Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Body piercing

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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) 22:25, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Body piercing[edit]

Portal:Body piercing (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Only 11 articles, which is far too narrow a scope for a portal. A set with this low a number of pages is better served by a head article and a navbox; we already have both. This is the worst I have seen so far of the flurry of micro-portals being created by @The Transhumanist, significantly more trivial than the Pebble Beach portal which the same editor requested speedily deletion of when it was MFDed. It is so absurd that I wonder whether The Transhumanist is trying to make some sort of point; I hope they will explain. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:21, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The portal's slideshows display from a pool of 74 articles, and 18 images, with more likely out there to be added. Each time the page is purged, it randomizes a selection of 10 articles from the pool of 74, minus stubs, thereby providing a varied reading selection each time a person visits the portal. That's the purpose of the "Refresh with new selections below (purge)" item right below the intro section. The stubs, if any, will be displayed once they are no longer stubs. Seventy some articles is way past the threshold for a portal, and that's just the ones I found at creation time. Those will increase automatically, as new body piercing articles are written and added to Wikipedia's navigation system. The selection displayed by portals is also very easy to expand manually once created, so it is not limited to the articles that are on the initially designated sourcepage.
Note that the original design for portals, which is still in use, displays a single article per visit, which has always been acceptable. The slideshow feature is a new advancement, that allows display of more than one article per visit. So, eleven articles is eleven times more articles displayed than the old-style portals.    — The Transhumanist   00:18, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@The Transhumanist: that pool of 74 articles is still no more than a modestly large navbox. What does this portal page do for the reader that Template:Body piercing doesn't? Your decsription above suggests that all it does is sample 11 of the 74 rather than displaying the whole list. How is this helpful to readers?--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:05, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The standard established since 2004, is for portals to display a single selected article, kind of like the Main Page. How is that helpful to readers? It's a sample of material on the portal's subject, while the scope of the Main Page is knowledge itself, providing a sample from the encyclopedia as a whole. Providing excerpts, kind of like a Reader's Digest. The idea behind portals is to do for specific subjects what the Main Page does for the whole encyclopedia (knowledge in general). Since April, we've been expanding upon that model to present more than one excerpt at a time, using slideshows. Slideshows are a very convenient way to browse samples from a subject. So, if you present 11 articles instead of 1, I guess in some ways that is potentially 11 times more helpful to readers, than the established standard of presenting a single article. Keep in mind that displaying a single article excerpt is acceptable in a portal, and is the current model being used on over 1200 portals. As of April there were 1500 of them. The very portals that the community consensus was to keep. We've upgraded about 300 of those so far, to present more than a single sample excerpt at a time. So, in summary, the answer to your question is "The same thing the Main Page does: provide sample content to read". What portals have always done.    — The Transhumanist   05:59, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
 
BrownHairedGirl, in answer to your question "What does this portal page do for the reader that Template:Body piercing doesn't?" This portal does the same thing that every other portal does: presents one or more excerpts for users to read. The old style of portal just shows one excerpt, while the new design, which this portal uses, displays multiple excerpts in a nifty slideshow. Once the page is loaded, the items in the slideshow change instantly when you click on the control arrows, which really facilitates skimming very well. You can click through them really fast, until you come across one you want to read. But there's more...
 
The portal also includes an image slideshow, which users can add pictures to. Many portals have extensive slideshows, as anyone editing a portal can easily add as many as they want. It's a cool place to add pictures you come across on Wikipedia and Commons. You can add them one picture at a time, or specify a sourcepage, and the slideshow automatically picks up and displays all the images on that article (or whatever page type it is). You can also add additional image slideshows.
 
But the new portal design also has some features that aren't always immediately obvious. One of those is In the news. This portal is news capable, so if any news items on its subject are reported at Wikipedia's Current Events department, they will automatically show up in this portal. All the new portals have this feature, and on any given day, various portals have new news items ready and waiting for users to read applicable to the portal's subject. If there is no news, the portal is not cluttered with an empty news section. It's magic.
 
Another such feature is the Did you know section, same as on the Main Page, but which only appears if there are entries to display.
 
Note that the search parameters for In the news and Did you know are user adjustable, which can improve the search results.
 
There's also an expandable/collapsible category tree.
 
The portal is also WikiProject aware. So, if a WikiProject on this subject were ever created, a section for it would automatically appear in the portal.
 
The excerpts in portals always stay up-to-date, because they are transcluded at the time the page is visited, while...
 
...the portal's coverage automatically grows as Wikipedia's coverage of the subject expands with new articles.
 
In addition to all of the above, we are actively developing new features for portals that will be added as they become available.    — The Transhumanist   09:02, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment about the limit temporarily placed on this portal – we use that when a portal is producing buggy behavior resulting in formatting problems, until we can track down what's causing it in the wikicode in the transcluded articles, and adjust that wikicode there or modify the lua modules that service the portals, to solve the problem. I generally post the portals with such problems in batches to WT:WPPORTD, and hadn't done so for this portal yet. The portal scarcely existed a day before BHG nominated it for deletion. Once the limit is removed, the portal will display all 74 entries upon each visit, minus stubs if any, plus any new articles added to Wikipedia's navigation system in the meantime. Portals are auto-updating, and show new material over time without anyone having to edit the portal.    — The Transhumanist   08:33, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: image slideshow now has 32 pictures    — The Transhumanist   09:59, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Following a module enhancement, the portal is now displaying all 74 excerpts. That compares well with many good portals which display only one excerpt, so it should not in itself be a reason for deletion. Certes (talk) 10:29, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reply @The Transhumanist: lots of words, mostly about the technical features of portals. But I see no attempt by you to engage with my central concern: why deploy this technology for such a tiny set of articles? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:28, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • I would call 74 articles a rather long reading list. The reason I use these new portals is for the enhanced interface, of course. Slideshows! A very convenient way to browse content samples of the subtopic articles related to the head article. Once you come to one you would like to delve in deeper to, click the Read more... link. Simple and elegant, and best of all, ergonomic. Faster and more convenient (less mouse jiggling) than browsing a list of links. If all the supplemental articles can fit on the portal, that makes the portal even more useful in a particular way: between it and the head article, you can survey the entire subject. That is, actually read the material. Portals are nice because they gather the material all on one page, and the slideshows switch between topics instantly, so once the page is loaded you don't have any more interrim waiting while you browse the excerpts. Having to wait for a page to load every time you click a link is like turning the pages of a book ever so slowly.    — The Transhumanist   06:10, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. 74 is plenty of articles to constitute a broad enough scope for a portal, and I'm sure there are more that could be added. A portal is much more than a collection of links to articles plus a bit of information about the main subject - the idea that a head article and navbox serve the same purpose between them is nonsense. WaggersTALK 12:33, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Waggers: please can you expand on that? When the portal has the same scope as a navbox, what exactly does it add other than a bit of information about the main subject plus a snippet on the subtopics? As far as I can see, what you are describing is simply a fancier navbox, located on a lonesome standalone page rather than hnadily appended to an article. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:42, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think @The Transhumanist: has already addressed that very clearly above. Selected pictures, recent events, "did you know", and a far more immersive & deeper user experience than a simple list of links, to name a few. And please let's not repeat the exact same discussion on every single MfD; if you want to nominate several similar pages for deletion for similar reasons, it's far less disruptive to group those requests together. WaggersTALK 12:57, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • @Waggers: your core rationale of far more immersive & deeper user experience than a simple list of links basically amounts to "alternative presentation of the contents of a navbox". Where is the consensus to use portals as narrow scope alt-navboxes? Where is the evidence that readers want or use portal-as-alt-navbox?
Given the narrow scope, the chances of recent events and DYKs within the scope are vanishingly small. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:58, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No one has managed to find a consensus either for or against. Perhaps this would be a good time to pause and recruit a wider audience to form one, so that it can inform current and future MfD debates. Certes (talk) 14:16, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree wholeheartedly. This nomination is primarily based on the premise that the number of selected articles is too low, and that indicates too narrow a scope. As I've said above, I don't think the number of selected articles is too low, and even if it were, that's not the only measure of the scope of a portal. There is no policy or guideline that sets out a minimum number of selected articles required for a portal to exist, nor any other definition of the minimum scope required for a portal to exist. These manifold MfD nominations are based on personal opinion, not on any guideline or policy. As User:Godsy says, let's get an agreed guideline in place and then we can determine which portals meet it or fail to.WaggersTALK 12:24, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong 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. That aside, this topic is broad enough for a portal. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 21:27, 25 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. –Davey2010Talk 01:20, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep – A useful navigational aid for those interested in this very popular contemporary topic. North America1000 03:18, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hold until we have consensus on the guidelines currently being discussed. Certes (talk) 00:47, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep – complements the root article by providing the rest of the subject on a single page via a convenient interface (slideshows).    — The Transhumanist   05:23, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep It seems to function well as a portal and has reasonable content. As to the "number of articles" -- Wikipedia is far from complete, and is not being built in an ordered fashion. If editors are enthusiastic about the portal topic, there's no reason to delete because they aren't working on it full-time. I'm good with it.==Paul McDonald (talk) 02:06, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Paulmcdonald: Maintenance is automatic. The excerpts stay up-to-date by always matching their source (paragraphs from an article lead, usually), because they use selective transclusion. No more manual copying and pasting of excerpts. The slideshows will show more items over time because they match the selection on a sourcepage somewhere, so, as the selection grows there, the selection also expands on the portal. Sourcepages may include articles, navigation templates, etc.    — The Transhumanist   19:55, 5 October 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.


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