Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Diplo

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was: keep . ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:27, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Diplo

Yet another pointless micro-portal, with far too narrow a scope for a portal: only 16 articles. A set with this low a number of pages is better served by a head article and a navbox. We already have both: Diplo and Template:Diplo. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:44, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

PS This is simply a fancier navbox, located on a lonesome standalone page rather than handily appended to an article. I see nothing in WP:Portal guidelines#Purposes_of_portals to support this usage of a portal as a fancier navbox. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:13, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
As proposed at Wikipedia_talk:Portal_guidelines/Archive_6#Portals_are_moribund, Redirect to Diplo. Come to MfD only if opposed. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:09, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Redirect is not warranted. The portal can be easily orphaned and it's not a likely search term. Although not a categorically forbidden cross-namespace redirect, it's highly confusing. When people click on a portal link they expect to find a portal, not an article. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 02:29, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Why would anyone click on the portal? If there is a reason, keep the portal. Redirect per policy WP:ATD. There is no reason to suppress the history, and no reason to have a community discussion about each hopeless portal idea unless there is evidence of disagreement. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:04, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
These several portals appear to be recent creations by User:The_Transhumanist. Has there been a discussion before nominating them? User:BrownHairedGirl? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:41, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- @SmokeyJoe: I have been finding these portals while cleaning up Special:WantedCategories. They all had [[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]] where PAGENAME was a mon-existent category. In each case, I also examined them, and nominated them for MFD if they seemed inappropriate. In no case did I seek to find who had created them.

There has been a discussion at User talk:BrownHairedGirl#Portal:Pebble_Beach, started by User:The Transhumanist who asked that I withdraw Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Pebble Beach, which I declined to do. User:The Transhumanist later G7ed that portal, but has sadly chosen not to participate further in the discussion on my talk. In the MfD discussions, TH has chosen not to address the question of how such narrowly-focused portals can help readers. I get the impression that TH's approach is simply that if a portal can technically be created, there is no reason not to do so ... but it would be helpful if TH would clarify their thinking. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:31, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have previously liked what I have understood of User:The Transhumanist's ideas for Portals. I especially like the ideas of portals being auto-filled with content from article ledes, avoid the problem of content forking into Portal content. These portals recently created do not match my understandings of his ambitions. The portals seem narrow and redundant to the articles. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:35, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Dear SmokeyJoe, thank you for your comment. I appreciate your support. This is a portal start, analogous to an article stub. I explained the approach at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Pebble Beach, covered some additional issues in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Body piercing, and will be happy to elaborate in future postings, including below. Stay tuned. ;) — The Transhumanist 06:43, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(In answer to BrownHairedGirl) Chosen not to? I haven't been available to answer immediately upon your every posting. Sometimes, real life interrupts our activities on WP, like the occasional need to sleep. You were not reasonable in your posting immediately above, showing a lack of good faith. How would you know what I have or have not chosen to do? MfDs run for at least 5 days, and so a little more patience on your part would be a nice gesture. I don't think that is too much to expect. BTW, I have written some clarification, at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Pebble Beach and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Body piercing, and will respond to the other MfDs in due course, including this one. I'll be back. Thank you for your patience. — The Transhumanist 06:43, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Reply @The Transhumanist: you have written a whole paragraph about how busy you are, but I see no attempt by you to engage with my central concern: why deploy this technology for such a tiny set of articles? This is the central issue with all these portals which I have brought to MFD, and as I wrote above it would be helpful if you could explain why rather than how. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:33, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@BrownHairedGirl, SmokeyJoe, and Finnusertop:

One MfD at a time. So far, I've presented a long explanation of the benefits of portals at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Body piercing, a portal about which you asked what benefits it provides that the navigation box does not. I covered another benefit of portals at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Alexander Korda. Which brings us to this portal, which is nowhere near complete...

It's a portal start, still an orphan and not linked anywhere. It's doing no harm while it waits for further development. We leave portal drafts in portal space, because they don't render right in the Draft namespace.

I work on portals in batches, and the general sequence of development goes something like this, but usually much more chaotic:

Step 1) create portals using a template.

Step 2) refine the search strings for In the news and Did you know sections of those portals. This step improves the likelihood of hits in those 2 areas. Those sections appear only when the search strings find material for them (from the news and Did you know departments). So, attempting to improve the matches is done early in the process because these are features not provided on the subject's other page types.

Step 3) further populate the image slideshows. A portal's slideshow initially defaults to a single sourcepage, which merely provides a starting set of images. There are loads of images out there on most subjects, which can help build really nice visual surveys of a subject, turning portals into windows to the world. As part of this step I also look for banner-shaped pictures to embellish the intro section with (which are easiest to find for geographic portals, but many other portals are starting to sport banner pics as well).

Step 4) is to scour for content (topics), to improve the scope of the excerpt slideshow(s), which transclude article leads. This step includes building additional Selected item sections, if convenient. We are working on ways to automate this, but that is a ways off.

Step 5) is to see if any of the supplemental section types can be batch added.

But you nominated the portal for deletion right after Step 1, not even providing a chance for further work to be done on the portal before demanding an explanation as to why it was created. The whole idea of having a wiki is subsequent edits, by the initial editor, and potentially other editors. It's called wikimagic. But wikimagic takes time. My point is, this portal hasn't been fully created yet. Diplo is a prolific artist, and there is a lot more material on him. You should drop the deletion nomination, and let the portal be completed in due course.

As I mentioned earlier, I tend to work on these in batches, and so I do a bunch of Step 1's then a slew of Step 2's and so on. Also, it bears repeating that we leave portal drafts in portal space, because they don't render right in the Draft namespace. Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 14:04, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Wow! @The Transhumanist: That's a very verbose reply about how you work, which almost entirely evades the central question of why create a portal with such a narrow scope.

However, there is a troubling answer near the end of your response, when you complain of my not even providing a chance for further work to be done on the portal before demanding an explanation as to why it was created. That is a truly spectacular piece of illogic. Why on earth do you need to complete the portal before you know the reason why you chose to create it?

As far as I can see, you are telling MFD that you work in batches to create portals without any prior assessment of whether there is sufficient scope to justify their existence ... i.e. that you are a blind bot.

The reason for a why-was-this-created nomination early in the life of any page is very simple: if the topic or scope is inappropriate, then everyone saves a lot of time and effort if construction is halted as soon as possible. What possible reason would you have for wanting to invest more of your time before the community has an opportunity to decide whether this was a bad idea from the outset?

Your bizarre justification raises much wider questions about your WP:COMPETENCE. It seems that you make no editorial judgement before starting work, and such aversion to editorial judgement is very poor basis for editing. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:59, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You are twisting words and attempting to speak for me. Play nice, BHG. I didn't say I didn't assess their creatability, or that I didn't have an idea about the portals' scope. Diplo doesn't have a narrow scope. There is plenty displayed, there is much more out there on this guy, and it appears this guy isn't done yet -- the portal's coverage will grow as this artist generates more creative works. In addition, having a portal ready and waiting to automatically display any news that comes into our system on this guy, or Did you know blurbs, is a good thing. The portal will grow with the subject.

Nor have I said that I agree with your assessment of scope. Narrow scope isn't a problem with this portal's subject coverage on Wikipedia. And, regarding subjects covered of the narrowest scope, not that this subject is one of them, when a subject falls within a portal's technical capacity to show the entire rest of the subject not presented in the root article, it provides a convenient way to browse all of that material and complements the root article very well. I would say, that the narrower a portal's subject is, down to the threshhold allowed, the more helpful a portal is.

When there is too much material to display in a portal for its platform to efficiently present it (for example, shoving 100 or more topics into a single slideshow is counterproductive, as a user will unlikely ever browse to the end of the slideshow), it may be an indication for another portal, or at least, another slideshow. Math for example, has many subportals. Slideshows are another browsing tool we provide to readers, providing them an additional browsing option to choose from.

The subject (Diplo) is of sufficient scope. That the portal was nominated for deletion during its development is the most relevant topic here. It looks very likely that the portal will require more sections to cover the topic. You contradicted yourself, and revealed that your interest or bias is in halting construction, which is simply disruptive: if construction can continue, which you should have assumed good faith on, that would support the fact that there is more than what is contained in the generation template. The template used to construct these only provides a starting point. By its very nature, it doesn't capture everything on a subject. It only catches the things that happen to match its parameters.

To nominate a portal for deletion at this point in the portal's development is premature, and just looks like you are anti-portal, attempting to not let a new portal stub even get off the ground. Give Diplo a chance. He makes for a very interesting portal. — The Transhumanist 23:51, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - If there is to be a minimum number of articles within a portal's scope for it to be appropriate (or some other broadness of topic clause), then a guideline should be established to that effect. Handling them individually without established guidance is undesirable and inefficient. — Godsy^(TALK_CONT) 21:36, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep – the portal is a stub, ready for further development. Give it a chance to grow. That's what the wiki platform was designed for. The entirety of Wikipedia, and every nook and cranny of it, is a work in progress. — The Transhumanist 23:58, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This is a new portal based mainly or entirely on links from the corresponding navbox, but there are further articles that would be appropriate for inclusion in the portal (such as places, people or events related to the subject); besides which, the current number of selected articles is still a decent basis on which to build a portal. As has been discussed at length elsewhere (a discussion that would be pointless to repeat here), a portal is more than a summary of the core subject and a collection of related links; "a head article and a navbox" do not serve the same purpose or provide the same user experience as a portal. Waggers TALK 11:58, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

*Keep as per the consensus over at some Wikispace which I forgot where consensus was to keep these - I personally disagree with it but hey ho, If you want portals deleted then it might be worth reopening another RFC on it but as it stands keep pretty much per the rfc and above. –Davey2010^Talk 01:20, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per Godsy et el. –Davey2010^Talk 01:52, 29 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep – A useful navigational aid for those interested in the subject. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 03:03, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hold until we have consensus on the guidelines currently being discussed. Certes (talk) 00:40, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment – the guideline currently in place sets a low end threshold of articles needed of "about 20 articles". See Wikipedia:Portal guidelines#Article selection. — The Transhumanist 19:30, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete until we have consensus on the guidelines currently being discussed. The originator seems to be creating as many portals as possible because creating portals is fun, and hasn't justified them. This is yet another portal that has been recently created in spite of the lack of consensus in the community that we need portals at all, let alone that we need this portal. There is no evidence that this portal will actually be maintained, when the originator is simply creating a large number of unrelated portals, possibly because creating portals is fun. Rather than keeping yet another portal until we can agree on guidelines, we should delete new portals that are not clearly needed until we can agree on guidelines. The category associated with this portal is empty. This implies that this portal is not likely to be properly maintained in the future either. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:28, 30 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- The community consensus established at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/RfC: Ending the system of portals#Survey: Ending the system of portals is to keep portals and the portal namespace. That is, that we do need them. They decided in favor of portals by a margin of about 2 to 1. No new consensus is required to create new articles, nor new portals. Based on the very nature of wikis, that is left up to the initiative of individual editors, and is how wikis grow. A proposal for a portal approval process was rejected by the community in 2009. — The Transhumanist 19:30, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion on portal creation criteria

FYI

– Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere. You are invited to participate in the ongoing discussion at: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals § Time for some portal creation criteria?. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 16:48, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.