Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/RfC: Ending the system of portals

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 – Hi everybody. Because this discussion has become so lengthy (400,000+ bytes), I have moved it to a subpage of the village pump so that the village pump is more accessible. I apologize if any confusion has been caused by this. Mz7 (talk) 01:54, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
(The RFC originally started with :this entry on WP:PROPS --Ｔｏｍ (talk) 16:03, 20 April 2018 (UTC) )[reply]

RfC: Ending the system of portals

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There exists a strong consensus against deleting or even deprecating portals at this time.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 23:43, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Should the system of

portals
be ended? This would include the deletion of all portal pages and the removal of the portal namespace. 14:23, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Survey: Ending the system of portals

Notice to editors:

  1. This survey is now closed. Do not add any more Support/Oppose comments.
  2. General discussion about the proposal or the RfC itself can be found in the next section, called "Discussion: Ending the system of portals".

8 April 2018

  • Support Taking at look at one example of Portal:Cricket: it contains a summary of the lead of Cricket, which is out of date (there are now twelve full members); obscure random articles that is just something someone took the effort of making them good - like Yorkshire captaincy affair of 1927; out of date news, random anniversaries and other random stuff like that. Readers aren't looking for random cricket-related stuff - it is clear, from the extremely low page-views, that readers don't care about portals. The most-viewed portals are purely from being featured on the main page; but for example Portal:Science gets only 8 out of 100000 of the views of the main page, a few hundred people a day, and they are likely from random clicks - not from people interested; which would likely account for most views of other portals too. There have been suggestions of automated systems for helping to develop portals, which even if developed wouldn't help, because portals aren't useful in any way. Personally, I've never felt the desire to read, say, a random science article, which is what portals consist of (most portals indeed have literally randomly selected content from a list)
In essence, portals try to straddle reader-facing and editor-facing stuff, but are terrible at both. They aren't really part of the encyclopedia; nor do they help in the backend - they don't benefit the encyclopaedia in anyway (the main page, which could be called a portal of everything, in contrast, encourages people to improve articles). Any navigational purpose, which I don't think portals help with at all, is better served through outlines. Featured articles and other stuff in a topic are cared more by wikiprojects, which generally link them already. Implementation could be reasonably easily done, as nearly all, I reckon, portal links in mainspace and in all pages indeed are through templates like {{portal}} (in all pages I estimate 99% of links are from being linked in wikiproject banners), which can be blanked to remove links; once the links are gone from mainspace, the portal pages can be deleted. Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:29, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Galobtter: You take one example for deleting a whole namespace, some portals are working and there is no need for deleting the work of hundreds of people!--Sinuhe20 (talk) 07:55, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: It is time to abandon this useless relic simply because its function is duplicated (and done better) elsewhere. The portal system are also incomplete and what gets a portal is rather strange and random: take a look at
    UK? (We do have Portal:UK Trams -- last substantive edit in 2007 -- so there is that.) --Guy Macon (talk) 15:59, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support, in the good old days, misguided by the hype, I even created Portal:Lithuania. Agree that portals are not maintained and should be deactivated. There might be one or two portals out there that have some useful stuff worth salvaging, but 99% of the 1500 portals should be deleted. At the very minimum, the {{Portal}} from articles should be removed. Renata (talk) 16:01, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, I've never understood what portals were supposed to be good for to begin with. They've always seemed like a thoroughly obsolete idea to me, and the ones I've seen were almost invariably ill-maintained, magnets for POV editing, or downright useless. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:05, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support speaking for myself I’ve only made one portal edit (a reversion) and since that time 9 years ago have not found the desire to edit one since. They don’t seem to have any net benefit to the encyclopaedia side of things and hardly anyone seems to maintain or look at them, so it’s fine by me if they were removed. Aiken D 16:11, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support for the reasons explained above and those listed at User:DexDor/Portals. DexDor (talk) 16:25, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, per various comments above but FPaS's in particular. - Sitush (talk) 16:27, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support There has never been sufficient either reader or editor interest to maintain portals. I would be open to someday presenting next-generation portals which without any human involvement present Wikimedia content in a category in a human-readable way, perhaps ranked by article importance and quality. I would not want new editors looking at the portal system and using their labor to develop this content when it is a failed project. Portals are a burden for remaining out of date and abandoned. I would not want any reader to find the low quality content here. If portals get shut down then I think it should happen on a schedule of about 1 year to give anyone time to collect the information in them for re-integration, if there is anything to salvage. I think that usually there will be nothing to save, but at the same time, the portal project did recruit 1000s of editor hours and I would not want that deprecated lightly and without time for people to respond. The wind-down plan could be 3-months of comments, then 3 months of removing links pointing to portals, 3 months to move portals out of the portal: space with "deprecated" tags, then at 12 months actually delete or mark them so that they would not appear in search engines. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:45, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Oppose: Many people, including myself have invested many hours to improve and maintain portals. They are usefull to navigate. I propose that all portals which were created should be kept.--Broter (talk) 17:15, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This is an example of the
[t] [c] 23:23, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
I see this comment by a concerned editor, supporting his edits.. It is demeaning by reduction to say "this is an example of a fallacy" .. when it is his legitimate point of view, and volunteer labor ! A logical fallacy is not adequate to respond here, IMO. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1702:2770:9D0:C4A:68DE:2888:598F (talk) 18:20, 22 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, kind of a-holish to coldly label someone's legitimate, not malicious concern as a fallacy... 71.15.110.98 (talk) 01:10, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support The first item on the top right of the main page, is occupied by Portal:Arts, which hasn't been serious updated in years. This is supposed to be a featured portal. It's "supported" by a project whose page hasn't seen any activity since 2016. It's embarrassing. Vexations (talk) 17:24, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No, what's actually embarrassing is that some editors voting for deletion don't appreciate that Portal content is often made via other templates, which are themselves updated in varying amounts. The portal that forms Wikipedia's Main Page hasn't been edited at all this year yet. Nick Moyes (talk) 13:33, 12 April 2018 (UTC)  [reply]
Actually,
Portal:Arts, which I hadn't looked at for years, still seems to function fine. The sections have automated rotation of decent lists of articles, the anniversaries are for April. It's like one of those spaceships in Alien and other movies keeping going while the crew are in suspended animation.... It's not a very time-sensitive area, and the reader is still well-served imo, for several visits. Johnbod (talk) 16:16, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
  • Support despite adding these things for years and creating many see here ... it's clear that these have failed and do not serve their function as intended.--Moxy (talk) 17:36, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support They're outdated and the updating of them takes away from precious time that could be spent making 'Outline' articles. These are much better and avoid duplicate and outdated content on portals. I find that most people don't use portals either, rather using the search function or the main articles themselves which can act as portals. For example if wanting to know about economics I would go to the
    Portal:Economics – Craig Davison (talk) 17:40, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support Largely unused an unmaintained. An outdated idea that the community clearly does not care to continue supporting.
    talk) 18:04, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support Minimally delete the internal spam from every article directing the reader to the related portals. --RAN (talk) 18:11, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional Support - Support end of portals system as we currently understand it; Oppose deletion of the portals by default - I recently had a conversation about portals with a group of people learning to contribute. A couple of them stumbled upon portals and loved the idea. Sure enough, when I looked at the particular portals they mentioned, they hadn't been updated in years. (Portal:Speculative fiction was one of them that I remember off-hand). Talking a bit more about what they liked about portals, three things stood out: (1) it has a lot of related content gathered together for a particular subject, (2) it was useful to find articles to work on and to get a better feel for the state of Wikipedia's coverage of that topic, and (3) it was much more visually appealing/inviting/useful than a WikiProject page. In other words, portals served them primarily as editors, not as readers, and that's not the way we current understand/use portals. For that reason, I'm supporting. However, it's a partial support because I oppose deletion of the portals by default -- they should be moved to relevant WikiProject subpages by default, and MfDed selectively where the WikiProject does not wish to retain them. I would love to see the portals system reconceived as a way to make WikiProjects more engaging to new editors (or any editors), maybe even thinking about using the main WikiProject page as a sort of portal to a subject. Of course, none of this is to say the outcome of this RfC should in any way mandate that any WikiProject do anything differently. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 18:10, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • If the portals are all deleted, it would be a Good Thing if the Wikiprojects were notified with "heads up; the following portals are about to go away. Feel free to move them to subpages of your Wikiproject before that happens." --Guy Macon (talk) 18:21, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Guy Macon: I'm sorry, but that's not very logical. The portals should instead be tagged with {{historical}} in order to preserve their page histories. ToThAc (talk) 18:08, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • What part of "If the portals are all deleted" are you having trouble understanding? --Guy Macon (talk) 21:45, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support obsolete with respect to top articles in their subject. Don't delete, but mark as historic, lock them down (full protection), and force de-linking from content namespaces. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:15, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - efforts should be directed elsewhere, where they are more useful. Tazerdadog (talk) 18:16, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support – but move portal pages into Wikipedia/user space automatically or on request. Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 18:22, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support - I find that portals are almost entirely useless. Delete as such. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:24, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Since there are people here apparently without a lick of commonsense, I guess I should be explicit that I would exempt the Current Events portal, and -- as much as I love to disdain the Main Page --I would also exempt the Main Page. Sheesh, people can be so damned literal sometimes. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:47, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
what if Portal A was redirect to Outline of A. This was the name function still directs readers to an overview/index of a topic.--Moxy (talk) 18:33, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No problem with that if [1] Outline of A exists and isn't abandoned and [2] Portal A is seeing more traffic than we would expect from bots and mis-clicks. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:40, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Reform may be due (which I would be happy to discuss later if this discussion shifts and does not pass), but I do not think abolition is the way to go. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 18:43, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I’d be interested to know how we would reform an area that is more or less abandonded. The community and the readers seem to have made it clear they don’t find these particularly useful, we can’t force anyone to look at them or maintain them.
talk) 23:59, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
Guns. We need squads of heavily-armed thugs who will kick down the doors of Wikipedia editors who aren't working on what we want them to work on and hold a gun to their head until they comply. Not a practical solution, you say? How do you explain the immense popularity worldwide of similar systems? :( --Guy Macon (talk) 22:46, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support — For contentious issues with a strong political POVs it a can be a real problem to maintain a political balance. Take for example Portal:Genocide a far better portal name is Portal:Human rights, but POV warriors prefer labelling "crimes against humanity" genocide for various reasons which include style (shorter more punchy name), blame game, and legalistic (genocide so defined by treaty, crimes against humanity are in part defined by custom). Given the problems of eyes and maintenance, it is too easy for contentious issues in portals to avoid the sort of scrutiny that the major articles on an issue receive see for example Portal:Terrorism which suffers from the aliments to which Galobtter referrers. -- PBS (talk) 19:38, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional support Deleting them outright is not OK. In general I'm in agreeance that Portals are ill-maintained and not used often. However some are well-maintained, useful for some, and the editors worked very hard on them. They should be userfied, or moved as a subpage of a WikiProject. At the very least, every WikiProject needs to be notified that their related portal is doomed, and let them decide what to do with it. Please don't blindly delete all of them. — MusikAnimal talk 19:39, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: I have always thought of portals as redundant and even confusing sometime. They more or less usually look like historical archives due to outdated information with some having information dated over a decade ago. Also they generally duplicate WikiProjects pages which are more lively and better maintained. I am neutral on deleting/merging/moving or whatever, but I believe it is time for "Portals" to go. –Ammarpad (talk) 19:51, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Portals are rarely used or maintained, and they don't jell with the interface or how most readers/editors navigate. Readers want to 'click-through' straight to content. Outline articles and interlinking within standard articles offers this and makes portals obsolete. Cesdeva (talk) 20:06, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. These are largely useless and not well maintained. Natureium (talk) 20:14, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: they are redundant to other means of navigation, mostly poorly maintained, and in some areas provide a view of the structure of the underlying topic that is not neutral and by the nature of portals not sourced. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:27, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support because they are usually poorly watched they are a magnet for POV pushing and craziness. I had a heck of a time with a Portal on
    ISIL as there was no good way to keep it from turning into almost terrorist advertising. I finally got it redirected. The only reason selected Portals get significant traffic is because they are prominately linked. I've NEVER been directed by Google to a Wikipedia portal and you have to click a search box to find portals in internal search. Portals are so 15 years ago, the internet moved on a long time ago. Legacypac (talk) 20:40, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support: Poorly maintained, rarely useful, few views except the eight portals on Main Page, not worth editor resources. "Page information" under "Tools" shows page views in the past 30 days. I compared some random portals to their main article, e.g. Portal:The Simpsons 527 views versus The Simpsons 235,536 views. The main portal page gets 0.2% of the views of a single covered article. My other examples: Portal:Cricket 1,527/185,133 = 0.8%, Portal:Tennis = 943/64,213 = 1.5%, Portal:Cars 2,213/91,460 = 2.4%, Portal:Greece 963/223,193 = 0.4%, Portal:Dance, 1,421/60,807 = 2.3%, Portal:King Arthur 373/166,466 = 0.2%, Portal:Microsoft 2,646/230,201 = 1.1%. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:18, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support deprecating them. They are utterly useless, and like many dead-end ideas from the early days, become more and more of a maintenance burden as time goes on. Next let's axe the sidebars, outlines, and bibliographies.
However, I don't think mass-deletion is going to work (it rarely does). Instead I'd suggest updating any relevant guidelines to say they are obsolete, then introducing a speedy deletion criteria along the lines of "pages in the portal namespace that are no longer actively maintained". – Joe (talk) 21:37, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Very hard to get a new CSD approved but with a clear RFC result that would be a good mechanism to remove them systematically. Perhaps X3? We should statt by removing them from the top of the mainpage - the most important real estate for the least important namespace on the project. That will drop traffic on the portals a lot. Legacypac (talk) 21:44, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - As sad as it is, no one seems to care about portals anymore. I hepled get
    P:USRD every month for the past several years. While I value putting in time to keep the portals updated every month, unfortunately not many other editors care enough to contribute to the portals. Several years ago, many editors would contribute to P:USRD and offer suggestions for selected articles, pictures, and Did you know? hooks, which would make the portal easy to update every month. In recent years, there are very few suggestions for content which usually leads me to have to dig for stuff every month. Perhaps we could reduce the maintenance of portals and have them just randomly generate content and change every time they are refreshed, P:MDRD does this for selected pictures and Did you know? hooks. If no one cares enough to keep portals updated, then maybe it is time to get rid of them. However, I would not want to delete the entire portal namespace but would rather mark all pages in portal namespace as historical and remove links to them from article space. By doing this, we could still keep the attribution of the history of the portal namespace rather than delete a large portion of Wikipedia history. Dough4872 21:41, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support - as it appears they are largely pointless in the current environment. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:43, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per above. Largely useless, with dubious value to readers. -FASTILY 21:45, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional support I feel that portals result in additional maintenance time that could probably be better invested elsewhere on the project. However, interested editors should be given an opportunity to migrate the content elsewhere, and the portals should not be outright deleted right away. --Rschen7754 22:39, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose no strong reason to do so and it'd be more of a pain to implement than it is worth. The portal namespace isn't that useful, but I see this proposal as being about equal in usefulness to the namespace as a whole (namely, not very...) When the two options are both washes, there is no reason to change. Change for the sake of change is pointless. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:42, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Alternative – Why don't we just encourage editors to de-link portals that are unmaintained when they encounter them? Then if someone cares that will prompt them to do some maintenance. Dicklyon (talk) 22:57, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Because well meaning but not clued in editors will revert them, and keep add portal links without realizing what a disservice they are doing. Legacypac (talk) 00:07, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support There's no reason to let this largely useless part of the encyclopaedia continue to exist and just create problems for readers as well as editors. That said, I'd be open to migrating some content to wikiproject pages (on a case by case basis) if editors find a need . —SpacemanSpiff 23:34, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Portals are obsolete, even the one I helped create and tried to maintain for quite some time has become an irrelevant mouldy pile of arbitrary stuff. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 23:52, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Oppose: Portal are useful way for people to find information quickly and should be left alone. IQ125 (talk) 12:30, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

9 April 2018

  • Consider the articles created by Coxhead such as
    vital and focus on getting that right before allowing anyone to start anything else? Andrew D. (talk) 13:17, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
A low-traffic target page hardly has the same maintenance reliance as a portal (which we intentionally try and funnel readers through en-masse). Cesdeva (talk) 15:05, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Andrew Davidson: you didn't pick a good example in James Eustace Bagnall – he's long dead, and the information in the article isn't going to change. I can give you better examples for your argument, e.g. Ponerorchis cucullata, where there's active research going on and the generic placement has changed recently and might change again, requiring the article to be moved and updated. But portals are different, as Cesdeva says. Since they deliberately cross-connect multiple articles they necessarily need regular maintenance, as relevant articles appear, get moved, get promoted or demoted, etc. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:00, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Portals for well-established topics like
frenetic activity is not required for such pages. The point is that once you start to claim that we can discard pages because they seem to be a backwater then you put most of our content at risk. And Wikipedia is nowhere near finished yet. People are still developing and arguing about structural aspects like infoboxes and Wikidata. It's far too soon to say that everything's settled and we can discard pages which are currently not mainstream. Andrew D. (talk) 16:12, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
Well, we'll have to agree to differ, but the argument is not that portals are a backwater, but that, unlike articles, the nature of most portals means that they don't work well if they are backwaters. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:26, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No, the argument seems to be that because some portals don't work well, we should destroy them all to make sure that none of them work at all. The main benefit seems to be that we will then have some white space where the portals used to be. Presumably the people who didn't use portals will carry on as before while the people who did like and use them will be infuriated and leave Wikipedia. Me, I'm thinking that the next step should then be to tear down the Village Pump too before we get any more bright ideas like this. Andrew D. (talk) 20:17, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's not "some" it is ALL. The topic traffic portals are dismal failures according to our readers considering the have the highest visability links on the project. The readers rejected this failed idea a long time ago. We just need to turn off the lights. Legacypac (talk) 02:01, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No, that's a fake fact – facile and false. Some actual stats are listed below to refute it. Andrew D. (talk) 23:25, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You have a funny definition of "false" and "refute". Something linked to on the main page and on thousands of pages and talk pages gets fewer clicks than the word "free" in "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and your conclusion is that this shows that readers are interested in it? Can you think of anything -- anything at all -- that might serve as an alternate explanation? I'm just saying. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:09, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The list of main page stats below shows that the link free got over 100K views and that most of the portals got even more traffic. This is good evidence of significant usage. Q.E.D.. Andrew D. (talk) 07:22, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No it isn't. It is evidence that it has a link from one of the most heavily visited pages on the internet. Put a link to https://zapatopi.net/blackhelicopters/ or http://www.patience-is-a-virtue.org/ in the same place and those pages will get over 100K views. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:50, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
But that's still 10,585 and 17,155 people a year respectively who have an opportunity to discover, if they so wish, new topics and sample selected encyclopaedic information in a different way to normal, without having to wade through a lengthy and maybe dull-looking article. Yes, numbers are low on the scheme of things, but there are innumerable Featured Articles like this and this that get less traffic. Shall we delete all low-traffic pages next because they don't attract enough people? The logic makes no sense. Delete a rubbish page because it's flawed and can't be fixed, for sure. But all 1500 Portals (assuming just 50 visitors a day each) still amounts to 27.6 million people a year not having an opportunity to see or discover a broad sample of articles relevant to a topic, usually in a bright, uncomplicated manner, and possibly being enthused enough to learn and study that topic in a way that might even change their direction in life. Why take that away? Nick Moyes (talk) 03:02, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I watch and edit two portals, Portal:Germany and Portal:Opera, both featured portals, and up-to-date, - why change? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:46, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    While you maintain the portals, there may be some point. But the problem is that portals don't continue to be maintained, as noted repeatedly above. Note also that the Germany portal gets less than 1% of the number of views that Germany does. So the value to readers in relation to the work required by editors is grossly disproportionate. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:20, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I am not alone, maintaining takes me 3 minutes on days that have DYK related to Germany. It takes someone else 3 minutes to update the news. Why not? To compare portal and country is like apples and pears, - where on the country article would a reader get news and DYK? Some hundred look per day, enough for me to invest 3 minutes now and then. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:30, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support They are dead (as a whole). Let's do the honours. Although I would not cry my eyes out at the sight of their deletion, I would find it disrespectful for them to be deleted -- mark as {{historical}}. talk to !dave 10:45, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support not updated, old, hardly viewed, and not a central part of our mission.--Tom (LT) (talk) 11:00, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as written, but would Support a purge of some poor portals. -- Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 13:15, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose to Strong Oppose - although many support arguments appear to have quite rational argumentation - It is bit like some who cannot cope with having projects on talk pages - project tags help the process of evaluation - the linked nature of things seems to be lost on most above. Portals can have moribund content and appearance but they are excellent links to a more complex process - where latin names of phenomenon have category pages with no attempt at explaining as to whether they are rock, plant or animal - portal links are useful to clarify the context of many pages in complex category trees that are otherwise too labyrinthian for the average user. Portals are useful, but for whatever reason, those who visit seem to think otherwise, a small problem with dismantling parts of a structure, what is suggested next? Take care with such a suggestion, I would suggest threshold of this argument needs to be considered very carefully. JarrahTree 13:38, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Can you give an example of such a latin name category page and how a reader might arrive there without knowing whether it's about rocks/plants/animals? As an editor (when fixing categorization problems) I wouldn't rely on the portal link being correct. DexDor (talk) 21:03, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
reply to DexDor - having been through birds, and other category page main spacetagging - I believe that some indication on a category page reduces potential confusion as there some binomial latin phrases could be a plant or a bird. I have not found deliberate or accidental project mis-tagging. JarrahTree 09:11, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I still don't understand how you think people would end up on a category page without knowing whether it's about a plant or a bird. "project mis-tagging" presumably refers to tagging by wikiprojects on talk pages which is a different thing to putting portal links on article/category pages. DexDor (talk) 20:43, 22 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I think the efforts expended in maintaining them can be better used elesewhere. S a g a C i t y (talk) 16:25, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose If the proposal here is broad deletion of all, that can and will only end in a mess (see this, followed by this, followed by this this) - extensive one fell swoop, hacking away of multiple pages just is bad for the project, and we do it badly. Some pedians have expressed interest in some of these even in this discussion (over many years) - so, I support those pedians -- I also might support things like removal of links from the Main Page, etc. but I cannot support this.
    WP:IDONTLIKEIT, showing the invalidity of the delete arguments -- adding, that never in Wikipedia history has there been mass deletion like this because it runs afoul Wikipedia:Editing policy. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:41, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support Outline articles are more efficient. Would not oppose some method of archival for portals that have been maintained up until at least the past month and archival with deactivation for those maintained up until a year ago, but definitely deletion for those that haven't been maintained in over a year. Ian.thomson (talk) 17:26, 9 April 2018 (UTC) Edit: Broter has (perhaps inadvertantly) provided good evidence that selective action (deleting some but not others) would result in increased bias in the portal area. Whatever action is taken (be it deletion or archival) should be unilateral and affect all portals in an identical manner. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:14, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, they are obsolete, and most are not maintained. Side bars and end bars provide a similar service and do a better job at it. Kierzek (talk) 17:58, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Portals are largely unviewed and unmaintained. I do think they should be marked as historical rather than deleted outright (though deletion should be an option in some cases). Plantdrew (talk) 19:08, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Axisixa. Portals (operating like topical main pages) make sense when you have a group of editors (like a WikiProject) actively curating them. The portals (like the Main Page) aren't configured to be static. Because of that, their utility degrades over time and deletion makes sense when they aren't being updated. Maybe if the WMF had done more to retain our "wild west" editors from 2005-2008, we wouldn't be short-staffed and deprecating stuff now. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:24, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose We shouldn't be deleting pages because (i) they don't receive many page views, or (ii) they haven't been well maintained. How do readers benefit from this proposal? Some readers must find portals useful, and this proposal seems like the wrong solution to specified issues. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 20:51, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • PaleCloudedWhite, what's your basis for believing that they are useful to some readers? (The mere fact that people sometimes click on them isn't enough, since you click before you know whether the page will be useful to you.) Is there a particular type of reader that you think they'll be more useful to? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:05, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • And what is the basis for people's assertions that they are not of any use to readers? Do the same editors make such assertions about particular articles, and that therefore they also should be deleted? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 06:41, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        The incredibly low readership of portals - even the 8 linked off the top of the mainpage - proves they are not useful to readers who vote with their clicks. Also every person voting here is a reader too and I've yet to see anyone really say they use portals. The objections are around preserving history or some useful bits or not offending the creators. Legacypac (talk) 06:51, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        public service broadcasting, which he said should "cater for the broadest possible range of interests, popular as well as less popular, a network that measures its success not only by its audience size but by the range of its schedule". PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 07:05, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
        ]
        Thank-you for that comparison as it should help you understand my point and might make you change your vote. 119 pages a day for page with 16 inbound wikilinks about a row of trees is impressive (and an impressive article). We don't need to delete Dark Hedges because it is meeting a need. 139 views a day on Portal:Christianity is indeed incredibly low given it is an an extremely important topic of global interest where the portal is wikilinked from a HUGE number of pages (I gave up counting at around 30,000 page). There are so many ways to get to Portal:Christianity that 139 views a day could be mostly bots and accidental clicks. Legacypac (talk) 07:43, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        And my point is that we should not be deleting pages based on pageviews, nor using pageviews as a basis for how useful a page is (unless, perhaps, it always receives zero). PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 07:58, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • PaleCloudedWhite, you said that "some readers must find portals useful". I am therefore asking: Do you use portals? Do you know anyone who does? Can you think of a hypothetical scenario in which a portal would be particularly useful for some reader? Perhaps a situation in which you personally would bypass other alternatives (search, navboxes, see also, links, etc.) and head straight to the portal? I know why the critics think that portals are not useful (critics look at the low page views, and conclude that if portals with tens of thousands of links on hundreds of articles are attracting such low interest, then realistically, some people are looking at them but nobody's finding them useful enough to seek them out.) The critics may not be correct, but it is a reasonable belief. I want to know why you believe that "some readers must find portals useful". Let's say, arguendo, you're absolutely correct. Let's say that there really are some readers who use them, and let's say that portals really are useful to those readers. Now, which readers are using them, and how are portals useful to them? If we can identify a plausible scenario, some sort of user story, then that might change people's minds about deleting them. Otherwise, I think this type of claim is going to be rejected as motivated thinking (e.g., "I spent a hundred hours on portals, so it can't just be wasted effort. It just can't!"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:26, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        Your last point does not apply to me because I haven't invested time in editing portals. I made the statement about some readers finding portals useful in response to statements higher up the page stating that they are useless. People cannot make such statements; there is no factual foundation. The WMF, as far as I'm aware, has not conducted in-depth market research on how portals may or may not be used by readers, but we do have pageviews showing that some are read at least as much as many articles. That does not quantify to what extent they are useful, nor in what way, but it does establish that they are used. It's really a rather narrow way of looking at something to say, as some have here, 'I haven't read them or edited them much, therefore get rid of them'. I do not look at portals as navigation aids, rather I see them more like the random article feature - showing readers something that they weren't necessarily looking for - but in a more topic-orientated way. If they aren't performing as well as they might, perhaps some thought should be given as to how to improve them and/or give them better functionality. Leaping straight to deletion seems wholly the wrong way to go about this. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 19:49, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        Okay, so I'm understanding that you personally don't use them or know anyone who uses them, I don't use them or know anyone who uses them, and nobody in this discussion seems to use them or know anyone who uses them. We also know that portals get remarkably few page views per link. Portal:Food, for example, is linked on more than 8,000 articles, and it gets a mere 400 page views per day. The article on Food, by contrast, is linked on only a third as many articles, but it gets about seven times as many page views. On a view-per-link basis, the encyclopedia article is 20 times more desired by readers than the portal. That limited popularity suggests that portals are not actually "useful to readers". Maybe they could be – I'd personally be happy to find something that worked for readers, and mw:Extension:RelatedArticles might be one option to consider – but the long-term lack of use, in the face of such heavy "advertising" in articles, suggests that portals (as they currently exist) do not seem to be useful to readers (including for entertainment utility). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:14, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        We have pageviews that show that people visit portals - that is the only concrete information we have. Everything else is unproveable assumptions, which are not adequate basis for deleting a section of the encyclopedia. So what if Portal:Food gets less visits than Food? It doesn't get zero views. Editors could reasonably have a discussion about why a page might receive less pageviews than another, but it is reckless to use such comparisons as a basis for deletion. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 08:02, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        I frequently use and love the Portal:Current_events. I find it well maintain and a very useful source of news that links me to the relevant articles about news items. Sisksyr (talk) 15:21, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Most of the Wikipedia hasn't been well maintained. I don't see how mass deletion of content benefits the project. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:00, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    It seems that any collection of pages will now be subject to deletion. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 07:35, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Hawkeye7: Are there any reasons other than mass deletion for which you're opposing? Much of the other editors here (including myself) support only the deprecation of portals, not outright deletion, so I politely ask you to either change or justify your vote. ToThAc (talk) 18:15, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    That is not the consensus. And it's the people who haven't been here for over ten years and haven't done any work on portals but still post cursory support votes who need to justify why their comments should not be stricken. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:51, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    1. There is a mechanism for the deletion of portals, and that is
      WP:IDONTLIKEIT
      . Could the portals benefit from more automation? Certainly. Is that a reason to delete anything at all? No.
    2. The proposal violates our first pillar, that Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia. It is not enough that information be listed. It has to be organised as well. That is why we have portals and, less usefully, categories.
    3. When writing articles, content creators often focus on a whole series of articles on a particular subject area. Portals and topics are often the locus or goal of such efforts. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:35, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Can you clarify what you mean by "mass deletion of content"? Portals mostly consist of just a copy (possibly out of date and copied without attribution) of the lede of an article surrounded by some pretty formatting and links. Hence, deleting a portal doesn't delete encyclopedia content (facts that are of use/interest to readers). DexDor (talk) 20:02, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    That's not true. The attribution to the original article is clear, just as it is in TFA. Attribution is required when you're copying a block of text from one article to another. The portals are encyclopaedic content, there's a lot more involved than you think, and the reasons given, ie low traffic and lack of maintenance apply to most of the encyclopaedia and are not valid grounds for mass deletion of content. What value is there in contributing articles under such a regime? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:51, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. It seems that better systems of directing users around has become the norm and in falling out of use they have become stagnant. Even looking at
    Portal:Arts the most highly trafficked portal (due to a link on the main page), it appears to have almost no editor activity (edited twice in 5 months). I'd support removing all mainspace links and adding a historical template to all of the portal pages as a good compromise (preferred choice). — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 21:33, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support - I checked my edit pie chart & in my 12 yrs on the 'pedia, I've made only 5 edits (2 on main, 3 on talk) to portals. They're basically obsolete & need to be made historical. GoodDay (talk) 21:49, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - the portal system would greatly benefit from some sort if integration with the main article space to draw more attention to it from readers and editors. Perhaps, every article linked from a Portal page should have a link back to the Portal displayed automatically. We should also move Main_Page to the Portal: namespace. Its hard to convince people to use Portals when such a visible portal page still hasn't moved there yet. -- Netoholic @ 22:58, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support a transition to deprecation. Do not delete anything, they are project history, there may be value in the history. Instead, for each moribund Wikiproject, redirect to the parent article. Exactly as I argue at Wikipedia_talk:Portal#Portals_are_moribund. In short, they are near useless, they are out of date and misleading for people who find them, and they are near worthless time sinks for an editor who feels the desire to update them. Do no merge with WikiProject, most WikiProjects are barely active themselves. User:Abyssal and User:The Transhumanist would like to create an automatically generated indexing/outline and summary system - that would be great, but is not a reason to not deprecate the current form of portals. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:59, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Deprecating and marking historical would allow anything of value to be harvested by active Wikiprojects, or by others outside Wikipedia who may be inspired to create something better, etc. Also, there are design element in these that may be useful to know about. And the wikimarkup and formatting may be useful for some. I cut my page formatting teeth on portals.     — The Transhumanist    12:43, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

10 April 2018

  1. The automatic production of article synopses of the appropriate length when articles relevant to the portal topic are accepted and the ability to edit these synopses if they need improvement.
  2. The automatic addition of these synopses to the pool from which the portal draws its content selections.
  3. The ability to sort or filter the article synopses on the "more articles" page (or "more pictures", "more DYKs").
  4. The criteria portals use to select content should default to chronological rather than random (ie it shows the last article to be featured in that subject).
  5. The automatic addition of DYK hooks after they've been displayed on the Main Page to the pool from which the portal draws its DYK selections.
  6. The automatic addition to the portal's content pool of featured and quality images when they get promoted at Wikimedia Commons.
  7. The automatic generation of an image summary for the featured pictures based on their synopsis at the Commons, but with the ability to edit and improve it if needed.
  8. The ability to automatically pull pictures from DYK articles to be associated with their hooks on the portal.
  9. The ability to randomize all of the individual DYK hooks instead of manually devising "blocks" of hooks.
  10. An automatically generated list of new and recently expanded articles relevant to the subject.
  11. Foundation sanction for direct outreach by Wikiprojects to portal-goers like offering topical reference desks, advertising within-project contests, user adoption drives, etc.
Sorry for the textwall, I just thought it was worth noting that the pro-portal camp has put forth a concrete plan for reform and I think implementing these changes would address most of the ccomplaints people have about our currently busted system. Abyssal (talk) 01:35, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. (edit conflict) There are portals that are still well-maintained. I like the idea of tagging unmaintained, out-of-date portals with a one-week deletion notice that flags the creator and the associated WikiProject(s) to either save it or let it be deleted. Project members should be allowed to extend the one-week period if editors are in an ongoing discussion about it. Maybe have a WP:Pfd page where portals can be proposed for discussion/deletion? Frankly, I'm surprised at all the support this RfC gets. What's next? Will someone come up with a case to delete little-viewed categories? or low-pageview articles? How about unused helpspace redirects to projectspace? Where does all of this end, and how much of it is due to an objectionable level of deletionism?  Paine Ellsworth  put'r there  01:46, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Move all portals into Wikipedia namespace and mark them as historical. Lojbanist remove cattle from stage 03:17, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Oppose per Paine Ellsworth. I've not edited any portals except for italic runs, so they're not an area I work in. But it's odd that this discussion is taking place without alerting every portal's talk page (my apologies if they have been alerted) as well as giving a good notice on Wales' talk page (and again, apologies if it has, I'm not a constant lurker there). This is a major move, to wipe out an entire sub-culture of Wikipedia. Paine comes up with some good "way to go forward"ness. As for his concerns, I have seen, with my own eyes, editors actually contemplating if navboxes (I call them templates) should be removed from the project. They already are banned from the mobile edition of Wikipedia. Lots of us love navboxes, they are the maps of Wikipedia. To create or add to a well-designed topic map feels like artwork. But since navboxes are already banned for 50% or our reader-views, maybe it won't take much to push them over the side. Is that what comes next? As I said, portals are not my thing here, so I don't know the level of work and care that has been put into them. Probably a lot, I'd guess. So this move is pretty major, either way it goes down, which is why every portal talk page should be alerted, so active editors know about it (I mentioned it in a move review and I think, judging from the recent comments to this discussion, that that mention at that move review alerted quite a few active editors that this discussion was going on, let alone that they'd have a chance to read six "that's" in one sentence). This major discussion is likely not very well known in the community. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:10, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support removing the portal links from the Main Page as soon as reasonably possible. I generally support deprecating the portal system, but I think this needs to be a slow, structured process that is developed outside this one-time discussion. There are multiple things that need to be done (e.g., stop making new ones; remove bad ones; re-work supported ones in the mainspace; consider alternatives; stop advertising/linking to them; possibly someday deleting them), and I think that process and an approximate timeline needs to be worked out by a small group of people willing to do the work, rather than being set in stone a single large discussion such as this one. Our goal right now should be setting the direction and some basic parameters. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:19, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support and replace the Main Page links with the corresponding outlines (or how about something completely new and refreshing in the top-right?). Portal space is dusty and fairly dead. The few people who continue to maintain portals could refocus their efforts on other navigational systems, such as navboxes, sidebars, outline pages, and categories. — This, that and the other (talk) 06:18, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I agree with some of the descriptive claims of the supporters. It's true, for example, that I hardly ever edit or use the portals, and I often forget they're even there. But glancing around at a few of them, I don't agree that they're useless — they're a nice way of gathering together related material in a way that catches the eye and sparks interest. It's not a good argument that there are POV problems; there can be POV problems anywhere. --Trovatore (talk) 07:04, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Like many above, I have very rarely edited in the portal space. They have not served their intended purpose many are completely out of the date. It is time to close the book on this chapter of Wikipedia. Prefer the history is maintained and mark as historical rather than delete though. Cheers – Ianblair23 (talk) 08:16, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. The entire idea appears to have been abandoned. Without editor engagement, the portals serve little useful purpose. Sandstein 10:28, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Not useful and distract from work that is useful. I think the portal-linking templates that litter the bottoms of articles should be deleted, as well as the links from the main page. Wholesale deletion of the portal pages themselves might be too demoralizing for the editors who created them. Calliopejen1 (talk) 12:18, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Redundant with both regular articles and categories which can provide better content and navigation. However, I also support the condition that, should this proposal pass, all portal pages be tagged with {{historical}} instead of being deleted. ToThAc (talk) 18:08, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: I made a proposal to redesign portals, but that's up for a potential eventual return to the concept, if it is accepted. I agree that the portal system, as it is nowadays, does not work and needs to go. However, as requested by others, you should either make portals historical, or give a deadline before deletion. Cambalachero (talk) 19:18, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • deprecate and mark as historical. I have been worked on them in small ways, but they do seem moribund now. I would guess the deep linking of search engines is to blame, taking people directly to articles. Also WP is no longer new, and both editors and readers know their way around much better. So I support removing links to them, but they should be kept, as a record of the work on them, and in case anyone one day thinks of a use for them. Maybe one day when WP is lauched on a new medium it needs a totally new front end, and they may come in useful for such.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 20:25, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. In case of discontinue, existing portals should be preserved.  samee  converse  21:17, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose – There are definitely useful portals on Wikipedia (even if the daily pageviews are only in the hundreds), and even if they are preserved outside a reader-viewable space, they will be made useless even if previously useful and often-updated. Yes, there are many, many useless and deletion-worthy portals of Wikipedia, but there should have been a much larger pre-RfC discussion to consider various approaches to reform (and I do not think this discussion is large or public enough to fit that bill) prior to this proposal of outright abolition given above. Master of Time (talk) 21:28, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, never really took off, and in recent years they've faded almost totally into obscurity. Many of the opposing comments cite the large amount of time people have spent working on portals, which to me is if anything more reason to scrap them... imagine how much better the encyclopedia would be if all that time was spent actually improving articles! Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 21:59, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose outright deletion. Support marking most of them as historical, similar to inactive projects and other previous good-faith contributions that just no longer work in practise. And as Andrew D.'s numbers below seem to indicate, there is still substantial viewer interest in some of these portals. GermanJoe (talk) 23:45, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • We may be confusing cause and effect here. Is the substantial viewer interest because they are useful, or because they are linked from the main page? Would a link with the same link text to an "overview of" page get any less viewer interest? --Guy Macon (talk) 23:57, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

11 April 2018

  • @Nixinova: It would be deleted per the argument below that this proposal does not go into detail. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 13:29, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No, any competent closer will see the lack of support for their deletion or marking historical - rfc outcomes don't have to match the original wording and can exclude those specific portals. Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:32, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure you have realized by now that you dove headfirst into a huge issue here. It concerns me a bit that you didn't offer up a proposal on what to do if the portals are deleted, there are also other things that editors have pointed out. Are you going to leave this up to the closer on what should or shouldn't be marked as historical? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 13:51, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I don't agree that you always find new content in some Portals, but that's not even relevant. But you are right to say they provide an overview - a different way in to a topic if you like. Having provided a taster of articles across a broad sectrum, like many articles here they do not need much modification. If we were to take the approach being proposed here, we would soon be mass deleting every article that hasn't been edited for a year or so and which receives under some unspecified number of visitors per day. How demoralising to all users. I also agree with you that WikiProjects could/should be supporting Portals more - and many are very closely linked - but they are entirely different beasts, and both have their very distinct value in my view. Nick Moyes (talk) 16:48, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - I find portals useful and a net positive to Wikipedia. No doubt they can be improved, but this proposal is throwing out the baby with the bath water. I also agree with those pointing out the flaws in notifications regarding this proposal. Jusdafax (talk) 11:57, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as they are the best grouping of related articles that exist, far better for readers than books, categories, WikiProjects, or any other groupings. ɱ (talk) · vbm · coi) 12:08, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Nasty little RFC, this. Oppose wholesale removal or deprecating of entire portal system and favor case-by-case review, per Nick Moyes. Full disclosure: I have worked on Portal:Mathematics content quite a bit in the past. As noted by Andrew D., that portal is not per se out of date, as Portal:Cricket is claimed to be. If a particular portal sucks, improve it or get rid of it, using existing procedures (including proper notice to the portal's talk page). If a portal is well constructed, leave it alone (well… or improve it further, like anything else). If this results in some sort of imbalance, as mentioned above (can't find the exact comment at the moment), then fine, remove the Main Page links (although, of course, that should be discussed on Talk:Main Page and not be decided here). Automation ideas of Abyssal are interesting and should be considered by interested parties. Finally, I think this RFC has been mishandled from the beginning, as apparently none of the portals themselves were notified (on their talk pages) about this until 2 or 3 days into the discussion (and Portal:Society, linked to from the Main Page, still hasn't been notified [edit: was done shortly before I posted my comment]). The propsal as stated seems to me to be (frankly) outrageously overbroad and should not be taken seriously (much less agreed to) until other avenues for improvement (as just mentioned) have been pursued. - dcljr (talk) 12:10, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with caution. The vast majority are stale, and any that are being kept up to date should be migrated to e.g. a relevant WikiProject. Stifle (talk) 12:17, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I'm shocked this is even being considered! I'm even more shocked that there seems to be a number of editors that support it. My first caution: don't let a large number of people automatically be considered the consensus. I check Wikipedia multiple times a day and just heard of this proposal this morning. Notification to such a wide base of editors will take some time. In any event, portals are useful and helpful for navigation, provide an outlet for enthusiastic editors to promote their favorite subjects, encourage collaboration between editors, expand Wikipedia with distinct layout and design, and are an excellent source. The argument that many portals are out of date is a sign that we need to have a campaign to update the portals, not delete them--which is my second caution: don't confuse an editing issue with a deletion issue. The solution here lies in editing, not deletion.--Paul McDonald (talk) 12:25, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Article pages function as the default "portal" for article topics on Wikipedia. Existing content on portals should, where applicable, be moved to WikiProjects, templates, article content, etc. Mitchumch (talk) 12:31, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This suggestion is to completely misunderstand the potential of Portals in providing an alternative and often very visual route into a broad topic, without having to wade through a hugely long, and often tedious article, or visit a complicated WikiProject. Portals are (or should be) a bright window into a broad subject area, allowing the user to 'dip a toe' into topics that might interest or enthuse them. As the main explanation of Portals states: The idea of a portal is to help readers and/or editors navigate their way through Wikipedia topic areas through pages similar to the Main Page. In essence, portals are useful entry-points to Wikipedia content. Compare
Portal:Arts. I do believe Portals are best off being closely associated with a relevant WikiProject in most cases, even though the latter deliver an utterly different function of focussing editor collaboration. Deleting 1,500 Portals in one go and moving content into a WikiProject would create vast work for absolutely no benefit and similarly misunderstands the purpose of WikiProjects and the role of Portals. Nick Moyes (talk) 14:12, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
  • Support Dead end, almost entirely unmaintained and out of date, yet included in almost every article. There's several IPs in my watchlist areas that constantly tweak and re-tweak portal bar templates to portals that haven't been updated in 11-12 years. -- ferret (talk) 12:48, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – some of the portals are actually key projects, such as
    Portal:Contents isn't a portal at all, as it is comprised entirely of navigation lists. It was placed in portal space because at the time (over ten years ago), we didn't know where else to put it.     — The Transhumanist    12:56, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support - most are not maintained and thus are misleading to the few readers who seem to actually click on them, support deleting all. - Ahunt (talk) 12:58, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose deletion of all this content. I completely agree that most portals currently do not work, but that is no reason to nuke them all and pretend they never existed. Many collaborations used to be organised through portals, for examples see
    Portal talk:Poland/Poland-related Wikipedia notice board. Ten years ago, some people tried to use portals as something addressing both readers and editors, trying to showcase the best content in a topic area while attempting to attract further help. The same concept works reasonably well on the German Wikipedia. On the English Wikipedia, portals slowly became sidelined. I assume, however, that some are still alive serving some subcommunities (and for example Portal:Germany/Did you know is very much alive). The suggestion to just delete them all is outrageous and frankly insulting. —Kusma (t·c) 13:14, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support and remove namespace. This has been a long time coming, as the system has very limited usefulness coupled with high maintenance overhead. The category system and See Also links effectively do the same job. — Huntster (t @ c) 13:23, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • strong oppose. I find none of the reasons I've seen really convincing to justify a wholesale removal. I don't necessarily have objections in removing (or archiving/moving) most unsupported/unmaintained and outdated portals, but that can (and should) be done on an individual basis. In general portals are helpful for navigation and allow for material and discussion that have no place in the article name space and hence cannot simply be replaced by article on the field in article name space (contrary to claims above). Also on occasion they may provide a function similar to projects. So as long as a portal is supported and the maintainers are happy to do so, I see no reason to shut it down. "Many people don't use it (anymore)" is imho no proper argument and no justification to aggravate the (smaller number of) readers and editors who do.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:40, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Deleting all of these portals just because some are not up to standards is a terrible proposal per
    WP:BABY. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 13:41, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Oppose - This proposal is apparently originated from a personal issue with portals. That the portals are not getting updates is not a problem to be resolved via deleting them, the correct way is to devise schemes encouraging the editors to edit the portals.--Mhhossein talk 13:52, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose A properly created portal, properly supported with inbound links, can be much more effective than a google search, or the WP category system, in helping (non-editor) readers find information related to a particular topic. I don't agree that portals should be deleted on the basis that they are (a) often not properly manually maintained and updated; and/or (b) often not much visited. Assuming that the former is the case (and I'm not sure that it is), then automation is the solution. Google has already automated the incorporation of extracts of WP articles into the results of google searches (eg if you google the name of my home suburb, you get a page including an auto-generated infobox with an auto-incorporated up-to-date extract from the Wikipedia article about the suburb). So it's clearly possible for portals to have auto-incorporated up-to-date content. Assuming that portals are not often visited (and, again, I question the assumption), then it seems to me that a large part of the problem is a lack of links from articles to relevant portals. (When I create a new article, I usually include at least one portal link. However, I just randomly visited more than half a dozen substantial articles linked from the main page, and not one of those articles had a portal link.) I agree with the comment above that the solution lies in editing (and, I would add, in automation), not deletion. Bahnfrend (talk) 14:03, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Mixed feelings though I agree that we need to find an incremental way to either depreciate portals (especially those that haven't had significant maintenance or public visibility in the last few years), this should be incremental: first with removing portals from the front page/other main subpages of Wikipedia, and then a gradual process of deletions (could probably be done with PROD on portals with less than 20 pageviews a day). The other option, is to overhaul the infrastructure used for portals, to be driven more by Lua Scripts and Wikidata Queries -- we have much better technology than we did when we first developed them 5-10 years ago: there is benefit in helping folks navigate Wikimedia projects. That being said, the portals have a very low level of demand right now. Sadads (talk) 14:08, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose What the what? I didn't realize this was going on until I saw a portal I have watchlisted tagged by Transhuminist just now. Nobody told me these were outdated when I got Portal:New York City to featured status. All I see here in the supports is that some of them are out of date. Since when do we delete articles that have {{update}} tags on them? I'm not seeing any better reason here. – Muboshgu (talk) 14:13, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that the Featured portal process itself was marked as historical last year could mean that, while Portals aren't necessarily outdated, there could be a fundamental flaw in the system that might not be easily solved. As I've mentioned elsewhere, portal automation has been proposed, which would probably solve the editing activity problem but might not be enough to solve the readership problem.
csdnew 14:18, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
The point is more than that they are outdated, it is that they don't add to the encyclopedia the way an article fills gaps in coverage; are more effort than they are worth; and readers are not particularly interesting in them despite how often we link them. Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:50, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Of course they don't fill in the encyclopaedia in the same way that an article does - they're not intended to. They're collections of articles which should provide a visual taster and a route in to a wide selection of subjects falling under that Portal's umbrella. More effort than they're worth? Explain please. Interest and deletion arguments are being based purely on numbers again. Like a child at school - if you can open one child's eyes to the wonder of a subject like science, geography, the moon, or whatever, that's a real success. So supporters neeed to demonstrate that all Portals turn users away, or fail to let them access articles, or that the server drain is just too high - then they might have a valid argument for mass deletion. But no-one has. It's all
WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT as far as I can see. Regarding 'outdated' - I do think there could be an argument to deprecate the use of 'News' sections within portals, or at least to have a guideline to remove these templates if not regularly updated. Nick Moyes (talk) 17:10, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
  • I respect your opinion but want to remind you that there are sometimes many editors on any given project and not all of the portals are alike. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:52, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • If that's true (and I'm not saying that it isn't), that is an indication of an editing issue and not a deletion issue.--Paul McDonald (talk) 18:12, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose – the very fact that this RfC has generated a massive response shows that portals are being watched, used, and read. Those who do not watch portals are free to ignore them. – S. Rich (talk) 17:40, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - specifically, deprecate, have bots mark them all as historical, and in time convert them to Outlines or Indexes to serve as centralized "See also" listings per topic.
They don't further our
Portal:Arts. Portals are intended to help users stumble upon quality material on random subtopics within a field. That's not a goal I care about or think Wikipedia should pursue. I like Finnusertop's proposal of topic-specific reference desks managed by WikiProjects, but that seems like a whole new idea, not an adjustment of portals. Daask (talk) 18:38, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
  • They wont be missed by you, but yeah all of the other editors who use them... what about them? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 02:05, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Supports are at 130 and Opposes are at 62 as of this reply .... that would indicate I'm not the only person who wont miss them, Well I'm sure those that do want them will live (if they get deleted that is). –Davey2010Talk 02:52, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Davey2010, where do you get the 130 support figure from? Are you counting 'mark historical' as supporting deletion? As of the time of writing (this version) I make it 92 people explicitly supporting the proposal and 64 explicitly opposing (give or take a few sitting on the fence or with lots of caveats in their position). Carcharoth (talk) 10:04, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
My bad all's I've done is counted the use "Support" and "Oppose" - Probably should've search for "'''Support'''" but oh well, Consider that point struck. –Davey2010Talk 15:24, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The whole reason I became a wikipedia editor was to help with a portal. It's useful for me to find all of the information I want easily. However, I think there should maybe be some updates to the portal system? A way to make the news on the topic update without having to manually update it each time would be nice. What I mean about that is that you could put news in it that times out when it is no longer relevant and new things will update into their spots, and the input is just to put in the news, which can be done in advance (for a sports portal, games to be played, stuff like that). Maybe the original purpose of portals isn't what they're used for anymore, but things should adapt and change to fit the new needs of portals. They should not be deleted, but the system should be updated to make them easier to maintain and use. Too many people have spent too much time on portals to just have them be removed, or archived, because many of them will be unhelpful when they aren't up to date. Aabernat (talk) 23:57, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

12 April 2018

  • Hi Nick-D: Out of curiosity, have you checked out any of the page views for portals? Your assessment stating "...they're unlikely to be being used by readers" is countered by page statistics for several portals. For example, Portal:Biography has received 62,874 page views in the last thirty days as of this post. North America1000 07:48, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @
    [majestic titan] 14:46, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Oppose deletion, there are hundreds of excellent pages here. Support change, including marking many as out of date or historical, and possibly removing from the Main Page. – SJ + 07:27, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Overall their utility is not proportional to the maintainance effort as separate pages. Some elements (e.g. lists of DYKs) make sense as part of WikiProjects, but the remainder could be archived for posterity. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 07:52, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Many are confuse masses of content, difficult to update, and in most cases unsourced (since in most cases they do not use a system of sources).--
    talk) 07:57, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support But: Wouldn't a technical solution like "no activity for 1 year => auto-delete" be sufficient? Also, portals with >= X hits/d (to be defiend) should probably stay as a public interest is proven. Kind regards, Grueslayer 08:41, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose deletion; the Science portal had 122,000 hits. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 08:53, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Oppose
    Like to know more? – well best look soon before it is all deleted
    Having created a couple of portals in recent years, I have a dog in this fight. Portals provide a way of linking articles, images, quotes, DYK’s in a different manner to single articles. Yes they may be out of date, etc. etc. but so are many articles. As per Paul McDonald, this is an editing issue and not a reason for mass deletion...Jokulhlaup (talk) 09:03, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Appear to be generally unused and unmaintained. Wouldn't necessary mass-delete them, but perhaps they could be integrated into Wikiprojects where people are keen to do so
    talk) 09:23, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Oppose Portals are for readers (this is why enclosing them within WikiProjects is beside the point), and we need the "market research" as suggested by PaleCloudedWhite before we can be sure what forms of navigational aid are most useful to readers. Among portals, indexes, outlines, navboxes, sidebars, TopicTOCs and the rest there is no consistency in which ones exist for a given topic and to what extent they are linked from articles. A save-the-portals plan: (1) take up the ideas for maximum automation of their construction and maintenance; (2) also automate the provision of links from articles, thusly: for each Category assigned to an article, a process follows up the category tree until hitting one that has been marked as corresponding to a portal, then adds a link at the article; (3) keep portals for major topic areas, trimming out those for minor subtopics; (4) be aware that not all readers will have heard of web portals, and the word "portal" otherwise suggests high-flown phrases such as "entering the portals of glory" – so just putting a link saying "All portals" on the main page won't attract many clicks, you need to say "Pick a topic that specially interests you, and here's an overview of how Wikipedia covers that topic": Noyster (talk), 10:03, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - For full disclosure, I have a strong personal connection to this issue; I created and have been maintaining Portal:Trains and making daily edits to it since its inception in May 2005, but I have not been the only person viewing it. The pageview count for the last year is almost 30,000. If we assume that my edits amount to five pageviews per day, that reduces the overall views for last year by only 250. When I make edits to the portal, I almost always find other pages within the scope of WikiProject Trains that I can make improvements to, and I will make those improvements when I can. My work editing the portal has led on a daily basis directly to additional work building up the content outside the portal. It has helped to keep me involved as a Wikipedia editor and administrator since my first edit to it 13 years ago. Slambo (Speak) 11:01, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Spot on Slambo. Another way of looking at portals is that they are an 'intelligent contents page' for a topic. And certainly much easier to use for tracking relevant articles that poring over the often lengthy main article for a topic which is just not structured for the easy location of articles. Many portals are also a valuable project asset, indicating what's been done, what needs improving, what needs adding and so on. Improvement of portals is a worthwhile goal; mass deletion leaves Wikipedia very much poorer. --Bermicourt (talk) 12:29, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Further, Portal:Trains has translations on 18 other language versions of Wikipedia. Portal:Transport has 24 other language variants, and Portal:Technology has 62 other language variants. I understand that changes on en.Wikipedia don't necessarily mean that changes will also happen on other language Wikis, but having so many different language versions of all the portals shows strong interest worldwide in maintaining them. Slambo (Speak) 12:06, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I do not see what harm portals cause to the project. If anything, they are useful for combining several related articles on a topic in one place. There are several well-constructed and featured portals. Mar4d (talk) 12:39, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - My thanks to those who have contributed to them, but I think dropping portals will help concentrate our efforts in more impactful areas. -McGhiever (talk) 12:47, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose removal of portal space and portal "system/facility". But do support deletion of out of date (and hence by definition) unmaintained portals. These are contrary to the stated purpose of a portal and take away from the reader's experience. I suggest any portal that has not been updated (and should have been) for 12 months more can be nominated for deletion via a process the same as AfD. Aoziwe (talk) 13:18, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I think they could serve a very useful purpose, being written in a less formal manner than most articles, and providing a more accessible roadmap to related articles for visitors who are no so familiar with wikipedia categories and other means of navigation. I think the real problem is that they have not been properly promoted. Most links to them are tucked away at the bottom of a page. I think that if they could be linked to at the top of the page, perhaps alongside or under the space where coordinates appear, then they could get more visits and perhaps become better maintained. I must admit that I had pretty much forgotten about them. Derek Andrews (talk) 14:03, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose No, and especially oppose deleting all portals. How many articles do we have on Wikipedia that no one or few read? How many articles do we have on Wikipedia that are not well maintained. These are not the criteria we use for creating articles and by extension should not be for creating portals to those articles. As well, we do have portals that are well maintained. I just saw RfC today; this has to be more public than it is now.(Littleolive oil (talk) 14:21, 12 April 2018 (UTC))[reply]
  • Oppose To me, Portals act like subsections of a newspaper, if we take our Main Page as the equivalent of the front page of a newspaper. When they are updated, they provide a good current snapshot of a topic area within WP. I do think this RFC leads to the idea that we should reassess what makes a good portal, how to encourage portals to stay updated, and possible investment of time into new tools/processes to automate updates, but the simple lack of updates should not be taken that portals are not needed and should be deleted. --Masem (t) 14:24, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support deprecating and archiving but not deletion. Portals were an interesting experiment that doesn't seem to have worked out. That said, I agree with those who say that all this effort should not be now just dumped in the trash bin. Someone may still find them useful and possibly reuse elements of existing portals for other purposes. — Kpalion(talk) 16:01, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support the general idea of depreciating the portal namespace (generally speaking—things like the featured content portal should not be included and perhaps moved to the Wikipedia: namespace), but who designed this RfC? Why would you propose to delete them all and guarantee opposition on that front, as opposed to marking historical? Just doesn't make any sense.
    [majestic titan] 14:44, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    Keep in mind that portal pages are edited through templates. In the end, you should measure the template activity and not the portal page which just presents all the info. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 14:50, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Far too sweeping a proposition. The issues identified do need addressing, but this is not the way to do so. Andrewa (talk) 14:57, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Portals made sense back in the days before robust search engines, when Yahoo Directory] and Open Directory Project/DMOZ ruled the web and most people's browser home pages were set to iGoogle or My Yahoo!. Portals are best deleted or absorbed into WikiProjects. Give the Wikiprojects a few months to refactor any desired content into their front pages and then delete them. The one exeption to this would have to be Portal:Current events, whose WikiProject is inactive (here, the easy answer is to simply move Portal:Current events→Wikipedia:WikiProject Current events). --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 15:25, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This is one of the stupidest proposals I've ever seen in Wikipedia. As it is described in the description "The idea of a portal is to help readers and/or editors navigate their way through Wikipedia topic areas through pages similar to the Main Page." If people do not find portals helpful and useful who on the earth created all those portals? Deleting all the portals just because portals receive a low number of views is a bad decision to make and a bad exemplary for the future editors. They will propose to delete Wikipedia articles also just because they receive a low number of views. If you really want to stop portal function on Wikipedia, then do it. But please don't delete all the portals which were made by so many editors who found portals interesting and useful. ---Randeer (talk) 15:36, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose "the deletion of all portal pages and the removal of the portal namespace", which is what the RFC proposes. It makes no sense to delete all pages on the basis that some (or even many) are unsatisfactory. Thincat (talk) 16:17, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for several reasons.
    1. It looks like this would be a seriously divisive move. It may deeply antagonise a significant number of passionate editors for very little, if any, real advantage. This alone is sufficient for abandoning this proposal.
    2. We are not short of space, and portals take up very little space anyway.
    3. There is insufficient evidence for most of the claims of both sides for them to be taken seriously. This would be a big change, and the possible consequences should be evaluated by experts before making the proposal. The arguments here are mostly emotional or based on opinions and guesswork.
    4. Many of the supports are clearly from people who do not have any personal involvement in portals, so can be reasonably expected to be rather ignorant about their usefulness to those who do use them, work with them and maintain them. Are these really the people who should be forcibly removing something from the people who want to keep them? Portals have been on Wikipedia a long time, there is no question that they are acceptable in terms of tradition and existing policy.
    5. Deletion means that the content is lost. Much of that content may be valuable. Who has checked and can say with evidence that it is not?
    6. Alternative solutions have been suggested, but the practicability of these have not been established. There should be no deletion until after these have been considered and discussed. The proposal is premature. There is no rush.
    7. We do not delete things because they are not perfect, we fix them. This would be a dangerous precedent. We could no longer trust Wikipedia to respect our work and the effort that went into it. It is bad enough that we can't trust the WMF much of the time, we do not need to start mistrusting our own community as well. There are probably fewer support !votes here than the number of portals they want to eliminate. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 16:41, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment Every editor should pay attention to Peter's final point. Wikipedia first and foremost exists as a repository of knowledge, and being too happy to delete means you will kill the momentum and enthusiasm of the userbase. This doesn't mean deletion shouldn't happen at all, but that deletion needs to be carefully considered and reconsidered. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:52, 25 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose deletion, support reform. Many portals are outdated and long-unmaintained - and those should be moved out of namespace and marked as historical. Hooever, numerous examples have been given above of portals on major subjects which are still being maintained, and I feel like the nuclear option is a massive case of overkill. (The lack of even a plan for things like Portal:Current events particularly illustrates to me that not enough thought has gone into the nuclear option.) The Drover's Wife (talk) 16:45, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose—deal with outdated portal content the same way as we deal with outdated article content: editing. The various arguments advanced in support of this proposal call for the mass deletion of things that just need fixing or selective deletion. At the most extreme, this proposal calls for the deletion of otherwise perfectly good content. This situation is too nuanced to use mass deletion as a solution. Additionally, if you remove portals, there is no guarantee that their editors will redirect their attention to other tasks. Volunteers will work on projects that attract their own interests and attention, so we can't assume those energies will be channeled to other endeavors. Imzadi 1979 → 16:55, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • My last intervention here has been harshly criticized, most of all when I wrote that this idea is liable to "drive off contributing editors" and that "most people who like to join these discussions apparently do not have the slightest respect for other people's work". In twelve years I have encountered quite a number of people who gave that impression and as a consequence I've remained attached to Wikipedia just at the very edge. But that's a personal question which doesn't really belong here. Actually I hoped that my hard words would cause some reflection, so I thank everybody for their replies. First of all I want to say that this is not about dividing the citizens in good and bad guys. I could say that my words were ironical, but that would be only half the truth without changing much. Here is what I really think: There are many ways to destroy a democratic community and this one is quite illuminating. What's the trick? You ask a simple question: Do you think Hillary is corrupt? Everybody has seen her in television a number of times, so I guess they are able to answer. Everybody has come across a forum on Wikipedia, so he must have gained some impression whether that was useful. Come on, don't be shy, say your opinion! People have the right to say what they think, that's democracy! If there is a vote or an election it is the only way. But as soon as you answer that question, positive or negative, to decide on the sweeping purpose, you appear as if you don't have the "slightest respect for other people's work". It is inevitable, because you may have lately looked at three or four portals, the most diligent of you even more, but you sentence hundreds of them, judging the intelligence of thousands of people who have tried their best on a million edits which have all been verified by another 10.000 or 100.000 users. Nobody is able to answer this for each and every single portal in question. It's generalization. That's why I think this proposal should be ruled INADMISSIBLE. But now the question is on the table, everybody has understood, it needs an answer and everything else will pass in second place. Like the Athenians who were asked if they would like to rule Sicily. Of course they would. Or more recently the US voters, who were urged to decide whether they were more comfortable with Crooked Hill or Grabbing Don. I wish you a nice discussion then, but don't forget that the purpose of democracy is to include, not to destruct. If only a few of us understand this, there may still be some hope at the bottom of the box.--Lamassus (talk) 18:00, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - When I need information about something, I use the search function or external internet search engines. When I am interested in learning more about the subject, I Ctrl+Click all links that seem interesting to me. I end up with 100 open tabs, hours of delightful reading and no need for any "portal" created by someone else to inform me about the "most interesting" articles on one big topic. I have never even considered opening a portal page. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:13, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose. I've read this entire discussion as well as the discussion that preceded this RfC, and I've seen and considered all of the reasons that have been given in support. And I'm not persuaded. It's not like deleting them will make Wikipedia better. In fact, even if I posit for the sake of discussion that the supporters are right that readers almost never make use of portals, then it follows that readers will almost never even notice if they go away. Although I get it that portals need a significant modernization, the proposal here is a solution in search of a problem. But I would happily support a major effort to improve the portal system. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:09, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • This is the best oppose to a proposal I've seen in a long while. Agreed 100% with everything you've said. If anything, this proposal will be a negative because it will be a massive waste of admin time deleting these things. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:21, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Monthly upkeep is minimal but so is readership. Less than 100 views per month day. Despite invitation to be bold, only one other editor tried to add to ours in 10 years. -SusanLesch (talk) 19:22, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@
WP:MFD. That's not a rationale for mass-deleting the other 1,500 portals. Nor is a lack of recent editing, or having only 36,500 visits a year. Think of Portals like a window or table display in a library. They simply present a minute selection of their holdings to encourage broader use of any of the library's holdings. They're just another route in to content; pick one up and maybe you'll get inspired. Why deny readers that opportunity? Nick Moyes (talk) 00:10, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
errm, but these were
WP:MFD either if you wanted to. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:25, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
Did I edit
WP:MFD as the problem may simply resolve itself. →Wordbuilder (talk) 17:24, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]

13 April 2018
Further information: User_talk:Fram § Seeking advice
Perhaps the best way to promote them, as well as to increase their usage and importance, would be to improve their quality, in terms of interactivity and self-updating dynamic content, to keep them interesting and relevant. Inspire repeat visits. Currently, the vast majority of portals are static, and therefore they go stale over time.    — The Transhumanist   13:05, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is not a good link to make and have seen it talked about someplace on Wikipedia I think through an essay. The notion that "editors would be better off doing x" is a slippery slope, should we then go on and say something like: "Editors should focus their time away from plant related articles due to the complexity of the field"? Each portal attracts editors interested in that particular area, just because you may not edit portals nor care about them is a good reason for wholesale deletion. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 14:14, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry Jklamo, arguing to delete all portals and respecting portal editors are mutually incompatible. Instead of arguing for deletion of portals, why not spend your time more efficiently improving articles? Sarcasm aside, redirecting volunteer effort away from what they want to do towards what you think they should do is quite a lot of work, and deleting the work of volunteers is not usually a good way to make them volunteer for more. —Kusma (t·c) 14:16, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose deleting all portals but support deleting particularly bad ones. Portals can be useful from time to time, and even if use rarely, that does not mean they should al be deleted. If someone searches a portal, he will always be happy to find whatever he finds even if is not well-maintained. However, some portals have not been edited in years and should be deleted. The "Many people don't use portals, so let's delete them all" is ridiculous. Mass deleting portals won't make Wikipedia better. L293D (☎ • ✎) 14:55, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose blanket deletion of all portals regardless of current maintenance status. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:08, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose but de-emphasize. These are not really designed for people like us, but for readers new to WP or a subject area. Some links to them should probably be removed, and the actually bad ones deleted. But many seem to function ok, more or less on autopilot, and they do get views. Johnbod (talk) 16:20, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support – I setup the Military History portals for Portal:Napoleonic Wars and Portal:American Civil War many years ago, but the Pageviews for portals are generally so poor, they're just not worth the effort maintaining (ACW and NW). If the trends are similar for other portals, the whole system seems a waste of effort and should be scrapped in favour of focusing on actual article content. Portals seem a bit 1990s phpBB anyway, IMO. — Marcus(talk) 16:31, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
78,500 views since May 15 (Portal:American Civil War) doesn't seem too bad at all. Do they actually need any more maintaining than any other page? Johnbod (talk) 16:40, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
When you compare 78,500 views to the 15 million hits on the American Civil War article itself in the same period then yes, it's only 0.5% in fact. Not worth it. — Marcus(talk) 19:23, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support reform of the portals system as we know it, but oppose deletion of all portals en masse. Perhaps, rather than resorting to a blanket deletion of all portals, it might be better to review them. After review, each portal could either be:
  1. categorised as an active portal, with the general criteria for this status being that they have to be regularly monitored and kept up to date;
  2. marked as inactive through the use of the Historical template; or
  3. deleted outright (for example, if they are particularly poorly and/or rarely maintained).
Portals can come in useful for editors from time to time, but admittedly it is quite easy to gather that they are not quite fit for purpose any longer. I don't think it'd be unreasonable to suggest that many portals, if not most, are very infrequently viewed by most editors and (non-editor) readers alike. I don't think that there needs to be as many portals as there currently are.
Would this proposal to eliminate the portals system provoke such interesting discussion between editors had the system not been in such a sorry state? I can't tell you the answer to that, but what I can say is that the system is in dire need of improvement. A portal should be a useful navigational tool for readers and editors, but the way they are today, most are not. All too often, editing activity fizzles out, leaving a near-abandoned portal that is a sitting duck for POV issues and unsourced material.
Forgive me if this idea is too simple, but it may be wise to try and devise a system that unobtrusively increases the awareness of the portal system to readers so that people are encouraged to visit portals. This would be expected to generate some interest in using portals, so that people are more inclined to contribute to Wikipedia by editing portals. In turn, this would help to improve the encyclopedia by helping people navigate through it.
I don't tend to voice my opinion in community discussions like this, because it can seem quite intimidating to editors like me, who don't consider themselves to as well versed with Wikipedia as many of you, and haven't been contributing for as long as many of you have. So, once again, let me apologise if I am reminding you of something that is bread and butter to you. There are several templates that can be used to include links to a portal or multiple portals. Take the Portal, Portal bar, Portal-inline, Subject bar and Sister project links templates as examples.
Best wishes, Ntmamgtw (talk) 16:49, 13 April 2018 (UTC) (updated 09:24, 17 April 2018 (UTC))[reply]
I have no problems with reforming the portal system or even setting something up to increase reader/user awareness of the various portals (which will help mitigate any maintenance issues), but deleting or redirecting all of the portals outright is simply not a viable option? Are you even aware of how much infrastructural damage or reader shock you will cause if you were to delete all of the portals? LightandDark2000 (talk) 18:02, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, a large number of portals, such as
deletion of all the portals. LightandDark2000 (talk) 18:19, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
I would not support marking all portals as "historical" (or taking them all out of the portal system). Some portals, such as the current events and tropical cyclones portals are still actively maintained and highly essential to accessing the latest articles (in a chronological sense) in relation to their specific WikiProjects. I could support marking the archaic / extremely old portals as historic, but the active/relevant portals are still very much in use and should not be taken out of Wikipedia mainspace in any way. LightandDark2000 (talk) 18:24, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
WP:POG as historical. Wugapodes [thɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 07:16, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
You don't get 2 !votes. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:18, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not voting twice. I'm specifying my opinion on this a little more. I oppose deleting all of the portals outright, but I'm open to the option I just mentioned above (and other similar proposals by some other users in some of the votes earlier above). LightandDark2000 (talk) 04:38, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • hold - there is little data on the readers. They get quite a few page hits and if automated I'd see them as a good way to display featured content. Need data from readers before we delete wholeslae. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:55, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question: What are the currently best-maintained portals? So we can compare with non-maintained ones, for an idea of cost-benefit for a project-wide overhaul.    — The Transhumanist   21:15, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Portals are a great way to explore the millions of Wikipedia articles. They allow to find interesting, unexpected facts. There are issues with portals than can be solved by the community of editors, with tools such as random article selections. --NaBUru38 (talk) 21:54, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

14 April 2018

  • Support - Redundant, useless, and not maintained very well are the words I would use to describe portals. If I am a visitor, I'd just use the search and not go through portals. I do think that the compromise provided by LightandDark2000 is also a good idea, keeping major and active portals. ITSQUIETUPTOWN talk • contribs 03:35, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as a mass deletion - The argument that there are some bad or out-of-date portals does not seem to me to justify removing all portals, any more than some bad or out-of-date articles justify removing all articles. Also, I think there will be considerable loss of goodwill from those individuals who do actively maintain portals, possibly to the extent of losing them as contributors entirely. I think a better outcome from this discussion would be a slowly rolled-out campaign to propose deletion of *specific* poor/out-of-date portals. This may either spur individuals to update those portals (and save them) or result in the deletion of those portals. I say slowly-rolled-out because if a person is involved with multiple portals and decides to update them, we should give them time to do so and not put all of them up for deletion simultaneously which would make it impossible for them to update them all. Kerry (talk) 04:51, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose There is a certain question about whether or not this entire RfC was poisoned based on the inadequate wording of the question. Obviously, all portals should not be deleted. There are portals that Wikipedia themselves maintain and rely on, and which are rather popular. We don't need to
    blow it all up just because some of the more obscure portals don't get much attention. Nonetheless, there is a question to be made about what could be done about portals that barely crack even 100 views a month (a very generous deadline imho). Portals seem to be a more niche thing that a normal viewer may not want to view but an experienced Wikipedian may visit frequently especially as a topic they're interested in. Though it seems that the very way that they're advertised is the issue. I went through some of the portals via "what links here" feature and find that they're most relegated to the last section of the page, after see also, where barely few readers make it through and it seems that by only luck you would find the link to X portal. This is unacceptable, and probably the main reason that portals are not utilized. They are but a scarce link near the last of a page, barely even a footnote, led alone enticing a reader to click them. I don't think all portals should be removed, but they should be in a more accessible, more GUI-friendly (click me to learn more about X topic) sort of thing. Tutelary (talk) 06:46, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support Delete all portals except Portal:Current events, Portal:Science, Portal:History, and Portal:Tropical cyclones, all relatively active. Buckshot06 (talk) 09:27, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, portals usually provide one-stop overview of each topic and related articles. Skimming through the main article of the topic is not an easy way to reach those related articles; and browsing through categories/indices is a really horrible way to find things, especially when you don't know what you are finding by its name.

    One might not use portal when they know enough about the topic, but that doesn't negate their usefulness for beginners; it also provide pointers to good/featured articles (and some cases, recent-event articles) on topic of interest. Like Tutelary said above, their presence in relevant articles should be more prominent to encourage more uses. If specific portals are inaccurate or outdated, deal with them case-by-case; turning those into automated ones is nice too. But proposing mass-delete? That is careless.

    — Nvtj (talk) 09:36, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose They are not doing any harm, and can be useful to some users for finding information easier. -Quickfingers (talk) 13:39, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I have been editing here for over five years and almost never pay any attention to any portals (other than, as noted above,
    (there's a halo...) 13:45, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support Many of the portals are not being actively cared for, and as such, are not very useful. I would argue that many casual users of Wikipedia would not ever use a portal to find any information on Wikipedia. Jpmanalo (talk) 13:47, 14
  • Oppose. While some portals might be poorly maintained, the same might be said of many articles. Mass portal deletion seems a very severe way of solving what might not be much of a problem anyway. I've used Portal: Astronomy recently to get opinions (and traction) on an article I started. It gets about ~150 views a day and is maintained. Trashing editors' valuable work would be a negative, not positive, action. Richard Nowell (talk) 13:58, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, I'm afraid they're basically edit-only pages, readers aren't interested in them, and this reader has never used one to find anything. We have plenty of simple and direct ways to get to pages, without even mentioning Dr. Google. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:09, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - What others have said above in support of this. --Malerooster (talk) 15:46, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This is a bad solution to a "problem" that is hardly a problem at all, and the quality of the discussion does not inspire confidence in the process.
    talk) 15:50, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Kind of Oppose I am new to Wikipedia, and I do not use portals a lot. However, one portal that is viewed a lot (by me, and many others) is Portal:Current events. This is viewed several thousand times daily (45,180 times today as I type this). What would happen to it if the Portal namespace was removed? SemiHypercube (talk) 17:23, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support the cessation of portal work. There is no consensus for outright deletion so I'd recommend instead a grace period of several months to merge relevant content (for those portals actively maintained) to projectspace. It might be useful, for instance, to import some portal content for WikiProject pages (which, in my opinion, should all be repurposed as subject area noticeboards anyway). If the content is imported, the pages must be preserved for attribution history and thus redirected. Tag the remaining portals and those that aren't merged/redirected within several months should be deleted, though it'd be reasonable (as always) to temporarily restore that content if someone wants to merge after the deadline. There are many case-by-case discussions to be had, but only once we have general agreement on the fate of portals.
The core question that isn't being asked enough here is what portals contribute to
our purpose of building an encyclopedia. There is no shortage of lost causes to which we apply ourselves, from the marginally notable to the reams of talk page debate over single sentences, so there is no guarantee that portal maintainers will suddenly decide to steward a high-level topic overview article: The point of editor time spent is neither here nor there. The point of readership is more salient, but gets into a debate over what readership counts as significant, which is the wrong debate. Better to ask what portals contribute in service of a better encyclopedia. Are they actively funneling users from general interest into more specific articles? Are they surfacing content to draw readers further into their own general interests? How are readers even finding portals aside from the main page welcome bar and the bars that sometimes grace the underside of navboxes? I haven't seen any assuaging answers to these questions. Our existing systems of high-level topic overview articles (for readers) and WikiProject/noticeboards (for editors) appear to fulfill all of the objectives of portals, with the added benefit that they already exist and have a dedicated user base. I hope that the work of portal maintainers can be welcomed into these other areas of the encyclopedia. czar 17:27, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]

15 April 2018
  • Oppose A number of editors are currently working to revise and automate the portal system, and a lot more people use the portal system than I initially thought. While I still have many grievances with the portal system, I am happy to give them a chance to fix things and see what they come up with. The portal system does need to be reformed to address the problems I mentioned, but I've been convinced that there may be some value to keeping the portal namespace active. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 05:13, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Oppose Are you serious? A lot hours of work was used to build these portals, a simple deletion would annoy a lot of volunteers, so please stop these proposal!!!--Sinuhe20 (talk) 07:22, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That the "deletion would annoy a lot of volunteers" is not a reasoned motivation for keeping the portals. What is put into question here is their usefulness and content accuracy. The goodness of the encyclopedia should come before any personal whim of the users.--2.37.216.231 (talk) 13:37, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The term "usefulness" is really arbitrary because it's up to one person or another to determine what that is, and that becomes personal preference. That starts to delve into the range of
WP:IDONTLIKEIT which is never a reason to delete anything in Wikipedia. As to "content accuracy" -- this is a valid issue, and if the content is not accurate then the obvious conclusion is to edit the content. Once in a while we find content that is so poorly assembled that deletion is the best step, but that's not the case here... certainly not a blanket deletion for every portal.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:30, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
This is really the worst of the motivations that have been put forward to save the portals! Wikipedia is not a social network! The aim of this project is to build an encyclopedia of good-quality (academically supported) content, not to make friends sharing the same interests!--2.37.216.231 (talk) 13:37, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
While it's true that Wikipedia is not a social network, I disagree with the logic to the step that because it's not a social network there is no value in collaboration with other editors who are enthusiastic on the same general topic or topics. Collaboration is a good thing and if portals help promote collaboration, then that's another reason to keep them around.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:33, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Wikiprojects already serve the purpose of gathering together editors to collaborate on a topic. Portals aren't needed for this reason Cesdeva (talk) 15:11, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
First of all Wikipedia is a social network as well (but one with a specific purpose). Secondly it is true that much or all functions of portals could be taken over by Wikiprojects (or vice versa actually), but the conclusion from that is (at best) a merging or migration (with a potential phasing out of one) and not a wholesale deletion as suggested above.--Kmhkmh (talk) 15:36, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Vice versa? Portals don't even function well for their primary purpose, nevermind incorporating the workings of a wikiproject. Many portals already come under the 'jurisdiction' of wikiprojects, yet they still have major issues. Shifting namespace won't solve anything. Cesdeva (talk) 16:03, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Additional comment I further disagree with the premise that collaboration should only come from one source (a "project" or a "portal") -- collaboration can and should come from multiple sources if possible. Further, I do not believe that "need" is the proper measure... do we "need" portals? We don't "need" Wikipedia (see
WP:NEED).--Paul McDonald (talk) 22:28, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]

16 April 2018

  • Oppose On the one hand I can see the merit in arguments like the one above, that they are a relic of early 2000s thinking about web design and how users would approach Wikipedia, thinking that has not proven correct in the long term. But by that same token we ought not to delete them for that reason.
    I don't think we can say that just because they don't attract a lot of views now they never will again. Future web usage trends could change, and it would be easier to have the portals around should they become valuable in some way rather than have to rebuild them or some equivalent from scratch. Daniel Case (talk) 02:09, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
Keeping portals on the off-chance that they become popular again is CRYSTAL, so you've actually invoked policy which is the antithesis of your argument. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 18:55, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
WP:CRYSTAL is a policy that only applies in full to article content, not a namespace. In this instance I think it's perfectly fine to argue it both ways. Daniel Case (talk) 18:27, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support but don't delete them. Mark portals as historic and remove links from mainspace. I agree that outlines and indexes work much better than portals. Rreagan007 (talk) 05:13, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose. If you have problems with specific portals, feel free to nominated them for deletion. However, there are many portals (especially those that are featured) that are excellent. Interestingly, featured portals are the ONLY featured content to never be featured on the Main Page. This has been proposed several times (having a rotating once-a-day link to a portal, or one that loads randomly each page load based on a list of featured portals), but people seem to think it would be a lot of work (it wouldn't be...a feature used in many portals could be used to create it). It takes a lot of work to get an entire portal up to featured status (I've helped with two of them), and if they are built effectively, they don't require much maintenance. ···
    Join WP Japan! 07:00, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Oppose I agree that many of the portals are out of date and useless, but there are a few portals that are well maintained and a good source of information. I don't think that they should all be deleted. Rather, each portal should be evaluated and determined to see if it is inactive or not. Those that are can be deleted but others should be kept if they have active support. Draconicfire (talk) 14:05, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose deletion but support marking portals historical and/or moving to different namespace. I do not see any reason to remove people's ability to read historical portal content, such access would not waste editors' time, and old data on portals will certainly be of interest to some. Also, it's important that certain portals such as
    Portal:Contents and Portal:Current events are exempted or kept active in a different namespace, as has been discussed multiple times in this proposal -Cake~talk 14:53, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support, for reasoning stated previously. Isseubnida (talk) 14:57, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional Support I would be more in support of pruning and/or freezing portal creation. Some (one?) of the portals are still quite useful, such as Current Events. As long as we don't lose pages that matter, I don't care if portals are overhauled or phased out. But I would hate if my favorite news source disappeared over night. Also, Current Events is a nice time capsule, so it would be a shame for all the years of curated news articles to just disappear.Spoonlesscorey (talk) 15:06, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Highly oppose Deleting such a good fixture to Wikipedia would disappoint those who used to frequent the portals. In fact, this year alone, I've had more portal edits than anything else. Call me when you get the chance 15:17, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Oppose I find it to be a very useful feature that gives a handy and concise summary about a topic. A relative lack of views should never impact an encyclopedia's content, otherwise you could delete 90% of it. --Therexbanner (talk) 16:00, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • oppose.The portals have been very useful. I use the news one dailyArglebargle79 (talk) 15:20, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for Contents, Featured Content, and Current Events; Neutral for everything else — the Portal concept is good when done well. A portal serves as a useful topic-based contents page for readers when people actually use it and edit it. However, portals which don't get viewed or edited much should be marked as historical so people don't expect them to be up-to-date. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 16:20, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I am far more of a reader “outsider” than editor “insider”. I am not informed about many of the issues involved creating/supporting portals, and have no opinion there. As a content consumer, i read Portal: Current Events every day. Other portals i stumble across as i use Wikipedia, and generally seem useful (from memory). Now, it may be improper for me to use Portal: Current Events as my daily newspaper, but when i go to Wikinews and the headlines don’t change for days and those of Portal: Current Events do, the *de facto active* news source is Portal: Current Events on Wikipedia. I would hate for that to go away with no replacement. It appears that some portals are useful and maintained and some are not, so hopefully there is a less binary approach to resolving portal issues. Sonic Purity (talk) 16:28, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Portal Current Events would continue in Wikipedia space. No one wants to close it down. Legacypac (talk) 16:31, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Looking over the problems of portals reported in the discussion, they boil down to 1) out of date / lack of maintenance (lack of volunteer labor) 2) useless (static / unchanging) and 3) low traffic (few repeat visits). These are problems we can solve. The support to do so is obvious from the above discussion.
The 3rd problem (relatively low traffic) is misleading, for two reasons. First, portals as a whole get more traffic now than ever before, with well over 20 million views per year. Second, portals get their traffic internally, rather than from external search engine results.
Please keep in mind that portals are an internal feature intended to enhance the user experience once the user is already here. Traffic is higher for those portals that provide ongoing services that users return to them for.
But, most portals do not have that level of volunteer labor available to them. Therefore, automatically-generated dynamic content, for example, in the form of randomly generated on-topic selections, automated news feeds, and so on, would be a valuable service, turning the portals into a form of periodical or newsletter.
Also, with such pages in place, who knows what enhancements could be made to them in the future. Technology is accelerating as we speak.
I believe the solution is automation, with configurability (to provide flexibility to portal designers). Refreshing the intro entry, using selective transclusion, so it doesn't go stale is one form of automation that can help.
Obviously, there is no consensus to delete. But, the message is loud and clear that the status quo is unacceptable. The portals need a lot of work. They need an upgrade, to turn them into what they were originally intended to be: main pages for their respective subjects. It's time to roll up our shirt sleeves, and get to it. I foresee a major and fun collaboration coming on. You can expect to see me there. Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   22:17, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose I come to Wikipedia every day and read the Current Events Portal. Should there come a day when there is no Current Events Portal, I will discontinue my use of and support of Wikipedia as a whole.23.251.93.185 (talk) 23:04, 16 April 2018 (UTC)Dan[reply]
Threats to leave, stop using the site, or even stop donating are generally responded to with an eyeroll or a laugh. Try using other Modes of persuasion such as logic-based ethics or practicality. Ian.thomson (talk) 23:22, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
They are? I don't see this as a threat but an actual statement that the editor gets value from the portals and will likely not return if they are gone. But I didn't know that I was supposed to roll my eyes at this...--Paul McDonald (talk) 01:00, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Readers are the most important part of the community; more important even than editors since an encyclopaedia without readership is nothing. This reader is stating that without portals, they will cease to be a reader. Readers rarely comment for the fact they are here to consume content not contribute it and the fact a reader has weighed in should be seen as a particularly valuable insight. -- BobTheIP editing as 2.28.13.227 (talk) 16:37, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

17 April 2018

  • Somewhat Oppose The portals are a very nifty tool which of course is why they exist. I understand the reasons for deleting them. Personally, I would think an appropriate action would be to leave them as they are.The popular portals, like the ones with multiple millions of visitors, should probably be maintained and updated. The more obscure ones can be saved and left in the order they are. If a change is necessary: Keep the current events.--66.76.14.92 (talk) 00:33, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Oppose The current events portal provides a very unique concatenation of articles from various topics. Without a portal like this, Wikipedia would lose a critical access point to recently updated articles, articles relating to current events, and pertinent related articles which tie in to topics in the news. If there is not another medium to provide this type of dynamic insight into Wikipedia's content without something like a portal, I think preserving this space which attempts to provide unbiased current events is more important now more than ever. Esa895 (talk) 00:16, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support and first save necessary content in another namespace if needed; and move portals such as Current events to Wikipedia-namespace. Where for example Wikipedia:Your first article, that is also one of the most visited pages, currently is situated. --Treetear (talk) 00:35, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support in general.
    WP:BLP violations. Needs a more nuanced responce, but the first step is to unlink them from mainspace and Wikipedia space. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:51, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Oppose. This would remove the Current Events portal, which I for one find incredibly useful and better for use than most official news sites. Anon e Mouse Jr. (talk) 01:01, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Oppose
I'm posting this again after the Section break because I didn't see this within the first 15 minutes of reading through this discussion.
I love Wikipedia and reference it as my first source when learning about a new topic, but I visit the 'Current Events' portal at least once a day because to me this is the equivalent of reading the morning newspaper that was the standard about 50 years ago. The diversity of events which individuals take the time to report there is unrivaled. Often I learn of events that only much later become TV-news worthy or never make the circuit. In a sentence, 'The 'Current Events' portal enriches my life and to lose that would be a shame.' Please do not remove this section just because you find it unnecessary, please rather consider the many people who don't contribute but appreciate the thing for what it is. This comment is only my second time ever editing a Wikipedia page. The other time was in the 'Current Events' portal. So there again is another benefit to it, it draws in visitors and entices them to become contributors. Please, PLEASE, let it be.
Something that I've done in the past, please forgive my ignorance here, in relation to clearing disk space on my computer, has been to search for empty folders in my directory and delete them using a third party utility. As this applies to what seems to be the appeal to many here of deleting the portals, mainly clearing up unused namespace, could something similar not be done? If a portal hasn't been edited in a certain amount of time, could there not automatically be a message posted at the top of it, like the one that led me to this discussion, notifying users that unless the portal logs some activity within the next short time frame, it will automatically be deleted? Seems like a good compromise without killing the whole program.
Thank you to who ever just moved this to the bottom of this section. Duh, I didn't see that either. Thanks again.--66.76.14.92 (talk) 01:03, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Notwithstanding that
Wikipedia:Current events Legacypac (talk) 03:43, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
  • Strongly Oppose I love Wikipedia and reference it as my first source when learning about a new topic, but I visit the 'Current Events' portal at least once a day because to me this is the equivalent of reading the morning newspaper that was the standard about 50 years ago. The diversity of events which individuals take the time to report there is unrivaled. Often I learn of events that only much later become TV-news worthy or never make the circuit. In a sentence, 'The 'Current Events' portal enriches my life and to lose that would be a shame.' Please do not remove this section just because you find it unnecessary, please rather consider the many people who don't contribute but appreciate the thing for what it is. This comment is only my second time ever editing a Wikipedia page. The other time was in the 'Current Events' portal. So there again is another benefit to it, it draws in visitors and entices them to become contributors. Please, PLEASE, let it be.
Something that I've done in the past, please forgive my ignorance here, in relation to clearing disk space on my computer, has been to search for empty folders in my directory and delete them using a third party utility. As this applies to what seems to be the appeal to many here of deleting the portals, mainly clearing up unused namespace, could something similar not be done? If a portal hasn't been edited in a certain amount of time, could there not automatically be a message posted at the top of it, like the one that led me to this discussion, notifying users that unless the portal logs some activity within the next short time frame, it will automatically be deleted? Seems like a good compromise without killing the whole program.
By word count, there are currently 150 'Oppose' and 206 'Support' including multiple usages by single users.
I can't see how rearranging the names will improve the usefulness Legacypac (talk) 03:43, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
How did you come to the conclusion that their traffic has gone down? It is exactly the opposite: their traffic keeps going up. They are more visible now than ever.    — The Transhumanist   23:20, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think that the main ones, maybe, but fringe ones about topics that no one is updating definitely shouldn't exist. We should at most keep it to a few core portals and then delete or archive the rest. Nomader (talk) 14:52, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The other problem is a lack of maintenance. Portal:College basketball's "featured biography" was last updated by me..... 12 years ago (history is here: [2]). That's insane, and shows that for many of these portals, they've gone too far in the weeds. It should really only be core subjects at the end of this. Nomader (talk) 15:26, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose You are essentially wanting to remove other's hard work simply because you found a few that are bad. Yes there are the bad ones, but deleting all of them is a pathetic waste of time and energy. Why we can't just remove the ones that are terrible instead of deleting all of them is beyond me. Namcokid47 (talk) 23:11, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

18 April 2018

In addition, this also means that a couple of very popular portals like Portal:Current_events should be open to everyone. We need to distinguish portals for ease to access with the average viewers and portals for editing purposes. --Komitsuki (talk) 01:51, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose You are killing all of the bad ones. It's like finding few rotten eggs, and throwing the whole box out, even though 4 of the eggs are bad in 12. Yes, there are the bad ones, but killing all of the portals will ruin people's hard work. Delete the one's that are useless and keep the major ones like Portal:Current Events. Alot of people like me like the news, and I don't want it do be deleted, as it's a great information source. I support the deletion of small and useless portals like things about King Arthur, but keep the main ones.AbhiramKapaganty (AbhiramKapaganty) 1:31, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Strongly in favor of technical overhaul per Abyssal. Acebulf (talk) 01:51, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose That would be really harmful for readers. Portals are an important tool to explore articles and join them in the same subject. For example, what would happen to Portal:Current events. For many people, this portal is an important source of news, as much as Google News. This mass deletion is insane. If some portals need updates, just let's do it. There are hundreds of thousands of active users in English Wikipedia, so I think that's not an excuse for removing such important tool. You know what? This Wikipedia, the English edition, is almost perfect. We don't need to do that. --Humberto del Torrejón (talk) 01:54, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose For one, getting rid of the portal system does not guarantee that those who spend most of their energy working on them inevitably will move their focus somewhere else. It's very possible that it causes some sort of push-back, for lack of a better term, amongst the very active editors of those portals, which I personally think isn't worth the hassle. Secondly, I do think they could use some sort of overhaul, but what that would be, I can't say. Other posters have already covered most of the reasons I'm opposed to this move, so you can look to those to understand my thoughts more completely. In the case where this discussion does lead to the ending of the portal system, I think two things need to happen.
  1. Certain portals, such as the current events portal, should stick around. In fact, it probably should be on a case-by-case basis anyway, where the more active portals stay around while the inactive or rarely active ones can be closed.
  2. The various portals shouldn't be removed from existence, but instead left in a non-editable manner for historical purposes. Gamermadness (talk) 02:13, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note: The Current events portal and Tropical cyclones portal need to be actively maintained, since they both place a heavy emphasis on "active" or "current" events related to their topics (and both portals are actively maintained). LightandDark2000 (talk) 02:59, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly oppose, with suggestion - want to know why? See Portal:Explanation. Tisquesusa (talk) 08:22, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    1. Wikipedia is not a popularity contest. If it were, there are thousands of Iranian villages with 32 inhabitants and 50 goats that 'nobody' looks at. Same for moths with only one specimen found or islands of Antarctica and so hundreds of examples more.
    2. The whole argument is bogus; a link to a portal may be only clicked once and from there, other pages can be visited (generating multiple clicks and views on the pages linked in the portals), so the view count per day is not a good measure anyway.
    3. Also there is no way to measure how much time or actual reading a reader spends when clicking a portal page.
    4. I never ever click on the Main Page, but browse, read and check my watchlist (hence I found out about this, I never visit the Village pump either) everyday and have written in the past over 200 articles and worked on thousands.
    5. The writers do not decide what readers may find interesting. It is up to the readers, the vast majority of which is not here, to decide that.
    6. Comments above that portals are not linked, I did my share in linking to all relevant portals for the South American paleontological articles (example. It may have led to traffic to those portals, or not, that doesn't make my work redundant.
    7. Many users have spent many hours in creating portals, maintaining portals, improving portals and linking portals. That work done "is not an argument" is not true for a community project, with different writers and personalities.
    8. I have seen portals that are better maintained than many mainspace pages, with outdated information, tags without discussion or proper motivation, bad spelling, grammar, insufficient categorization, etc. And those pages were created years ago and not or hardly maintained afterwards.
    9. It is illogical, and even dominating, that someone who doesn't like portals decides that the people who do like portals should be negated their liking. If you don't like portals, simply don't click on them or do not work on them. If you do like them, please let this discussion be a motivation to improve the portals. An automation for weekly/monthly updates is not hard to implement, after all there are "just" 1500 portals, almost less than comments on this very page (in just a couple of days).
    10. That might be a requirement following from this discussion; all portals that by date X do not have this automated system implemented will be put in historical (not: deleted), after several attempts to contact the content creators of course. All the other portals that have that automated implementation done (plus other maintenance needed) will be maintained as they are. Cheers, Tisquesusa (talk) 08:20, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Request: Someone please speedy delete Portal:Yerevan (It's an empty husk. P1 (as article), A3 (no content)). Thank you.    — The Transhumanist   10:40, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Done (I think it is the first time I used CSD P1 in more than 10000 speedy deletions). —Kusma (t·c) 11:30, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad to have made your day. :)    — The Transhumanist   12:54, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Slightly Support I've never seen the point of portals. They seem like they can be merged with wiki projects. One thing of consideration is that Portals are most likely being made/maintained by the most enthusiastic editors? Lollipoplollipoplollipop (talk) 13:54, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Portals need fixing, not deleting. They are (or should be) a crucial navigation tool for the encyclopaedia. That's not to say they're not without problems - maintaining them can be time consuming and, as has been pointed out, is often not done. I think the reason for that is the work is actually quite monotonous and repetitive - the kind of stuff that could and should be automated. I've made some inroads in that direction - for example, Portal:South East England is fully automated, pulling articles from its subportals. So, what are these maintenance tasks and how could they be automated?
    • Updating selected content - the bot proposal in the next section should be able to fix that
    • Selecting content - can be automated by "selecting" FAs/GAs in the relevant categories
    • Pulling "current events" from Wikinews (relies on Wikinews categorisation and content creation, which doesn't work too well) using things like Template:Wikinews table
  • If there's a decent proposal to replace portals with something more automated - a view of categories that automatically shows excerpts from featured/good articles within them and related to them, with "on this day", "current events" and other common portal features supported (again, see
    P:SEE) - then I'd consider supporting it. But I oppose wholesale deletion without a decent alternative in place. WaggersTALK 14:30, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Oppose. Keep portals, and upgrade them – I regularly use Portal:Current Events and think this evidence of its relevance. I think ending the system of portals at large because their function appears redundant would deprive Wikipedia of an essential function, namely impartial aggregated global news that anyone can see the edit history for and anyone can contribute to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AlphaEnochOmega (talk • contribs) 15:01, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Seems like maybe the notability guidelines need to be better implemented or something, but I came here from portal:current events which I read every day. If there's a replacement for it that has the same functionality, cool. 74.93.182.21 (talk) 15:02, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Portal are really helpful when people is trying to look and learn from some topic, rather than searching for a specific article — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.1.186.4 (talk) 15:40, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I understand the argument that some portals were abandoned and are pointless considering there are WikiProjects, outlines, etc., but I must say Portal:Current events is actively read and edited (including by myself every once in a while), so I'm not sure outright deleting or deprecating them is the right solution. NoMoreHeroes (talk) 16:11, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The portal for News is one of the most useful pages in Wikipedia. It's not the same as the portal for Cricket. Portals that are very useful and serve as reference should not go the same way as useless portals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.218.162.191 (talk) 16:16, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very strong oppose There are several reasons why this absurd request should not be continued in favour of portal destruction
    1. Portals are no inconvenient, they contribute to the encyclopedia

      if it ain't broke don't fix it

    2. Portals are well visited and useful for navigation
    3. The majority is well maintained and updated (comment) but all portals need to be constantly updated and cared of by Wikipedians, not only of the project. The portals need to be in perpetual improvement to avoid stagnation
    So why delete portals? --Railfan01 (talk) 17:07, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose No value in removing. Lots of value in the current portals. I like the question, but think the answer is to improve portals not delete. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mmackenz (talk • contribs) f 19:37, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • International very strong oppose because it also concerns other wikipedia-projects.
    I do not understand why you have to delete something that:
    • Thousands of hours of free time spent on volunteer helpers
    • does not bother anyone, does not cost anyone anything
    • rarely until barely outdated and needs updating
    • Helping readers by giving them an overview of a topic
    • Help readers to ask questions when they have a problem
    • Authors of a subject area help to discuss problems together
    • leaving behind a lot of frustration after deleting and certainly chasing away old veteran writers
    A Statistic shows that only 6 Portals had 451.481 Pageviews in the last 3 Month. Best --Ｔｏｍ (talk) 20:37, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

19 April 2018

  • Support getting rid of them. There's reason for keeping a few of them, e.g. Current Events, but anything good can be moved to projectspace. Portals were a great idea, but they've just not worked out. "if it ain't broke don't fix it" True, but as the nominator noted, our portals are typically grossly out of date and fail to provide consistent good information. How useful is something featuring a random collection of articles? And they've been around for years: why should we expect portals magically to start improving if nobody's done any significant work for a long time? Yes, they're broken, and they're not likely to be improved. From glancing through some of the upper parts of this page, it seems that most of the opposition is specifically because people don't want to get rid of Portal:Current events. The closing admin (or admin team, given the size of this thing) should note this; unless I've been glancing at a misrepresentative sample, there's consensus for retaining that page at whatever title, but if there's consensus for keeping the system as a whole, it needs to be because of votes that explicitly address the whole system, e.g. Tom's comment immediately above mine. Nyttend (talk) 00:22, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional Support: Many portals are merely reiterations of the articles that they are based on. However, some portals are quite useful (like Current Events). The best way to approach it is on a case by case basis.Randomness74 (talk) 00:49, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Ridiculous suggestion. Just because there's a few out of date portals, no need to punish the well maintainted.
    TheLostBoy (talk) 02:44, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support. Whatever the theoretical benefits of portals, the reality is that most of them are woefully under-maintained, and v little used. This been the case for years, so all the talk of "keep and improve them" is dreaming: there simply are not enough editors with a sustained interest in doing so, Worse, given the viewing figures, anyone advocating widespread improvement is unintentionally encouraging editors to waste their time. That would actively damage Wikipedia by diverting effort away from actually improving en.wp
    I say this with some sadness because I recently spent a day or two making     Template talk:YearInCountryPortalBox to automatically add portal links to thousands of country-by-year cats; but as I built it and viewed more portals, I became more and more convinced that my concerns were well-founded.
    My ideal solution would be too keep about 20 major portals(art/science/etc plus continents), and delete the rest. But given the unhelpful binary nature of this proposal, I'd prefer outright deletion to either keeping them all or to having 1500 MfD debates. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:38, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support and Oppose I am a frequent reader of the Current Events portal. I find it useful and a good source of news. I suggest all portals that have a number of views higher than a certain amount to be transformed into something different, but not abandoned. Portals that are old in their updates but visited anyways may become static pages (e.g. "tonight's soccer games" becomes "soccer games till 2017"), updated ones may be continued in other forms. amdp 09:02, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose Personally, I find well maintained portals like that for Mathematics very entertaining and useful. Wikipedia search can only deal with known unknowns but portals excel at unknown unknowns and let you expand your bubble and find interesting subjects that you didn't even know existed beforehand. DecBrennan (talk) 09:42, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose. I am a frequent user. It is very useful when one is interested in particular topics. --Julien1978 (d.) 12:21, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I'd like to point out that there is a common thread among those who support removing portals, and that is that since a group of portals (A, B, and C) are "poorly written/out of date/not maintained" then we must therefore remove all portals (A, B, C, D, ... Z). This argument is essentially
    WP:ALLORNOTHING, an argument to avoid in deletion discussions. This is especially critical in that it is known that at least some portals are indeed well written, current, and regularly maintained. Not only is the argument one that should not be used in general, it is also proven to be incorrect in this specific case.--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:47, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Weak conditional support. Some portals may have content that can be salvaged and moved to the pages of their respective WikiProjects. For example, Portal:Eurovision, which is part of the WikiProject in all but name, has some very handy links in there, besides useless stuff like DYK, article summaries and annual news of who won the main contest. —  Andreyyshore  T  C  14:23, 19 Apr 2018 (UTC) 
  • Oppose It's a nice way to explore a topic. It's still useful even it is unmaintained. --Lerdsuwa (talk) 15:14, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Portals also have a following from interested readers of those topics. The surprise the main page articles give to followers is pleasant. Yes, the update frequency of portals can be increased or a section of main page can display a random/automated article to keep the enthusiasm of the readers up. But portals need not be closed as it will be disappointing for the following community. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 106.211.26.88 (talk) 16:18, 19 April 2018
  • STRONGLY OPPOSE The portal system is EXTREMLY HELPFUL for my book writing, especially the Portal:Tank, due to the fact that there are so many tanks out there. plz keep the portal system. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.221.154.43 (talk) 16:52, 19 April 2018‎ (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose While they may be mostly unmaintaned, how does removing them benefit Wikipedia? Per many people above, it seems to be a helpful resource. And while I don't oppose the idea of merging them with Wikiprojects, doing that basically forces people to do tons of tedious work, and again, for no real benefit. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 17:01, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I believe a portal should provide a contemporary overview of what's topical or changing in a subject area. A bit like Britannica's year Books they give the reader an overview of where change is occuring in the understanding of a subject , what novel ideas have emerged and what are the current debates and controversies. If a portal has not been edited for some time ( say 2 years) then a box should be added stating it is silent and asking people who are interested in the subject to adopt it. Lumos3 (talk) 21:09, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment: I actually really like this; were this to be a proposal after this whole mess is finished, I'd certainly support it. Icarosaurvus (talk) 23:37, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Reading Franz Kafka I came upon the Book Portal, hoping to find something about Kafka. Instead of which I was treated to a smorgasbord of stuff, some of it interesting, but none of it relating to Kafka and apparently no sensible way of navigating. A complete waste of my time to have been directed there. Three random articles for breakfast did not please me. I say portals should go if this one is in anyway representative of the lot. Cheers, MargaretRDonald (talk) 21:51, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Why would you think the "Book" portal would necessarily have something to say about a particular author? Sounds like a better solution to this problem is removing the link to the Book portal from the Kafka article (if it is there) rather than deleting the entire portal namespace. - dcljr (talk) 22:46, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose Breaks the first pillar of Wikipedia, also it is unnecessary. Felicia (talk) 21:57, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. If what is proposed would remove and not replace the functionality of non-commentary news sources as is demonstrated in the Current Events Portal, then I oppose. I donate yearly due in part to this simplified and "reduced bias" approach to world events. It is my first source for daily news and I refer many people to it. I sincerely hope the concept of Current Events is not lost, regardless of technology change. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Poweredbywill (talk • contribs) 23:01, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

20 April 2018

  • Strong oppose deletion (they are in no-way harmful to have available in the history); neutral on deprecating (and redirecting) them in favor of something else. If this discussion had taken deletion off the table initially, it would have avoided at least one source of derailment. Please consider that in the future.
    JesseW, the juggling janitor
    02:38, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Minor deletion Ok. The portals are nice. Very nice. i think that not ALL the portals should be deleted, but rather let us keep the major portals and get rid of portals like Portal:Cricket that seem to belong more as a category instead. I like the portals. So let's keep the major portals. The garmine (talk) 05:21, 20 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Portals are detrimental to Wikipedia. They give the impression of being dynamic, constantly updating sources of information, but in practise are out of date and redundant to article space. If someone wants to know about cricket, they'll go to Cricket and follow links from there, not to Portal:Cricket. Portals are a waste of editor time. --LukeSurl t c 10:42, 20 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I don't think there is a lot that can be achieved by deleting the portals. I find portals to be exciting and helpful. Portals are a part of Wikipedia where I believe there is more artistic freedom compared to articles. Pratyush (talk) 11:26, 20 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per MargaretRDonald. JackHoang (talk) 13:44, 20 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I do not favor complete removal of portals. It is true that some portals are unmaintained or poorly constructed, but not all portals fall into this group. I think the main problem with portals is a lack of visibility. While the main page has links to several top-level portals, they do not always appear in search results (in particular, when there is a page and a portal by the same name) and, if they are referenced at all in related or relevant pages, the reference is somewhere at the bottom of the page and is not always prominent and are not provided in a consistent and recognizable manner, unlike some other links. Putting the portal link at or near the top of the page would make portals much more visible and much more likely to be visited. I suspect that many Wikipedia readers do not even realize that the portals exist - I know I didn't for a few years (yes, years), and I read pages on Wikipedia regularly. I would support a "weeding out" of unmaintained and poorly constructed portals, or merging the functionality into another area of Wikipedia (if a relevant area exists), and, if portals are retained, I would strongly suggest making them more visible. 67.233.25.174 (talk) 16:02, 20 April 2018 (UTC)DrROM[reply]
  • Strong Oppose because I value Portal: Current events very highly as a world news resource. Evan R. Murphy (talk) 18:27, 20 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose Per all the oppose rationales above. This is a terrible idea on many levels. Dr. K. 22:27, 20 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support: In 12 years of active Wikipedia editing, and several prior years as a reader, I cannot recall visiting any portal twice. I can think of only one real engagement with a Portal as an editor, and it was negative. I admit that case is an outlier and should not be used to judge the whole Portal namespace; it is not the reason I support this proposal. The main reason I support it is that portals drain the energy and attention of editors and give very little to readers in exchange. They distract editors who might otherwise make valuable contributions to one or more related Projects. The decay of a Portal is a discouraging experience for contributors, and the ones who left Wikipedia are not represented in this discussion. Finally, deletion on Wikipedia is not annihilation, and time should be allowed for valuable content to be collected and maintained by Projects. It may give moribund projects something to do, and could give them new energy. Portal-like pages in Projects might be the next step toward what the Portal namespace aimed at but failed to achieve. -- ℜob C. alias ALAROB 23:14, 20 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. The remark "I cannot recall visiting any portal twice" is meant to indicate that I have visited many portals, but have not found them useful; therefore I have not returned to them. They are not the resource I believe they were intended to be. I mention this because the opposing comment immediately below seems to make a straw man of my remark, viz.: "many of the "Support" votes have the following character: 'I've never visited a portal, and therefore they are useless and should be deleted.'"

21 April 2018

  • Oppose. It seems to me that the outcome of this RfC, should it be successful, would be no different than if thousands of MfDs were to close as delete, and all portal pages deleted individually. Accordingly, it should require very strong consensus to proceed. I do not see this outcome. Indeed, on the one hand many of the "Support" votes have the following character: "I've never visited a portal, and therefore they are useless and should be deleted." An argument like this would never pass muster at MfD. And, on the other hand, there does seem to be a consensus that some portals are important and useful, while perhaps the majority of portals should be deleted. As User:BrownHairedGirl points out, the RfC's binary nature is problematic. Yet I reach the opposite conclusion as she: if we were to run 1500 MfD's and the outcome of some of those would turn out as keep, then this RfC should do the same. So far it has been demonstrated the the Portal namespace has a solid core, despite having much cruft in need of culling. The solution, as I see it, is to start a systematic cleanup operation: tag portals as dead, unmaintained, or otherwise needing cleanup. Once tagged for a reasonable period, those that remain so can be en masse discussed at MfD. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:28, 21 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The current events portal is my main source for news and if it goes away I'll be stuck reading biased, for-profit news. 12:40, 21 April 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.178.43.148 (talk)
  • Oppose. Portal is a great way to discover concepts in a topic when we are free to learn new knowledge. However, a great portal should only contains "links" to articles, hierarchy of the topic (a better looking of categories summary) and templates to topic (or info boxes), instead of polluting the portal system with advertisements and articles content. BAlbert 16:43, 21 April 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Balbert (talk • contribs)
  • Strong Oppose The merit of all portals should not be decided by the POV pushing on a few. Portals are, in my opinion, very useful to readers and editors. They do need a lot of work; but I definitely do not support mass-deleting them. Vermont | reply here 17:26, 21 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose Portals provide information on a subject in a very "tasty" way, as for it usually promotes to read more. -> Good Introduction. They are a good start into a subject. Community should take better care to update, OR: provide as much timeless information in the start page as possible. But we shouldn't delete them! --Soha~dewiki (talk) 18:02, 21 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. i have put in huge amounts of editing in a number of portals, and find the idea of them appealing. there are lots of flawed, incomplete, abandoned portals that dont help. that can be fixed. making them more visible (or making good ones more visible) would help the negative feedback loop of no one seeing them/no one working on them. fix the creation and maintenance process (i removed some 'in the news' sections from moribund portals with no regular editors).Mercurywoodrose (talk) 19:55, 21 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose (but support reform): In my experience, Portals are the optimal way to explore a topic on Wikipedia.  My most active period of WikiEditing occurred in the months following when I set
    WP:BEBOLD.  The editing did not drop off even as the Portal visibly stagnated for a few months.  Many arguments here in favor of support seem to argue that Portals are rarely used by editors and ill-maintained.  To the former claim: this is by design!  Portals are for readers seeking introduction to a topic, not for editors seeking to coordinate; the latter should use WikiProjects instead.  Note, too that this also makes RfC's a poor way to judge the feature's utility.  To the latter: as many people have remarked, Portals are relatively easy to automate to randomly select their content, and there seems no opposition to such a change. That suggests that any maintenance issues are technical and easily fixed—hardly a reason to delete. 128.135.98.72 (talk) 20:43, 21 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support. Move all portals into Wikipedia namespace and mark them as historical. They are useless.--
    talk) 22:54, 21 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Strong support. 99% of a productive WP editor should be spend writing new articles and editing/improving existing ones. The whole portals system is a huge waste of time and has no purpose whatsoever - the system of "Projects" is already doing what "Portals" are trying to (and people can coordinate within "Projects" if need be).--Piznajko (talk) 23:20, 21 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Productive Wikipedia editors come in all stripes. Trying to tie productiveness to one type of editing pattern is misguided. (And trying to improve editing of one type by suppressing editing of another type is, I think, similarly misguided.) - dcljr (talk) 00:17, 22 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Seems wrong to attempt to herd portal editors into more main namespace editing by eliminating any option of portal editing. To eliminate portals for this reason comes across as unnecessarily patronizing, manipulative, and even draconian. Let editors decide for themselves what they want to do. North America1000 00:58, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Dcljr and Northamerica1000. You can't force volunteers to do work that they don't like. If somebody only edited portals while they were here, if the portals disappear they will most likely not move to editing articles. It won't necessarily raise productivity across other areas of Wikipedia. Gizza (t)(c) 02:17, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
By deleting the portals you have just as likely of a chance of losing editors which is a net loss. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 03:07, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
DcljrPiznajko, you clearly haven't spotted that many WikiProjects use portals as a tool to help them improve their topic area. Do your homework before making sweeping statements. Bermicourt (talk) 18:23, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Um, @Bermicourt: you wanna try that again? Because your comment doesn't seem to make any sense as a reply to anything I've said. Were you trying to reply to someone else? - dcljr (talk) 21:03, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ooops, I'm sorry, I was replying to Piznajko. I'll change that. Bermicourt (talk) 06:35, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

22 April 2018

What's the Recent Deaths portal? If you mean
Deaths in 2018 then that's not a portal. DexDor (talk) 20:31, 22 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]

23 April 2018

  • Oppose. Portals are helpful tools when one is not certain about what to look for, but know it's in a particular "area" on Wikipedia. Plus with all of the crazy amount of events going on in the world, the Current Event Portal is still helpful. JaxisMaximus (talk) 00:33, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak oppose I do support deletion of portals that are neither used nor well maintained but don't think all of them should be deleted. There should be a higher burden of making sure portals are active than mainspace articles since portals are a secondary way of providing encyclopedic information to the reader whereas articles are primary. Portals are also a time sink if not viewed by many people. Categories have a similar navigational purpose but don't require as much work as portals. It would be interesting to compare the page views between the categories of a particular topic and the portal. We could also gauge the perspectives of non-editors by asking a few questions on social media. Perhaps readers are interested in portals but just aren't aware of them (the links on the main page are not very eye-catching - other sections have colourful headings and pictures). Gizza (t)(c) 01:11, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - With the exception of the main page and related content (e.g. current events), I have never found much use for portals. Keep in mind, I've been using this site for over ten years. Even when I started, portals didn't really do much. Kurtis (talk) 02:01, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Oppose:
  1. The portal is useful, but hard to browse around. It has great topical information. Just needs a face lift.
  2. Is there a topical index that would replace the portals?
  3. Part of the problem is that many do not know that the portals exist. Maybe a marketing campaign would be worthwhile before the portal is deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.172.160.70 (talk • contribs) 05:43, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose: I use the Current Events portal nearly daily—it is one of my primary news sources. It would be a significant loss to me and others if it were deleted. If that page were excluded from the proposal, I would be a weak oppose; I generally feel that portals are mildly useful, but I do not think that it would be helpful at all to delete them en mass. I do believe that deleting the portals is likely to drive contributing users away. The Jade Knight (talk) 06:27, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I see no problem with portals. But I agree it needed to reform.--John123521 (Talk-Contib.) 08:42, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I have always considered the portals an interesting side entrance to Wikipedia, a possibility to give and get an overview of the specific field. - Mdd (talk) 10:52, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose: All good works of reference need some form of indexing, which a portal is. However most portals are difficult to edit - which is why people do not do it. I have edited the Trains portal and the process was torture. Make it simple. There is a segment of Wikipedia editors who use complexity as a method of exclusion. (Maps and route diagrams for railroads comes to mind) Not all portals need a daily or even monthly update. Wickifrank (talk) 13:51, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I haven't edited any portals because they didn't interest me from the very start. Though it may be useful for people working on them, but I don't think they are any significant value to this encyclopedia. It is a failed project. Maintaining articles in itself is an exhaustive task so why increase the burden? Harsh Rathod Poke me! 15:34, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
And you being disinterested makes them without value? It's not a failed project; evident from the dozens of portals that link people from one article to a "topic page" of sorts about them. Vermont (talk) 23:55, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Vermont: Please don't be wary. What can I do if they are of no use to me? But in fact, I'm happy with the "Category" namespace. Portals are oudated and useless but Category provides specific and updated info. Harsh Rathod Poke me! 05:22, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

24 April 2018
I don't see how an old design is a bad thing by nature. Sometimes traditional is best.-Sıgehelmus (Tωlk) 15:20, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

25 April 2018

  • Oppose. I object to the deletion request, in the opinion that it is very useful in addition to it facilitates the person easy access to the rest of the information about what they readEgy writer (talk) 00:22, 25 April 2018 (UTC) [Note: The word "Oppose" was added by User:Dcljr for consistency with the other comments.][reply]
  • Oppose and close discussion as
    WP:NOCONSENSUS. Nominations for individual portal deletions should continue. Brian Everlasting (talk) 00:37, 25 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Strong oppose. The Main Page is one of the best pages on the internet. --Tewy 02:09, 25 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Streamline/rethink portal content (Rename "Portal:" to "Index:" to start, and support new thinking about discoverability on Wikipedia). When I first visited this RFC, I was OK with deletion. Then I wavered. Wikipedia needs UI elements for exploring topics that inexperienced readers can a) locate easily, and b) find useful. [It would not surprise me if categories turn out to do a very poor job of this (and they don't even show in mobile).] I support a system that allows Wikipedia readers to find related content, and I believe we need new thinking about what UI elements would accomplish this. I do not support the essentially arbitrary content that many portals use (as a matter of fact) to represent a topic. They are uninspired re-hashes of the main page, portal by portal, when the main page itself has always been largely arbitrary in content (the right half isn't!). Some of the portals amount to original research, really, by the selective highlighting of random topics that ostensibly pertain to the topic of the portal. I just looked at Portal:2010s, which I think is a good (bad) example of that--the only thing useful about it is the category tree display. The rest is entirely arbitrary content. We need concise UI elements that let readers find categories, lists or overview pages, and so on. Portals are not concise and have too much arbitary content. (A well-defined portal topic, though, like Portal:Jane Austen, is tight enough to not have much arbitrary content.) It is only for this particular aspect of them that I am ok with deletion. I would prefer that portals be turned into "indexes", construed as you wish; then I would like to keep them, and link to them more. I am proposing to rename the portal namespace "Index" and proceed from there. :) Outriggr (talk) 02:38, 25 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's not an either/or situation. We already have indexes and tree structures in place and being developed further, with software being developed to enhance them further. They serve different purposes than portals. The Portals WikiProject is currently working on ways for the next generation of portals to transcend the capabilities of our current portals. This is happening fast. See #Portals WikiProject Update: Portals – The Next Generation is almost here, below.    — The Transhumanist   04:25, 25 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

26 April 2018

  • Oppose Please keep the
    Portal:Current Events: this is my browsers startpage! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hundfred23 (talk • contribs) 00:53, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    • @Hundfred23: Although I object to deleting all portals, a portal being your browser start page could not be a reason. This discussion is about deleting all portals and not just Portal:Current events. Nigos (t@lk • Contribs) 06:21, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Why not? There are lots of comments above saying we should delete all portals because no one uses them and they are outdated. Here's an example of someone who uses them (or at least one).--Paul McDonald (talk) 11:47, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per reasons already stated above, including the importance the Current Events portal has attained over the years. Kiteinthewind Leave a message! 07:32, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: The WikiProject is fixing them – A good reason to keep the portals is that there is now a strong and growing WikiProject dedicated to updating them, upgrading them, and maintaining them. Since the Portals WikiProject rebooted 9 days ago, 51 users have joined (with more joining daily). To gear up for the main work ahead of us, we are developing automated components for portals, to make portals easier and more fun to build and maintain.
So far, we've completed a template, and supporting Lua module, that together can selectively transclude desired paragraphs from an article's lead section to use as an excerpt in a portal section. Previously, excerpts in portals were static, and would drift from the original content from which they were copied. Transcluded content from articles never goes stale or forks, as the current version is always displayed.
To give you a sense of the reaction this template is generating, here is an excerpt of a discussion thread from the WikiProject's talk page:
  • This new template is fantastic. I've added it to the intro sections of the portals on Australian cities (eg P:PER) and it works brilliantly. My compliments to its creators. It can probably also be used in other sections of many portals (eg "Selected article" and "Selected biography"), and, for that reason, will probably make the task of maintaining portals a great deal easier. Bahnfrend (talk) 09:02, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Kudos on a wonderful template.    — The Transhumanist   03:27, 25 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This is amazing stuff. I'm going to get to work on using it on the selected content at most of these portals very soon. WaggersTALK 13:40, 25 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
We are currently putting our heads together to develop better ways to handle news sections, "Selected" sections, anniversary sections, and "Did you know" sections. As we do so, maintenance drives will be coordinated to clean these up across the entire portal system, to remove or archive outdated information, and automate those for which it is feasible to do so and that do not have active maintainers. The first maintenance drive is expected to start within a few days.
Concerning "Selected" sections, most portals provide a selected article and picture, and sometimes a biography, item (dog, plant, volcano, spaceship, etc.), and so on. Many portals have only provided one of each, which have never changed. However, some of the best portals provide (either manually or automatically) a different selection each week, or each day, or even each time a person visits the page, keeping its content vibrant. We are looking for ways to improve these types of components so that editors can easily implement them on the portals they work on (if they want to).
Our overall goal is to revitalize the entire portal system, and make it even better, providing support to portals editors, so they can provide readers with new and interesting ways to explore knowledge. Toward this end, we are also conducting discussions on potential future features and components. You are welcome to come join in on all the discussions.
So, please, before you cast your !vote, come visit the Portals WikiProject, especially the talk page, and take a look at what we're doing, and see what is in store for the future of portals. You are also invited to join the team and contribute to their development. Thank you. Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   10:48, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Mostly for the Current events portal, as stated by many others above. Not only is it the best news summary I know of on the Internet, its contents and headlines are also a unique way of seeing that slice of human history since its creation. If that specific portal were to be preserved, I would then have a neutral opinion regarding the deletion of others. --Pyrhan (talk) 12:33, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose As a Wikipedian who has about one fifth of their edits in the portal namespace (here's proof), I believe that getting rid of the portal system will negatively impact Wikipedia in multiple ways. First and most obvious of all is that many edits and hours dedicated to improving portals will all be gone instantly. To put in a more specific context, if Wikipedia decides to delete the portal system, then they are essentially punishing those who spent much of their time improving them. Remember what happened to Vine? It ended up announcing its discontinuation, and many users of the site had all of those hours put in for nothing. Secondly, some of Wikipedia's most viewed pages are portals. Those advocating to shut down the portal system are arguing that portals should be shut down because nobody uses them. However, pages such as the
    1940s portal, Coke Studio portal, and other portals which are mostly incomplete should either be completed by a certain deadline, or be deleted from the site, since portals like those hardly get any views and are mostly unfinished.
    tl;dr - Portals should be kept because it would be wasted time/edits for nothing, many still get sufficient or a lot of views, and they're a good way to link multiple articles from a certain topic together. Instead of deleting the portals, people should improve already existing portals and delete those which provide inadequate information or content.
    I hope these thoughts get taken into consideration, and have a nice day. Redolta📱 Contribs 13:27, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support. I've been a Wikipedian since 2004, and in all that time I never used a portal as any kind of serious starting point (even as I have always been aware of their existence). On a few rare occasions I somehow found myself on a portal page, I found them confusing, poorly organized, and ill-maintained. If there are any portals out there which are in fact well-designed and maintained properly, I have nothing against keeping those (or reworking them into some kind of alternative) on a case-by-case basis, but the majority of them seem to be fairly useless to the bulk of the audience. Time to let them go.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 26, 2018; 14:35 (UTC)
  • 2 VOTES for STRONGLY OPPOSE STRAIGHT DELETION even with a few exceptions, SUPPORT REFORM, USE OF SOFTWARE AND TECHNOLOGY already available, IDEAS TO REDUCE HIGH MAINTENANCE POSTED IN A SPACE, TRAINING OR INTERNSHIP OR SPACE FOR INSTRUCTION FOR READERS INTERESTED IN CONVERTING TO EDITORS, PROPERLY DEFINING "USE" OF PORTALS, ALLOWING EDITORS TO CONTACT WIKIPEDIA IF NO LONGER AVAILABLE TO MAINTAIN PORTAL AND CANVASING FOR OTHERS WILLING TO ASSUME EDITING, INCREASING ACCESS TO PORTALS BY TAKING INTO ACCOUNT HOW READERS ACTUALLY USE WIKIPEDIA, such as over the phone, through search engines, through wikipedia search, through fan pages, ARCHIVING OR HISTORICAL AND ENCOURAGING EDITORS TO ENGAGE THEIR EFFORTS IN OTHER TOPICS OR AREAS SUCH AS PROJECTS especially in the same topic as previous portal, ALLOWING NEW FUTURE EDITORS TO REVIVE A PORTAL IF IT REMAINS DEFINED AS USED IN ARCHIVE OR HISTORY (much easier to do if content is archived rather than deleted), GRADUAL WEEDING OF PORTALS NEVER USED AFTER ARCHIVING OR HISTORICAL, ANNUAL EVALUATION OF USAGE AND DELETION OF OUTDATED INFORMATION AND OBSOLETE LINKS FOR ARCHIVED/HISTORICAL previous portals. POSSIBLE INTEGRATION WITH WIKIPEDIA PROJECTS. These and other alternatives are better solutions to the problems identified with portals such as poor maintenance and/or poor usage, than short sited nearly wholesale deletion, and even importing content to areas other than archive/historical would in the long run import the problems. Even archiving/historical will experience these same problems if used alone without implementation of other reforms. There clearly needs to be a system to evaluate usage and maintenance and not keep proliferating ad infinitum. Additionally, deletion only SEEMS to be a simple solution, but technologically definitionally and motivationally (for editors) is much more complex in execution than noted at first glance. Finally, Wikipedia Internationally has dealt with the same problems using solutions other than deletion. MAJOR REFORM OF CATEGORIES ALSO PROPOSED, please ASAP. excuse me (zion) I am primarily a reader and I did not know how to bullet and bold to follow the format, so I used capitalization. (I zion wrote all comments and votes as of april 26 2018 but consulted my brother mullosk via phone, probably after this date he may more sophisticatedly and knowledgeably add his own input.) zionpegasus/eagle in the city; and mullosk43 — Preceding comment added (in two edits) by 67.140.143.169 (talk) 05:49, 8 May 2018 (UTC)zion67.140.143.169 (talk) 05:49, 8 May 2018 (UTC)zionpegasus67.140.143.169 (talk) 05:49, 8 May 2018 (UTC)eagleincity67.140.143.169 (talk) 05:49, 8 May 2018 (UTC)my brother: mollusk4367.140.143.169 (talk) 05:49, 8 May 2018 (UTC)i am not sure i have a current account, but i did once have one.[reply]

67.140.143.169 (talk) 18:53, 26 April 2018

27 April 2018

  • Oppose Portal:Current events is an excellent source for a global perspective on news. I think it also generates some historical value through its archives. Jicksw (talk) 02:15, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I only found out about Portals today. Why? Because they aren't well advertised; I hadn't conciousely noticed such a link previously. Having found out about them, they strike me as being extremely useful! Rather than following a string of links interspersed within the text through various related pages, a properly constructed Portal allows me to hierarchically access related articles within a tree structure from one page, which is a vast improvement in regard to my standard method of trying to find/organize information. I must say, the arguments relating to number of edits per page over a specified time period don't appear to be including any information regarding the volatility of the subject matter contained, other than that for specific pages looked at; if the information the page contains is up-to-date, there is no need for an edit; that some of the responders state that while they had not edited the main Portal page for a topic, but had edited pages the Portal linked to does seem to support the argument that for some topics the Portal would be static over long periods of time, without being out-of-date. The question should not be "How many edits have been made in x-time-period?", but rather "Has there been any need for edits, and if so, have they taken place?", which would seem to me be the criteria to apply to all pages, regardless of namespace. Some pages are static by nature, in that there is no change in the matter being covered, while others are in need of constant updating, due to high currency of the matter being covered. Umm, this is slightly OT, but is there a way to identify a page as being a stable/static topic, and that an alert be automatically created if it is edited; that would seem to be of assistance in being alerted to possible POV vandalism of topics where the probability of legit edits is low. JohnBobMead (talk) 04:00, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak support. Portals are essentially useless, our regular readers don't visit them and don't know they exist. They could be seen as essentially harmless, except they do make some Wikipedians waste time maintaining them, time those individuals could better spend doing something actually useful. Of course, it's a free project, and in the end if someone wants to work on a page that is seen by pretty much no-one, it's fine, but we should try to discourage some of the more wasteful activities, and portals seem to fit in this category. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:26, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@
transclusion. This design feature is completed, and is undergoing beta testing now. When we are done automating the portals' other functions (like topic selection) we'll have fully automated dynamic portals that will need very little maintenance, with subpages made virtually obsolete or greatly reduced for many portals. By dynamic, I mean fed new material without human intervention once the configuration settings have been made. It's looking like we'll have working prototypes very soon. The big question after that, will be "What features can we add to make Portals really cool (and useful)"?. For example... The portals of the German-language Wikipedia are so heavily automated, that their portal operators can focus on more community-oriented activities. Their creatures portal, for example, has a sub-department where you can post a picture of an animal, and they will identify the species for you. We are limited only by our imagination and our creativity.    — The Transhumanist   14:55, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
      • @The Transhumanist: I appreciate your detailed answer. Automatization is certainly a good step, and I like the 'ID feature'. Still, we have to consider the big problem of portals being hidden deep inside Wikipedia. As long as 99,99% of our users don't even realize they exist, they may be a cute, cool - and useless due to effective invisibility - feature. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:44, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • @Piotrus: The traffic to Wikipedia's specialty pages seems like so little, until you consider the navigation function. For the vast majority of navigation attempts, (google) search works fine, and leads you right to the article you were looking for. But sometimes, search can't help. Like when you don't know what you are looking for is called. Or your needs are more general, like learning what exists. For those situations, other types of aids are needed. So, Wikipedia's contents systems don't generally compete with search, they are there mostly to assist when search doesn't produce the needed results. They complement search. Search is our navigation work horse, and does the bulk of the work, but it can't reach everything. The content systems extend the users' reach beyond the search system. That's one of the reasons they don't get as much traffic as articles - they are in essence navigation tools, like search is, but for special cases. So comparing them to articles is like comparing apples to oranges. So, having search plus alternative navigation tools is superior to having just search, because you have something else to try when you get stuck.
Concerning tools or service, the closer to 100% effectiveness you try to reach, the more it costs. Search is cheap, and covers 80% to 90% of users' navigation needs. That last 10% to 20% requires custom tools, which takes editing to build, but it is well worth it to readers to have them when they need them. The more effective Wikipedia is in fulfilling users' knowledge needs, the more they will choose Wikipedia as their first stop for knowledge.
With the new improvements (and quality) coming to portals, they may inspire return visits, which would increase traffic to them. And don't forget improvements over the long term. Who knows what they will become in the future? Personally, I like the interactive interface (the holotable) used by Tony Stark and S.H.I.E.D. in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Imagine if portals adapted that to the 2D screen. (There's already a related prototype invented by Elon Musk).[3] But, portals won't be able to evolve into something like that, or something else cool, if we kill them off now.    — The Transhumanist   06:34, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Portals are useful, valid sources of current data/information and, if they are maintained by people who find them interesting enough to exist, there is no point in terminating them. IMHO, Portal:Current events, for example, is an excellent and unbiased news center resource. Hugo Salvado (talk) 08:28, 27 April 2018 (GMT)
  • Oppose All time, when I am joining the Internet, I am going to read a Portal's news. At least, it is edited by peoples, who donate their time for Wikipedia and I was all time content with this, that I read. Only surprised, that somebody want to delete the Portal or portals generally--Noel baran (talk) 08:17, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I will just answer with my gut. For some odd reason the Portal for New YORK CITY where I live, is my WP homepage before I login. It is my bookmarked page above all the other links, wiki or potential references, I hold under a bookmark tab called Wiki. I do not want to see this starting point for my entry into the WP world to change based on a cricket match. If you want a debate, find me another Fan Dancer or Flagger who has taken to the stage of Heritage of Pride's Dance on the Pier for a span of years equal to my own. 1991-2017. Do you see my name on a flagger or fan dancee WP page, no. It's just something I do for my community in the town where I live. The art was near extinct, until Randy of LA taught Jeffrey Reichlin in the Fall of 1987 how to build his fluid fans and work them properly. February 1988 at Pier 17 in the Seaport, fans where spun in NY for the first time in many years, as AIDS took far too many and these interpretive dancers who trace their history back to the Trocadero in SF (early 1970's) either put them away for good or they were put away for them after they found a box in their size... and a place to burn it, because that wasn't easy at first. Between 1988 and 1997 there were eventually a total of 16 fan dancers who took to that one stage. How do I know. I hold the fax which I sent to the NFP ensuring they all had access. But I digress. Leave the Portals.Mrphilip (talk) 10:10, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Partial oppose. The portal system has been broken a long time, but deletion isn't really the answer, because that implies mindlessly putting information in view of admins only for no special reason. This is user content and should preserved -- it just shouldn't be promoted with a special Main Page index or given a special namespace. The Portal: space should be reserved for redirects only and everything presently there should be redirected, and after about 5 years the redirects can be shut down if there's a reason to, not sooner. But the content presently there should be moved somewhere - whether WikiProject or user page or some other discussion namespace - and an index to all the portals, at new locations, should continue to exist. Then people interested in the content can keep working on it, and if you have a favorite Portal link, you can bookmark wherever it gets redirected to. Wikipedia has a tremendous internal division between being "not social" and having "portals and wikiprojects and wikiconferences and wiki chapters and so on" and so long as it pursues these divergent goals with excessive fervor in both directions it will continue to have strange flotsam prominently displayed. Wnt (talk) 11:53, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Wnt: The new and improved rebooted Portals WikiProject is fixing the entire portals system with a redesign/upgrade. So, it won't remain broken for long: the new team is designing fixes as fast as we can. It's been just 10 days since the reboot, and we've designed some cool new components already, and you can expect more at a fairly rapid pace. We have some of Wikipedia's best and brightest on the team.    — The Transhumanist   13:56, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
At first glance that project seems like a bull session, stuff like people asking whether you can automate DYKs. That's not to say it's a bad thing, but I don't see why having a "Portal:" namespace or the set of Main Page links is necessary for it. To the contrary, I think it's great that people want to branch out and reconsider what portals would be -- the format seems a bit stilted, a lot of work, and maybe people making pages like "My Study List for A&P 1" would be a lot more useful. I think you should be allowed to keep the portal pages (somewhere else, a common WP: space) but with lots of room to play around with them, the no-social-media enforcers should be batted off with a stick, but we should also keep an open mind to whether maybe it is possible to amicably transfer some of the content to Wikiversity and breathe some life into *that* project by relieving some of the restrictions of their rather unimaginative course format. But other stuff is also useful that doesn't fall into their purview, like if you make a "Hot Topics in Physics" portal/news forum where you list a bunch of physics articles and why they're hot now. (That would be a Wikinews prospect but AFAIK Wikinews is hopeless where anything creative is involved; we should keep such things in Wikipedia and practice batting) Wnt (talk) 22:01, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@
WP:WEBHOST. Portals are not (usually) simple summaries of subject areas (and those that are should be expanded and/or refactored). - dcljr (talk) 18:19, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
I think a page meant to demonstrate a course curriculum is a little more educational than, say, a page about last night's party, so it may be time for batting practice. Wnt (talk) 03:16, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose I like the portals, I find them useful, and there's no reason to throw them out just because some of them aren't up to scratch yet. The vast majority of articles aren't "finished" either. Ganesha811 (talk) 12:03, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose I visit the current events portal frequently. I find it to be a broad, neutral, and unsensationalist news source, which is a rare thing to find in 2018. If you want to clean up specific unmaintained portals, that's fine, but to destroy all of them because you can find a few examples of page rot makes no sense at all. I suspect some portals don't get much maintenance because they cover relatively static subjects and don't need frequent updates. dreish~talk 12:33, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - I revise my statement, as after looking further at the portal system, with the necessary improvements I think portals would become easier to maintain, thus allowing them to be up to date and so useful to readers who may want to become avid editors. Wpgbrown (talk) 13:43, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    [Note to readers: Wpgbrown is referring to this. - dcljr (talk) 21:18, 27 April 2018 (UTC)][reply]
  • Solid Oppose I find the portals useful but without them I would likely be running around Wikipedia like a chicken with its head cut off. I would have no idea whatsoever what to do and where to go when I forget which page to search for for a specific topic and I think that others would likely have the same problem, too. Not only is the system useful and more convenient than other methods of finding what you're looking for, it doesn't require you to know what the thing you're looking for is so that you can ask for it directly (which wouldn't be possible if your mind went blank, which constantly happens to me). Additionally, newer users will be at a significant loss for the change if the system is removed. --OdysseusTroy (talk) 14:48, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose While the system of portals is often convoluted and needs to be cleaned up at best, the ability to find ALL information on a certain topic is invaluable when researching things, especially when you cannot remember exactly what you're looking for. As stated by others above, most portals are left stagnant due to the lack of events pertaining to their topics. SirGents(talk) 16:49, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I rely on the current events portal as my most trusted source of international news. Ryan Singer (talk) 19:16, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, no action should be taken before Portals are (re)added to the default search result and we let a few months pass to collect page view data. Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)[ᴛ] 21:06, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

28 April 2018

  • Support, as long as the pages are archived and not deleted entirely, though links to them should be removed. Portals became obsolete a while ago. —mountainhead / ? 12:47, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral. Other than the Community portal (if it is truly a portal), I don't use portals. When I do stumble across one, it's generally in a sad state of disrepair. However, I don't think the "Delete portals: Y/N?" phrasing of the question is very useful. There are things that are of value in the portal system, so I would support a more careful review of portals that thinks about what services they do provide and how those could be preserved, whether in the portal namespace or by consolidating with other Wiki components (Overviews, Projects, etc.). Overall, though, I don't think portals are functioning as their vision of a grand organizational structure for Wikipedia, so I would oppose maintaining the status quo. Tdslk (talk) 14:23, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, I don't see any reason to remove the portal system. Some need to be cleaned up, but that's no reason to remove them completely. It's the easiest way by far to find multiple articles on a specific topic. Unless a new, better system is put in place using the framework from portals, I don't see any reason to end the system entirely. Pugchump (talk) 14:08, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support general deprecation of the portal system / process. Outright deletion (if needed) can come later. Portals have become obsolete a while ago; much of the information on the portals that I did come across was out-of-date. I'm not aware of them being actively worked on (in general). They do not appear to be useful. K.e.coffman (talk) 21:36, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@
WP:WikiProject Portal. This project aims to not only get them worked on in general but use transclusion to avoid being out of date. If this changes your mind feel free to comment, if not then have a good day. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:36, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]

29 April 2018
This RfC isn't as simple as a quick-scroll, and it should run its full course. Many of the opposes (and some supports too) involve narrowly focused and repeated points, some of which have been posted by very new users or editors who've swung by from other-language wikipedias. No consensus became apparent fairly soon on, after that its a weightless pile-on; but perhaps an editor will still appear with a useful reasoned point. Cesdeva (talk) 12:36, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand what points can be made that already haven't been made. Scrapping Portals is a reckless restructuring that is antithetical to especially the First and perhaps even the Third Pillar of Wikipedia. It's ridiculous modernization for the sake of modernization and
WP:SNOW too.--Sıgehelmus (Tωlk) 16:26, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
Well sometimes you have to aim high. There is now an effort to overhaul the neglected portal system, so I'd say the proposal was a success. Kind regards, Cesdeva (talk) 18:04, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's simultaneously more of a success and more of a failure as a result of this proposal; the growth of Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals was in part a backlash against this proposal as a result of joining it I was motivated to establish my own portal and project. It's in some way a win to make a high-profile deletion nomination based on how portals are neglected if it results in a renewed desire to work on them, which it has. I understand the idea of making a fringe proposal if it's the mentality of "to get to the moon you have to reach for the stars." However, it's also unsuccessful if the nominator genuinely wanted to delete all portals, as the consensus is unambiguously in favor of keeping them. Brendon the Wizard ✉️ ✨ 19:07, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with @Cesdeva:'s thought is the base insinuation that there is a problem with Portals themselves besides many being unmaintained. Many here have stated the point that Portals are reliable and incredibly helpful for many people; not just in Current Events but subjects they are interested breaking into.--Sıgehelmus (Tωlk) 20:16, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly agree with your point. There's nothing wrong with portals themselves. As was stated in another sub-discussion here, the main page itself is a portal; portals allow us to create an entire main page dedicated to providing relevant information on a subject that interests the reader. The only thing needed to ensure that portals continue to be useful is that portals continue to be edited by readers. What's necessary is for various WikiProjects to work on their related portals, not to delete or overhaul the system of portals itself. It's not just the current events portal that helps readers. Brendon the Wizard ✉️ ✨ 21:29, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Now I understand why this portal (Portal:Limited recognition) was suddenly created. I was confused as to why the article List of states with limited recognition suddenly required a portal encompassing it, as I didn't see the point of one. Matters that affect this list have always been handled historically on that article's talk page with little issue. I hope you are prepared for the work required to maintain such a portal, as I do not expect much contribution to this portal by others. It is a fringe subject as it is anyway. - Wiz9999 (talk) 15:40, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
fork). The second one is Template:Transclude random excerpt, which is like the first template, but allows multiple article names to be included, from which it displays one at random each time the page is visited. Both templates make the use of subpages obsolete for the sections they are implemented on, reducing the maintenance burden. Portal space currently has about 150,000 subpages. Conversion to the semi-dynamic model takes a matter of minutes for a portal with moderate subpage support.    — The Transhumanist   00:24, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
Semi-dynamic? This cycles-through a pre-defined list, providing a modest selection. Fully dynamic would take as its source a list that is maintained and updated regularly, such as a category. We are currently looking for fully dynamic solutions, which would result in portals that continually update themselves with new content. For progress on all of the portal development initiatives, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals. Excitement is high, and the WikiProject's membership is growing daily.    — The Transhumanist   00:13, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

30 April 2018

And the Portals Project has been restarted and is going strong. To make portals more dynamic, it has designed upgrades for two portal section types so far, and is working on upgrading the rest. Plus the new team is working hard on the portals themselves. See its watchlist for the activity on portals.    — The Transhumanist   19:16, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

1 May 2018

  • Oppose, the portals organize the articles in Wikipedia. They help me find things. Comfr (talk) 02:26, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose ending all of them (maybe some can go?) - I am concerned that to get rid of all portals will throw the baby out with the bathwater. I cannot vouch for the usefulness of 100% of them, but I became aware of this proposal a couple of weeks ago when I was looking at Portal:Current events, which I have found to be a very handy portal. (And how else would that information be organized on Wikipedia?) KConWiki (talk) 02:56, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: Portals are not a huge maintenance burden so let them be. Esquivalience (talk) 03:02, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Just today I landed on a portal for the first time in what seems like years, it feels like a better system for a broad overview on a topic than the related page blurb at the bottom can afford. It surprises me I don't come across more, saw the deletion proposal notice and finally made an account to comment. Shlemme (talk) 03:57, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with caution. Each existing portal should be examined to ensure properly relocating the content.--Jusjih (talk) 04:17, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Oppose Portal has important role in Wikipedia and it make it easier for readers to surf the articles related to certain topic in a much easier way than categories do especially for newcommers because categories are down in the pages and don't have icons to attract readers to them like portals so that the attention and flow to portals is much higher than that for categories and so i think its more beneficial to the readers than other surfing related articles methods and if we think in the same reasoning manner here then we must delet small categories with low views! . Regards--مصعب (talk) 10:53, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose the main question. However, as with any subject, moderation or some form of guideline might be required. Support the relevance guideline proposed in section 3.37 by User:Bermicourt. 198.84.253.202 (talk) 15:15, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I read the Portal: Current Events every day for news and now above it they are saying they are going to delete it, they are obviously not useless as over 4 million people have read it in 2018 so far (
    talk) 06:30, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Oppose This is indeed a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Some articles are terrible, some portals are terrible. Should we end wikipedia because of a few bad articles? Is that not what we're being asked of here? Boundarylayer (talk) 19:00, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I visit the Portal:Aviation page every day to check out the "On this day in history" portion. I consider portals a vital portion of this wonderful online community, and they facilitate the easy sharing of knowledge among Wikipedians. —Editor 357 (Talk • Contributions) 22:06, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

2 May 2018

  • Slight Opposition If we were to delete them all then there wouldn't be any easy way for, say some new, to find out how to get to a certain article, an article that is hidden under about two-hundred other articles. I think that [some] should be kept to allow an easier experience for newer people. who don't know about the articles. -Clujikostu (Talk • Contributions) —Preceding undated comment added 00:58, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • OpposeWhy Delete a Portal To the Community forums on Wikipedia? I'm no expert, but If People still use Portals, Why delete them?--Tails Era --Voltaire — Preceding comment added by The sonic channel 1 (talk • contribs) 01:36, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Serious
    WP:USE issues will arise for common readers if portals are to be deleted. 203.139.28.241 (talk) 05:45, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Oppose No reason to be deleted, in my opinion. OggyOlivia (talk) 12:31, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • OPPOSE! It is actually quite pragmatic keep portals as they are a leeway to access relevant info, and the main page is also styled like a portal. ---DÆMÖN MUNDANE++ — Preceding unsigned comment added by DÆmÖN MUNDANE++ (talk • contribs) 14:15, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Only few people knew how to navigate inside portals and most of them are outdated. PH 0447 (talk) 15:28, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Editors' time could be spent more effectively on increasing the quality of articles and maintaining the articles themselves rather than maintaining portals. There's no need to reinvent the wheel- Google and similar structures already exist and are effective in aiding navigation and finding of articles. Lookunder (talk) 15:35, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Common sense. The most visited portals should be kept, but the majority of them are out of date, not visited by readers, and useless. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 16:12, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I fail to see how anything is gained by removing the portals. Are they taking up too much space on the internet? Is Wikipedia's service provider asking us to delete files? Folks who don't want to use them can ignore them; those of us who like them can continue tinkering with them. Simple win/win. —Dilidor (talk) 16:22, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support The selected quotes, pictures, articles, etc placed on these sometimes focus on the obscure, and would violate
    WP:NPOV were it placed in the overarching article. Some treat these as a POV fork. These are also redundant. With the "see also" sections, infoboxes, categories, navboxes, and wiki-links (which now have mouse over previews), I feel the portals add no value to Wikipedia. As to the how, I would start by preventing any new portals, then gradually remove the portals on the basis of editing inactivity. Dig deeper talk 17:13, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    • This is not true.
      WP:NPOV is also a guidline for Portals.--Broter (talk) 17:37, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply
      ]
    • and if it were, then it would be an editing issue instead of a deletion issue.--Paul McDonald (talk) 17:45, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Paulmcdonald and Broter:. Thanks for your thoughts. A genuine question: Is it appropriate to add comments after editors rationale in this section? I'm not certain I've seen this before. I wouldn't mind adding some feedback above to some of postings myself, however I'm concerned that the section will become bloated or that this may violate Wikipedia ettiqutte. Thoughts?Dig deeper talk 18:21, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • Scroll up and you you'll see it's fairly common. "RFC" means "Request for Comments" which to me implies a discussion... and that's about the only way I know to do it in a text forum such as this. As to is it "appropriate" ??? Never really thought about that!--Paul McDonald (talk) 18:44, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
          • Fair enough.Dig deeper talk 19:28, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
          • Portals are going to be forever up-to-date with the {{Transclude lead excerpt}} - template.--Broter (talk) 18:54, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
            • This will mirror the current lead, it doesn't change the content. How is having stale portals any better than "see also" sections, infoboxes, categories, navboxes, and wiki-links? Dig deeper talk 19:28, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
              • Portals provide a better interactive experience than "see also" sections, infoboxes, categories, navboxes, and wiki-links. "see also" sections are only some articles, infoboxes give only information about one subject, categories are not used by the average reader and navboxes use Portals and are in a relationship with Portals.--Broter (talk) 19:51, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
                • Many Portals are dynamic and show changing content.--Broter (talk) 19:53, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I read the Portal: Current Events every day for years. If made obsolete, a new option would be preferred. 47.203.211.199 (talk) 19:11, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I personally like portals, as I consider them like "You may also like" pages. They may also make the reader able to reach more articles of the same subject. And maybe even editing them in order to improve the said articles. In addition to be visually appealing. --Espilio (talk) 22:23, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

3 May 2018

4 May 2018

  • Oppose I pretty much agree that this should be decided on a case-by-case basis, as someone who has occasionally worked with portals, I understand the problems that they are facing, but deleting all of them is not the solution, I am free to consider deletion of some problematic portals, though. - CHAMPION (talk) (contributions) (logs) 00:21, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose No reason to delete. If you don't like them, then don't read them. Some are being used and that's enough to not throw out all. Royalbroil 00:22, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Hi, im a reader, not an editor. Somehow i stumbled upon this discussion and after reading, thought i would offer some feedback from a reader. I mostly use an ipad to read wikipedia and switch it to "desktop" because i like it better. Maybe im not a typical user. I tend to look something up like "porcupine", read that article, get intrigued by something else, click on a link and then other. I wound up on a page about Madagscar. I love delving deeper into topics and can spend hours reading articles on wikipedia. That said, i love portals because it makes it easier to find indepth info on whatever im interested in that day. I didnt even know about portals until one day i discovered a portal link in the box at the bottom of an article. I now look and i dont see many links to portals. I think if the links were there, easier for users to find, they would get more traffic. Im not a fan of outlines although i do use them. I think portals are more user friendly and comprehensive. Maybe some portals need to be deleted but i dont think you should throw the baby out with the bathwater. Reading this discussion did give me a better understanding and appreciation of the work involved in maintaining wikipedia. Maybe im not a typical user. I do have an insatiable curiosity about the world and everything in it. I love wikipedia. Thank you all for all your hard work and your efforts to make this the great resource it is, whether you oppose or support this RFC. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:49:0:88C1:9943:A3D8:AE55:6997 (talk) 03:55, 4 May 2018 (UTC) [The word "Oppose" was added at the beginning by User:Dcljr (me) for consistency with other comments. - dcljr (talk) 04:22, 4 May 2018 (UTC)][reply]
  • Oppose Portals can be improved.They are a great Feature. They need improvement in a more structured way.
    Talk2Me 04:34, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Oppose mass deletion of portals. I think it could make sense to implement something like Wikipedia:Proposed deletion for portals. Orser67 (talk) 05:45, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose - This is a terrible idea that will cripple the explorability of Wikipedia. 24.20.122.141 (talk) 05:50, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very strong oppose, portals are important infrastructural part of Wikipedia which also has historical and social value. They also can be seen as parts of WikiProjects system which is also important. Proposals to delete something historical and important, with many people's contributions, occur regularly and seem to be generally unrelated to improvement of Wikipedia, but just related to desire to "delete something I didn't like". There were such proposals as to "close all Wikinews", "close Sebuan Wikipedia", they all failed and just wasted community's time. Because the correct approach, if someone see an important wiki-thing they dislike, is how we improve projects/portals, not remove them. --ssr (talk) 09:19, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think it is reasonable to ban further attempts of any mass-deletions at the scale of "all portals", "all wikinews", "a whole active wikipedia". People begin to produce giant conflicts instead of writing articles. --ssr (talk) 06:43, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose There is no value in deleting content.--
    talk) 11:08, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Strong Oppose Yea some portals are dilapidated and can be removed but some like
    Portal:Current_Events are very useful.--JustAnotherWikiUser0816 (talk
    ) 5:26, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose It has interesting news and keeps us informed. There is no point in deleting this. If people don't like this, don't read or ignore this section. That simple--Hovhannesk (talk) 3:25, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I think they're a useful way of organising information on a particular topic and act as a handy in-subject directory. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.102.134.13 (talk) 20:25, 4 May 2018
  • Oppose As a reader, I want to throw in a word of support for
    Portal:Current_Events, which I have referenced almost daily for years. It provides a global and unbiased perspective as well effective temporal and thematic organization -- a vanishingly rare gift on the clickbait-happy internet. I believe the world will be worse off if it is deleted unless a comparable replacement is added.ChFrBa (talk) 20:45, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]

5 May 2018

  • Oppose Portals are convenient and easy to use. As you can see I am an end user. I have no idea on how to comment here so this is where I placed it. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.51.157.5 (talk) 01:07, 5 May 2018 (UTC) [Note: This comment was left on the talk page by 108.51.157.5 and then moved to here by User:Dcljr (me). I added the word "Opposed" for consistency with the rest of the comments. - dcljr (talk) 02:19, 6 May 2018 (UTC)][reply]
  • Very Strong Oppose A. No reason to delete content that can be improved. This is akin to AfD'ing an article that just needs some CE. B. Many portals are extremely useful. C. Some portals definitely may need work, but they at least provide some deal of navigation for topics that may otherwise be difficult to access. --9563rj (talk) 02:27, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Remark: Neutral I personally think Portals are a good idea, but their implementation is all wrong. I see Portals as a way of linking similar subject matter. For instance, if I clicked on Portal:James Bond, I would expect to find anything relevantly related to the subject matter listed in a clear and easy to navigate manner. Portal:James Bond is a good example of what I expect a Portal might look like because it is well laid out with relevant matter. But, the few times I have ever clicked on a Portal link, I usually just see a great big mess of virtually unrelated matter, barely navigable.

If it is decided that Portals should be kept, then I suggest they are in need of a serious overhaul. It is for this reason that I'm 99% more likely to click on a ==See also== than a Portal. However, I do like seeing that Portal icon identifying articles as belonging to a particular subject, thus suggesting there are other topics of interest I might wish to read.
talk) 07:53, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
  • Support - They serve very little purpose and are difficult to maintain with many out of date, I don't think they are necessary. SSSB (talk) 10:49, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I have never found a portal to be useful in over 12 years of being a Wikipedian. Flibirigit (talk) 12:15, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Flibirigit:. You do not like Portals, therefore you want all Portals deleted and the work of thousands of editors in vain?--Broter (talk) 12:57, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose - Portals help organize lots of information and events for ease of people who want to use them. It is a useful feature that provides navigation in an extremely large web of articles. TheSubmarine (talk) 13:14, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very Strong Oppose 1. No reason to delete content that can be improved. I have added WikiProject information to many thousands of article talk pages, improving the ability of editors to find information on project information. Recently added pages to the Jersey project, taking total from 800+ articles tio 1180+ articles, and letting me create and imporove articles on Jersey and the Channel Islands 2. Some portals definitely need work, but they at least provide connections to topics that may otherwise be difficult to access. I have done a lot of work on several projects, including Insect, Madagascar, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. 3. Projects allow me to work with other editors with the same interests. Four and five years ago, I worked on Guyana articles with another editor. We find each other on a Talk page. 4. We talk with each other, ask and answer questions, and improve Wikipedia on Project pages. Please let us continue.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 16:28, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Partially - It´s ok to end them, but I think that their contents should immediatly be converted into a corresponding "Outline" article, with topics, lists, everything in plain text to help people who want to dig into the subject. Ogat (talk) 17:29, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with some regret. Almost every one I have come across are so out of date that they are misleading to readers. The very few that still function as intended could be brought into article space somehow. Regretfully as a lot of work has been put into them and there was potential. We just lack the manpower to keep these functioning and too often they rely on one dedicated individual, who may retire or move on. Marking as historic is fine if editors don't want to delete them outright. There is a certain historical charm in keeping these trapped in time for future generation to find. AIRcorn (talk) 21:25, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Partially As a random reader watching this, low-level portals could happily go away: eg the Australian Cars portal. But the Cars portal, and the Transport portal, which are much broader, could remain. 222.154.227.183 (talk) 23:20, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

6 May 2018

  • Oppose - I can see both sides of the argument. But in my opinion the portal in this case is useful at the main page for finding specific articles about current topics etc. Thats my take on this.BabbaQ (talk) 00:32, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very Strong Oppose I created an account just to voice my opinion. As someone who reads the Current Events Portal everyday, I was horrified to find out it is in jeopardy. Please consider the thousands of people like me who would never of created an account to voice their opinions on this matter. cshy (talk) Sun May 06 00:43:46 2018 UTC
  • Partial support - Keep well-maintained and useful ones (such as the perennial example Portal:Current events). Mark infrequently updated ones (another perennial example: Portal:Prehistory of Antarctica) as historic so any content can be salvaged by WikiProjects, interested editors, etc. As a general rule, I think portals should be few, but broad in scope. Looking through the mishmash of arguments, it seems most Opposes are either 1) many editors' work will be lost (this is a textbook example of begging for mercy), or 2) they are useful to readers (a legitimate argument to keep some portals, but most don't get viewed a lot). There may be no deadline, but it's not realistic to expect the system can be substantially improved. Teratix (talk) 01:50, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very Strong Oppose Why are you trying to destroy a piece of art that has been made and not damaged? Even if you want to be deleted, the history of these pages will never be erased in the direction of Wikipedia politics. I find this request totally irrational. --
    talk) 10:38, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Very Strong Oppose The portal system is an integral part of the Wikipedia experience. Removing it because you don't want to work on it is counter to everything Wikipedia stands for. --Auric talk 11:44, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very strong oppose I believe that Portals are an integeral part of Wikipedia, because they've always been here, and removing portals would take a big chunk of the original Wikipedia away. A second reason is the fact that Portals help make things organized. IiTomsx (talk) 12:46, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I've probably got nothing new to add, but it seems like portals are in the process of revitalization, and, while not integral to the success of Wikipedia, are in no way contributing to a coming failure. There are editors who are now willing to maintain, so it makes sense to keep. Eddie891 Talk Work 13:35, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support. I 've never found portals useful. Other tools of the wiki, such as categories and the "See also" section are way more easy to browse and offer much more information. In the times of mobile browsing portals don't serve a purpose. Let the users that have spend their time in these pages, be more valuable categorizing articles and providing in in wikidata. ~~ ∫uℂρЭ ℝ0υĜe 14:48, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Oppose Portals have been useful tools for many users, and they have been part of Wikipedia for years. Just because some editors do not use them does not mean that we should delete them. If we listened to each and every individual editor and only kept the parts of wikipedia that they found useful, there would collectively be nothing left of the site! David Straub (talk) 14:59, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Oppose* The Current Events Portal is one of the most useful sources of current events in our world. I use it every day to see a non-biased plate of information. Closing all portals is not necessary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.246.218.27 (talk) 21:14, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note: — 50.246.218.27 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. 198.84.253.202 (talk) 23:11, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
There is no
WP:SENIORITY: the "newest editor, with the least edits, may have the best idea or the most relevant point of view."--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:54, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
'May' and 'editor' being the operative words. This is a niche and 13 year old issue, comments from newly registered users are unlikely to have significant reasoning, despite the broad assertions they make. These ephemeral 'editors' (readers in editor's clothing) won't have to deal with the portal system once they inevitably bugger off after this RfC. Cesdeva (talk) 11:51, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

7 May 2018

  • Weak Oppose I think the creation of portals was a good idea, and I think that they can definitely be helpful. However, I do agree with many of the concerns with keeping portals that have been mentioned in the original post as well as many of the "support" comments, such as no longer being maintained, being a spam target, etc.--SkyGazer 512 What will you say? / What did I do? 00:03, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support Portals are fundamentally just stand-alone nav boxes in an encyclopedia that has way too many nav boxes already. The community spends much too much energy on chrome, relative to the energy it spends on bona fide encyclopedic body text in some areas. Portals are part of the problem, not the solution. In active, well-covered subject areas they're never up to date. In inactive, poorly covered areas they only suck the oxygen out of the place. Damvile (talk) 08:39, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per reasons listed by other users above. The Portal namespace should not be deprecated as described in the nom. While the system of Portals might possibly need to be revamped a bit, deleting the namespace itself wouldn't be the right course of action. Paintspot Infez (talk) 12:40, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, although I should clarify. I oppose deleting the portal system altogether because culling the portal namespace would be a better solution. Older outdated and unmaintained portals should indeed be removed if they are no longer useful, or at least archived as historical/deprecated. There are plenty of active and useful ones that we should keep, and many more that could be brought up to date and made useful again. The Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals is a great start on this effort. I also think this needs more than 30 days for people to come up with a complete solution that everyone can get behind. — AfroThundr (talk) 14:54, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral to weak support - I don't really use portals at all, so I don't really care if they go away. And as many people stated, most of them are in disrepair and aren't doing their job. But I'm indifferent. Either way works.
    talk) 15:04, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Oppose. I support reform, but I believe Portals can be important introductions of a certain field of knowledge and, therefore, they should stay. Besides, merging them with Wikiprojects makes no sense to me, since the latter is not supposed to be for the reader, but for the editor. Wikiprojects shouldn't display valuable content that can't be found elsewhere. I thereby oppose the deletion of it, but I commend the initiative for the renewed maintenance efforts it inspired. - Sarilho1 (talk) 18:06, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Obsolete, poorly maintained, unnecessary and makes us look unprofessional. Served a purpose once but times have changbed and we should change with them. Amisom (talk) 19:25, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I can probably include everything a portal can add in templates. A reader will probably not be searching for portals. We should focus more on turning key articles into "portals" of a sort. WikiProjects, on the other hand, are still necessary, albeit neglected. However, there needs to be some sort of gradual transition from having portals to not having them, as they still contain very valuable content. Inatan (talk) 19:44, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose While I can see that out-of-date and poorly maintained portals are an issue, many cannot suffer from that problem (e.g., math and science are slow-changing fields at the encyclopedic level). Many more could be kept up-to-date with some basic implementation of bots. I used to have the Earth Science portal as my homepage (now I don't really use a homepage for reasons irrelevant here). I occasionally use the Geology portal to find the active wikiprojects because I can never remember which ones exist. I also used portals when I was a student to find random articles when I needed current events or random topics within a certain scope for class projects. Part of the lack of user-ship for portals is probably that the people who could most use them, such as students and teachers of particular subjects, often do not know they exist. Also, the argument that the views are low for the number of links is problematic to me. I see portals more often than I see the Main page. I have never clicked on the portals from the main page because I go to the main page to go to the main page, not to go to portals. I do occasionally click on a portal from a topic page, particularly topics that correspond directly to portals (e.g., Geology and Earth Science). But I often don't even realize there is a portal link on pages because of where it is placed.Elriana (talk) 21:11, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - so first it was RD and now this, what's next, main page? Is it forgotten that this is all digital and so doesn't take much space? That people can contribute however they wish and it's not mutually exclusive and these can be ignored and mainspace focused on? Destruction is so much simpler than creation. --
    fisto 21:40, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]

8 May 2018

9 May 2018

  • Oppose I like portals as they help me find interesting articles about a given subject. Poor maintenance isn't a reason to delete, it's a reason to improve. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 01:52, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I never found portals to be particularly useful, and I have pretty much ignored their use and function as a whole over the last 10 years here on Wikipedia. Yes, I would say that portals can sometimes contain valuable information for Wikipedia editors and users, but I see no reason why this information could not be migrated into a relevant article/talk page/category/template, or a new article/talk page/category/template generated from existing portal content. For very active, heavily utilized, and functional portals such as
    Wikipedia:Current events, especially since a portal such as this is so heavily integrated into the main page of Wikipedia itself. I have never found a function of a portal to be so useful that it cannot be replaced by another aspect available on Wikipedia. The overwhelming majority of them are stagnant lists of stuff that are not maintained or looked after. (e.g. Something I just picked at random: Portal:Laser.) - Wiz9999 (talk) 15:28, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]

10 May 2018

  • Conditional Support But only if there is an alternative to things like Portal:Current events which seems like a very effective use of the Portal construct. I use Portal:Current events daily as a way to be inspired by current events to determine which Wikipedia pages to visit, and by definition it is evolving content so I don't see how it could become a conventional topic page instead. But if a viable alternative to Portal:Current events is made possible, I do understand why most of the time portals are not needed or effective. - Yuzisee (talk) 04:44, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Extreme Oppose I strongly agree with everything that has been written before by editors supporting "Oppose"; I can add that I save on my computers most of portals' main pages, and all the main pages of the other wikimedia projects for at least 15-20 days every month, if not more.Brain (talk) 00:21, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Broadly, I am in favour of keeping the portals. The rational behind Wikipaedia is that it provides not only information but access to information. Portals are excellent starting points for many people who use them to start reading, then, by by following the different links, end up where they need to be. However, the point about portals is that may not know where they need to start, as their enquiry maybe too vague, but the portals are excellent starting points for vague enquiries. --77.58.164.140 (talk) 09:29, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Most portals is outdated and not many users access it. Search and category list is replacing Wikipedia portals. Wikipedia portals have to go. 2A02:C7F:963F:BA00:1928:2C1C:C9F1:9870 (talk) 15:50, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Most users don't use them but some clearly do, and even if they are kept those who don't want to use them don't have to. So I don't see a valid rationale for mass deletion. Rlendog (talk) 16:20, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Portals are a great way to interlink articles for readers, browsers and editors! --Marshallsumter (talk) 17:38, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support closure of portals and not-wasting resources anymore.
    talk) 17:42, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Oppose - The current events portal is an excellent synopsis of daily news, I read it almost every day. Donald Rennie 2:04 pm PST — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.103.165.48 (talk) 21:04, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

11 May 2018

  • Strong Oppose The portal system has ALWAYS served a purpose (For me both editing & reading). Not much else to be said. AryaTargaryen (talk) 02:01, 11 May 2018 (UTC)AryaTargaryen[reply]
  • Oppose per Gerda Arendt - people do genuinely work on them so why delete them? I rarely use them, granted, but they are useful to some editors here. Patient Zerotalk 08:23, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Discussion: Ending the system of portals

Notice to editors:

  1. Please do not add any new Support/Oppose comments here. The "Survey", where new Support/Oppose comments would go, has now been closed.
  2. General discussion of the proposal and the RfC itself is now closed. If you want to discuss this further, please open up a new section on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) or other appropriate Village Pump page.
Some exception would need to be made for the Community portal. This has been getting over 10,000 views daily since it was linked as one of the three exits ("Start helping") from the New user landing page, introduced in conjunction with ACTRIAL. The Help Out section is essential and should be kept as visible as possible. Parts of the Community bulletin board are dusty, but just need more regular maintenance: Noyster (talk), 15:16, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Seeing as this Community Portal isn't even in the "Portal" namespace, I don't believe it would be affected either way. Good page too keep in mind, though. ~Mable (chat) 15:22, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, I did think of that, but I also saw that they're not in portal space, and wouldn't be affected. Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:41, 8 April 2018 (UTC) Also, it is entirely different from general portals, being editor facing only (which is presumably why it is in WP space not portal space) and does an okay job of helping editors Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:46, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
...And of course even if there is the occasional useful portal, we can easily make an exception -- possibly with a move to a better namespace. What are the top ten most-visited pages in the portal namespace? --Guy Macon (talk) 16:03, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say 90% likely the top 8 are the ones on the main page, at the top right. But like I said above, I don't think people actually find the ones on the main page useful either, they just click it randomly Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:12, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a pageview graph of those main page portals, anyhow - extremely interestingly, they group into 3 clear bunches Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:24, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think the top-visited portals are those linked from the left sidebar,
Portal:Featured content (pageview graph). The arguments for deleting the other 1500 portals may not apply to these. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:49, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
Ahh, I forgot about them. These seem like they'd be fine in wikipedia namespace, honestly, and would be exempted; they aren't really like the other portals at all, and just seem sort of dumped there because they vaguely explore something Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:58, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Agree Current events is a very active portal and should be moved into a different namespace if all Portals are deleted.  Nixinova  T  C  04:39, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@
Portal:Featured content as it is the front page for the various "Featured" content production departments, and has a link on the sidebar menu that appears on every page of Wikipedia. Thank you.     — The Transhumanist    13:26, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
@
csdnew 13:31, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
I'm uncertain whether how exactly one should amend a proposal while it has received significant comment -
Transhumanist: too Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:38, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
I think it would seem rather inappropriate were the nominator to suggest altering or adding to the wording of the RfC in this way now that it is running, and numerous people have expressed their views. Would that be with the hope of better securing the desired outcome? Was not the removal and relocation by the nominator of previous comments also intended to keep the proposal clear and concise? Nick Moyes (talk) 03:27, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Namespace ID Namespace Total pages Pages with redirects Pages without redirects
100 Portal 148868 13188 135680
101 Portal talk 36710 2701 34009
  • Question - If the current portal system ends, and the portal namespace disappears, presumably this would not prohibit certain active WikiProjects from creating a portal-like page within the WikiProject space, correct? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:16, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but the main thing is that they wouldn't be linked from articles - wouldn't be reader facing - and thus wouldn't be at all like the system currently here. Thus ending Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:19, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Broter I do understand that people have spent a lot of time on these, and that is is frustrating to see one's work deleted. However I don't see that portals help much with navigation - since they produce random articles, that isn't really navigation; outlines like Outline_of_science do a far better job. Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:23, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please keep the existing portals.--Broter (talk) 17:26, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I invested so many hours into portals. Please keep the existing portals.--Broter (talk) 17:31, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
List of Portals which were created by myself or very much improved by myself:
--Broter (talk) 17:47, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Compromise? Perhaps we should "mothball" or eliminate portals which haven't been edited or maintained for a certain length of time. Pegship (talk) 18:03, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We should only delete the portals which are not maintained.--Broter (talk) 18:06, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Hmmm, I wouldn't oppose keeping them in wikipedia space - there's no particular reason to prevent people from harvesting the portals if they feel it is useful; and some could be useful to move into the main pages of wikiprojects as a "face". Beetstra I think it'd be better to store them in wikipedia space, free for people to use if there's anything valuable (or not). Easier than force delinking and full protection IMO Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:19, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

WP:1AM page. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:30, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]

  1. Convert them to links to WikiProjects. This would help readers become editors without the need to route them through the Talk page and a collapsible banner first.
  2. Turn them into
    WP:NOTFORUM
    , I believe that "off topic" discussions between readers and editors could benefit both groups. We'd get an idea of what readers really want to know outside of our sometimes rigid system of articles, and readers would become contributors before they even know it.
  3. Turn them into links to Outlines or Indexes to serve as centralized "See also" listings per topic.
  4. Automatic listings of Featured content grouped by topics. See Bluerasberry's comment above (cf. Galobtter's for an opposing view).
  5. Limiting the number of portals should help concentrate our efforts. Suitable sets could be those featured on the Main Page, some of the top categories at
    Portal:Contents/Portals, those corresponding with Featured articles categories, or Core topics
    .
Some more wild ideas? – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:28, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • If portal pages are moved/created in wikiproject namespace (e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Foobar/Portal) then this should (1) only be by or with the agreement of the wikiproject and (2) only be a single page (e.g. not the 45 pages currently in Category:Book of Mormon portal). DexDor (talk) 20:46, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Would something else replace the links on the main page? It seems like a waste of space to leave almost all of the top banner empty. KSFT (t|c) 21:05, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The mainpage is full of information. A little whitespace would be good, or make the rest of the box Wikipedia ... wider and thinner. Legacypac (talk) 21:23, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hey yes, this could be a great opportunity to update the 12-year old main page (only half-kidding!) Aiken D 21:40, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Portal:Arts
    3,872 / day
  2. Portal:History 2,235 / day
  3. Portal:Biography 2,178 / day
  4. Portal:Science 1,413 / day
  5. Portal:Mathematics 1,404 / day
  6. Portal:Technology 1,398 / day
  7. Portal:Geography 1,063 / day

--Pharos (talk) 22:51, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Those are 7 of the 8 portals on Main Page. The 8th there is Portal:Society which is number 8 in page views with 665 / day. Portal:Food with 429 / day is the most for portals not on the main page. linksto:Portal:Food currently says it has 8,045 links from mainspace. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:07, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Major takeaway - put a link to something in the best position possible on one of the world's top visited pages and it only gets 665 to 3000 odd hits a day => total rejection by the public of this useless content. There is NOTHING wikipedia can do to drive more traffic than those 8 links. Legacypac (talk) 00:21, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Is there any way to find out how many real links go to a particular page as opposed to links because it was added to a template? For example,
Template:CPU technologies and don't give an accurate picture of how many people are interested enough in 1-bit architectures to link to it. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:25, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
I don't think that is possible, but It's somehing I've wanted to know for many years too (unrelated to the portals).--Pharos (talk) 23:36, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
1-bit architecture. It currently says 26 results in all namespaces (10 in mainspace). I also made {{source links}}. {{source links|1-bit architecture}} produces Source links. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:57, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
I've done a more comprehensive query, and besides the higher-placed pages that are not conventional portals, the stand-out of those not linked from the Main Page appears to be Portal:Dance, which had 2,227 / day pageviews in 2017.--Pharos (talk) 23:36, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Portal:Dance was one of my random examples earlier with only 1,421 views in the past 30 days, meaning 47 per day. The page views graph since the first data in July 2015 [5] shows a jump from around 50 views per day to around 2300 from October 2016 to January 2018, and then back to 50. I don't know the reason but I suspect it's automated views and not humans. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:54, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don’t think the idea of turning them over t relevant projects is workable at a time when so many projects are inactive, just as the portals are. The fact that a small number are still being maintained is a credit to those doing so, but it doesn’t change the fact that the system as a whole has been largely abandonded.
    talk) 00:05, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
Projects can remain inactive and dont directly impact readers. portals can have an effect on readers. portals need to be either complete, as in not needing maintenance, or maintenance, or active work to improve. projects are forever. different animals. i advocate simply having Featured portals be linked to more visibly, and other portals linked at end of article. since portals are highly edited, they should be reviewed periodically by a dedicated editor to make sure they are up to snuff. if not, we should be able to mothball them easily.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 20:14, 21 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regarding it being more effort than it is worth - at minimum this would be blanking templates that link to portals/removing templates like {{portal}} from mainspace; then marking portals as historical; this wouldn't be much effort that I can see. Then we can save fiddling about it, and prevent other people from wasting their time for the next 10 years on portals Galobtter (pingó mió) 03:53, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Step 1 - take the portal links of the mainpage and Delete all the portal templates. Readers will not find the portals after that and we can roll up the actual portals whenever we get to them. Dead wikiprojects are another topic for another discussion. Legacypac (talk) 04:00, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

From use PrimeHunter's script, I see there seems basically 0-1 links per portal in mainspace that are not from templates. So it should be simple to use bot machinery to remove all portal links from mainspace, and then marking 1500 pages historical shouldn't be hard either. Most visible non-mainspace links are from linking portals in wikiproject banners which can be removed by removing the |PORTAL= parameter. Galobtter (pingó mió) 05:11, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Has anyone thought of keeping a decreased number of portals, which are highly used and of higher quality? They still serve a purpose and are better than an outline. feminist (talk) 08:19, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • We shouldn't be in haste to ditch the portals. Those who say "let them eat outlines, or indexes" should be aware that there over 1,500 portals to 755 outlines and 660 indexes. Many such popular topics as Football, Cricket and Dogs have a portal but no outline or index. Moreover, in all the topics I have looked at where all three types of navigation page are offered – a portal, an outline, and an index – the Portal receives the most page views of the three. I won't bore you with a table but this holds for such a range of topics as Philosophy, Engineering, Film, Forestry and United States. If we don't have the resources to maintain everything, what needs to go may be the outlines and indexes, which between them reproduce the work of the category structure: Noyster (talk), 13:49, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • There are two kinds of pages on Wikipedia: pages people look for and pages people stumble upon. Portals, Outlines and Indexes are almost exclusively in the latter category.
For such pages, page views are determined by visibility: how many incoming links are there and from where. With Portals, we have capitalized screen real estate that will be simply wasted if this proposal results in a mass deletion and unlinking operation. The Main Page, See also sections of countless articles, navigational templates, and WikiProject banners all give visibility to Portal links and that's where all the views come from. Even if we do away with Portals, we could use this visibility for something else. In my comment above, I suggested placing Outline and Index links where Portal links are now. We should definitely think about how to make the best out of these links. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:23, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
WP:BLUDGEON. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:04, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Keep the Portals that exist and are in good shape and delete only the poor portals.--Broter (talk) 15:50, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Do not delete all Portals. Then you will loose editors. Do only delete the poor portals.--Broter (talk) 15:53, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You don't need to keep repeating the same thing. One of the questions asked is about the future of the Portal: namespace. Are you suggesting we keep the 'good' portals in this namespace, but not allow any new creations? In my opinion, it would make more sense to use the Wikipedia: space and move the updated and maintained portals to there, perhaps in the form of Wikiprojects. But, I can't see how allowing some portals and not others would work. Aiken D 15:56, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This is technically no problem and we should talk about the criterias which portals need to stay.--Broter (talk) 16:22, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It is disrespectfull to delete all portals!--Broter (talk) 15:55, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • If anything can be deleted by a mob, why should someone create something on wikipedia?--Broter (talk) 16:43, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    "Mob" is emotive and disrespectful language –
    WP:AGF applies. It always has been the case that anything can be deleted by consensus. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:49, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    WP:BLUDGEONING. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:54, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
@Guy Macon: Portals were created to stay on wikipedia! Wikipedians were encouraged to create Portals and improve existing Portals! Now some people want it all to be deleted. Please understand me.--Broter (talk) 17:26, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If almost no one uses portals because more efficient means of linking and organizing exist, why should we waste bandwidth and editor time and effort with keeping portals maintained? Please understand what others are getting at. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:25, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I may never edit wikipedia again if the deletionist extremists win this proposal.--Broter (talk) 19:05, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, no... What ever will we do without you... Ian.thomson (talk) 20:10, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree the left-wing one is definitely not maintained, but yeah, if anything, the bias that would result from one portal being deleted but not the other is an argument against selective deletion/archival and for unilateral action on all portals. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:10, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
WP:BLUDGEON. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:04, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Everybody can improve the Portal:Left-wing populism. There needs to be only an interested editor.--Broter (talk) 15:16, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
There exist the politically left wing portals Portal:Communism and Portal:Socialism. The Portal:Left-wing populism is really not needed.--Broter (talk) 15:41, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
See, though, that's effort that's not being put forth for something that readers aren't using because we have more efficient methods of linking to content. The only way to fix those issues would be automating portal generation, which would pretty much take editors out of the question at any rate. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:57, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • As a first step, I would suggest removing all links to the portal namespace from the mainspace. This would essentially remove portals from the encyclopedia proper and out of the sight of readers, relegating them to the status of "projectspace" pages. The portals themselves would then be allowed to remain for at least 6 months to 1 year so editors and respective wikiprojects have time to preserve any unique content not present elsewhere etc. Particularly useful portals could be preserved as wikiproject subpages. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 19:55, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • My first preference however, would be removing all links to the portal namespace from the mainspace, then marking all portals {{historical}} as has been suggested above.— Godsy (TALKCONT) 20:03, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • The points I made above are no longer applicable because they were made when it appeared this proposal would pass; it now appears it will not. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 08:51, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question - if portals are to be discontinued, will there be anything that takes over from their job? Namely (from
    WP:PORTAL) to help readers and/or editors navigate their way through Wikipedia topic areas. I guess Outline of X and templates at the side of the main article do something like this job, and possibly much better than a portal. Is that the idea?  — Amakuru (talk) 21:03, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
    ]
That's the impression I've had. I've used a portal maybe two or three times the entire time I've been here, but I use those templates pretty regularly and "Outline of..." articles whenever I want to access a lot of articles on a topic really quickly. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:43, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Love the "outline of" pages, hate the templates. Look at
1-bit architecture. Instead of that huge wall of links at the bottom, Wouldn't it be nicer to have a simple link to Outline of CPU technologies, and have that page contain the wall of links? What percentage of readers who are interested in 1-bit architectures are looking for a see also link to SUPS? I would say that the answer is "zero". --Guy Macon (talk) 01:06, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
I'm not opposed to having both. Whichever format I find easier to read depends on the subject and how much caffeine I've had. Sometimes I have an easier time with tables, sometimes with lists.
Since the idea of automation has come up elsewhere in this discussion, I imagine it wouldn't impossible to write a template that'd turn an "Outline of" article into one of those templates. Like, some sort of mark-up that doesn't show up in the article, that you wrap around entries that are supposed to show up in the template, that's look something like {{Subst:OutlineEntry | (line number) | [[Article Title]] }}. Then the template would just be {{ (template name) | 1=[[Article|(name of first row)]] | 2=[[Article2|(name of second row)]] }}. That should be far less work to set up than automating portals. Hell, I could probably work out how to how to do templates for an Outline-to-Table dealy, and the coding nightmare that is
WP:BINGO is an anomalous highpoint for me. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:07, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
Hello, outlines are very different from portals.
Outlines are basically a structured list of links. If you don't click, you don't understand anything. Also they are completely static.
Meanwhile, portals show snippets of articles, interesting facts, images, etc. Also, they are dynamic, as each section rotates automatically. They offer a completely different way to explore the millions of articles. --NaBUru38 (talk) 13:27, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am concerned that editors currently maintaining portals may not be aware of this discussion. Can someone create a neutrally-worded edit notice for the portal namespace? And if we want to hear from readers, maybe even a namespace-specific site notice. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:24, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Seems a reasonable idea - what do people think of adding