Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Electricity

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 without prejudice against creating a properly curated and maintained portal. — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:42, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Electricity

Portal:Electricity (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs

)

Huge topic, but just another drive-by junk portal, created by @The Transhumanist (TTH) to boost the numbers in his "newsletter". Contains a useless subset of this rich topic, created in the same slapdash way as Portal:Shipwrecks (see MFD:P:Shipwrecks) and Portal:Habitats (see MFD:P:Habitats).

It goes like this:

1. TTH creates[1] the portal page, using {{subst:Basic portal start page}}, which draws its "selected articles" list from Template:{{PAGENAME}}.
2. That produces no list, because Template:{{PAGENAME}} resolves to Template:Electricity. That page doesn't exist, so the "Selected general articles" section just shows a Lua error "No page specified."
3. To create a list, TTH then does a quick screenscrape of the eponymous
   WP:AWB, and using AWB's "list compare" to compare two. Perfect match, exceot for Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which was removed[3]
   from the category on 7 March 2019, a month after the portal was created.
4. Press save, and key presto, an instant "portal". Three minutes after the first save, he's saved[4] the embedded list, which now looks at first glance like a curated portal.
5. One wee edit to change column widths,[5], and after five minutes he's done and gone.

(I have since hacked[6] the Lua Module:Excerpt slideshow so that portals built in this way are tracked at Category:Automated portals with embedded list. Some of them seem okay, but others are junk.)

In some cases, this technique produces a reasonably coherent list of subtopics which would be better done as a navbox.

But in this case it only gathered the sweepings of the topic.

Category:Electricity is the parent of a deep category tree. But I rapidly spotted that TTH has simply used the base category, and taken nothing from the subcats. Some list-making confirmed that, and also allowed a quick check: only 26 of the 106 pages displayed as "subtopics" are assessed as FA, GA, A, B, C or list-class, which is what portals should be made of. 28 of the articles, all listed in the "Subtopics" section, are stubs:

But that's not the worst of it.

TTH's selection consists only of those which have not been properly categorised by diffusion into subcats. If you wanted to chose a set of what are likely to be the least developed articles on electricity, TTH's drive-by screengrab would be a good approach.

So once again, this was 5 minutes to create a portal which looks like it's curated, but is actually just disguised spam. It's hard to see how even its creator could have thought that this drive-by junk served any purpose other than boosting the count of the new "portals" which he listed in his "Newsletter". It's in issue #28, just below the heading "10,000 portals, here we come...", which boasts "We're at 5,705 portals and counting."

Once again, never mind the quality, just count the numbers ... and leave others to clean up the tsunami of spam.

I am sure that could be a decent portal on electricity. It is a huge topic, and a very important one: the article

Note A previous portal at this title was created on 20 January 2019 by

User:Cryptic on 3 February 2019 after Emoteplump was blocked as a sockpuppet. That version[7] drew its list of articles from the head article electricity, which is a very bad practice for the reasons seen at WP:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Lusaka. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:35, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply

]

• Delete - The question is not whether an electricity portal is in order, but whether this particular electricity portal should be kept, and the case for deletion has been made. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:28, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - Did You Know that... the footballer Kahraba ("Electricity") was given his nickname due to his pace and energy? Lets wait 36 months and get another piece of wisdom about Electricity. Pldx1 (talk) 11:13, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2019-02-05 08:31:43 by User:TTH, useless navigation tool, redundant to the existing articles and navboxes, and of lower quality. Without prejudice to a team who would do the huge job to create a decent portal on the topic (despite the low page views to be expected for a portal). Portal:Electricity. Pldx1 (talk) 11:13, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Now we're on to portal topics of which the breadth and significance is not challenged in the nomination. When the skeleton is there, the content can be improved at will. If, for instance, it is desired to display only high-quality articles among the Selected Articles, then they can be handpicked from the results of queries like Good articles,
  WP:TNT essay is far from an agreed policy and is often challenged: Bhunacat10 (talk), 12:11, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • @Bhunacat10, the gain from deletion is that we stop wasting the time of readers by redirecting them to an abysmal pseudo-portal whose content list is basically built of the worst articles on the topic. This is not a portal in need of improvement; it's a portal still in need of the basic minimum effort to start something which is of any use.

The downside to deletion is almost nothing, because the skeleton to which you refer can be re-created in seconds simply by entering {{subst:Basic portal start page}} and pressing save. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:11, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics courtesy talkpage notified. UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:09, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Huge topic indeed, so worthy of a portal. The rest of the nomination is concerned with how the portal was created and what it currently contains, which are
  content issues not deletion issues, and as such should be addressed by appropriate tagging and editing according to the deletion policy. WaggersTALK 15:56, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• @Waggers, articles are content, so deleting them removes content.

Portals are not content, so they are not covered by content-based aspects of deletion policy. They are a navigational device and/or a showcase for existing content, so the case for their existence depends on whether they do that well enough to add value per

WP:PORTAL

: "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". If they don't do that, they should be deleted, just like we routinely delete redundant or non-defining categories.

In this case, all we have is yet another bundle of drive-by spam from the portalspammer. If someone wants to build an actual portal on this topic, they can re-create the shell simply by entering {{subst:Basic portal start page}} and pressing save, which will be a trivial start to the hours of work needed to build an actual portal.

In the meantime, keeping this page live misleads readers into thinking that there is an actual portal here ... when all they will find is spammed junk.

The community has already made it very clear that it doesn't want to retain the spam in the vague hope that some day, somebody might build a real portal on one of the ~4,000 spammy shell created by TTH. Sadly, a small number editors seem to have an IDHT problem with that, and seem to be mounting what looks a bit like an attrition strategy to retain the last of the spam and waste the tine of readers. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:14, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't referred to any specifically content-oriented aspects of the deletion policy but to general principles that apply as much to portals as anywhere else. This entire nomination is based on what can be seen at the portal; the selected articles, pictures etc and frequency of updates. You can't update a shell or a framework, (other than changing colours and formatting etc) so the argument that "portals are not content" makes no sense in the context of a nomination that is all about the content of a portal. WaggersTALK 16:55, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nonsense, @

WP:DEL-CONTENT

says very clearly "Disputes over page content are usually not dealt with by deleting the page, except in severe cases".

Like most of the other pseudo-portals which you advocated keeping today, this a severe case. It is drive-by spam, crated by a mass spammer, which provides readers with a grossly misleading picture of the topic.

Yet you continue to point to

WP:DEL-CONTENT as if it placed a total ban on deleting junk pages, which it explicitly doesn't. Please read policies before wandering around cherrypicking them. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:03, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply

]

• Delete. Topic is eminently suitable but this method of creating a portal is worse than nothing. Willing, as ever, to change my mind if anyone is willing to take this on, but they might be better advised to restart it after deletion. Pinging @Waggers and Bhunacat10: in case they want to give it a go. Espresso Addict (talk) 16:54, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The point here I think Espresso Addict is that without consensus determining what makes a portal acceptable – nature of topic, amount of coverage of it on Wikipedia, basic structure of portal, selection of linked content, and other criteria – no portal is safe: after looking at the wide range of deletion arguments adduced over dozens of MfDs, few will wish to put in the "hours of work" rightly stated to be necessary to re-create a better portal, when they can have no confidence that this too won't be found wanting in some way and put up for deletion. This is not just a shot at the deletion team, but an appeal to all interested to begin building such a consensus: Bhunacat10 (talk), 12:41, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Broadly I agree, Bhunacat10, but my personal choice is to AGF very vigorously and try to wade in anyway; see eg Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Museums. I don't think anyone is likely to argue that electricity is not a suitable portal topic; it ticks the boxes of level 2 vital, lots of content and no BLP problems. Espresso Addict (talk) 13:36, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, and thanks to BHG for the very thorough and interesting explanation of how this was made.--Srleffler (talk) 02:47, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. This kind of auto-generation of pages had some purpose in the early days of Wikipedia (lists of redlinks, stubs generated from databases) when the 'pedia had no structure. But now, we have gone way beyond that. We have plenty of structure to build around. The idea that this kind of output is "creating content" has to be disabused. Real content creation requires some real work to be put into it. That's what we need, and that's what this isn't. SpinningSpark 17:38, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete the topic is fine but this method of automatically building portals does not produce acceptable results. Note in particular that the automatic DYK mechanism has produced an article about a footballer who is nicknamed "electricity". Yes, a manual portal on this topic would be viable, but if someone opted to do that then most of the contents of this portal would be discarded and the remainder is boilerplace which could be trivially resurrected. This isn't a case of putting up scaffolding so a building can be built, it's a case of putting up a dilapidated shack instead of a properly built house. Building the house would have to start with tearing the shack down. Hut 8.5 12:37, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per Hut 8.5. This is without prejudice to thoughtful recreation and ongoing curation by a willing maintainer. SITH (talk) 12:59, 12 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.