Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Geophysics

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: Nom. withdrawn because the rationale is no longer valid given editor improvements in the interim. (non-admin closure) UnitedStatesian (talk) 14:40, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Geophysics[edit]

(convenience link: subject article Geophysics)

Delete You have seen this movie before: created with one click, the articles come only from a template, the biographies come only from a list article, meaning it adds no enhancements (DYK, news, quotes, links to featured content) required to make it an "enhanced main page" of the subject, as the WP:POG guideline requires. UnitedStatesian (talk) 23:51, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(!vote struck. New one below)~~Delete~~. This pseudo-portal draws it article list solely from the navbox Template:Geophysics navbox, of which is therefore a redundant fork. (For a full explanation of why this type of portal is redundant, see the two mass deletions of similar portals: one, and two, where there was overwhelming consensus of a very high turnout to delete a total of 2,555 such portals).

There is no manual version to revert to, so just delete it, without prejudice to recreating a curated portal which is not a fork of another page, in accordance with whatever criteria the community may have agreed at that time. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:27, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Another one-page wonder. I concur with the analysis by BHG. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:15, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-11-11 16:13:42 by User:RockMagnetist, useless navigation tool, redundant to the existing articles and navboxes, and of lower quality: Portal:Geophysics. Pldx1 (talk) 13:49, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
~~Comment~~. I have no great love for "pseudo-portals", but this is not quite as simple as the nominator and BrownHairedGirl describe. The consensus was against portals that draw all the elements from a single page. As this draws from the list of geophysicists, the geophysics navbox, and images at a hand-coded list of 6 articles, strictly, this is not covered. "DYK, news, quotes, links to featured content" are not required elements, they are clearly listed in the linked guidelines under Optional (in fact "links to featured content" isn't mentioned at all), and several might well not be appropriate for all portal topics. There is a clear enhancement over list of geophysicists of improving a rather unattractive list article with appropriate and attractive images. On the broader question of whether the portal is useful, I think geophysics is a broad enough subject. Is anyone prepared to try to make a go of this portal? Espresso Addict (talk) 13:56, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

ETA: Keep, per the promise below to improve it from the creator & maintainer, an admin and topic expert. Espresso Addict (talk) 16:02, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

- @Espresso Addict, please take a closer look. The two sets of articles are as follows:

"Selected general articles", drawn from Template:Geophysics navbox
"Selected geophysicts, drawn from List of geophysicists

But List of geophysicists transcludes Template:Geophysics navbox, so the set of articles in the portal is identical to the set of articles linked from List of geophysicists.

The only significant difference between this pseudo-portal an the list is that the pseudo-portal takes a random subset of the total set of links, and displays htat subset one at a time on a click-for-next basis.

By contrast, readers can see a preview of any link on the list page just by using mouseover on the link to see the picture and the start of the lede. And they choose which one they want to mouseover, rather than the pseudo-portal's unfriendly tactic of making them scroll through a randomised subset.

We have been through this before. Far from being a clear enhancement over list of geophysicists as EA claims, the pseudo-portal is massively less functional fork of. I can forgive EA's oversight, because like me they are a logged-in editor who doesn't see the mouseover previews. But go on, EA, right-click on this link to list of geophysicists, select "open in private window" (or "incognito window" on Chrome), and enjoy the way taht the list massively enhanced over the outdated random-slideshow model of the pseudo-portal. -BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:27, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I did take a careful look at it. As I wrote in my comment above, it draws on the sources you mention plus images from six hand-selected articles. Espresso Addict (talk) 14:46, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

So it's a degraded fork with 6 pictures added in a slideshow. That's not a great case for keeping the WP:TNT undeployed. The pictures would be better added to the list. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:29, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not being uncivil, BrownHairedGirl, but please read what I write. As I read the code, there are not 6 images, but rather images drawn from 6 articles. Further, unless I am misunderstanding you, it's absurd to suggest adding the pictures to the list, given that the pictures are of geophysics topics, and the list is of geophysicists. Pinging @RockMagnetist:, the creator of this portal, whose talk page states "I am a geophysics professor", so I'm guessing knows more about geophysics than either of us put together, to join this discussion. Espresso Addict (talk) 15:45, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, @Espresso Addict, I misread that. But it's still just a degraded fork with a set of pictures added in a slideshow. That's still not a great case for keeping the WP:TNT undeployed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:55, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. No, you haven't seen this movie before. I am the creator of this portal, and unlike the pages linked by BrownHairedGirl, this was not part of a mass production. I am probably the largest contributor to geophysics articles on Wikipedia. I contributed the vast majority of the content (and images) in Geophysics, List of geophysicists (I'm glad you like that list, BrownHairedGirl) and {{Geophysics navbox}}, and I created this page based on what seemed to be the standards at the time. O.k., now the standards have changed, and I will modify it accordingly. RockMagnetist(talk) 15:51, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- @RockMagnetist, the list is good. Clearly a lot of hard work went into it.

The guiding principle of portals is that per WP:PORTAL, "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". So a portal really needs to add a lot of value beyond what's offered by the pretty-good head article Geophysics.

Sadly, last year the portals project lost sight of that principle and favoured any-old automated thing to push up the numbers. I'm sure that what you created was done in good faith, but it ended up not wildly different from the driveby automated portals. I will be interested to see what you come up with ...but do beware that portals are still the subject of intense debate. The cleanup of clearly sub-standard portals is still underway, and thereafter there is likely to be a period of RFCs to resolve the undecided questions of what portals are actually for, what they should look like, and what topics should be covered. So it's a very unstable field. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:11, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I have stayed away from the recent craziness around portals, but I am aware that a lot of negative things have been said about the new tools. I think it worth pointing out that I have maintained Portal:Earth sciences over the years, and had to waste a lot of time dealing with difficult and confusing layout issues. I was attracted to this new system because it took care of a lot of that nonsense, leaving me free to think about content. Yes, I could have done a better job, but I would rather improve the portal using these tools than go back to the old way. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:17, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- @RockMagnetist, there are some good elements to the new tools, such as cleaning up layout, and dispensing with the hideous proliferation of content-forked subpages. The downside is that they new tools could be abused to generate uncurated drive-by portals, which was sadly done on an industrial scale. Hence the dramas.

Where they are used to assist actual curation, they can be a powerful help in building magazine-style content-sampling portals. However, there still is no consensus on whether these magazine-style content-sampling portals are actually a good idea: e.g. EA is a thoughtful editor who thinks they are, but reader numbers remain mostly abysmal (Daily median pageview of all portals = 12), so I view them as a low-value type of page more popular with creators than with readers. In the absence of a broad community consensus on portals, their future is undecided. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:28, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@BrownHairedGirl: Can you think of an example where the tools have been used well? That would help me with this page. RockMagnetist(talk) 21:04, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@RockMagnetist, sorry. Would help if I could, but I am concentrating on cleaning up the junk, so I skip past the non-junk and pay it little attention. "Non-junk" obviously covers a wide spectrum, and I haven't tried grading it. I do note that I am impressed by the v difft Portal:Harz Mountains, which is a v difft style ... but again I am unsure where the consensus will lie on that sort of portal. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:14, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I have stricken my Delete !vote above, and will be reviewing the discussion in more detail within a few days. At this point, I see reasonable arguments both ways that require review. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:00, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comments @RockMagnetist: I commend you for your efforts on this topic, and I beg you, please, do not waste them on this portal that almost no one is ever going to look at (see the pageview stats for evidence of that); please consider sticking to the article space or to much more broadly viewed portals such as Portal:Physics. I would add that if a single editor can be responsible for the majority of Wikipedia's content on a subject, as here, that would seem pretty strong evidence the subject is not broad enough to meet the WP:POG guideline. UnitedStatesian (talk) 12:19, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Portal has changed during this MfD, and therefore, my !vote is changing accordingly. At 13:49, 6 May 2019 (UTC), we had:

-Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-11-11 16:13:42 by User:RockMagnetist, useless navigation tool, redundant to the existing articles and navboxes, and of lower quality. And now we have

-Maintained portal, 9 subpages, created 2018-11-11 16:13:42, maintained by User:RockMagnetist. And here, maintained means "doing maintenance" and not pretending that, perhaps, she (generic gender pronoun) will do some work in some unforseeable future (as can be encountered somewhere else).

Side remark: it could be useful to change the maintenance line atop the portal, which is saying:

{{Portal maintenance status |date=November 2018 |subpages=none |broken= |note= }}. The doc of the template is useful.

Portal:Geophysics. Pldx1 (talk) 12:58, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Dear User:RockMagnetist. <joke> One can even add that you would triple your page views per day if you were dealing with the Yeonguijeong article rather than with the present Portal:Geophysics, see [wmflabs]. Aren't you tempted by 38 views per day, instead of only 11 ? </joke> Pldx1 (talk) 13:19, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The improvements made by @RockMagnetist since nomination mean that my earlier !vote to delete was no longer valid, so I have struck it.

This is now a curated portal, using two separate lists of topics in subpages /Selected articles and /Selected geophysicists. Note that the way this has been implemented takes full advantage of the benefits of the automated technology introduced last year, which avoids the use of content-forks from the lead of every article; but because it uses curated lists, it avoids the indiscriminate spammy effect of wholly automated portals like this which were mass-deleted. Great work, RockMagnetist! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:30, 7 May 2019 (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.