Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/15 related narrow-subject portals

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: delete all except Portal:Underwater diving. — JJMC89 (T·C) 01:15, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

15 related narrow-subject portals[edit]

(convenience links: subject articles Finswimming, Diving safety, Diving support equipment, Diving equipment, Underwater work, Science of underwater diving, Diving medicine, Underwater breathing apparatus, Underwater sports, Freediving, Recreational dive sites, Diver organisations, Diver training, Underwater divers (redirects to Outline of underwater divers) and Underwater diving)

Delete all As a follow-up to Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Decompression (diving), I was waiting for the different creator (and sole maintainer) of all 15 of these to CSD G7 them, but oh well, here we are. All but one are one-click creations, and none of these topics meet the WP:POG guideline's breadth-of-subject-area requirement. UnitedStatesian (talk) 00:33, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all except Portal:Underwater diving, which dates from 2012, has hand-curated content, covers a broader topic with 1,157 project-tagged articles including 18 FAs/FLs/GAs (including the base article, which is featured), and is supported by an apparently active Wikiproject. Personally I'd suggest removing it from the bundle for clarity. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:44, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all except Portal:Underwater diving per @Espresso Addict. I have checked that all the the other 14 are in Category:Automated portals with article list built solely from one template.

There is no need to chop up Portal:Underwater diving into lots of litle pieces, which seems to have been the aim here. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:24, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Portal:Underwater diving per the above: lots of content, broad subject area, meets WP:POG. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 02:37, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all An excellent group nom. I anticipated. Legacypac (talk) 05:15, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Portal:Underwater diving provided it continues to be maintained. Easily broad enough to meet the vague criterion of WP:POG. Bermicourt (talk) 07:31, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep all for now (stipulating per request below that I created these portals) Until there are specific and objectively clear criteria for creation and deletion of portals this set of closely associated portals should be kept. It is a useful example for demonstrating that a portal on a broad enough topic can produce technical problems when trying to cover the full scope of the topic. These are problems that need to be addressed in the portal guidance. The original Portal:Underwater diving met, and until evidence is provided to the contrary, still meets, both original and current criteria for portal creation. The portal existed for several years as a multi-subpage portal on what was at the time considered to be an adequately broad topic, and has not yet been shown in objective terms not to be an adequately broad topic. It was split into sub-portals to reduce the server load of rendering the latest versions which were too large for the current limits. The splitting can be reverted when a better solution is found, and I will reconstruct the entire set to comply with whatever reasonably practicable portal creation criteria are deleoped by consensus once that consensus is reached. Reconstructing the mult-page portal is pointless until the criteria are settled, and the existence of a few new model portals in the interim does the encyclopedia no harm. This specific deletion proposal is too soon. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 07:41, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Peter Southwood, it's a pity that you chose not to identify yourself as the creator of all these ~~navboxes~~portals. I hope that you will promptly amend your !vote above to make that explicit at the start of your comments.

Regardless of any issues arise about the future structure of Portal:Underwater diving, the other 14 share a common, fatal flaw.

There is a very broad and exceptionally clear consensus that a portal built on a single navbox is simply a WP:REDUNDANTFORK of that navbox. (See about 7:1 support at MFD:Mass-created portals with a huge turnout for a WP:CENT-advertised discussion).

So any future choices about Portal:Underwater diving need to be made in light of that consensus. There are indeed unresolved issues about the future of portals, but one issue which clearly is resolved is that a portal built on a single navbox is not part of that future. So whatever future structure you adopt for Portal:Underwater diving needs to be one which does not involve the 14 WP:REDUNDANTFORKs. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:49, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

BrownHairedGirl, I did not "choose not to identify myself as the creator of all those navboxes", I was simply unaware that there was any relevance to who created them. I am still unaware of how this is relevant. I have created many navboxes, and some of them have been used for portal creation. I assume some have not. It is not a thing I ever considered worth looking up. Similarly I would like to know why it should be mentioned in my !vote, as I still consider it irrelevant to the point. It is not a thing that I am trying to hide, and anyone can establish the facts by simple examination of their history. At the time that they were created there was no consensus preventing them from being used for portal creation. Now it would seem there is. Consensus can change. That in itself is a good thing, because the encyclopedia must adapt as times change.

I am not currently arguing whether a single navbox is a valid basis for a portal. I really don't care that much. What I do want is for a valid basis for portals to be described in an unambiguous, clear and reasonably practicable way so that portals can be created or fixed without the constant risk of the goalposts being moved all the time, wasting the time of the people working on them. Deleting these portals now, when the way forward is so unclear, would gain nothing for Wikipedia and could be construed as being pointy. I am willing to wait until the criteria are developed to a stage where they can reliably work in practice, then to work within them. That should not be a big deal for anyone who is acting in good faith. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 13:30, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

BrownHairedGirl, I take note of your amendment. I have no objection to being identified as the creator of these portals nominated for deletion, and will make the amendment as you request, though I remain unconvinced that the value of the arguments to delete or keep should be affected by the identity of the person expressing them, and had assumed that it was already common knowledge, or at least that anyone expressing an opinion here would take the minimal due diligence to actually inspect the material proposed for deletion, and if they consider the identity of the creator important, would look it up. The proposer was certainly aware, but did not find it necessary to specify. It is no big deal anyway. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 13:57, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) @Peter Southwood, sorry. I meant to note that you had created the portals, not the navboxes. I have corrected my comment.

The reason that it should be explicitly stated is to alert other editors to the fact that you are not an impartial commenter, but an editor defending their own edits. Again, I hope that you will have the integrity to amend your !vote to state that explicitly. You say it is not a thing that I am trying to hide ... so just state it upfront, rather than leaving other editors to burrow for it.

I am sad, but not entirely surprised, to see you write not currently arguing whether a single navbox is a valid basis for a portal. I really don't care that much. The community consensus is well-established, and is very sad to see that you as a leading member of the portals project, simply don't care that much about upholding the consensus. That disdain for consensus is pretty much how the portals project turned whole issue of portals into it such a storm.

The community has already decided repeatedly that even though other issues remain unresolved, automated portals based on a single navbox should not be kept. It is utterly disgraceful that you describe the application of that well-established principle to your own creations as pointy, by which of course you mean Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point.

You are a leading member of the crew who supported and defnded @The Transhumanist while TTH unleashed a tsunami of thousands of spam pseudo-portals. You and TTH have done precisely nothing to assist in the cleanup ... so how very bloody dare you try the psychological projection trick of labelling as "disruptive" those editors who have each devoted many dozens of hours of their time to cleaning up the crapflood which you and your pals created. That truly is disgusting, despicable, scummy behavior; it's the complete antithesis of the conduct expected on a consensus-based project. Have absolutely you no shame at all, man?

As you well know, the 14 automated portals included in this nomination can each be recreated in seconds simply by entering {{subst:Basic portal start page}} and pressing save. The navboxes on which they are built will remain in place, so there is precisely zero chance of any disruption of efforts to construct an alternative.

Your final sentence has the cheek to assert that anyone who is acting in good faith will agree with you. That is despicable: if you were working in good faith you wouldn't have cheered on the portalspammer as he shouted down objectors and unilaterally rewrote guidelines to endorse his spamming.

If you were working in good faith with a smidgeon of cluefulness you wouldn't have created this wee forest of micro-pseudo-portals which are merely WP:REDUNDANTFORKs of navboxes.

If you were acting in good faith you'd have helped cleanup the crapflood which TTH unleashed.

If you were acting in good faith you would not even think of accusing those doing the cleanup of disrupting Wikipedia to illustrate a point.

On the basis of your conduct here, I see no reason to believe that you would even recognise good faith if it danced naked in front of you with its name tattooed on its torso in big print. For gods sake, even if you won't cleanup the portalspsam, clean up your conduct. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:25, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

BrownHairedGirl, This is a discussion page for the proposed deletion of a set of portals, Please try to stick to arguments relevant to the specific portals under discussion. Your comments above and the conclusions you appear to be reaching are inaccurate and the way you express them may breach behavioural guidelines. You may be held to account for these statements some time, but this is not the place. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 05:39, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Peter Southwood, I stand by my comment as an appropriate response to your astonishing stance on the issues here. If you wish to open a discussion at WP:ANI or wherever on the points I made, then you are of course free to do so. I will be happy to defend what I have written, and suggest that you be aware of WP:BOOMERANG.

I would much prefer that you and the other creators of automated portals respected the overwhelming consensus at MFD:Mass-created portals based on a single navbox, and assisted in the implementation of that consensus. (@Gazamp has set a fine example[1][2][3]). But if you prefer a trip to the drama boards, we can do that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:41, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete these portals

Listing one by one, to be sure

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-11-05 05:20:43 by User:Pbsouthwood, useless navigation tool, redundant to navbox, lower efficiency: Portal:Finswimming

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-11-04 13:32:14 by User:Pbsouthwood, useless navigation tool, redundant to navbox, lower efficiency: Portal:Diving safety

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-09-23 12:09:49 by User:Pbsouthwood, useless navigation tool, redundant to navbox, lower efficiency: Portal:Diving support equipment

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-09-23 06:01:51 by User:Pbsouthwood, useless navigation tool, redundant to navbox, lower efficiency: Portal:Diving equipment

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-09-22 15:10:07 by User:Pbsouthwood, useless navigation tool, redundant to navbox, lower efficiency: Portal:Underwater work

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-09-22 12:23:13 by User:Pbsouthwood, useless navigation tool, redundant to navbox, lower efficiency: Portal:Science of underwater diving

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-09-22 11:44:56 by User:Pbsouthwood, useless navigation tool, redundant to navbox, lower efficiency: Portal:Diving medicine

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-09-20 15:29:53 by User:Pbsouthwood, useless navigation tool, redundant to navbox, lower efficiency: Portal:Underwater breathing apparatus

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-09-20 14:53:12 by User:Pbsouthwood, useless navigation tool, redundant to navbox, lower efficiency: Portal:Underwater sports

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-09-20 14:35:59 by User:Pbsouthwood, useless navigation tool, redundant to navbox, lower efficiency: Portal:Freediving

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-09-19 18:08:42 by User:Pbsouthwood, useless navigation tool, redundant to navbox, lower efficiency: Portal:Recreational dive sites

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-09-19 17:29:27 by User:Pbsouthwood, useless navigation tool, redundant to navbox, lower efficiency: Portal:Diver organisations

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-09-19 16:12:22 by User:Pbsouthwood, useless navigation tool, redundant to navbox, lower efficiency: Portal:Diver training

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-09-19 10:50:50 by User:Pbsouthwood, useless navigation tool, redundant to navbox, lower efficiency: Portal:Underwater divers

Once again, [wmflabs] shows that all this hipe about portals is much ado about nothing. Concerning the last one, I am bound by "the existence of a maintainer could make the day". And thus,

Keep - Portal:Underwater diving. Pldx1 (talk) 18:51, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep underwater diving, Delete rest per Espresso Addict. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 20:40, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete the 14 except for Portal:Underwater diving as useless forks created during a wave of reckless portal creation. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:09, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Robert McClenon, Please clarify what you claim the portals to be "forks" of. They do not appear to match any of the types of fork described in WP:CONTENTFORK. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 20:04, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- User:Pbsouthwood - See the analysis by BrownHairedGirl stating that single-navbox portals are redundant content forks of the navbox. Or don't see it. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:20, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  Robert McClenon, Thanks, that does clarify the matter. We have a situation where the old style multi-subpage portals are actual content forks of articles, as they include different content, or the same content written differently in a different place, and the new semi-automated portals are said to be content forks of navboxes. What I see them to be is an alternative way of viewing the original content of articles making use of the original navboxes, so I do not see them as content forks at all, since I don't see any forked (different) content. I will read BHG's analysis, as I may have missed something. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 12:23, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Portal:Underwater diving without prejudice to renomination in 90 days. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:09, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Recommend that User:Pbsouthwood be topic-banned from edits in portal space. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:09, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Robert McClenon. This is not the correct venue for recommending topic bans. If you wish to do that , do so at an appropriate forum. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 05:46, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- - I am aware that WP:AN (or WP:ANI if the disruption won't wait) is the forum for topic bans. The above is a recommendation that a topic-ban be requested at WP:AN or WP:ANI. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:20, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I don't agree with the naked aggression above but I do have concerns about Pbsouthwood's contributions and plans. On TTH's talkpage he proposed automatically harvesting categories to create navboxes to create portals. If you think navboxes are a bad base for an automated portal, categories are far more random and inaccurate. Legacypac (talk) 16:23, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
We did discuss the possibility of harvesting links from categories as a basis for creating navboxes, and the point that categories are often a mess was part of the discussion. I doubt that there could be a way to automatically sort the dross from the harvest - that would require expert attention - but a tool to create a list of links from a category would save the time needed to do that manually before discarding the stuff that would not be suitable for a navbox on the chosen topic. At the time there was no ban on using a navbox for the strucure of an automated portal, so the concept was at the time a legitimate subject for enquiry. On the point that categories are less suitable than navboxes as a basis for a portal I completely agreee. that was the whole point - by converting the relevant content of a category to a more focused navbox the irrelevant would be discarded. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 20:04, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Creating the navboxes is usually a very good idea, @Peter Southwood. The error came in building the WP:REDUNDANTFORK portals off the top of them. It looks like the question being asked was "how do we make portals", rather "how best do we enhance navigation for these topics". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:10, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
BrownHairedGirl, In my view making portals from navboxes is/was a possible way of enhancing navigation worth exploring. A navbox based portal is an alternative method of viewing the content collated by the navbox, with a few additional features not found in navboxes. When the navbox is updated the portal content changes to match. I do not see this as a content fork, but it could be considered a redundant view of the same content. There are several issues with some of the other features, like finding images that make sense in context, and getting suitable captions for them, relevant material for DYK, quotes, in the news and that sort of thing. Some of the traditional features may not make sense any more, but if people want to experiment, they may come up with solutions.
I see two functions for portals that are of interest to me. As a content creator in a particular topic area, a portal gives me a good idea of the existing coverage and gaps in that coverage. As a reader this function is mostly invisible and the relevant function would be navigation aid, particularly to aspects of the topic that a layperson might not expect, and therefore is unlikely to search for by name. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 12:23, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Peter Southwood, sure it was indeed worth exploring. The problem is that the valuation process was woefully inadequate, and the technology was widely deployed without having been subjected to a public beta evaluation/pilot project ... and then it was used as the basis for spam. Same for most of the other automated technologies developed last year. There are some useful elements to nearly all of them, but they all have limitations, and in the rush to deployment those limitations weren't scrutinised. TTH also created an environment in which reflective discussion was very difficult, so a lot of opportunities were missed.

In hindsight, it seems to me that the biggest error of all was missing how mousoever preview has made the selected-snippet format redundant. It's bit a like how in the mid 2000s websites concerned about accessibility used various CSS/javascript technologies to allow readers to choose bigger or smaller print, but later all the major browsers began to offer simply iPad-style zooming (by Ctl-Plus, Ctl-Minus), making the website's built-in feature redundant.

To me, that means both the automated snippet system and the curated snippets are now largely redundant. If there is still a place for portals, it lies in some other functionality. I agree with you that navigation aid seems like the most useful function. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:02, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

BrownHairedGirl, Sometimes people get over-enthusiastic about something and go off without considering all the possible consequences and motivations. They may do this in the complete conviction that they are doing it for the good of the encyclopedia, and cannot see the validity of any counterargument because they know they are right, and there is no specific injunction against it, and therefore they are not wrong. They can do things in good faith that when looked back upon with the perspective of hindsight seem misguided. This can happen to any of us, and the more we are sure we are right the more likely it is to happen. I have been arguing for clearer portal guidance and moderation for a long time. Some of my suggestions were accepted, others not. I went with the consensus of the time and place as is expected of us and because, as I have mentioned before, portals are not all that much of a big deal to me. This is all in the history, but it is not an entertaining read. It may seem counter-intuitive, but if asked nicely, TTH will probably admit that his main vision for portals is also to help people navigate the encyclopedia. We still need to work out what we want portals to be, and that is probably not going to happen here. As others have mentioned, it is trivially easy to undelete a one page portal - that was never the point. The point is that it serves no useful purpose to delete these specific subportals until we know where we are going. I suggest we let this one go and work towards some realistic and objectively practical guidance based on your question about Portal:Ireland. That discussion is not only interesting, but may turn out to be really useful. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 13:56, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You make some points about the automated snippets and mouseovers above that may be worth exploring in more detail. Mouseovers are also a different way of viewing existing content that I personally find immensely useful, though sometimes a bit limited. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 14:05, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @Peter Southwood. There's a lot in that I can agree with; we can all get carried away. But the repeated problem with TTH's approach was that instead of welcoming open discussion, he steamrollered his ideas through, without even a single RFC to get wider input. WP:CONSENSUS is a core policy on en.wp, and TTH has been here long enough to know that. His repeated disregard for consensus-building and tendentious misrepresentations of WP:ENDPORTALS are fundamentally incompatible with Wikipedia's core purposes.

I am very glad that we can agree about some avenues for moving towards a consensus on the purpose of portals, and i really look fwd to working with you and others on getting that underway.

However, I disagree strongly with your assertion that it serves no useful purpose to delete these specific subportals. I see nothing fundamentally different between the 14 subportals here and the ~3,000 other WP:REDUNDANTFORK portals deleted in recent weeks through my nominations alone, and the hundreds more deleted through other MFDs or WP:G7ed by their creators.

As they exist now, they don't help navigation; the navboxes do that better, and the portals are a waste of readers' time. The scope info remains in the navboxes, so future design is not impeded by deletion. If you feel that userfication would help your work, I'd be happy to support that; but I still see no reason to keep them live. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:28, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Lets just leave it to the uninvolved and neutral closer to judge the validity of the arguments then, and move on. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 16:27, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. We have each said our say. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:51, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Portal:Underwater diving and merge the rest back together. If we're leaning towards a hybrid semi-auto/multipage format, there's no need to maintain a "family" of smaller topics, they could be kept in the main portal and organized with subpages to avoid WP:TLIMIT concerns (such as the suggested tabbed layout). — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 15:30, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - The rationales given by User:Pbsouthwood must absolutely be remembered in any general discussion about portals. When you stop playing portal with only 3 articles, 3 pictures and 3 DYK, and really use Portals as a full-sized tool, then you get complexity issues. This is a well known problem: when the implementation is not done with utmost care, the software doesn't scale as expected... and you only have to play portal with toy-sized subsets. Pldx1 (talk) 15:47, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all. Even the portal:underwater diving, which should perhaps have been nominated separately, is hardly worth keeping. It may have been manually created, but it starts at the moment (days after this MfD started- with a redlinked image (with a caption though), then has a first section ending with "how to use this portal" (text) with nothing beneath it nor a link, and further down has issues like the massive, page-wide "selected image" I show here as well, which has little educational value, no esthetic value, but does prominently feature the name of the author of the portal... Fram (talk) 15:58, 26 April 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.