, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Best wait till things cool down then we can make real progress in the guideline. Give it a few months and we can see what is left to work on. No point now as every attempted change has been reverted. --Moxy 🍁 15:46, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Moxy, if you expect that delay will allow you and others to progress your desire to address the widespread quality problems with portals simply by lowering the standards, then you will be in for a long wait. After ten 13 years of the portals project presiding over a vast pile of unmaintained junk, community consensus has turned against the portal fans' desire to retain a sea of junk. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:09, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

WHAT was said is lets see what is left after the purge is over so we can talk on what is considered viable for future portals. As you can see its not possible to move forward when all we get is bad faith assumptions based on paranoia.--Moxy 🍁 16:08, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Proposal to delete Portal space

It has been proposed again that the entire Portal: namespace be deleted. Discussion is at WP:VPPR#Proposal to delete Portal space. Certes (talk) 00:16, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 26 September 2019

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.

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Wikipedia:Portal/Guidelines → Wikipedia:Portal/Information – An RfC has found clear consensus that the "Portal guidelines" are not, in fact, official guidelines. The closer has tagged the page as informational. Renaming the page will clarify its status and avoid its being inadvertently cited as if it were an official guideline, as has occurred in 878 MfDs. Certes (talk) 09:43, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

• Move - Makes sense. --Hecato (talk) 09:57, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

• Retag as failed works too. --Hecato (talk) 09:47, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

• Move, may help prevent the page being referred to as a guideline. —Kusma (t·c) 10:00, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

  Tagging as failed also works for me, and Help:Portals (per Wugapodes below) is also better than the proposed title. —Kusma (t·c) 18:03, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. No consensus it is an information page. It should instead be retagged {{failed}}, with the possibility (albeit unlikely and distant) of a major rewrite corresponding to a major restructure of portals in general. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:35, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

The Portal Information page already exists at Wikipedia:Portal. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:39, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

• Retag as {{failed}}, per SmokeyJoe. That's how you'd normally deal with failed guidelines. They can stay that way until the community agrees on a successor version. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 17:44, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
• Retag as {{failed}}. The current information page tag says "it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community" when this is false. A CENT advertised discussion on the village pump found that this essay doe not have consensus. The text of {{failed}} is a more accurate description of the history and level of consensus, namely "Consensus for its implementation was not established within a reasonable period of time". Second choice is to move to Help:Portals to emphasize that this is documentation of how portals are technically implemented. Third choice is to move as proposed, but I'm opposed to it remaining at this title unless retagged. Wug·a·po·des​ 17:52, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

  As proposer, I'm equally happy with Help:Portals as the new title. I also agree that the failed tag is appropriate. Certes (talk) 18:06, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose per SmokeyJoe, and tag as failed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:06, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
• Retag as {{failed}} per SmokeyJoe. 24.72.14.64 (talk) 03:13, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

• Retag as {{failed}} (1st choice) or move to Help:Portals (2nd choice). A no-brainer really. Recognition that this was never a valid guideline should have been done long before this, but was aggressively resisted by those keen to rely on ambiguous, poorly worded statements, as if they were policy mandated requirements of absolute imperatives in deletion rationales for Portal MFD's. Hopefully common sense can now prevail in such discussions. --Cactus.man ✍ 12:25, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
• Retag as {{failed}}, per the clear consensus that was determined at the RFC: Formalize Standing of Portal Guidelines as a Guideline (18 July 2019) discussion, and as an action congruent with the closing statement there that "there is clear consensus that the "Portal guidelines" are not, in fact, official guidelines." North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 15:58, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
• Speedy retag as {{failed}}. Contentious guideline that's often misinterpreted (and what I believe is a necessary hurdle to clear in order to properly address the usefulness of portals in the long run). ToThAc (talk) 17:04, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
• Suggest calling it "Advice" and keeping its label as an information page (other labels could be added as desired). As has been pointed out, the page was not written with the goal of attaining community consensus to be an official guideline, but simply to provide some advice for those interested in portals. Pages can fall short of having sufficient community consensus to be a guideline and yet still have enough support to be useful as an information page. It's not necessary to make a one-or-the-other choice: if long-standing guidance on any topic fails to pass an RfC to become a guideline, it doesn't mean the guidance is now null and void. It just isn't ready to be promoted to guideline status. isaacl (talk) 17:39, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
• agree with @Isaacl:; I think this page should be labeled as "advice" on portals. starting a whole new set of procedures from scratch is probably not realistic, or feasible. Sm8900 (talk) 18:37, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

  Isaacl, Sm8900: I'm not opposed to it either, but I think maybe that should be a separate discussion. ToThAc (talk) 20:29, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

  The original proposal is to rename this page to "Information". I don't think we can separate that from my suggestion to rename it to "Advice". Your suggestion is the retag the page as failed; that can be separated from my suggestion to keep the information tag, if you change your proposal to simply tag the page as failed. isaacl (talk) 04:51, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Advice to editors, from editors, should be tagged {{essay}}. Portals remain a problem area and opinions are contentious. It would not be appropriate for anyone to try to label their “advice” with pseudo-official looking taggery. For this page, the “advice” was not “advice” but was a {{proposal}} that {{failed}} to gain consensus. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:55, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose and retag as {{failed}}. Wikipedia:Portal already exists as an information page on portals, and considering this page's (former) status as a "guideline" that was largely written without consensus, the latter better fits the definition of a failed proposal. Geolodus (talk) 08:00, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
• Retag as {{failed}}: has no consensus. ɱ (talk) 14:58, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - If guideline is tagged {{failed}}, I believe this talk page will no longer be the best place for discussions about portals.Guilherme Burn (talk) 18:35, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

@Guilherme Burn: How about plain old Wikipedia talk:Portal as a suggestion, keep it at source? That talk page is currently a redirect to Wikipedia talk:Portal/Guidelines. I've no idea why, but it makes sense to me to centralise these discussions in one place. For far too long they've been hopelessly fragmented. --Cactus.man ✍ 20:04, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

@Cactus.man:, that seems like a good idea. 18:59, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose - Guidelines on portals are necessary, especially so that we have clear inclusion criteria for what is an acceptable portal and what is not. Just because there was an RfC that deprecated this page to an "information" page doesn't mean that there still isn't a need for actual guidelines. The next step in the process should be to find consensus on new guidelines, not to simply give up and rename the page. This page needs to be edited, not moved. ‑Scottywong| [chatter] || 21:15, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Okay, yeah, a guideline is important here, and fixing this is important. However, it is improper and misleading for it to be titled as a guideline now, when it is not actually a guideline. ɱ (talk) 23:57, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

so then we should change the name to simply Wikipedia: portals.

It is proper that a page set up to be a guideline it properly tagged, and the proper options are {{proposed}}, {{guideline}} or {{failed}}. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:58, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

• Retag as {{failed}} per accurate representation of what happened. We cant go pretending that this is still a guideline when its clearly not. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 15:26, 3 October 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.

Portal:Contents is really a portal?

It has been proposed that Portal:Contents its subpages and Portal:Featured content be moved to Wikipedia space. See Portal talk:Contents#Requested move 9 October 2019.Guilherme Burn (talk) 17:21, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

RFC: What rough number of selected articles demonstrates a portal with excellent long-term prospects

What size would be befitting of a portal with good long-term prospects? (More detailed query below.) ToThAc (talk) 14:52, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

As many users are aware, there's been an ongoing mass-deletion of portals that have failed in multiple aspects. Every day, more and more portals are being nominated at MfD, and it's showing no signs of stopping in the near future. I think it's been established that even as portal advocates are scrambling to make whatever improvements possible to certain portals (such as converting selected articles/pictures into slideshows), portal topics remain narrow and thus the subtle improvements fail to draw in new readers.

As a previous discussion showed, there has already been some dispute about how selected article counts should be construed when creating a portal. However, one user said something the other day in the deletion discussion for Portal:Chad that piques my interest:

Someone wrote: "There are now 30 rather than 24 articles. This is in my opinion broad enough coverage."
Absurd.
A portal, like a metaphysical doorway through which you have access to much. 30 articles is a one page list. It is woefully inadequate. I think the top portals should provide navigation to all six million articles. I think there should be 10-100 portals. Probably 10, maybe 100. If 100, these 100 Portals should cover the 6 million articles. 60 000 each? Well no, some areas are bigger than others. Half the articles are biographies, for example. But the answer should be in the thousands, not 30. 30 can be accessed by a list, and it doesn't even have to be sorted to be useful. A portal should be something clever and advanced, and capable of navigating to orders more than 30.

Speaking for myself, I wholly agree. The whole point of a portal is to provide extensive navigation over a wide range of articles, and nearly every portal I've come across (except obviously broad portals, such as Portal:Biography) fails in that regard. They rely too heavily on pseudorandom navigation, reader-unfriendly layouts, and continued user maintenance at unrealistic levels. That said, I think it's absolutely necessary to consider two questions on this matter: (A) how many portals are actually necessary for readers, and (B) what number of selected articles is actually helpful to readers in the long-term?

• Something like Portal:Biography, which has 2281 average daily pageviews in January-June 2019, is a great example of what constitutes an ideal portal.
• Something like Portal:Brazil, which on the other hand has 37 average daily pageviews in January-June 2019 (while the parent article had 9667 in the same time period), is not.

Pinging as many involved users as I can think of: Bermicourt, BrownHairedGirl, Guilherme Burn, Levivich, Mark Schierbecker, Newshunter12, Northamerica1000, Robert McClenon, SmokeyJoe, and UnitedStatesian. ToThAc (talk) 00:55, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

The problem of pages views is only related to accessibility and not an indicator of quality. Portals on the main page are visible to all readers - while other portals are barely seen by readers due to limitations in mobile view (just like how popus don't work for most readers). This could be fixed by changing the template type .... using portal inline over the normal box portal..... could have been done recently with all the edits changing portal types but for some reason this point was overlooked during the mass clean up of deleted portals.--Moxy 🍁 01:07, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Personally, I see a portal as an entry point to a topic area, and not a way to navigate through all of the related articles. The linked articles have their own cross-navigational tools such as navigation boxes that allows readers to delve deeper into related articles. This is in accordance with the doorway metaphor: a door lets you into a room that you can then explore. isaacl (talk) 01:18, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure that every article needs to be covered by a portal, so the portal/article ratio isn't terribly meaningful to me. I think the minimum number of articles for a portal should be more links than fit in an article and more links than fit in a nav template, whatever that number is. Something like 100 if I had to put a number on it. – Levivich 01:49, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Have always though given links to important articles in list ... but limit the amount of articles excerpts to related FA and GA articles. Portals should have a big enough scope to have a big enough selection of well written articles....be that 10 or 40. Setting limits is always difficult but setting standards should be easier.--Moxy 🍁 03:17, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Comment - Perhaps portals need to be simpler. At this time, I am testing a friendly layout on Portal:Computer programming.Guilherme Burn (talk) 01:21, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Looks great.....side note any progress on fixing image display on mobile devices....still rendering every image instead of just one...see File:Screenshot photo image error.png.--Moxy 🍁 01:40, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

@ToThAc: what is your brief and neutral statement? At over 3,000 bytes, the statement above (from the {{rfc}} tag to the next timestamp) is far too long for Legobot to handle, and so it is not being shown correctly at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines. The RfC will also not be publicised through WP:FRS until a shorter statement is provided. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:48, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you that worked. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:10, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

• Comment: I wouldn't call Portal:Biography an ideal portal. It has been improved a lot over time, but it is certainly not perfect. That giant list of Recognized articles is all sorts of things, but not navigationally valuable. The user might as well go to a category page (which we know users don't do. They want guided navigaton). It just has many pageviews because it is prominently linked. That demonstrates that pageviews should not be the measure of a portal's quality or utility. And I think it is kind of sad that so many people seem be so fixated on pageviews. Just link a low-pageview portal on the frontpage and it will have tens of thousands of pageviews tomorrow. But does that actually improve it in any way?

The number of selected articles does not really mean anything by itself. The question raised by this RfC is misguided in my opinion. It matters what is selected, why it is selected and how it is presented. There was an RfC recently about the purpose of portals, maybe take a look at the answers there. Portals are not supposed to be just giant navboxes. As other users pointed out above: among other things they are supposed to be a guided exploration into a topic area. That requires some specialization of the portal to the topic it is about. Just copy-pasting the same portal for every topic is not a good solution. Showcasing high quality content and interesting trivia are just some of the possible utilities a portal can offer. And I do not really see why broad topic areas should not offer such a guided navigation into their topic area, even if it has low pageviews. --Hecato (talk) 10:45, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

• Comment: There are also technical problems with very broad topics. How does one present 10,000 articles in a way that is actually useful to the reader? Also, as the encyclopedia grows, the number of articles associated with a portal will generally increase, so whatever formats are used must be able to scale unless portals can be split into subportals, and we all know how that went. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 05:13, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
• I concur with Hecato. Further, I think this discussion is kind of premature and "postmature" at the same time. For our current portals, both hand-maintained ones and the auto-created and rather skeletal ones, we have the problem that intensely focused advocacy against them by a handful of individuals has poisoned the well by blurring all distinctions between portals by depth, breadth, interest level, creation rationale, maintenance level and method, etc. On the other hand, it's also been proposed that portals need not even exist as pages but be autogenerated on the fly. Under such a model, questions about number of articles in the topic, number of page views and over how much time, etc., become meaningless. If I want WP to present me a portal of material pertaining to salamanders of genus Bolitoglossa, or 19th century cricket in India, that's my business. It's more important to decide what purposes portals should serve and how they get created, before hashing out finely detailed criteria, since many criteria would be irrelevant under different answers to the core what/how questions.  — AReaderOutThataway ^t/_c 23:07, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

• That portal autogeneration discussion (it was never a "proposal") never got any community consensus. I don't think I am going out on a limb to say that functionality will never exist in Wikipedia. UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:46, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Pshah. Anyone [competent] could implement it right now in JS, and it wouldn't take much to make it available as a Gadget under Preferences, like various other community-made tools. Don't confuse "what is officially part of Wikipedia as a matter of policy or WMF development cycles" with "what exists in/on Wikipedia"; the latter includes a boatload of unofficial technology, and that category expands all the time with new stuff that some people find useful and which sticks around as an option as long as it doesn't break stuff (or sometimes even when it does, like Visual Editor, if there's some force keeping it there, like WMF board decisions).  — AReaderOutThataway ^t/_c 08:28, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

• To the RfC section title, "What rough number of selected articles"?, the answer is Mu (negative). Selected articles are not serves a portal in fulfilling a function as a navigation tool. The question is "How many articles does the Portal serve to assist navigation to?" I submit that the number should be something like 100 000. Portal:Biography, which would ostensibly serve to navigate to biographies, if its purpose were to be stated, means that it corresponds to Category:People, which I believe (should) navigate downwards to ~2.5 million articles. (There is an issue/problem/weakness of the category system leakage into other category trees to articles that do not match the ultimate parent). Other broad subject areas are smaller than Biographies, but to be a tiny fraction of the biggest is to be too small.

NB. I completely agree with the "one user" that the OP quoted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:39, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

• Comment - I've not really been involved with the portal disputes (or with portals, really), but the bot summoned me so here goes. 30 articles does seem like an awfully small scope, but I don't think it's a good idea to set a specific minimum number. The general guidance seems sufficient. There does seem to be a value in the narrow scope, though, in that some narrow topics might not need as much regular maintenance. A historical topic, for example, or a popular television show that's off the air now, might not see much development in articlespace, and a portal probably wouldn't require much maintenance once it's set up. That's not to say that every narrow topic makes sense for a portal, of course -- I'm just getting at why setting a minimum number isn't ideal. I would also say, to respond to the quote in the opening statement, that the extremely broad categories don't make any sense to me. Why anyone would click on the the portal for a vast subject like "biography" or "arts" is beyond me, except if (a) they wanted a broad overview of what that concept means, in which case they should just read the article rather than the portal, or (b) if they see it as a way to find something more specific, in which case there are better ways to do that. The most important thing to determining the viability of a portal to me is the extent to which it's maintained relative to how dynamic the subject is (so, again, a politics portal would need maintaining more than an article about, say, the American Revolutionary War). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:15, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

RFC: Selection process of recognized content in portals

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.

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Attempts to codify a specific policy on portals. (Questions below.) ToThAc (talk) 05:40, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

This is sort of a continuation of the discussion above.

Since we have no real policy basis anymore for what the "ideal" portal should be, let's ask some fundamental questions going forward:

1. What rough number of selected articles would a portal absolutely and/or preferably need to prosper?
2. What selections of articles would be befitting? EX: Selections littered with systemic bias or whose subjects are only superficially related to a portal's scope are not worthy of this.
3. What maintenance strategies could be implemented to keep portals in check? How could a portal's content avoid content forking? Moreover, what kind of maintainer would be ideal?
4. What portal layout would actually attract readers and be easily accessible at the same time? Would lead-section transclusions of selected articles work (as done by NA1k)? Or is it too risky to implement?
5. Is there really even a need for portals other than Portal:Current events and those listed on the Main Page top banner? Wouldn't navboxes suffice instead? And mind you, navboxes aren't the only things making most portals obsolete.

Really, I just want to use this (actually highly important) discussion in an attempt to come to terms with portal advocates. I cannot stress enough how tired I am of arguing this out any longer, so I hope this discussion can at least invoke some form of common sense and avoid the Randy in Boise problem.

Pinging some users on both sides of the debate who participated in past discussions: Bermicourt, Britishfinance, BrownHairedGirl, Certes, Guilherme Burn, Levivich, Mark Schierbecker, Moxy, Ɱ, Newshunter12, Northamerica1000, Randy Kryn, Robert McClenon, SmokeyJoe, and UnitedStatesian. I think that should be everyone. ToThAc (talk) 05:40, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Survey (Q1)

• 100 – Levivich 05:43, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Survey (Q2)

Survey (Q3)

Survey (Q4)

Survey (Q5)

• No. It's a variation of WP:WTAF: we don't have enough quality content to fill up a lot of portals. Portals like Portal:Contents, Portal:Featured content, Portal:Current events, and the main page portals, have enough content to support them. – Levivich 05:46, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

General discussion

I know that ToThAc has v good intentions in launching this RFC, but this is premature. Another rushed, broad RFC doesn't help. We have had too many of those, and they all end up as inconclusive time sinks.

What we need now are separate, focused, RFCs on several narrow questions, where the questions have been discussed in advance to try to put all options on the table. I urge ToThAc to withdraw this proposal, and help build more tightly-focused RFCs. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:47, 9 November 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.

Are major nation portals about "broad subject areas"

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.

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Given the about 20 on-going MfDs about country portals. Can we get a consensus on whether a nation is a broad subject area? --Hecato (talk) 09:44, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Poll

• Yes. Major nations tend to have a large article scope. Potential for useful navigation to a broad category tree, a lot of interested editors and a large number of potential readers. Exceptions might be very small countries. --Hecato (talk) 09:44, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
• Of course countries are broad subject areas. —Kusma (t·c) 10:17, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

• From a personal standpoint, I view nations as a broad topic if they have a sufficient amount of coverage on English Wikipedia, which many do. However, some country portals are being deleted at MfD relative to WP:POG for 1) having outdated content that presents outdated information, 2) having an insufficient amount of content, 3) having a lack of active maintainers, and 4) having relatively poor page views. As such, these matters are being hammered out at MfD on a case-by-case basis.

A question is whether or not the deletion of nation portals is final, like they've been WP:SALTED, although I've never seen the first deletion of a portal resulting in creation protection. One would think that it could at least theoretically be permissible at some time for a later re-creation of a portal that was deleted. In my view, this would hinge on a re-created portal that contains adequate content, has an active maintainer or maintainers, and for topics which have a sufficient amount of coverage on Wikipedia. Of course, for a re-created portal, page views could also come into play later on, in terms of whether or not a re-created portal receives a decent amount of views after its been live for some time. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 11:52, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

• Yes. Look at any category page for any given country and you will find that they all have many, many articles. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 11:58, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes its actually one of the main reasons we made portals and outlines so that "See also" sections of country articles are not spammed with links and that we have an overview for our readers in two different formats just as we do with "Help" style pages..see Canada#See also - Australia#See also - India#See also - Germany#See also etc..--Moxy 🍁 15:53, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

• It depends. To take one example: there are 36 countries listed at Wikipedia:Vital articles#Countries (37 articles) (Country being the 37th), and my view is, because of their combination of population, length of history, importance in world politics and economics, etc., that subset of current countries are what aligns pretty well with WP:POG's "broad subject area" requirement, and that none of the other current countries are likely to meet the guideline. To take another example, there are 517,167 pages in the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject United States, and only 1,840 in the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject Gabon. See the difference? In addition, similarly major historical "countries" such as Ancient Rome and Ottoman Empire (both of which also happen to be on the vital article list) would also meet the requirement, in my opinion. UnitedStatesian (talk) 18:08, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Discussion on broad subject areas

• Recent MfDs tend do go "delete" because the portals are abandoned, unused, and unmaintained (having News sections last updated ten years ago is embarrassing), not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with the topics. The similarly abandoned and unused "Outline of ..." or "Index of ..." articles also demonstrate the wealth of content. In portal space, we seem to have somewhat higher expectation of readership and maintenance status than in article space. For maintenance status, that makes sense: mini-Main pages should not look like an abandoned neighbourhood of your city. Page views just demonstrate that work on portals is probably not going to reach as many people as work on popular articles (still, Portal:Germany is more popular than many of the articles I have written), but as this is a project of volunteers, we tend to work on what we enjoy, not on what is most urgently needed. —Kusma (t·c) 10:17, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
  • I guess I am most interested in whether it is acceptable to recreate portals for these subjects without having to deal with a barrage of speedily deletion notices followed by another MfD. Editors have offered to fix these country portals when they get nominated, but the deletion votes did not change. --Hecato (talk) 10:36, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
    • It seems to me that recent MFD voters are looking for long-term maintenance, not WP:HEY fixes. I don't really agree (I'd say the page should be provisionally kept, but then revisited a year or two later if maintenance has failed again), but I do think we should have some realistic expectations and clear criteria for maintenance and at the same time a process that allows portal maintainers who have forgotten to update their portal to come back to it without an uphill battle at MFD and DRV. See my section below and recent guideline change. —Kusma (t·c) 14:27, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
      • I have reverted your change to the guieline.[2] Please propose changes and discuss them, rather than unilaterally making changes controversial changes. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:31, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

• Silly, tendentious, leading question. Countries can sometimes be broad subject areas, usually if they attract large numbers of readers and maintainers. Smaller and less developed countries repeatedly fail to meet those criteria. We can make estimates in advance, but in practice we find that data throws up many surprises.

This is not complicated:

1. A portal without a large number of maintainers rots
2. A portal without large numbers of readers is a pointless exercise, like publishing a magazine with no readers.
3. A portal without large numbers of readers won't have many people spotting problems with it, so is unlikely to be maintained.

Some editors who like portals per se seem determined to ignore those basic issues of utility.

A portal is not content; it is a tool for navigating and/or showcasing content. An unused tool is pointless, and an unmaintained tool is useless. The only purpose of this question is to try to nmaufacture some sort of exemption for a particular class of topic from the necessity that a portal is used and maintained. That may be a very attractive prospect to those enjoy creating and/or editing portals, but it does a great disservice to our readers. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:27, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

• I am merely interested in finding out what topics are broad enough to create portals about. Looking at recent mass MfDs I feel there is a trend towards "none". Maybe I am wrong. What topics can portals be created about? --Hecato (talk) 08:45, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

• The low number of editors interested in maintaining portals (and these are often the same editors who create, and thus might also be expected to maintain, indices etc) means that the number of high-quality portals that can be reliably maintained is probably less than 100. Given that many of these portals (e.g. Portal:Animals) are not about countries the number of country portals would be low (e.g. under 10). It would save discussion/bickering over which countries are important enough to "deserve" a portal to not have any country portals; there would still be continent portals. DexDor ^(talk) 11:02, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

• Funny that you say that since Portal:Antarctica is currently up for deletion --Hecato (talk) 11:20, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

• I was thinking more of the continents containing countries. DexDor ^(talk) 19:17, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

• How about Asia, or the entire Solar System, both are up for deletion currently. --Hecato (talk) 13:05, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

• Forum-shopping. Since this discussion is clearly a WP:POINTy attempt to generate some sort of meta-consensus to override MFD discussions, @Hecato should make it a formal RFC and notify the relevant MFDs. Otherwise it will just be blatant forum-shopping. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:26, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

• Note: A user offered to create a widescale RfC for this question, but the complainant above changed their mind and voiced strong opposition to the idea. --Hecato (talk) 13:06, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

• Sadly, I am not in the slightest bit surprised that Hecato has chosen yet again to dishonestly misrepresent my comments. That has been Hecato's repeated practice since shortly after I first encountered Hecato about two months ago, and it is as predictable as it is uncivil.

The discussion is at User_talk:Hecato#RfC?, where editors can see for themselves how I a) pointed out that the proposal would not achieve the desired effect, and b) asked why anyone would want to establish a mechanism to allow the retention or re-creation of unread and unmaintained portals.

I stand my by statement above that if Hecato or anyone else wants this change, they should open an RFC. And I have not changed my view that it would be a very bad idea. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:02, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

You literally said you oppose the RfC and its objective and you would "shred it" if it was created. You did not say you would vote "no" in the RfC, you said you oppose the RfC itself. If you oppose the creation of an RfC then do not demand one. I was willing to go along with your demands, but it turned out be just another tactic. I am tired of you wasting everyone's time with your political maneuvering. --Hecato (talk) 18:14, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Hecato, this is all very simple.

1. I did not "demand" an RFC. I demanded that no change be made without an RFC
2. I do not want this change. If do not want an RFC
3. However, this change should me made only of approved at an RFC
4. So if you want a change like this, it needs an to go an RFC.
5. If you do not want to open an RFC, that is absolutely fine by me. Just don't think you can make such a change without an RFC
6. No pre-approval needed to open an RFC. Anyone can do it, unilaterally.
7. I think that the proposal is very bad, and if it goes to RFC, I will oppose the change.
8. So my statement that h I intend to oppose the TC means that I will !vote to oppose the proposal. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:00, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

I have not been engaged in wasting everyone's time with your political maneuvering, or anything like it. I have been clear and consistent in my view throughout. The only timewasting is your repeated determination to get in a strop because you persistently fail or refuse to understand plain English. Given the frequency with which you do this, you could save yourself and everyone else a lot of drama by simply asking for calcification before you fly off the handle again and make another round of bogus accusations or misrepresentations. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:00, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

If you feel like this venue is too small to generate a consensus about whether nations are broad topics then feel free to create an RfC. As you said anyone can do it. I think this venue is fine since it is about the exact guideline page that demands a "broad" topic area in the first place. I see no forum shopping in my choice of venue. If you disagree then the option of creating an RfC is open to you. I am not willing to cooperate with you any further in that regard though. --Hecato (talk) 19:15, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Hecato, many dozens of MFDs have now made a case-by-case analysis of whether a country constitutes a broad topic, and have weighed that against other POG criteria such as pageviews, number of maintainers, existence of a wikiproject, and have also considered the current condition of the portal.

If you want to make a change designed to achieve different outcomes and explicitly to alter the consensus of so many recent discussions, then it needs the broader consensus which can only be achieved at WP:RFC, not the WP:LOCALCONSENSUS of the editors who frequent this page.

I am bemused to see an editor who has been here for two months repeatedly asserting that they know en.wp procedure better than an admin of 13 years' experience. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

This request for consensus is not about overruling the outcomes of MfDs, but about whether nations are broad topic areas in the sense of POG. If they are then people could create portals about them. That would only (partially) invalidate MfDs if these MfDs came to the conclusion that you could not recreate those deleted country portals. The point is to prevent harassment of portal creators and maintainers from speedy deletions and repeated MfDs after they recreate portals for these topics. The constant threat of MfDs disincentivizes portal creation and adoption of old portals by maintainers. Nobody wants to improve portals while the brigade is out for blood. There need to be boundaries for what topics are safe. Otherwise nothing will improve. But maybe that is your intention. --Hecato (talk) 19:53, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

@Hecato, first, please drop the battleground language. Nobody is out for blood, and no blood has been or will be spilt. WP:harassment is a serious matter. If you have actual evidence that it is happening, then take that evidence to ANI ... but given the rest of your battlefield language, I assume that is just more of the same hyperbole.

Next, this discussion is not a WP:RFC. It is a local discussion, whose outcome (if there is one) can not be assumed to reflect a broad community consensus.

If you want hard boundaries for what topics are safe, then they will need to be drawn very tightly, because it's clear that there is a large grey zone of topics which might in the abstract be argued to be "broad", but which in practice have come nowhere near attracting viable numbers of either readers or maintainers. It has been very notable in the last few months of MFDs that there has been almost no support for the portals from the associated WikiProjects (as required by POG), and that objections continue to come overwhelmingly from the small core of portal specialists ... and that core has utterly inadequate to maintain the vast numbers of portals which have been rotting for a decade. So a desire to create new portals in those conditions looks completely misplaced.

The claim that portals are rotting because of MFD is absurd: we have had only 6 months of MFDs, but the rot goes back years.

I have no general desire to disincentivizes portal creation and adoption of old portals by maintainers. But I do strongly hope that potential creators and maintainiers are massively disincentivised to continue their decade-long practice of ignoring POG. Even at this late stage, potential maintainers and creators still seem astonishingly slow to wake up to the fact that a) POG actually specifies at least 4 key criteria for the existence of a portal, and b) there a remarkably consistent MFD consensus that a portal needs to meet all those criteria. It's long past time for portal enthusiasts to start a systematic and proactive assessment and prioritisation of portals, instead of still moaning about the demise of some of the sea of neglected or abandoned junk. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:29, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I have no interest to continue this conversation, but I have to at least correct your claim about Wikiprojects. The guideline specifically says To aid in this, the portal should be associated with a WikiProject (or have editors with sufficient interest) and notes the quote: "You don't have to join our project to work on military history articles. We welcome everyone who wants to help improve these topics, and encourage you—project member or not—to participate in all of our activities and take complete advantage of the support we offer." --Hecato (talk) 17:10, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

This gives an indication of how interested MILHIST editors are in portals. DexDor ^(talk) 18:53, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that link, @DexDor. The zero response to your request at Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 152#Call_for_portal_maintainers also speaks volumes.

MILHIST is an exceptionally well-organised an active project. When even they are so uninterested in portals, there's little hope for any of the others.

Hecato's attempt at squeezing nuances out of POG by textual analysis misses the point that POG requires multiple maintainers, but very few portals have even one. The result is that MFD continues to be fed a stream of abandoned junk. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:06, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Link fixed. Note: That call for portal maintainers was by UnitedStatesian. DexDor ^(talk) 05:28, 10 September 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.

RFC: Community opinion concerning a proposed method of displaying selected content in portals

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Procedural close per SmokeyJoe's comment. I wonder if BHG was even made aware of this discussion at all. Never mind, she was. Seems to be some sort of misunderstanding on her behalf. ToThAc (talk) 19:10, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

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Northamerica1000's attempts at transcluding lead sections of selected content for portals was previously implemented without consensus. However, I'd like to know if there is consensus at all for this. ToThAc (talk) 23:50, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

On BrownHairedGirl's request, I'm going to try and resolve the "portal wars" in separate RfCs, starting with this question.

About a month ago, Northamerica1000 attempted to "update" some underviewed portals by ditching the currently used subpage transclusion for the selected content in favor of a transclusion of the lead section of the selected article(s) in question. Said changes were repeatedly reverted by BrownHairedGirl as "sneaky" and "undiscussed", as NA1k never sought consensus for his proposed changes, and the content itself had additional problems, such as a clear-cut systemic bias towards the United States and some selections only being superficially related to the portal subjects as a whole.

And then when Moxy filed an ANI request, it resulted in a rather ugly stalemate.

So now, I think it's time we start afresh. Should we go with NA1k's proposed changes of using lead section transclusions in displaying selected articles in portals, or should we stick to using subpages?

As for me, I have no opinion on this measure as long as there's no obvious systemic bias or superficial content involved. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ToThAc (talk • contribs) 23:50, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Northamerica1000's attempts at transcluding lead sections of selected content for portals was previously implemented without consensus is unfair. The problem of content forked into portal pages, and the solution of instead transcluding lede section was discussed, without opposition, at Wikipedia_talk:Portal/Guidelines/Archive_6#Portals_are_moribund. Implementing that discussion is not even BOLD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:34, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Preliminary discussion

I think it's best that we first try to understand the scope of the discussion first before doing anything major. Pinging some users on both sides of the debate who participated in past discussions: Bermicourt, Britishfinance, BrownHairedGirl, Certes, Guilherme Burn, Levivich, Mark Schierbecker, Moxy, Ɱ, Newshunter12, Northamerica1000, Randy Kryn, Robert McClenon, SmokeyJoe, and UnitedStatesian. I think that should be everyone. ToThAc (talk) 23:50, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

• ToThAc, thanks for pinging me here. I am certainly open to helping in a structured discussion on the topic if helpful. However, I want to drop term "wars" from this. Any time this term has become in use in a subject area in WP it has turned out badly for all sides (the Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/EvergreenFir is a case in point). It is not worth it - this is a hobby/intellectual engagement activity (at least for me), and it should not be a source of "war" for anybody. Editing on WP can involve stress and conflict, but it should not be "war".

Also, as I have posted several times at MfD (latterly at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Alaska), the high majority of portals have become so functionally obsolete in Wikipedia, that they are not worth getting stressed over, and their long-term collapse is simply unavoidable. My increased interest in portals is only really because we have such highly productive admins like BrownHairdGirl (and also BD2412), who are willing to do the extensive clean-up needed after a portal is deleted (otherwise it would be even more of a mess).

I am therefore not the best person for engaging on the "technical" aspects of portals, per your valid questions above. I have posted on BHGs (and NA1Ks) talk pages that I think the long-term solution to portals, and the ultimate balance of Main Articles (plus their Navboxes) vs. Portals vs. WikiProjects, is to merge portals into WikiProjects and get WikiProjcts linked onto article pages (discussed here and here), but it has not taken root. I will observe these RfCs, but am unlikely take much part in the "technical" debates that you are proposing. thanks. Britishfinance (talk) 01:15, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

• Though successfully brought some of NA1000's overhauls to deletion to MfD, I find BHG's mass reversion of NA1000's edits in early October to be highly perplexing. In the case of my ongoing MfD nomination of Portal:Transport I was persuaded that BHG's reversion was counterproductive. I reverted her edits in light of the strong consensus emerging in favor of NA1000's revision, only to be reverted by BHG again hours later. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 05:41, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
• Why does this need an RfC? Both methods can result in good portals, and both methods can result in bad portals. I would oppose any move to outlaw any of these portal types, and would also oppose any move to outlaw conversion of portals from one type to the other (of course the regular maintainers should be involved in this decision, if there are any). Behavioural issues between editors should not be settled by changing content guidelines that do not need changing. —Kusma (t·c) 07:33, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

What Is the Question, anyway

It is unfortunate that I don't really understand the question in sufficient detail to give a straightforward answer. User:BrownHairedGirl criticized an RFC that was posted less than 24 hours ago as being rushed and too broad. This RFC, less than 24 hours after the previous one, seems rushed. Maybe it would have been better to request the preliminary discussion before putting an RFC tag on, and simply asking the previous participants for their comments, "first before doing anything major", but something at least medium-sized has already been done. I think that the question is a false dichotomy. The author, User:ToThAc, writes: "Should we go with NA1k's proposed changes of using lead section transclusions in displaying selected articles in portals, or should we stick to using subpages?" Are those the only options? I don't think so. Also, I am not sure exactly what style of lead section transclusion is being discussed.

There are at least two distinct ways of using subpages. The more common old-fashioned way is to content-fork the lede paragraph of the article, followed by a link to the article. This approach is unsound, because the lede paragraph of the article is updated, but not the content fork, which results in content rot. A typical error is failure to report the death of the subject of a biography. A better alternative that is sometimes used is to replace the content-fork with a transclusion of the lede paragraph, which will then link back to the remainder of the article. However, there are also other approaches, some of which are single-page, some of which BHG refers to either as mega-navbox or black box, which use either externally visible lists or internally embedded lists. (I am not entirely sure what in particular she means by black box, other than that there is no obvious way to determine what the articles are without looking inside the black box, which violates the concept of black box). My recollection is that BHG listed five styles of portal architecture. This appears to be a comparison of two of them, but I only think I understand the first one, the use of content-forked subpages. I don't know whether you are asking for a choice between content-forked subpages and transcluding subpages, or between content-forked subpages and some sort of embedded lists.

So I think that this RFC has also been rushed. I don't know whether clarifying the RFC at this time is feasible, or whether it needs to be withdrawn a second time, or what. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:31, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree that this too has been rushed. It would have been much better to take time to discuss the questions before going live.

I particular, I think that the framing of this question around one editor is a very bad approach. It avoidably personalises a question of principles. It would be much better to address the actual issues, rather than to invite support or opposition for any one editor.

There is secondary problem in that ToThAc comments stray outside the scope set by the heading, and introduce issues unrelated to the structure, such as NA1K's population of the list.

It seems to me that the first issue at stake here is: How should the list of selected articles be presented? I see at least 5 options: a) as bare list ("mega-navbox") style; b) as a bare list with random preview (e.g. Portal:Wind power); c) as a random preview with a link to a list to list on another page (as with many of the content-forked portals); d) as a random preview with no list (i.e the "black box" model which NA1K sneakily imposed on many dozens of portals); e) as an annotated list with a short description to accompany each entry. There may be more possibilities.

The question of how to select articles is a separate question. Whatever decisions are made about selection apply regardless of what presentation method is chosen, asnnd vice versa.

I urge ToThAc to withdraw this RFC, and instead to discuss the framing of questions before going live. It is v clear that ToThAc brings lots of goodwill and evident desire to resolve problems ... but they are proceeding far too fast, with too little preparation. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:23, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Also, whenever a set of questions has been agreed, the discussion should be hosted at the village pump, where they will be drawn to the attention of a much wider audience than on this talk page of a failed proposal.

And I think that ToThAc has somewhat misunderstood the discussion on my talk page. I merely observed that we needed RFCs to resolve a set of narrow points of contention. Somehow, ToThAc has interpreted that as a request from me that they should single-handedly, without further discussion, open those RFCs themself. That was not at all what I intended.

As I noted in the promptly-closed RFC above this, what we need is RFCs on several narrow questions, where the questions have been discussed in advance to try to put all options on the table.

This is still what we need. Less haste, more preparation, please. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:35, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Example portal

As per the understood concept of what a portal should be Wikipedia:Portal#Purposes of portals and based on many of the concerns raised by those opposed to portals who are concerned with things like portals going stale, selection of articles and listing articles selected....I have rebuild Portal:Canada to what I think a portal can be.....that is many things for different readers. The articles selected are transcluded assuring they are kept up-to-date with the news and DYK supported by two very very active projects related to our main page.....so what is this....1) A showcase of our best related content as assessed by the community alongside vital articles as seleted by the related wikiproject. 2) A navigational aid listing realted featured and vital content while listening what is presnted in the portal itself. 3) An introduction to the related wikiproject and it's subproject with an overview of discussions taking place related to the project and the pages it covers. --Moxy 🍁 03:54, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

• Keep Portal:Canada – nice job Moxy, very well done. Can you give us some stats, e.g., how many FAs, how many WikiProjects, etc., filling this portal? – Levivich 07:34, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Around 200 featured articles and bios...23 symbolic articles (a few GA.s in there)....22 top level overview vital articles as per project Canada....almost 50 images (most featured images)....90 DYK in rotation with more every week provided by the DYK project....new news and years of archive news content provided those at Portal:Current and wikinews..Sub pages populated by automated bots intended for Wikiproject. tracking and maintenance.....all but the images transcluded. --Moxy 🍁 07:57, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.