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Requests for arbitration

Arbitration Committee proceedings
Request name Motions Initiated Votes
Portal Issues   23 March 2019 2/6/1
[edit]
Open cases

Currently, no arbitration cases are open.

[edit]
Recently closed cases (Past cases)
Case name Closed
Venezuelan politics 25 May 2024
Request name Motions  Case Posted
Amendment request: Conduct in deletion-related editing Motion (orig. case) 30 April 2024
Amendment request: Article titles and capitalisation none (orig. case) 13 May 2024
Clarification request: Extended confirmed restriction none none 29 May 2024

No arbitrator motions are currently open.

Portal Issues

Initiated by Robert McClenon (talk) at 22:42, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Statement by Robert McClenon

This is a request for arbitration of conduct issues involving portals, including the creation of portals, and debates over the deletion of portals. There have been several threads at WP:AN and WP:ANI on this topic, and some of the cases are still open, as listed above. Perhaps the most heated is also listed above, which resulted in no consensus with regard to the two parties, but a widely expressed view that the matter would need to go to ArbCom. Arbitration is a last resort and is needed when the community is unable to resolve a conflict, as is evident in this case. The primary focus is Miscellany for Deletion discussions for the requested deletion of portals, and Deletion discussions are often controversial. I am asking ArbCom to consider whether either ArbCom discretionary sanctions should be available in deletion discussions in general. I am of course also asking ArbCom to consider whether civility violations by the parties require sanctions. I am also asking ArbCom to consider whether the creation of thousands of portals, some of them defective, by User:The Transhumanist and others, was disruptive editing in itself.

The community is divided by at least three types of issues. The first is policy issues, of what the policy should be regarding the creation and maintenance of portals. The consensus in May 2018 not to abolish portals was not a consensus to create thousands of new portals. The second type of issues is questions of deletion or retention of portals, and deletion is a content issue. The third is conduct issues, which interfere with the orderly resolution of the policy and content issues. I am specifically asking ArbCom to resolve the conduct issues.

I have no objection to a mandated hiatus on requests for the deletion of portals. However, I find the statement of concern that the critics of portals are attempting a fait accompli by piecemeal deletion of portals after discussion in a public community forum to be ironic, after thousands of portals were created without discussion and then their existence has been cited as the status quo that should be left alone. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:50, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that this case has strong similarities to the Infobox cases. Infoboxes and Portals are both optional features of Wikipedia. Some editors love them; some editors hate them; some editors behave badly in pushing their viewpoint. ArbCom tried to let or tell or order the community to deal with infobox wars before finally imposing an effective draconian remedy. The issue of Portals or No Portals will continue to annoy and divide the community until the ArbCom concludes that a draconian remedy is in order.

…

It will be overly optimistic for ArbCom to decline this case by thinking that the community is a few days or weeks away from solving it. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:25, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

…

Statement by The Transhumanist

Statement by SMcCandlish

This is long overdue. It's remarkably similar to WP:ARBDATE, WP:ARBATC, WP:ARBINFOBOX, WP:ARBINFOBOX2: repetitive debating over content-presentation matters that most editors don't care about, but which some are turning into an excuse for WP:POINTy antics and for uncivilly personalizing disputes against certain parties over and over and over again. It's turned into a full-on WP:BATTLEGROUND, though most of the parties named above are not engaged in battleground behavior. I'll get into the diffing later; this is a workday for me. Just to be clear: Unless forced to, I am not going to dwell on the recent misunderstanding between myself and BrownHairedGirl, which is only incidentally connected to this topic (it was more about user-talk namespace than any particular subject); both of us agreed at ANI not to make that an RfArb dramafest. The fact that the portals debate – despite an RfC last year, and a new RfC being drafted, and an huge AN discussion – has turned into a roiling brawl seems to indicate that it's ripe for ArbCom.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:20, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Responses to Kusma and Voceditenore:
@Kusma: your "big difference" isn't a relevant one. All of these were editorial civility and disruption cases, over matters of guideline (not policy) compliance, about presentational matters most editors consider trivial, and involving a small number of entrenched "your side vs. my side" editors – just like this one. The "mainspacishness" of any of them was no component of any of these ArbCom cases. Also, your comment below "Consensus on the simplest possible cleanup solution (just nuke the lot) hasn't quite arrived yet" is highly misleading (presumably unintentionally so). In last year's RfC at WP:VPPOL there was a strong consensus against such a notion. We may yet arrive at a consensus to delete all automated portals, or all those per [insert some new criterion here], but it has not happened yet. And it clearly will not be a consensus to delete all portals, since we just went over that within the year at the community's broadest venue.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:17, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I thank Kusma for the clarification below.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:25, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Voceditenore provides mostly a good nutshell summary of the entire issue, other than I take exception to the declaration of The_Transhumanists's post-RfC activity as "clearly disruptive". WP:DE has a specific and constrained definition here, it's not just some hand-wavey "feeling" someone has. WP:EDITING is a central policy; that which is not expressly forbidden is permissible to be attempted, and to be refined and improved, unless and until the community actually does forbid it. And the AN result isn't a general topic ban, but an interim result pending further discussion. Aside from these quibbles, I agree with every word of Voceditenore's section so far. The POINTy behavior at MfD, and the incivility, strongly reminds me of the FAITACCOMPLI and BATTLEGROUND antics that led to ARBINFOBOX.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:25, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I get where Voceditenore is coming from, but creating a large number of one-liner micro-stubs on "nothing" topics is disruptive because of WP:N; we have clear minimum standards for articles. We don't really for portals, but vague ones about topic "breadth" whatever that really means. It isn't necessary to declare The_Transhumanist to be "disruptive" for the community to get rid of portals we don't think are useful, nor to develop clearer criteria. I'd been warning The_Transhumanist that having separate portals for thing like "spaghetti" and "strawberries" isn't likely to meet with community approval (they should redirect to broader topics like Portal:Pasta, etc.). I'm not "taking a side" in this. The very fact that it's become polarized into "death to portals" versus "any portal imaginable is okay" is markedly unhelpful. That, at the personalization of the issue is problematic. This isn't about what a terrible person editor A or B is, its about what criteria we want to establish for portals and how we get there. If this case is accepted, it should be about behavioral problems that get in the way of consensus formation about that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:34, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion rationales: This will addresses several parties' comments, at least in part: "The Transhumanist made it" isn't a deletion rationale. "It was created after some people expressed a concern but the community came to no consensus that agreed with those concerns, and instead closed with a strong consensus against deprecating portals, without addressing more specific criteria for them" isn't a deletion rationale. "Was created with a semi-automated tool" isn't a deletion rationale. "Nobody's manually working on it right now" isn't a deletion rationale. Arguably, "is a topic with fewer than 20 articles" is one, but even this has been disputed (another page says 3, I think; this was discussed at the AN thread). There's another one, for topics too narrow in scope, but it's subjective and people aren't sure what it's supposed to mean (see the ongoing spate of MfDs, which vary from near-unanimous delete to near-unanimous keep, and everything in between). It's not ArbCom's job to answer these questions (since they're about content), but the behavioral problems need to be restrained.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:38, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Legacypac

  1. [1]
  2. At Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Alhambra, California User:Ɱ (who should be party if this proceeds) says "A guideline (WP:POG) that I don't have to follow" and "you even stated in one that you were spreading out the nominations (not several portals in one nom) in order to give the impression of more nominations against small city portals. That's essentially fraud." I believe this is a bad faith fabrication.
  3. In the same MFD TTH says [2] which is very problematic.
  4. If this is accepted I'm prepared to show User:Thryduulf behavior is suboptimal. By suggesting we stop MFDs now he is forumshopping arbcomm to get what he can't get at the AN WP:X3 discussion. Even if all Portal MfDs close delete, the deletion rate per day will be much slower than the creation rate per day as seen here [3]
  5. The accusation by User:OhanaUnited that I have made "repeated xenophobic comments at multiple pages" [4] is so outrageous it may be Desyop worthy for it shows serious competancy and civility issues. I request this Admin be added to this case and that their conduct be examined here. Legacypac (talk) 19:23, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  6. An Admin templating me like some vandal [5]
  7. Because WP:CSD talk is a secret page [6]and someone should notify 30 or 40 or whatever MfD discussions about a CSD policy suggestion.
  8. an excellent summary of this trainwreak [7] and when portal pusher Northamerica1000 tried to save an opera related portal from deletion by alerting a wikiproject, even more detail on what a disaster these are [8].
  9. Thryduulf has a strange fixation on my editing. He points to an ANi he started on me that got no traction as evidence there is a problem with me, when actually several editors took him to task on his involvement with portal in his own ANi thread. If one can't get anyone to take your complaints seriously at ANi, bringing the same beef to ArbComm is not usually the correct action. He is now quoting one of my replies in his section out of context (where I refer to another user's plan as backward). The post makes perfect sense within the conversation.
  10. "Your friendly WikiProject Portals" not only flooded the project with new junk but THe Transhumanist, Dreamy Jazz, and Northamerica1000 [9] restarted many portals like Portal:Beer where their automated junk tools added 6 DYKs including "... that Frank Beermann conducted the first recording of Bruno Maderna's Requiem, and the German premiere of Péter Eötvös's opera Love and Other Demons at the Chemnitz Opera? and DYK... that Beerbohm, a cat owned by the Gielgud Theatre, became famous for entering actors' dressing rooms, attacking props, and wandering across the stage during performances? Similar off topic DYK's have been found on other portals. We all make editing errors but there is a pattern here worthy of attention. Not only do readers not look at portals, it seems this group of editors does not even look at the pages they pump out.
  11. User:GoldenRing, acting in good faith, actually derailed WP:X3 by extending the discussion that had reached concensus after a full week (plus the extra time when many users suggested X3 before the AN proposal at VPP). Left in limbo by GoldenRing, MfD was flooded with portals with thousands to come, nearly all of which are being deleted.
  12. Misleading [10] even many of the keep voters wanted a cleanup but instead we got an explosion of trash.
  13. @User:MPS1992 because what User:Waggers posted is laughably incorrect. See WP:MFD

Statement by BrownHairedGirl

I see no need for such a broad Arbcom case. Thee may be some individual conduct issues to examine, but that's all.

The broad facts are simple. A huge number of portals were created by a semi-automated process, and this has been highly controversial. Some of the more extreme creations have been taken to MFD (e.g. University of Fort Hare), and and RFC is considering whether to have a special speedy-deletion criteria for others.

Views vary widely, but are not intractably polarised. So what the community most needs now is broad RFC to settle which portals (if any) should exists. An Arbcom case would merely distract energy from that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:17, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I am disappointed to see the "accept" votes by Joe Roe and RickinBaltimore. I agree that there are some conduct issues, but the main problem here is that after the WP:ENDPORTALS RFC was closed as "don't delete all the portals", there was no followup RFC to establish a consensus on which portals the community does want.
more of this comment
The mass portal creation by @The Transhumanist happened in that policy vacuum. TTH ignored many request for restraint, but others cheered the flood of portalspam, and nobody opened that broad RFC. (I was going to try in Sept/Oct 2018, but gave up when the portal project's response varied between apathy and hostility; it felt like I would be fighting a lone battle).
This problem can be resolved by establishing a broad consensus on portal criteria. If that consensus exists, then the community will have a clear framework for restraining editors who engage in either excessive creation or excessive deletionism. But without such a consensus, there is no basis for restraining mass creation or mass deletion.
So if arbcom takes a case now, and its outcome is to restrain the worst-behaved editors, we will have still have the same underlying problem: no broad community consensus on which which portals (if any) should exist. The result will just be a fresh set of editors finding themselves in conflict due to the lack of guidelines.
A conduct case now will drag a lot of editors into defensive recrimination rather than building that broad consensus. Arbcom may choose to mandate a process for achieving consensus, but even if it does so, that will come only after the energy sink and recrimination of an arbcom case.
The community is already taking action. It has agreed a moratorium on mass creations, and is discussing a speedy deletion criterion. If it does not proceed to develop a broader framework for the underlying question, then arbcom may need to signpost that process ... but a case at this stage would have the perverse effect of impeding a solution.
The most constructive thing which arbcom could do now is to pass a motion setting a framework for the broad RFC on portals, as it did with the Macedonia naming issue. Questions such as how an RFC can be framed, who designs it, and how it is closed could be set by arbcom. That's the best path to an actual solution. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:02, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
responses to Thryduulf unfounded criticisms
  • I strongly object to the statement[11] by @Thryduulf that I have declared a "war on portals". The WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality conveyed by that statement is pure projection, and a gross misrepresentation of what I have been doing.
In the last few weeks I have MFDed fifteen portals only as a product of a quarry check which I have ran with increasing thresholds to identify portals with an excessively narrow scope. That's about 0.5% of the total number of portals;which is hardly a "war". Of those (01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15), twelve were closed as "delete" with no objections; one (#08) was closed as delete with 1 objection; and two (#01, #10) remain open after other editors bundled numerous other portals into the discussion.
And yes, I do support the speedy deletion of the portalspam created by @The Transhumanist, because there are so many hundreds (maybe thousands) of portals of such poor quality and such narrow scope that the burden to the community of individually MfDing them is wholly disproportionate to the average of 1 to 2 minutes each which the TTH says it took to create them (TTH "Have you tried creating 500 portals? It is rather repetitious/tedious/time-consuming (from 500 to 1000 minutes)")
Far from declaring war, I specifically invited a few editors of divergent views to collaborate on first steps towards building a consensus, by trying to identify a set of proposals which I hope "can be broadly agreed as giving fair prominence to all plausible options".
The bad faith and misrepresentation in Thryduulf's angry comment remind me of the hostility which I experienced in September 2018 when I encountered a few recently created portals and took them to MFD as having too narrow a scope (17 of the portals listed at WT:WikiProject_Portals/Archive_7#Portal_deletion_nominations were MfDed by me).
In the same comment [12] which mentions me, Thryduulf alleges that "Opinions that do not align with the view that all mass created portals should be deleted as quickly as possible (for whatever reason and to whatever degree) are frequently met with hostility, assumptions of bad faith, borderline incivility and misrepresentation" is again, unevidenced misrepresentation and projection. Thryduulf claims that evidence was presented at WP:ANI#Legacypac_and_portals, but that discussion does not even mention me in passing. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:30, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Wow! What a halfhearted apology from @Thryduulf: [13]
  1. Thryduulf chose to refer to someone else's comment, directs it at me, and now disclaims responsibility for doing so
  2. Thryduulf writes "I do find your actions against portals disproportionately excessive".
    Bizarre! Is MfDing 15 carefully-selected ultra-low-content portals "disproportionately excessive"? Is being one of many dozens of editors who support a new CSD criterion "disproportionately excessive"?
  3. Thryduulf claims he was referring to the "collective actions of a group of editors who share similar opinions of which you are a member".
    So the fact that some editors with I share some views on some aspects of one issue have allegedly somehow makes me a part of war? That sort of guilt by association logic is precisely the sort of WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality which makes this area so toxic.
  4. Thryduulf says I don't recall any comments from you that I would highlight as giving a bad faith misrepresenation of my position (I offer no comment either way about your representation of other's comments) or as grossly uncivil. Your behaviour is better than that some other involved parties.
    Again, extraordinary: it turns out that Thryduulf has no specific complaint about me at all, but is no willing to simply withdraw the remark, preferring to just describe my behaviour as "better" than those he has accused of declaring war, and to exonerate me merely of being grossly uncivil to Thryduulf.
I was hoping to be able accept the apology, but that looks like the absolute de minimis tactical withdrawal. I have no recollection of any interaction with Thryduulf over portals, and I really expect that an admin should behave much much better than to hurl that much mud and then make such a heavily qualified withdrawal. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:14, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • And wow again.
@Thryduulf 's earlier comment[14] was "I do find your actions against portals disproportionately excessive". Note that word: "actions". Not my views, not my comment, but my "actions".
Now Thryduulf writes[15] "supporting a CSD for portals would not be grossly excessive. Supporting the criterion currently proposed (after it's overly broad nature has been repeatedly pointed out) and advocating for deletion without any assessment of quality or alternatives to deletion is"
Note that this is not about any action I have taken. It is a proposal which I did not initiate, but which I and dozens of others of editors have supported in discussion, and which Thryduulf thinks is too severe. Honest, consensus-forming discussion of disagreements is how Wikipedia is run. WP:CONSENSUS is core policy, and if a divergent view is misconduct, consensus-forming is impossible.
This is appalling. My good faith disagreement in a consensus-forming discussion about the amount of community time which should be spent scrutinising drive-by spam is being characterised as "actions against portals disproportionately excessive" as if I was engaging in some unilateral deletion spree rather than civilly expressing a reasoned view in an RFC?
Houston, we have a problem here, so I am leaning towards to changing my mind on the need for an Arbcom case. We have here an admin flagrantly trying to characterise a disagreement at RFC as misconduct in the form of "disproportionately excessive" actions, and thereby smear me in conduct proceedings. If there is an Arcom case, this series of smears will be part of my evidence of the entrenched WP:BATTLEGROUND, anti-consensus-forming conduct by some editors. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:46, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Casliber, the great walls of text which you observe at Wikipedia talk:Portal/Guidelines and at WT:WPPORT are a big part of why I decided to try making a head start on an RFC draft at a non-public page. The sprawling, unfocused style of discussion there would never produce an RFC which offered a clear set of options. Whether or not User:BrownHairedGirl/Draft RFC on Portal criteria progresses anywhere or whether I am further involved, some sort of draft will need to be produced by some process which does not get caught in the wall-of-text culture of the editors who were part of the last year of portalspam. I still think that a small group of editors of varied views is the best way to compile a list of the main options.--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:29, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Thryduulf

There are two types of conduct issue here - those around the mass creation of the portals and those related to the subsequent effort to delete them. The first has stopped completely, one of the principal proponents, The Transhumanist (TTH), has been recently topic banned (long after the fact) and ~5 days later this topic ban has not been breached.

Several users, most notably Legacypac, but BrownHairedGirl (BHG) and others also, have (in the words of Certes) declared a "war on portals" - with countless MfD nominations and numerous proposals to speedy delete them and/or restrict the - see WP:AN#Thousands of Portals (particularly the subsection WP:AN#Proposal 4: Provide for CSD criterion X3) and WT:CSD#Extend R2 to portals. Opinions that do not align with the view that all mass created portals should be deleted as quickly as possible (for whatever reason and to whatever degree) are frequently met with hostility, assumptions of bad faith, borderline incivility and misrepresentation (see WP:AN/I#Legacypac and portals for some examples.)

I would recommend that the committee look into the conduct of all parties (myself included) and pass a temporary injunction against new MfD nominations of portals (by everyone) until the case concludes or all RfCs relating to the deletion of portals are formally closed, whichever happens first. There have been 23 new nominations of portals (some covering tens of portals) in the last three days alone, causing the appearance of attempting WP:FAITACCOMPLI. Thryduulf (talk) 00:06, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@SilkTork: and others. This is a mix of content and conduct disputes, the former are obviously outside arbcom's jurisdiction but the conduct issues which are hindering collegial resolution of those issues (see [16] for another report on Legacypac for example) is very much within arbcom's remit. Thryduulf (talk) 09:30, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Legacypac's comment above [17] is a good example of the assumption of bad faith I mentioned. Thryduulf (talk) 11:37, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If arbcom is not going to look into the behaviour issues identified (and I still think this would be beneficial), then there needs to be significantly more uninvolved administrative eyes on the ANI thread, the AN discussions and the MfD nominations. It's not just SMcCandlish and BHG (that is tangiential to a significant degree) - from my point of view it is principally Legacypac, but also Robert McClenon, Fram and BHG, but they'll no doubt point a finger at people like me, SMcCandlish, SmokeyJoe and NorthAmerica). Thryduulf (talk) 17:02, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
extended example

A good example of the issues we're seeing in MfD noms is this deletion rationale from Legacypac at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Tacitus:

but this is backward. The portal enthusiasts claim the guidelines are out of date and they can create any portal they like. 4500 automated portals later we are left to do the hard work of sorting these mass creations one by one. Significantly more effort is going into analysis and MFD by other users then when into topic selection. The burden of meeting the guidelines should fall on the page creator not on everyone else to apply and debate compliance with the guideline they dismiss as worthless. Legacypac (talk) 19:43, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

In sequence this is a meaningless statement (what is "backwards"? what does that even mean?), an ad hominem arguably casting aspersions against unnamed "portal enthusiasts", a general statement about the number of portals created (which is irrelevant to whether the portal under discussion is good or not), a statement about the amount of effort involved (which while possibly true is also offers no useful assessment of this portal), a general statement of opinion about where the burden should lie that is not supported by consensus (it's not even really been discussed specifically anywhere I know of), and then another aspersion against unnamed people. Together it is a general statement of dislike about a set of pages that the nominated portal is part of. This was justified by a collection of quotes (not all in context) from individual editors (mainly TTH) about portals in general. Thryduulf (talk) 18:56, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

One thing that what would help would be something akin to the infobox restriction, requiring all comments in discussions about specific portals (including but not limited to MfD nominations) to be directly relevant to the portal(s) under discussion and not just general statements (for or against) portals as a concept or class (see e.g. [18], [19], [20]). A requirement for comments in discussions about portals in general to also be more than simple "I (don't) like them", "there are too many/too few of them", would also be good. Comments contravening either restriction should be struck and sanctions (including but not limited to topic bans) available (at AE) for those who continue to make them and/or unnecessarily personalise discussions (personal attacks, ad hominems). Thryduulf (talk) 13:09, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

replies to BHG
  • @BrownHairedGirl: the "War on portals" phrasing is as mentioned from Certes, and (like the rest of that comment) was not directed at you specifically but the collective actions of a group of editors who share similar opinions of which you are a member. While I do find your actions against portals disproportionately excessive, and while I don't think your RfC is going to be helpful but it is not being drafted in bad faith. I don't recall any comments from you that I would highlight as giving a bad faith misrepresenation of my position (I offer no comment either way about your representation of other's comments) or as grossly uncivil. Your behaviour is better than that some other involved parties. I apologise for the poor wording of my previous comment. Thryduulf (talk) 18:47, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • @BrownHairedGirl: I don't have time for a full reply, but supporting a CSD for portals would not be grossly excessive. Supporting the criterion currently proposed (after it's overly broad nature has been repeatedly pointed out) and advocating for deletion without any assessment of quality or alternatives to deletion is. Thryduulf (talk) 19:21, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
replies to casliber and Iridescent
  • @Liz: See WP:AN#Proposal 7: Toss it to the WikiProjects. Thryduulf (talk) 10:02, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @BU Rob13: Why are you focussing on BHG/SMC? The interaction between those two editors is a very small part of this dispute. As for what Arbcom could usefully do, see my comment above starting "One thing that what would help" where I detail exactly what arbcom could (and imo should) do. Thryduulf (talk) 12:39, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    @BU Rob13: There was a well attended community-wide RfC less than a year ago that concluded with very strong consensus against deleting or even deprecating portals. There is no evidence that consensus has changed since then, although there are a few users who are very vocal in disagreeing with it. The behaviour of a similar set of users is hindering the community's attempts to resolve issues around portals generally and disrupting discussions about individual portals - this is almost exactly the same situation as the infobox disputes. Thryduulf (talk) 17:31, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Opabinia regalis: the existence of some borderline ones, or even lots of them, is not an emergency and does not need to be resolved Right This Instant!!!111 exactly, but the behaviour of several editors who are insisting that it is an emergency is hampering the efforts to resolve the issues at an appropriate speed. Thryduulf (talk) 08:30, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by SmokeyJoe

  • At issue is the future of Portals. The community needs to discuss and decide. A village pump RfC is needed. A spat between two editors in drafting the RfC is a difficulty along the way. Short of someone disruptively mass creating more portals, or mass creating MfD discussions, there really is nothing particularly urgent.
I think this case should be declined. The small behavioural issue has not defied lower level dispute resolution. The mutually agreed Iban might be more than sufficient. Once the RfC is live in Project space, the userspace drafting issue will be moot. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:22, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]



Initial train-of-thought comments
This is a years old Portals / Outlines issue, and I think it is frustrating generally due to the lack of agreed forum. For years, Portals have been discussed at MfD, but MfD processes just one at a time. Outlines have largely been pushed out in the direction of Portals. Portals have recently become a feature in multiple threads at AN, and WT:CSD. WT:Portals has hosted discussions, but few opposed to Portals bother going there. Now there are RfCs in the works, in userspace, where userspace-ownership has proven an issue. I think no editors are at fault, all act in good faith. I think what is needed is an agreement to a central discussion, not AN, not MfD, not WT:CSD. This is an unusual discussion because one option on the cards is the depreciation of an entire namespace. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:20, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would call the Portals problem at least ten years old. Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Archived debates contains a great many individual discussions showing that a great many portals were considered less-than-worthless. I remember User:TenPoundHammer as once working hard to remove the worst "stillborn" (the standard term) portals, but there were a number of Wikipedians nominating them. Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Einstein family (April 2009) is an example from ten years ago. It is typical, SNOW deleted. User:The Transhumanist, if he participated, would be alone in !voting "keep". I would usually argue to archive old Portals, per WP:ATD and because of the impracticality of deleting so many one by one at MfD. Typically, everyone else would !vote "delete", resulting in "delete" or "snow delete". Mostly, I tried to ignore Portals as irrelevant to the project.
In March 2017, I started the thread Wikipedia_talk:Portal/Guidelines/Archive_6#Portals_are_moribund, proposing to archive nearly all portals, which I would call "broadly agreed with". A couple of editors, namely User:Abyssal and User:TenPoundHammer User:The Transhumanist, were enthusiastic to rebirth portals, much like the auto-portals mass created starting last year. I personally did not anticipate the very large number of low quality auto-portals that were created. My with-hindsight position is that auto-portal creation must only occur using a formally approved Bot. Bot Policy includes testing and post-testing consensus in its standard procedures, which would have caught the mass portal creation kerfuffle early on.
It is hard to tell enthusiastic volunteers that their ideas are not worth their time. Volunteers are supposed to be free to choose how to value and volunteer their own time. On the other hand, there is the argument that Portals were sort of a working thing in 2006, but they never really served the project, they sure do not now, and they are a net negative due to their nature of forking content into non-maintained pages, even if you discount the argument that they are a complete waste of time of the editors who try to work on them.
The situation reminds me of the inherent difficulty of getting a student organisation shut down. The quorum required to shut it down requires member activity, and the premise of shutting it down is the lack of meaningful member activity. It requires a higher authority, which I think in this case is a Village Pump RfC. To that end, I think User:BrownHairedGirl because an admirable enterprise of attempting an RfC drafting using a small defined RfC-drafting committee, selected by herself.
The ensuing spat between User:BrownHairedGirl & User:SMcCandlish is a regrettable. Both are prone to getting grumpy when arguing, with vehemence that fits Sayre's law.
Whatever else may happen, I think the RfC drafting needs to happen, with a Portal RfC launched and well advertised, before The Transhumanist's portal creation ban expires. My fear is that the spat will derail the RfC drafting. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:16, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Alanscottwalker

The only issue of far-reaching importance I see, is the issue of 'mass creation', which is bound to lead to some segment to fret over 'mass deletion'. My own take of the portals created are that they are at worst harmless, at best, someone's idea of useful exploration of a topic, so the actions and reaction of some seem just too much.

On the other hand, I am not aware of whatever standards we have for mass creation or script assisted creation and I can see mass creation potentially causing multiplied problems (perhaps earlier Arbcom cases have dealt with this). Nonetheless, there is no doubt that these things are conduct. So, though, I don't actually see individual user focused remedies being useful, here, a thoughtful in depth review of the ground around mass creation and/or script assisted creation, would be good use of this committee's time - at least by pointing to where and what the issues/policies/guidelines (and lack there of) are. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:06, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Kusma

I do not think that the issue has reached ArbCom-level disruption. The Transhumanist mass-created portals (with very few clicks each). Many people think that wasn't a good idea (I am one of them, and have voted to delete many such portals, nominated others at MfD, and reverted some "upgraded" portals to their old semi-manual versions), and so cleanup is now on its way, along with discussions about what topic deserve portals. There is also (too little) discussion of what portals are currently good for, what they could potentially be good for, and what the community wants them to be. Consensus on the simplest possible cleanup solution (just nuke the lot) hasn't quite arrived yet, and so we have many individual MfDs where the same discussions are going on. In a way that just means we're hashing out the criteria for portals at MfD instead of at some centralised RfC, which is time-consuming and tedious, but should also produce some rough criteria after a while. The advantage of the current approach is that we learn more about special situations of certain portals, which might be overlooked in RfCs covering several thousands at once. The Committee should decline this as premature: either this is resolved quickly through CSD X3, or slowly through a couple of months of MfDs. —Kusma (t·c) 14:10, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • There is a big difference between the portal questions and the ArbCom cases mentioned by SMcCandlish: the issues here are essentially not relevant for article space (other than the presence or absence of a tiny and usually ignored link somewhere near the bottom of the page) and most editors won't even notice the outcome of the discussion (number of views of portals is minuscule, even for ). I have not seen any recent edit wars in article space about portal links. There also seem to be no edit wars in portal space either (unless you want to count my reverts of portal "restarts" or "upgrades"). All we have are a couple of Wikipedia space discussions that most editors can safely disregard unless they have some personal involvement in portals. (Even popular portals like Portal:Sexuality or Portal:Pornography have just a few hundred views per day). —Kusma (t·c) 17:47, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • When I say "nuke the lot", I am talking about all portals created by TTH since the end of the RfC, a discussion where I was strongly on the "keep all" side. —Kusma (t·c) 19:03, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:Pldx1

It seems difficult to pretend that mass-creating content-less portals, like the late Portal:E (mathematical constant), could be a content problem, instead of a behavior problem. It remains that the temptation is great for the ArbCom to pretend that the community should work harder, instead of pretending that said community cannot address such a simple disruptive behavior (and all of the minor side effects of this disruption). 14:37, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  • @SMcCandlish: arguing that "The Transhumanist made it" isn't a deletion rationale seems to be a logical fallacy. The offending 3000+ portals were not "made" by The Transhumanist, but robotically generated. And it soon appeared that the robot had no editorial clues about cooking Portal:Spaghetti, nor about the relevance, for the Portal:E (mathematical constant), of asking
    WP:Did You Know the value of  ? Pldx1 (talk) 14:36, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @The Transhumanist: taking the time to create 3000+ robotic portals, i.e. creating a huge cleaning job for other people, while not taking the time to face the music and answer for your behavior when asked for, seems to be actionable here (and is probably the only actionable item of this whole saga). What is your opinion about that ? Pldx1 (talk) 14:46, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Thryduulf: You convinced me to change my mind. It could be useful to evaluate also the good faith of repetitively pretending that "nuke the harmful 3000+ robotically created portals and nuke them now" is in fact a conspiracy aimed to "kill the useless but harmless 1000 remaining ones"... and then pretending to be surprised/infuriated when some eyebrows are raised. There is no more a Portal:Circles to feed. Pldx1 (talk) 09:11, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Iridescent: How to parse the Driveby comment by Iridescent you are so proud of ? This looks so near to "commenting while driving". But we Assume Good Faith, don't we ? Pldx1 (talk) 07:43, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by RTG

The problem here is specifically a matter of guidelines.

  • Transhumanist and co are saying they want to do as much as can be permitted.
  • Objections are that lines have been specifically crossed.
  • What much is permitted? What lines have been crossed? The details needed to cover this in the guidelines would be relatively minor. ~^\\\.rTG'{~ 15:44, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I still can't find a centralised discussion where I could propose solutions like, birth each portal. Give each portal a week in a special incubator page of the project. Limit the number of concurrent pregnancies to 3 or 4, and give that page an overall feel of a content discussion for the Main page, (which is something the contributors seem to have as a goal, i.e. little main pages=portals).

  • One-click creation is great. One-click create what is requiring more debate. ~^\\\.rTG'{~ 16:09, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Voceditenore

I strongly disagree with Robert McClenon's contention that the "Infobox wars" were settled via Arbcom's "draconian measures" and that they are needed here. Though, I'm not sure what he means by "draconian measures". Please read Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Infoboxes. It focused purely on behaviour and resulted in a variety of admonishments and a complete topic ban on infoboxes for one editor and a partial one for another. Both were rescinded two years later. I hardly consider that "draconian". ArbCom also recommended that the community hold an RfC to settle the content/policy issues. It never happened, but the issue has settled down considerably. What did help were the restrictions on and admonishments of several of the most entrenched editors (on both sides). It provided a blessed breathing space for those people to reflect and get some perspective and for the rest of us who were caught in the crossfire to get on with editing articles without constant explosions. Both sides eventually realized that the world was not going to come to an end if an article had an infobox and vice versa. One might say the same thing about the existence of Portals. There are some behavioural issues here, for sure. And again, on both sides. But really, the entrenched positions developing in this melee are not helpful to anyone, including yourselves. Voceditenore (talk) 15:55, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just adding that The Transhumanist's bot-like creation creation of thousands of very sub-par portals was clearly disruptive, but he is effectively topic-banned from that now. Perhaps Arbcom needs to formalize that? I don't know. But I would say that coming in for second prize in the disruption stakes is the current rash of indiscriminately bundled MfDs for portals which are long-standing and predate the recent spate of bot-like automated ones—some of them Featured portals on important topics. Such MfDs are a pointless distraction. As I said in this MfD, in my view, they are an attempt to make an end run around the clear consensus to neither delete nor deprecate Portal space at the Village Pump RfC of less than a year ago. Both the first and second prize disruptions are the root of most of the unseemly sniping which may yet escalate to a level where ArbCom needs to get involved. Voceditenore (talk) 16:41, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Replying to Robert McClenon. The second case that you refer to, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Civility in infobox discussions, only restricted one editor and that restriction (or "Probation" as they called it) was actually much milder than the complete topic ban placed on one of the editors in the first case. The only difference I can see is that the second case introduced discretionary sanctions with "probation" as a penalty. I suppose they might help in this case, at least to tamp down the civility issues. Depending how the probation is worded, it could also call a halt to portal creation by any sanctioned editor and possibly also to the indiscriminate attempts to delete portals which were not part of the spate of mass-created ones. Voceditenore (talk) 06:31, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Replying to SMcCandlish. Per MEATBOT, the mass creation of poor-quality portals which continued despite the early warnings/objections being raised can be considered disruptive. Ditto the conversion and consequent degradation of quite a few decently functioning portals, some of which had been Featured portals. Mass creation of extremely poor quality stubs (even without automated tools) and their subsequent abandonment by the creator has been considered sufficiently disruptive in the past to result in an indefinite block, e.g. [21]. So no, the perception of disruption in this case is not just some "hand-wavey 'feeling' someone has." Of course, there's always the notion that if editors are concerned about the mass-creation of poor content, they should just ignore it and turn their attentions elsewhere. That's easier to do with portals than articles. But is that an optimal solution? Voceditenore (talk) 11:32, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Cameron, I've collapsed my replies. Hope that's OK. Apologies for exceeding the word limit. Voceditenore (talk) 06:15, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Fram

  • MfDs bundling automated / recent portals with older ones are a bad idea
  • People voting to "merge" such automated portals don't seem to have grasped even the basics of these, and should perhaps leave the debate as they are simply voting without doing the necessary background checks
  • A moratorium on proposing new portals for MfD is a useless prolongation of this mess. Many of the people who have voted against speedy deletion and against individually deleting these as well seem to do so on purely ideological grounds, or (worse) because of personal animosity against some of the people supporting the deletion. Actual interest in portals seems to be lacking in general, as major errors get undetected and uncorrected for months. The official purpose of portals, to function as some specialized main pages, entry points for readers, is completely baseless for the many, many small portals created last year.
  • The downplaying of the SmCandlish/BrownHairedGirl dispute by SmMccandlish above ("Unless forced to, I am not going to dwell on the recent misunderstanding between myself and BrownHairedGirl, which is only incidentally connected to this topic (it was more about user-talk namespace than any particular subject); both of us agreed at ANI not to make that an RfArb dramafest.") doesn't seem to match what really happened; it was hardly a "misunderstanding", there was near-general agreement that SmMccadlish had been harassing BHG and then lied about it at ANI to make BHG look bad, and the only reason it didn't end up at ArbCom was because BHG couldn't deal with the stress of an ArbCom case. It is not clear to me whether it belongs with this case, or whether a case about "SmMccandlish vs. others" may make more sense, but to downplay it as a "misunderstanding" where both agreed not to take it to ArbCom as if they didn't find it important enough is twisting reality too far. Fram (talk) 07:59, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just like with "merge", there is a problem with Thryduulf vigorously continuing to claim that deleting such portals is "deleting content", even though these portals in most cases contain zero actual content, just an automated display of article content. The difference between Portal:Jerome Robbins and Portal:Keane University is that the first has the text "Jerome Robbins" where the other has the text "Kean University": everything else in the code is completely identical. This shows that no content is lost by deleting either, and that "merging" such portals is a meaningless !vote. Thryduulf continued to claim that "Portals contain content (that it is republished content is the whole point of portals). Some portals you wish to see deleted contain content that is bad and/or badly organised, some portals contain content that is good and/or well organised (and others contain content that is between the two, it's not black and white). Therefore what you desire is the deletion of both good and bad content." even after the above was pointed out to him. The toxicity of such claims (not to mention OhanUnited calling Legacypac "xenophobic" when he means "neophobic", but refusing to correct this and maintaining that "xenophobic" is correct) is problematic, though probably not ArbCom-ready. Fram (talk) 16:05, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Liz

I'm not sure whether I would ask ARBCom to accept or dismiss this case. But I definitely think that these portals, initially wanted or unwanted, should be considered for deletion individually, not en masse. They are not akin to Neelix's thousands of ill-thought-out redirects. If you just look at a few of them, you will see that they are useful compendiums of information about a subject.

I don't think that their propagation should be automated and I think it is unfortunate that most casual readers will not even be aware of their existence. But I don't advocate deletion just because they are not a common form of Wikipedia pages. If anything, they should receive more promotion, not deletion. I would think that Wikipedia should encourage innovation to find different ways to convey information from different sources into topical areas not to go to great lengths to delete content that energetic editors have found new ways to present. Liz Read! Talk! 22:54, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think Iridescent proposes a great solution, let the individual WikiProjects decide the fate of portals that fall in their subject area. But I'm not sure how to move towards this solution from an Arbitration request page with an RfC that has gotten pretty full of rage and strong feelings. Personally, I'm not against deletion, just thoughtless deletion en masse. I remember that even with Neelix's tens of thousands of redirects, they were not all deleted but were kept if they were thought to be reasonable. Liz Read! Talk! 23:54, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently, this WikiProject/Portals idea was also proposed in February. I posted a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council to see if any folks there would be interested in taking portals over, both deciding which ones are useful, which ones are not, as well as maintaining them. It seems like this holds the possibility of a solution that doesn't involve either hundreds of MfD proposals or thousands of insta-deletions. WikiProjects are the editors most interested in particular subject areas and are willing to collaborate to expand them or decide some are useless. I think they'd be good judges of whether individual portals are worthwhile...or not. Liz Read! Talk! 01:00, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by OhanaUnited

I would like to ask ArbCom to accept this case and examine Legacypac's conduct revolving around portals. With the community at ANI and ArbCom pointing fingers at each other and hope that the other side makes an action, this issue isn't likely to go away over time and it will come back to ArbCom sooner or later. I have not had any interactions with Legacypac until I closed MfD for a bundle of portals in the same nom as keep. While I was in the middle of closing it, he made several comments (which were found by other editors to be riddled with errors and inconsistencies). First, he withdrew the nom but somehow also kept it open for remainder of 7 days[22] then said I closed the MfD 3 days earlier[23] before his comment was corrected by another editor for closing the MfD only 8 hours early and results unlikely to change at that point.[24] During the process, he repeatedly wrote personal attacking messages first directed at me in his user talk page You are an Admin? Never seen you at MfD or take any other Admin action ever.[25] and again on DRV in a more thinly-veiled way I also find it interesting an Admin with so little MfD experience choose this one weird MfD to close out of process [26]. He perceived me as an admin who was somehow involved for receiving Portals newsletter and being a Portals WikiProject member. His actions only foster a culture of "us vs. them" mentality for admin actions. Rather than reflecting on his fumbles, he quietly added a section header in ANI to redirect the attention elsewhere (towards me)[27]. Another editor has also made an observation that Legacypac has a tendency to attack anyone who disagrees with him recently.[28] I have no comments towards other parties of this ArbCom case, as I have not interacted with them and I don't have the time nor energy to read through what everyone else had said. OhanaUnitedTalk page 00:18, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Cygnis insignis

Opening this is desirable to those who are defending their creations, a privilege they assumed was a right, and the user experimenting with the community's will to oppose their ideas of overlays, outlines, and portals. Until I noted it, there was a 'wikipedia page' that introduced nuclear technology as "very safe" for I don't know how long. I know that there are people who believe that, which is fine, but users opinions are invalid without sources at wikipedia, surely a first principle. I value NPOV, not oldtimers opinions, I am opposed to the use of the portal namespace in this way, as I am opposed to infoboxes, the effect of an arbcom case only paints a target on anyone providing critique of even the worst cases of misuse. If I question OR, for example, in an article I can provide sources that show just that, question an infobox entry and I am dragged to AN/I and notified of ArbCom determinations. Whatever the outcome, mention ArbCom and most editors flee and leave the formulations to those not averse to battlegrounds. The effect of opening this would only further insulate Portals from collaborative editing. cygnis insignis 11:27, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

response to Thryduulf at 27 March 2019
In response to Thryduulf at 27 March 2019, I am cited as an example of someone whose position ought to be automatically invalidated and make them subject to sanctions and how that would be 'helpful'. I see overuse and abuse of the namespace, I wish to be transparent about that, and don't contribute to MfDs for that reason. Disagree with someone's good idea for a portal (or any miscellanous cruft/pov fork) and you had better be prepared for some repercussions. I am already constrained by the unwritten policy of 'do as you please' and any cadre of creators who are invested in defending each other against the 'others', an identifiable social network within our community. This happens everywhere, but when there is a coordinated experiment with creations detached from regular policy and seemingly any constraint the greater community can expect to see fur flying. Aside from voting delete on some 'sacrificial portals' their [Thryduulf, in this case, but any keep voter] rationale in keep on portals is they also think it a good idea and it is up to editors to improve it, which might be okay for acceptable stub articles that we know are improved and expanded, but the same vote could be applied to any one's 'good idea' for 'navigation purposes'. Here we are, inevitably, so it goes :| cygnis insignis 15:12, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • TenPoundHammer says it better below, The answer is to outline that this is not a normal contribution, and that any new portal is unlikely to find general support (despite what the promotion of this namespace suggests cygnis insignis 15:22, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thryduulf is an admin, okay, irrelevant yet useful information that I will repeat for others who overlooked that fact. cygnis insignis 20:57, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Mangoe

I am largely inactive these days, so my comments are those of a bystander. But I would note that mass creation projects have inevitably led to very problematic clean ups because of the presumption that anything created has to be considered on a one-by-one basis. In practice, these projects never finish because someone with a script can create a volume which overwhelms the time and patience of reviewers. It's not a content issue; indeed, it's more frustrating when the proportion of worthwhile material is fairly large. If I were Ruler of the Wiki I would forbid mass creation without some sort of preliminary review giving substantial confidence that the output would not need this kind of review (e.g. stub articles on a list of patently notable items). As it is, there inevitably a great deal of community stress of the sort which has bubbled up here. Mangoe (talk) 16:49, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Softlavender

Do readers actually ever click portals and read them? Has anyone conducted a study of pageviews etc.? Infoboxes are at the top of articles and are automatically visible, prominently so. Portals are stuffed somewhere at the end. I've only clicked on portals a few times, and not finding the portals very useful, rarely ever do so now. They do take up eye space where they are planted, often obtrusively, and add clutter, and often disrupt layout. If they are not useful and readers are not availing themselves of them, they should go.

I realize this is less an evaluation of the case request per se and more of an opinion on how I view portals, but the rampant indiscriminate creation (and addition) of portals is indeed disruptive and needs to be looked at and arbitrated and hopefully the apparently needless and pointless disruption stopped. Softlavender (talk • contribs) 23:10, March 26, 2019 (UTC)

  • @SmokeyJoe: You wrote "A couple of editors, namely User:Abyssal and User:TenPoundHammer, were enthusiastic to rebirth portals, much like the auto-portals mass created starting last year." I believe you mistyped, because TenPoundHammer did not participate in the discussion you linked. Softlavender (talk) 05:14, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't know whether this has been proposed yet anywhere, but I would like to propose that any new portal creations require stringent approval/consensus. That way we wouldn't be flooded with useless clutter. And by the way, I believe that all useful portals have already been created, because the only concepts that really need and merit portals are quite major and were already conceived long ago. Softlavender (talk) 23:45, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Casliber: WP:CONSENSUS is generally more a matter of WP:COMMONSENSE than it is of rules. And since, as I stated, all useful portals have already been created, because the only concepts that really need and merit portals are quite major and were already conceived long ago, the common-sense consensus regarding the creation of any specific new portal would generally skew to "no". And this would prevent the need for endless MfDs and the endless cleanup reminiscent of Neelix cleanup. Softlavender (talk) 00:25, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by TenPoundHammer

As a former nominator of stillborn/dead portals, I agree that an RfC should be drafted. Most of the time when I saw portals kept, it was people saying "I still use these" or "They're still active" despite no visible signs of activity since 2009. I've been here since 2005 and have never used portals as an editing aid, nor have I seen any strong cases for keeping them besides WP:ILIKEIT. It would be nice to receive some sort of consensus on the future of the Portal space, and an RfC should be the right way to go. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 00:08, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by UnitedStatesian

I recommend the ArbCom decline this case. Portals are still a difficult issue, but I believe the community is moving (slowly) to consensus-based resolutions, making ArbCom involvement unnecessary. Those current processes should be allowed to continue (for as long as is necessary, per WP:NODEADLINE). That the end result of that community process is unlikely to completely satisfy anyone is a good thing. UnitedStatesian (talk) 06:59, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved Cas Liber

I'd probably lean to accepting the case given the prolonged nature of the dispute. What really needs to happen is an RfC on Portals themselves. Right at the top of the Portal is a note "This is an information page. It describes the editing community's established practice on some aspect or aspects of Wikipedia's norms and customs. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community." So we have a segment that has not been vetted and just sorta "floats" alongside content (which has guidelines concerning notability and reliability). The are no rules or guidelines concerning portal use and they've been around for 14 years. (I haven't the time at the moment - can anyone point me to any past discussions on the establishment or use of portals?) Arbcom needs to direct the community to come up with some community-based discussion on the guidelines and scope of portals, and even discussion on their very existence. And community to report back in three months. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:53, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Softlavender: umm, having some rules or inclusion criteria are needed before we can get strict consensus. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:52, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Cryptic: that's a great start - we need a chronology somewhere. many of the early participants in that debate are still active and can (hopefully) fill in some gaps or recall some other discussions. We should take this discussion elsewhere I guess....yikes, I just found Wikipedia talk:Portal/Guidelines.....so...umm...discussion is progressing but it's turned into a Great Wall of text. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:52, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Cryptic

@Casliber: The earliest discussions I can find establishing portals in their current, reader-facing form (as opposed to tools for editors, see for example the contemporary revision of Wikipedia:Wikiportals) are Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Cricket (portal) and Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Portal:Cricket, eventually followed up by Wikipedia:Portal namespace (setting-up debate). I seem to recall there was discussion on the village pump in between, but searching its archives from around that time is difficult. —Cryptic 23:34, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by StraussInTheHouse

I would have argued against the Committee accepting this case but I see most some of the Arbitrators have chosen to accept it, but here's my uninvolved two cents. I've come across all of the users involved in this request either at RM or AFC and they are all productive members of the community and it's a shame to see a disagreement come this far. Barring any gross misconduct that I am unaware of, as I've only skimmed over the key points, I would urge the Committee to consider either topic or interaction bans as opposed to any form of block because losing any of these users would be a detriment to the project. SITH (talk) 19:57, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Iridescent

Withdrawn

@BU Rob13, if you want a quick-and-dirty motion, throw All editors intending to create a portal must consult with the relevant WikiProject for that topic as to whether they feel a portal would be useful. All existing portals should be raised at the talk page of the relevant WikiProject and deleted if there is a consensus at that project that the portal is not useful. If the topic has no relevant WikiProject, it should be deleted. at the wall and see if it sticks. That avoids bulk speedy deletions, avoids naming-and-shaming individuals on either the pro or anti side, and puts the decision on each portal in the hands of those who actually know about that topic. If a topic is so obscure that it doesn't have a relevant project, then it's reasonable to assume that it's unlikely there are sufficient people with an interest in the topic to maintain or use a portal. (I'm normally fairly scathing about WikiProjects and their tendency to declare WP:OWNership of whatever they feel falls into their remits, but I'd consider this a valid exception; if the participants at WikiProject Food and drink think Portal:Cheese is useful then they're implicitly taking on responsibility for maintenance; if even the people who spend all day writing about food don't think it would be useful, it's reasonable to assume it won't be maintained or used. Personally, I'd do the same with the huge stack of "outline" pseudo-portals created by the same players behind the mass creation of portals, but that's a discussion for another day.) ‑ Iridescent 20:18, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@BU Rob13, technically it's not out of scope; when WP:ARBPOL was written the scope was carefully weasel-worded to be To act as a final binding decision-maker primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve (my emphasis; and that "primarily" has been there since the original referendum in 2004 that created Arbcom as a stand-alone body rather than the Jimmy's Privy Council it had been previously, not a late afterthought), The Committee's decisions may … create procedures through which policy and guidelines may be enforced and The Committee does not rule on content, but may propose means by which community resolution of a content dispute can be facilitated. That capability to instruct people on what mechanism to use to sort out intractable problems is there by design, not by accident; you can't keep or delete pages by fiat, but you can create procedures by fiat to decide what to keep or delete if in your judgment community consensus isn't going to resolve the issue and the dispute consequently needs a "final binding decision-maker". (Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Ireland article names is probably the highest-profile example of Arbcom explicitly ruling on a content dispute rather than the user conduct matters arising from the dispute.) ‑ Iridescent 23:42, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Thryduulf, I'd have thought if a portal were in the scope of multiple projects then one keep and one delete—or one keep and ten deletes—would equate to a keep, provided the keep was coming from a project with a genuine connection to the topic and not a group cherry-picked to approve everything; what's being tested here is "does anyone outside the WikiProject Portals bubble think this is useful?". If the Universities project sees a use for Portal:Ohio State University and are willing to maintain it, they're free to do so even if the Ohio project can't see the point in it. ‑ Iridescent 23:48, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by QEDK

  • There is no point making a statement at all. Statement retracted. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 20:21, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Retracted

I think this committee needs to reconsider its position on dealing with the Portals issue, I've been on the sidelines mostly, but anyone can observe that it is quickly sprawling into a chronic and intractable problem. Thryduulf has iterated over a lot of the things I've wanted to say on the matter, but I think, for once, this committee needs to go headfirst into a mess and not pick it up after the community fails to attain a solution — kind of impossible, with the incivility, lack of administrator discretion, and disregard for basic Wikipedia policies. The job of the ArbCom is to deal with the issues, I do not see why convincing them to take up a failing solution should be so difficult. I will be responding to declining members in order:

  • @SilkTork: The community are trying to handle the Portals issue but miserably failing to deal with the fallout. I think it's extremely reductive to view as a place for AC not being able to step in, as that itself is the role of the committee. SMC/BHG was never going to be resolved at ANI, and thus never was, going back there is not a solution.
  • @BU Rob13: Per above. Minor scuffles that disrupt Wikipedia are still "disruptions". I think the quota for having a "chronic, intractable" problem mandate has been long fulfilled and I implore AC members to understand the same.
  • @Worm That Turned: The progress being made, but at what cost? The lack of a proper dispute resolution at every stage is appalling. I think there is a definite reason this Portals issue was brought to the AC, and the least ArbCom can do, is conduct its due diligence. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 08:17, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@BU Rob13: As Thryduulf stated, there have been lapses of basic Wikipedia pillars at every level. BHG/SMC has always stopped at a point and then resumed, there are open ANI threads, there have been more before and most of them are just rapidly closed, some with the caveat that "this should be taken to ArbCom", so what's the reluctance here? --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 09:49, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Beeblebrox

Nine days in, seems like the committee members have enough information to go ahead and vote on whether to accept or decline... Beeblebrox (talk) 21:59, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Waggers

Most of the issues here stemmed from a proposal some time ago to delete the entire Portal space, which did not achieve consensus. As a result of that, User:The Transhumanist and other editors worked incredibly hard to breathe new life into the Portals WikiProject and address the concerns that had been raised in that RfC. The biggest concern was that portals were poorly maintained and maintenance-heavy, so under TT's leadership the project set about establishing ways to automate portal maintenance, and these were hugely successful. The result is that the "overhead" of a portal is now much lighter, making portals that had previously been unviable, viable.

This led to new, self-maintaining portals springing up; but of course the perception of portals as being maintenance-heavy, multi-page behemoths hasn't necessarily changed to keep pace with the innovative work the project team have done. So, naturally some editors were concerned at the appearance of these new portals without really understanding the difference between them and the old style of portal. The real problem is there are some editors who for whatever reason feel aggrieved at the “delete all portals” proposal didn’t succeed and seem to take personal offence at every new portal that appears. On the flip-side, the exciting developments at the WikiProject led to some over-enthusiasm on User:The Transhumanist’s part. The combination of that over-enthusiasm, the vocal minority of anti-portal people, and the misunderstanding in the general community that I’ve described above, is what has led to today’s tensions.

The members of the Portals WikiProject have worked very hard and it is upsetting to see those efforts and enthusiasm being castigated by editors who chose not to engage in the revitalisation of the portals project and setting a new direction for portals on Wikipedia, but instead treat portals as a battleground to play war games on. It’s that behaviour that needs investigation by ArbCom. WaggersTALK 12:32, 2 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by CoolSkittle

I do not care if arbcom accepts or declines this case (looks like its going towards decline). However I do care that a very large pile of unpopular[1][2][3] junk has been created by The TH and his friends - a huge amount of time has been wasted on this and it needs to be sorted somehow - whether at arbcom or somewhere else. (P.S. This essay pretty much sums up my thoughts on portals). CoolSkittle (talk) 23:39, 2 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Pageviews for Portal:Shakira
  2. ^ Pageviews for Portal:BBC Television
  3. ^ Pageviews for Portal:YouTube

Statement by MPS1992

Waggers has made the point that the newly created portals are self-maintaining. If this is correct, why would anyone have a problem with them? MPS1992 (talk) 23:41, 2 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by {Non-party}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the case request or provide additional information.

Portal Issues: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).
  • I would remind editors that the purpose of this page is to evaluate the need for an arbitration case, not to rehash the virtues or otherwise of portals. Content that is considered not directly relevant to the case request may be collapsed or removed by the clerks (and I may well do so when I find time to wade through it all). GoldenRing (talk) 16:29, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal Issues: Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter <2/6/1>

Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse)

  • Recuse. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:45, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would like to hear from the other named parties and wider community, but based upon the preliminary statements so far, I could see a case being useful here if only to examine the issue of conduct more closely. Mkdw talk 03:27, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not seeing where ArbCom could be involved in the Portals discussion - that appears to me to be a community discussion, and one which the community are dealing with. However, there is some heat between SMcCandlish and BrownHairedGirl, which would be worth getting a wider view on to see if a case is needed. SilkTork (talk) 05:40, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Decline. The community are handling the Portals issue. Discussions are ongoing, The Transhumanist has been topic banned, and I'm not seeing where there's a place for ArbCom to get involved. Sometimes progress on issues like this is slow and fractious, with one step forward and one step back, but that's the nature of Wikipedia, and generally through such debate and discussions emerges a consensus that is not a compromise, but a working solution. We are actually, as a community, very good at solving these issues, while ArbCom is not. What ArbCom would do is sit and ponder for a month, and then issue restrictions - the community meanwhile can discuss quickly, openly, fluidly and imaginatively and reach creative and brilliant solutions that people agree on and buy into. It just takes time, and sometimes a bit of frustration and bad temper. As for the SMcCandlish and BrownHairedGirl issue, neither wish for an ArmCom case, so I don't see the point in forcing one on them. If people feel that SMcCandlish is being particularly problematic, they can start a discussion at WP:ANI to see if there is any consensus for that view. It is only if the community cannot resolve user behaviour that ArbCom should get involved. The community should at least make that attempt first, or provide evidence here that such attempts have been tried. SilkTork (talk) 09:39, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • At its heart, this is a content dispute, and so we need to be careful not to step too far into that if we do review the conduct issues here. I do not think ArbCom has the jurisdiction to suspend MfDs of portals, as these are firmly within the realm of content. I also question whether a month-long arb case would just make the eventual discussions surrounding portals even more contentious, by placing these editors in direct conflict with each other for a prolonged period of time. Instead, my initial thoughts are that this case bears a stunning resemblance to the Crosswiki issues case request. We might consider resolving it the same way, by authorizing discretionary sanctions over all discussions related to portals for a finite period of time as this situation is resolved through normal community processes. ~ Rob13Talk 13:34, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Decline. I've gone to write a motion on this case several times now, and every time, I've come up with nothing I felt would help ease tensions in this area. My general idea was a motion providing temporary discretionary sanctions on discussions about portals, but after reviewing the underlying discussions several times, I actually don't see widespread conduct issues that would make such a sanction useful. There have been one or two scuffles (notably, the SMcCandlish and BrownHairedGirl business), but they were at best tangential to portals and don't seem like they would have benefited from discretionary sanctions. ArbCom could also encourage editors to avoid a fait accompli situation, but editors on each side disagree over what actions would be a fait accompli (see follow-up comments from Robert McClenon), so such a statement would accomplish little. The community is already holding an RfC to see whether a CSD criterion for The Transhumanist's mass creations should be temporarily added, and further RfCs will likely be needed to chart a future path for the Portal namespace. Given all of this, I see no role here for ArbCom at this time. ~ Rob13Talk 16:25, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Iridescent: Such a motion would be entirely handling a content issue, well outside the scope of ArbCom. We can't do that. ~ Rob13Talk 22:41, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • @QEDK: The heart of the issue is a matter of content. I agree that no consensus appears to be emerging from that dispute, in which case the default is to keep the guidelines surrounding portals as they are at the moment. The SMC/BGH issue is rather definitively over and done with, and anything ArbCom did at this point would be strictly punitive. In short, what do you see ArbCom resolving here? What behavioral aspect of the ongoing dispute could we help with? ~ Rob13Talk 22:11, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • Just because something is closed as "This should go to ArbCom" doesn't mean it should, and I wish the community would start asking "Why?" in response to such closes. They often have the effect of stifling ongoing discussions regarding the behavior of long-term contributors. It is unfortunate that the answer to "Why couldn't the community solve this?" is sometimes "Because someone closed the discussion saying the community couldn't solve it." ~ Rob13Talk 17:17, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Thryduulf: I focused on that because it was explicitly mentioned by QEDK, and I was directly responding to their comment. I have read your suggestions, but I disagree that they're a particularly good idea. Unlike infoboxes, which are clearly established as something the community wants in many articles (though not all), there is a substantial unanswered question surrounding whether portals should even exist. I do not want to preempt that question by requiring that editors not voice their opinions on the value of portals. If anything, we need more discussion about the overall value of portals at a central RfC in order to settle the question, not to bottle up the issue. ~ Rob13Talk 17:13, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • I perhaps should have said "should even exist in most cases". I'm aware of the RfC, but it remains very unclear which portals the community wants and which they don't want as a general rule. It may even be the case that most existing portals should be deleted... or it could be the case that they all should be retained and a great deal more should be added. There has been insufficient discussion around creating the sorts of guidelines that would decide such things. It seems rather clear to me that a large part of the reason these conflicts are occurring is because something like BGH's RfC has not yet been carried out. The solution should be to hold such an RfC, not to bar editors from discussing the merits of portals. ~ Rob13Talk 04:43, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: The community has not definitively decided whether it wants these portals (as an editorial choice), and how to deal with them if it doesn't (as a procedural matter). In particular, a decision has not been reached as to whether these portals deserve a new CSD. By deciding on these issues, the community would unchoke many of the discussions/MFDs underway – thereby also resolving most of the situation-based conduct problems we are seeing. I would be inclined to deal with this matter by a motion (1) clarifying the committee's advice as to resolving, (2) passing any injunctions needed to assist implementation of our advice, and (3) reserving a fuller case, to be opened if needed. I am not opposed to opening an arbitration case, but I actually think that isn't how we can best assist in this particular matter. AGK ■ 14:04, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Continuing to read the incoming statements and observe the conduct of editors involved. Some evidence is emerging that editors are taking up a battleground mentality; this more than anything would necessitate an arbitration case. Resolutions do not come easily when people are trying to win, not collaborate. All editors are counselled to address the policy questions first, address the implementation questions second, and try treating peers with respect all the while. I do not think the project will be damaged by some portals taking a few months to be decided upon. AGK ■ 22:17, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Decline without necessarily opposing arbitration in the future. AGK ■ 22:54, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Accept. I'm thinking along the same lines of Robert McClenon and SMcCandlish here. The portal dispute has dragged on for at least a year without resolution. We've seen several related matters almost come to arbitration recently, involving many of the same names. At the very least that suggests there are conduct issues for us to examine. And if ArbCom can break the back of those issues, we'll be helping the community resolve the content and editorial dispute. – Joe (talk) 14:51, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Accept I've had to read over the comments here and look into what is being said. This is slowly turning into the debate over Infoboxes all over again. This has been going on for a while now, and the community appears to be coming to a stalemate in resolving this. Of more concern is the behavior of some of the editors involved, which does need a look into. For this I would accept the case. RickinBaltimore (talk) 15:47, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Decline at this point. I sat on the fence for quite a while on this, but in the end, my thinking matched SilkTork's. The community is handling this. Yes, it's taking a while, but sometimes these discussions do take a while, due to the complexity of the issues. There is progress being made, so for now, and with not prejudice towards a different case if nothing changes - decline. WormTT(talk) 09:14, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Decline per Worm. I also agree with Rob that there are steps and RFCs yet to be undertaken, and I don't want to interfere with those. It may be that we have to wade into this in the future. I don't think we're there yet. Katietalk 20:06, 2 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Decline. I know, I know, day late, dollar short, etc. Truth is, I keep coming back to this request wondering why anyone involved cares as much as they do, given the widespread agreement on the underlying fact that most portals get minimal traffic. That means that the existence of some borderline ones, or even lots of them, is not an emergency and does not need to be resolved Right This Instant!!!111 I really think community processes stand a good chance of working here, and maybe ironically that sitting at arbcom for a bit wasn't so bad because it put a pause in things. I like Iridescent's idea of letting projects take caretaker responsibility for any portals they want to maintain, but I think we're not at the stage where we'd want to be mandating solutions like that - the community is capable of considering that path on its own. Opabinia regalis (talk) 16:31, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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