Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Mass-created portals based on a single navbox

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was: delete . No prejudice against creating properly curated portals. — JJMC89 (T·C) 17:14, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Every one of the 1,426 1,390 2,698 1,390 portals included in this mass nomination is a mass creation based on a single navbox. That is, their list of selected articles (using {{Transclude list item excerpts as random slideshow}}) is drawn solely from a single navbox. For example, Portal:Football in Jordan is based solely on Template:Football in Jordan.

This makes each of these portals merely a fork of the navbox, with much less utility than the navbox because:

• the navbox displays a full list of the articles. The portal displays only one page at a time, out of a randomly selected subset of up to 50 articles.
• the navbox should be present on every page in the set. The portal always requires navigation to a separate page.

The topic's main page works much better as a navigational hub, because it includes:

• both the topic navbox and related navboxes
• A full summary of the topic rather than an excerpt of the lede.

I propose deleting all these portals in one go because,

1. Being each built on a single navbox, they add no navigational utility, and are an inferior fork of another navigational tool
2. Portals are not content; they are merely a means of navigating between content. So their mass deletion removes precisely zero encyclopedic content.
3. The pages were rapidly mass-created. They were all created by the topic-banned portalspammer @The Transhumanist, who describes the creation process as taking betwen one and two minutes per portal (Have you tried creating 500 portals? It is rather repetitious/tedious/time-consuming (from 500 to 1000 minutes)). It would be a severe waste of the community's time to spend more collective time assessing each of them individually than was spent on their creation.

Some of these portals cover narrow topics which should never have a portal. Others cover broad topics which might be capable of supporting a thoughtfully-designed and properly-curated portal which used a selected article list extending way beyond the navbox. So I propose that these pages be deleted without prejudice to recreating a curated portal not based on a single navbox, in accordance with whatever criteria the community may have agreed at that time. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:13, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• This discussion has been listed[1] at WP:CENT, --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:41, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Tagging. All 1,426 nominated portals are now tagged. Many thanks to @JJMC89 for kindly helping without even being asked. That made the job much faster. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:07, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

These portals were selected by screen-scraping the first four most recent pages of @The Transhumanist's page creations in portalspace, taking 500 pages at a time. I then processed that list of 2000 pages in AWB, removing duplicates, then excluding redirects and pages already tagged for an MFD discussion. I then used an AWB Custom module to exclude portals which were not based on a single template. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:13, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Update. Following a comment below by @Northamerica1000, I realised that I had not run an explicit check for portals which had been converted not to use the automated format. I just ran that check, and found 36 portals which should not have been included in this nomination. I have removed them from the list of nominated pages, and will untag them. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:02, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The following portals have been withdrawn from this nomination, and untagged in these edits.[2] --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:20, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• 1,308 portals added. I originally envisaged this discussion as a test of the principle of deleting mass-created portals based on a single navbox. I therefore started with a subset of the first 4 pages of automated single-navbox-based portal creations by @The Transhumanist (TTH).

However, here has been much more interest in this proposal than I had expected, so it seems to me that it would be helpful to expand the scope of this nomination to include ALL such portals. That will allow the community to make one decision on the whole set.

I have now completed my scanning process to go back to 13 August 2018, which appears to be when TTH began creating automated portals. That has produced a list of a further 1,308 portals, which I have added to the nomination, below.

As with the first list, these portals meet all of the follwing criteria: created by TTH; not a redirect or disambiguation page; not tagged for another MFD discussion; automated; their list of selected articles (using {{Transclude list item excerpts as random slideshow}}) is drawn solely from a single navbox. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:46, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Per requests in the discussion below, I have withdrawn the 1,308 additions. I thought that the addition was a good way of allowing the community to decide this issue in one discussion, and I had not foreseen that the addition would be controversial. However, it clearly is controversial, so I withdraw the extra set. Sorry for the disruption. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:48, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The process by which this list was made is set out at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Mass-created portals based on a single navbox/Selection process. The AWB module which I used is at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Mass-created portals based on a single navbox/AWB module. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:15, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

add your delete/keep/comment here

• Support deletion as spam. Renata (talk) 17:54, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Original !vote stands regardless of the below !drama of additional portal nominations. Renata (talk) 23:39, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal MFD Results supports this. Portals Update #29 confirms that these took a minute each including finding a page with a nav box (no effort was put into assessing scope or adherence to WP:POG as TTH informed us the failure of WP:ENDPORTALS means the portal guidelines don't matter and any portal like the 1500 kept there justify any similar topic). The WP:X3 discussion also supports this - 22 editors support mass deletion while only 14 oppose which is 2:1 good consensus. Legacypac (talk) 17:25, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note that this is not a forum-shopping re-run of the X3 proposal, which as closed as "no consensus". This is a much narrower proposal which includes only those portals which as of today still draw their content list from only a single navbox.

  X3 would included all mass-created portals, regardless of how much they had been developed since creation. By selecting only those portals which duplicate a navbox, I have addressed the concerns of those editors who feared that a list based solely on mass creation might have included some portals which resulted from greater active curation and selection, and which would therefore need a lot of work to re-create. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:16, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  I agree. I also note that this is a 1426 page subset of the 3500+ pages created by this same user using the same system, plus the hundreds of older portals they converted to this automated junk format. Legacypac (talk) 19:45, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep all. Navboxes have excellent support for portals, and the argument that portals are a redundant tool for navigation proves too much – it goes against WP:CLT. wumbolo ^^^ 18:19, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Wumbolo: to avoid egg on your face, please do take time to actually read WP:CLT before you namecheck it in support of a claimed logical point. Its full title is Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates, and it does not mention portals anywhere in its text. And it most certainly does not advocate building portals whose scope precisely duplicates a single navbox. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:51, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Portals are a distinct tool for navigation. They are no more redundant to navboxes than categories or lists. That's obvious from looking at a portal and seeing all the different elements. wumbolo ^^^ 18:59, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • That's a point-of-view which you can hold if you want to, @Wumbolo. But unless and until you get consensus to amend WP:CLT to include portals, it remains only your own WP:ILIKEIT position. Please don't misrepresent as actual consensus-based policy your own aspiration for a policy change. WP:RFC is thataway; please do tell us how you get on. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:13, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all Thank you for taking the time to nominate these pages which are a huge burden to Wikipedia. CoolSkittle (talk) 18:47, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, not only because of the brainless mass creation (The Transhumanist serves its name), but also because no effort was undertaken in involving the community and especially the first or main authors of articles and navboxes which now suddenly appear to have a portal?! Tisquesusa (talk) 18:55, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all, the mass creation was a terrible idea. Some of the topics are portal-worthy (like Portal:German literature or Portal:Henan), some are not (Portal:Percentages has content in all sections, but it is absolutely useless). Many of the navboxes have a lot of content of different types, which makes a very jumbled navigational experience when randomized in a portal. More care is necessary when creating portals so the result is useful and improves navigation instead of being a confusing mess. —Kusma (t·c) 19:01, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Userfy to User:The Transhumanist's userspace to allow those interested to sort out any that are reasonable and return them to the mainsapce. I am explicitly suggesting userspace as opposed to draftspace so that the pages are not subject to deletion after an arbitrary period of time. I would also support moving these to subpages of Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals, which may perhaps even be a better location for these. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 19:10, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  The individual differences between the portals are the title, the main article and the name of the navbox used. They are easy to re-create just from the list in this MfD (or using the one-click script that TTH used to make them). In other words, moving these pages around does not really save any future portal creator a meaningful amount of time or effort. —Kusma (t·c) 19:16, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • (ec)@Godsy: that's not technically possible. Similar ideas were discussed at the X3 RFC, but these portals are all template code, which doesn't work in userspace.

  In any case, userfication is not needed for pages whose creator tells us that they can be re-created in an average of only 90 seconds. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:18, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  They seem to display fine in userspace, e.g. User:Godsy/Portal example. ~1430 portals represents approximately 36 hours of work, based on the creation time provided above. It would probably take less than half an hour to mass move these to another location. That aside, I believe the portal script (which I cannot put my finger on offhand) is currently blanked and there is no consensus to use it, making recreating these that way problematic. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 19:44, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks for that test, @Godsy. Your test page seems to work fine, so I have struck my technical comment. It seems like either I misunderstood that part of RFC discussion, or whoever posted that was wrong.

  Since there seems to be no technical barrier, the question is whether the community wants to dump 1390 pages into the userspace of a editor who record in this area is at best controversial. Personally, I do not favour adding yet another stage to this drama by giving these pages a half-life, but we;ll see where consensus lies. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:35, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  Godsy, BrownHairedGirl, I was one of the people advocating against the moving/userfying of portals. Userfying or incubating in draft space is technically not a problem for the single-page portals, but very difficult for old-style multi-page portals with lots of selectively transcluded subpages. Some portals use relative paths for the pages they transclude, some use {{PAGENAME}}, some use absolute locations. All three break in certain scenarios (depending on page name and how many slashes there are in the name), and require a substantial amount of editing to fix when the page is moved. The single-page layout avoids this problem, while having other drawbacks of course. —Kusma (t·c) 11:03, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all. These portals are extremely unnecessary. They're just more annoying versions of navboxes. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 19:39, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • (post-addition of 2nd batch) Reaffirm delete without prejudice to recreation in a more thoughtful manner by others. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 12:59, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all - These portals are simply unnecessary and inaccessible navboxes that are difficult for normal editors to edit and maintain. A portal should be an interesting and unique way to navigate a broad subject, for exmaple, Mathemetics or English Literature - and it should be tailored to navigating that broad subject. When a subject is so broad it becomes difficult to navigate and find information, that is when it needs a portal - to help people navigate a huge broad subject. These portals that are mass generated from navboxes do not provide a use, because their subjects are not broad enough to need a portal to help navigate them. It's simply a confusing page containing the navbox already found at the end of each associated page. We could have a few interesting and unique portals for a few big broad subjects, but instead we just have thousands of this automated spam which is nothing more than a glorified navbox. Meszzy² (talk) 19:56, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all - mass-created portals are pointless and add nothing in the way of real content to the encyclopedia: they are all front and no bottom. This is exactly the kind of thing that quickly puts readers off. People come here to find real pages written by humans. If there is value in portals at all, it is in carefully hand-crafted introductions to a field. You won't find that in any of the pages here. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:30, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all If any seem like actually suitable topics for portals, they can be recreated with actual effort per WP:TNT. SemiHypercube 20:39, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all. I could have sworn I already voted to delete some of these, but oh well...mass-created portals have little to no value; the examples I have seen provide no more information that the navboxes (or sometimes singles articles) they were based on. The navboxes have the added advantage of fitting into the articles (although they are often quite ugly); thus, the portals are redundant, and should be deleted. Vanamonde (Talk) 20:42, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all – per nom and everyone above, as content-less forks of navboxes mass-created without community consent. Leviv ich 20:56, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I don't think a mass deletion like this is the right way to go about this.★Trekker (talk) 21:02, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  Whilst I agree in principle, to debate the individual merits of 1,426 portals is not practical. --John B123 (talk) 21:10, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  Trekker, there have been discussions in various venues for over a month. In that time I have seen no proposal on how delete large numbers of sub-standard without either mass deletions or vastly disproprtionate amounts of editorial time. Remember that each of these portals took between one and two minutes to create. Why should the community spend more time assessing each one than was spent in their creation?

  This nomination groups a large number of portals with a common flaw. If there is a consensus that this flaw warrants deletion, then individual assessment is un-needed, and would actually be a breach of WP:MULTI and WP:FORUMSHOP. Much better to have that discussion in one place ... and so far I see an unusually well-attended MFD with only one editor arguing that there is any useful purpose in an automated portal whose scope is precisely the same as a single navbox is. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:25, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete on the proviso that this does not prejudice a well made recreation of any that would meet the WP:POG guidelines. --John B123 (talk) 21:05, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Whilst I previously agreed that as a one-off in these cases deletion was the most pragmatic solution, as per the original nomination, doubling the number of portals was not what I supported. Although the further 1,300 have now been removed, I can see if the result of this discussion is delete, then there will a further nomination for the second 1,300 using this as a precedent. --John B123 (talk) 21:13, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @John B123, that seems illogical. If there is consensus to delete 1,390 portals because of a common flaw, why would it not be appropriate for a further discussion to consider deleting the remaining 1308 which meet the same criteria?

  I could understand a "keep" based on an editor rejecting the proposition that a portal based on a single navbox is a bad idea. But your stance now seems to amount to "would have supported deleting the first 50%, but not the second 50%". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:39, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  @BrownHairedGirl: Not illogical at all. The goalposts have moved. The original nomination gave reasons, specific to the first 1,300 portals which were mass created by a single user. No real explanation was given for the second addition. I seems very presumptuous to think because people have supported A they will automatically support B. It seems this is rapidly turning into a precedent for those who are against portals in general to nominate willy nilly. --John B123 (talk) 21:59, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  @John B123, the goalpsosts have not moved by one single millimetre. The second bath was explicitly selected for exactly the same reasons as the first batch, and the list was built in exactly the same way. I just finished the set, which I should probably have done at the beginning.

  The only difference between the first set and the second is that the lists were made 19 hours apart.

  As I noted[3] when I added the second batch:I have now completed my scanning process to go back to 13 August 2018, which appears to be when TTH began creating automated portals. That has produced a list of a further 1,308 portals, which I have added to the nomination, below. As with the first list, these portals meet all of the following criteria: created by TTH; not a redirect or disambiguation page; not tagged for another MFD discussion; automated; their list of selected articles (using {{Transclude list item excerpts as random slideshow}}) is drawn solely from a single navbox.

  I heard what editors said that they did not want more pages added, which is why I reverted. I misjudged how that would be seen, and thought that pinging everyone would keep it all above board; but clearly not. Sorry.

  But I still don't see why you thought that deleting 1390 portals was ok, but deleting a further 1308 on exactly the same grounds is outrageous. Either being a drive-by-automated portal which duplicates a navbox is grounds for deletion, or it isn't. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:21, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  I think 1390 to 2698 is a massive move in goalposts. I have only your word that the same criteria apply to the second batch. You may well be 100% correct, or there may be a difference that is significant. As I don't have a clue as to what the portals are, I can't judge for myself. I'm afraid I don't blindly follow irrespective of who says something is so. --John B123 (talk) 22:52, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Soft Delete All - Delete all 1426 with the understanding that this close does not prejudice subsequent creation of another portal with the same subject in accordance with whatever new rules are in effect about portals. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:14, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @John B123, the current version of the WP:POG guidelines clearly does not reflect community consensus. If it did, we wouldn't have had the recent months of drama. But I agree that if and when there is a consensus on portal guidelines, then deletion here should not prevent recreation according to whatever criteria the community has agreed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:47, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all Without prejudice to a more thoughtful recreation per Robert McClenon. Tazerdadog (talk) 21:31, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Portal:English. During the process at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:English language (2nd nomination), Fram performed a merge of Portal:English language and Portal:English (permanent link). Fram then later performed the action of reverting Portal:English to the older version (diff), which is the present version of the portal. Are there any other portals nominated herein that perhaps shouldn't be included in the bulk nomination, or is this the only one? Figuring this out would require going through each portal, which sure would take a long time. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 21:41, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks, @Northamerica1000. My AWB module which checked the pages did not envisage the possibility that some of the portals had been converted to a nonautomated format. So I just ran a check, and find that that there 36 nominated portals in that set. I will now strike all 36 from the nomination, and untag them. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:54, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks very much for the prompt (like instant) response. Cheers, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 21:56, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • You're welcome, @Northamerica1000. Thanks again for the pointer, and for being so nice about it. The list is now amended, and all 36 have been untagged, in these edits[4]. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:22, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - if deletion is decided upon (and I agree that many of the arguments made for that here are certainly convincing), I think it is important that, as others have argued above, that some of these topics could have portals recreated - albeit in a different way - in the future as they do have the potential to be useful (other I suspect less so). For instance a city like Glasgow with its long and rich history, significant contribution to world culture and sizable population, I think a portal could be quite a useful way in and potentially have a lot of content (and indeed to much content to cover in a template/navbox without cluttering it). Equally I would think there are other topics such as Mecca that you would expect to have a portal on. On the other hand I would agree that in some cases there is never likely to be enough material that a template/navbox cannot cover it adequately, particularly for some of the smaller towns/counties. Dunarc (talk) 22:53, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  Seems to me any re-created portal would be different from the version that was deleted and would "satisfy" the concern that led to deletion (i.e., a "hand-recreated" portal wouldn't be a script-generated navbox fork), and thus any recreated portals would rise and fall on their own merit based on whatever the portal standards were at the time of creation. In other words, re-created portals would be judged the same as any other portal. Leviv ich 00:33, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all: the portals simply don't aid readers, at least not in any non-negligible numbers (based on their pageviews). Editors looking for somewhere to help out on the project need to be pointed in directions other than portals, because it's just busywork when we have millions of mainspace articles with serious issues that desperately need editor attention (and not the tag-bombing kind, the kind where people dive in and actually start fixing the article's problems). — Bilorv (he/him) _(talk) 00:28, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all These portals are nothing but spam. I also support the deletion of the 1,308 portals that User:BrownHairedGirl added. ―Susmuffin ^Talk 01:06, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all their creation were a mistake to begin with. Pichpich (talk) 02:36, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all (including the ones added to the nomination) as none of these meet the breadth-of-subject-matter requirement of the WP:POG guideline. UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:53, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all, but... as a comment/suggestion I think we can have people nominate to keep certain ones, and if they have enough votes we'll see what to do about those. I'm not saying if someone randomly wants to keep some portal then we should do it, I'm saying that if we see value in something and it gets a sufficient amount of votes to keep, then we should. This way, we can easily mass-delete the portals while leaving out specific ones that people feel are important. Everything about the deletion itself has been discussed already (the portals are basically navboxes, etc.), and I agree with deleting for the most part. Pie3141527182 (talk) 03:08, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  Turning this into a WP:TRAINWRECK would defeat the efficency of dealing with this mess as a set. Legacypac (talk) 05:16, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  Okay, that's true. In that case, I agree with Nigej below: Delete all and then recreate portals as necessary through individual votes. Pie3141527182 (talk) 15:59, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all as spam. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 05:46, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• KEEP!!, I am wondering what is the standard for deteting this Portal, maybe all of you can search Portal:Taipei, why this portal can be keep? That's werid.--Chinyen Lu (talk) 07:17, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  Chinyen Lu, nobody is searching for Portal:Taipei or any of these others, hence this discussion. We're not talking about removing something that anyone actually finds useful; we're talking about clearing out clutter that duplicates existing content and in most cases literally gets no readers. ‑ Iridescent 07:24, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  @Chinyen Lu, I just checked, and find that Portal:Taipei was not part of my nomination, and that you added it to the nomination here [5]. I have now removed it.

  It is bizarre that you object to a deletion proposal solely on the basis of it including a page which yourself added to the proposal. I hope you will explain why you did that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:45, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all on the understanding that if someone wants to manually recreate any of these and is willing to undertake to update and maintain it, they're free to do so pending any future discussion on the future of portals. ‑ Iridescent 07:26, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all per nom, all of the above and Iridescent's comment (with regards to recreation). Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 07:34, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Some, No Opinion on the Rest – Specifically, Keep the black holes portal and the Quantum Mechanics portal. These are 2 major areas in astronomy and/or physics, particularly Quantum Mechanics. Some of the other portals also have merit, such as some of the conflict-related portals. However, I have to say that the vast majority of the portals listed appear to be far too specific in scope. Several portals that cover the broad scope of those topics would be more appropriate for the majority of them. LightandDark2000 🌀 (talk) 07:40, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  The main reason these pages are up for deletion is not because their scope is too specific, but rather because they are basically inaccessible fancy navboxs. Yes black holes and quantum mechanics are major areas, but their main articles already have the same copy of the navbox at the end of their articles. These portals serve no purpose in that regard. Meszzy² (talk) 08:01, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all per nom. Individual portals can be recreated if required. Nigej (talk) 08:29, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy Keep all without prejudice to smaller nominatons. This is orders of mangnitude too many to evaluate in a single discussion. I'm unconvinced that the nominator or those in favour of deletion have actually even looked at most of these. Thryduulf (talk) 10:18, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Upgrading to speedy keep given my comments below. Thryduulf (talk) 13:14, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thryduulf, as clearly set out in the nomination, this nomination is explicitly based on not individually evaluating them. These portals have been selected as part of the portalspammers's output, and as being automated portals based on a single navbox. I have made no attempt to examine them individually, because as noted in the nominationit would be a severe waste of the community's time to spend more collective time assessing each of them individually than was spent on their creation..

  It is sad but unsurprising to see that that Thryduulf continues to advocate the timesink of individual assessment of drive-by portals which all share a common, fatal flaw. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:11, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in WikiProject Football's list of association football-related deletions. GiantSnowman 10:52, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all - not needed. GiantSnowman 10:58, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Soft delete - These portals can be deleted and gradually recreated as old-style bespoke portals with subpages.--Auric talk 12:12, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  Note: This !vote refers to the original 1,390 portals nominated, and not the later added 1,308 portals.--Auric talk 14:48, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  Auric, I thought that the addition of the remaining pages which meet the same criteria would be helpful, but it rapidly became clear that I misjudged that. So I withdrew the additions. The scope of the nomination has restored to the original 1,390 portals nominated. Sorry for the unintended disruption.--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:53, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all I was - and still remain - a firm supporter of the concept of Portals, and thought The Transhumanist did a great job last year during and after the RfC in the face of some determined editors seeking their mass deletion on wholly inappropriate grounds of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. I was also impressed by TH's initial efforts and clear commitment to show the community that those editors' !votes for portal deletion were unwarranted, and that Portals are used by visitors, and that numbers aren't relevant as a rationale for deletion. Unfortunately, in showing the community that Portals are justified, and that they can be far more than moribund "topic tasters" for a relatively small number of broad subject areas, we now have a situation where the creation of innumerable trivial portals has probably served only to weaken and undermine the worth of those original portals plus the few others created for valid reasons as a result of the very welcome resurgence of interest (thanks to TH's and others' enthusiasm). In a sense, those who were so vociferous in demanding that all Portals, and even portalspace itself, be deleted have brought this problem on themselves; but that's no excuse for the subsequent mass creation of portals like these. They should go. It is especially sad that those who disliked Portals from the outset have now been re-invigorated in their campaign to expunge them entirely. In this particular instance, however, I feel they may be justified. Nick Moyes (talk) 12:24, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  Withdrawing my !vote, as explained below. Nick Moyes (talk) 13:30, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• NOTE: 1,308 portals added: new total 2,698 pages. I originally envisaged this discussion as a test of the principle of deleting mass-created portals based on a single navbox. I therefore started with a subset of the first 4 pages of automated single-navbox-based portal creations by @The Transhumanist (TTH).

However, there has been much more interest in this proposal than I had expected, so it seems to me that it would be helpful to expand the scope of this nomination to include ALL such portals. That will allow the community to make one decision on the whole set.

I have now completed my scanning process to go back to 13 August 2018, which appears to be when TTH began creating automated portals. That has produced a list of a further 1,308 portals, which I have added to the nomination, above.

As with the first list, these portals meet all of the following criteria: created by TTH; not a redirect or disambiguation page; not tagged for another MFD discussion; automated; their list of selected articles (using {{Transclude list item excerpts as random slideshow}}) is drawn solely from a single navbox.

Pinging all those who made a !vote so far: @Legacypac, Renata3, Wumbolo, CoolSkittle, Tisquesusa, Kusma, Godsy, Pythoncoder, Meszzy2, Chiswick Chap, SemiHypercube, Vanamonde93, Levivich, John B123, Robert McClenon, Tazerdadog, Northamerica1000, Bilorv, Susmuffin, Pichpich, UnitedStatesian, Pie3141527182, Feezo, Chinyen Lu, Iridescent, Lugnuts, LightandDark2000, Nigej, Thryduulf, GiantSnowman, Auric, and Nick Moyes. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:53, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Additions withdrawn. I had not foreseen that the addition would be controversial, but since it clearly is controversial, I have withdrawn the addition pf 1,308 pages. Sorry for the unintended disruption. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:58, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• I continue to support deletion with the expanded scope. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:12, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• (edit conflict) Flaming hell! I cannot express in polite terms just how inappropriate this now is (and it was bad enough before!). I am not opposed to bundling, but it is impossible to do due diligence on a fraction of these. Given the track record of portal deletionists I cannot trust that all the nominated pages actually meet the criteria that are claimed. Thryduulf (talk) 13:14, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thryduulf, it is long past time for you stop attributing to me the misconduct which you may have identified in other editors. We have had that discussion before; please strike the ABF.

  If you or any other editor would like to examine, check, or re-run the methodology which I used to create these list according to the specified criteria, I would be very happy to publish on subpages of this discussion all the steps which I took to create each list, including the AWB module which I wrote. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:25, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  @BrownHairedGirl: Once again, I will not withdraw an hosest expression of my opinions because you don't like it. This discusison is your responsibility, not anyone else's, and per GiantSnowman and Nick Moyes below, it really does not feel like good faith and WP:AGF is not an end-run around the requirements of WP:POINT and WP:CONSENSUS. Thryduulf (talk) 13:42, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• I would politely suggest that BHG stops adding any more portals to this discussion. It's already huge, and it would be better to establish consensus here before dealing with the rest. GiantSnowman 13:19, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @GiantSnowman so far as I am aware, the recent addition of 1,308 more portals completes the set of portals which meet the stated criteria. I had no plans to look for any more, but per your request I give an assurance that I will add no more to this discussion. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:30, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  My polite suggestion inferred (clearly insufficiently) that you withdraw these recent additions as well. GiantSnowman 13:31, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  OK, that's 3 clear requests to withdraw the additions, so I will do so. It will take a few minutes. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:43, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Withrawing my !vote No! No! No! No! No! It's not acceptable for BrownHairedGirl to double the numbers from 1,308 to 2,698 because she feels she's now getting more support than she "had expected", and then assume those who have given support one way or another to any original proposal will happily allow them to take our !vote and apply it to anything other than a minor correction. On a matter of principle I am now withdrawing my !vote, and propose that her attempt to rig the system by vastly increasing the topic under discussion should itself be withdrawn. This is not an OK way to behave. Nick Moyes (talk) 13:28, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Nick Moyes, I am sorry that you feel that way. I absolutely had no intention of rigging anything, and my addition was based on the level of interest, not of support

  In my experience, it is common at XFD to add more pages which meet the same close criteria, to centralise discussion per WP:MULTI and avoid debating the same issues twice. I did so very transparently, only ~20 hours after discussion opened, with no change in criteria, and I gave a clear explanation of what I had done and why. I absolutely did not presume anything; that's why I promptly pinged all those who had cast a !vote so far, including yourself. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:38, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  (edit conflict)@BrownHairedGirl: Yes, and I thank you for that notification. Some of those portals you originally proposed for deletion were actually getting as many -or more- visitors than some 'traditional' portals. I neither have the time to check the validity or the traffic to these extra thousand plus pages you've just tacked on, but it is more the seeming misuse of process which concerns me here, and seems somewhat reminiscent of how a few of the 'antis' tried to change the portal deletion proposal (albeit at an RfC not an XfD), perhaps because they thought they were on to a winner. I am genuinely saddened that we have arrived at a situation of such polarisation that the actual success of the Portal revitalisation project now threatens Portals all over again. Nick Moyes (talk) 13:59, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  More than doubling the number of pages under discussion from an already overwhelming 1300 is not anything like "common". If you want a centralised discussion start an WP:RFC and get consensus for the mass deletion of portals first - remember there have been several attempts to do this already that have failed to get consensus, and multiple open that are getting far from unanimous support. This is disruptive. Thryduulf (talk) 13:45, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  Thryduulf, doubling the number of pages under discussion is common. Many XFDs have much greater proportional expansion, and I thought that the proportion was the main issue. However, three editors have objected, so I clearly misjudged that. It was never my intention to disrupt anything, so I have withdrawn the additions. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:54, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  Nope, the problem is a combination of both the sheer number (even 1300 is way too many) and the proportion. Thryduulf (talk) 13:59, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  If the proportion was a problem, then adding one page to a single-page XfD nomination would be unacceptable. That is clearly not the case. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:27, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all - with the following restriction: the script that will be used to nuke all these 1,354 spam-portals will have to verify that, at the very moment to proceed, the portal to be nuked meet all of the criteria that were advertised, namely:

1. created by TTH;
2. not a redirect or disambiguation page;
3. not tagged for another MFD discussion;
4. automated;
5. the list of selected articles (using {{Transclude list item excerpts as random slideshow}}) is drawn solely from a single navbox.

Publishing this script would be great. By the way,I cannot express in polite terms just how inappropriate this is to argue aboutit is impossible to do due diligence on a fraction of these 1,354 deletions... when the same person is requiring the communitydo due diligence on 3500+ spam-portals. Pldx1 (talk) 14:01, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• @Pldx1, I think it's a great idea to everything check before deletion, so I am happy support that proposal for verification.

Unfortunately, it is not a single script. The selection process involved 6 steps, with the custom AWB module used only as the last step. However, the custom module could be used on the list to verify that it meets the last two criteria. The other criteria can also be verified by AWB, though in separate steps.

It will take me a bit of time to document the process I used, so I will publish it when finished, hopefully later today. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:14, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Pldx1, the process by which this list was made is now set out at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Mass-created portals based on a single navbox/Selection process. The AWB module which I used is at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Mass-created portals based on a single navbox/AWB module. Hope this helps.

@Thryduulf, you had concerns about the process, so you may also find this useful. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:34, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Delete - ^{See following explanation by BHG.} at least some...unless someone can explain to me why Portal:Wildlife of Nepal and Portal:Wildlife of India or the music portals serve no purpose. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 14:12, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Atsme, this nomination does not take a view on whether any of the topics is a suitable topic for a portal. The proposition is that the current portal which replicates a single navbox adds no value beyond that navbox, and that readers are better served without the duplication.

  In the two cases which cite, Portal:Wildlife of Nepal is simply a full-page version of Template:Wildlife of Nepal, and Portal:Wildlife of India is simply a full-page version of Template:Wildlife of India.

  The nomination explicitly proposes in bolded text that "that these pages be deleted without prejudice to recreating a curated portal not based on a single navbox, in accordance with whatever criteria the community may have agreed at that time". Hope this helps. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:23, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  (edit conflict) Thank you, BHG, your explanation helped. ^Atsme _Talk 📧

• Comment in response to comments about wanting to check these one by one. We have checked ad deleted one by one and in small groups over 500 portals now. We broke MFD today. There is not a word of unique content in any of these pages, it is all harvested, often wildly inappropriately, from other places. 2:1 the community voted to nuke every TTH portal. Some of the opposers to nuking demanded an MfD so here we are. Legacypac (talk) 14:42, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - if the support for deletion here is due to the pages being nothing more than glorified navboxes, what difference does adding more of these pages make? We are not looking for topics which might be notable enough to deserve a portal - the point of this discussion is because these pages are just fancy pages nobody is using that were automatically created like spam. Even if a topic is notable, deleting its fancy navbox currently called a portal is of no loss. We found more of these fancy navboxes that we all seem to think are of no value, and so should be added in. What are we looking to save here? Meszzy² (talk) 16:22, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's a lot like what I thought, Meszzy2. If editors don't approve of deleting portals based on these criteria, then it seem to me to be better for them to have the whole lot rejected in one go. And if they do approve of the deletion, then again better to do it in one go. But clearly that's not how it was seen by three editors coming from different perspectives, so I withdrew the additions and I won't put them back. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:50, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • @BrownHairedGirl: I would note that of the three editors against your addition to this MFD, the two that were mostly oppossed to it both were already in a very small minority pretty much in favour of the portals - and as such if they were actually put to discussion we would see a majority support for their deletion. I guess there's no harm in developing a consensous here first though. Meszzy² (talk) 08:07, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete: (edit conflict) What's the point of keeping these portals if the entire value of portals was to provide readers with a broad array of resources and links? These spam portals have undermined the value of all portals by being low-quality breeding grounds for more transclusions in WP:MFD; they provide no use for the project. –eggofreason^{(talk · contribs)} 16:59, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all and commendations to BHG for starting these proceedngs. ——SerialNumber54129 17:06, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Kudos to the nominator for coming up with an objective, quantifiable standard to identify specifc types of problematic/useless portals. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:52, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Having got support on this page for deletion of of a specified set of portals, to suddenly add a great number of other portals with the hope of also getting them deleted seems an abuse of process to me. --John B123 (talk) 18:31, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - I would like to thank User:BrownHairedGirl twice. The first thanks is a repeat of my previous thanks for nominating the first package. The second is for withdrawing the addition to the bundle. In general, bundling of nominations is a good idea, but only if done synchronously. The adding of items to a bundle after it starts proceeding through the deletion debate is confusing and can cause the train to go off the rails. So I stand by my original !vote to delete the first ~1300 portals. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:39, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Soft delete I remain a firm believer in the utility of well-made portals, but mass creation is not the way to go. And it does not seem right to me to spend more time on deletion than was spent on automated creation. However, this MfD should not prevent the recreation of any of these portals in a legitimate fashion. Lepricavark (talk) 19:35, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete I am not a fan of portals as I don't understand any intrinsic encylopedic relevance and none of these seems special.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 19:56, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete No evidence these portals are of use to anyone, they simply clutter the encyclopedia and project. Reywas92^Talk 21:47, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all per the nominator's rationale. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 23:29, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, my position on this proposal is:

• Delete all that properly fulfill the stated criteria, keep Portal:Wildlife of India Portal:Indian wildlife and all those that don't properly fulfill the stated criteria and can be realistically saved / suitably expanded into a decently curated Portal. But for the love of God, slow down the rate of nominations, stop bulk nominations and put much more consideration into selection of suitable candidates. --Cactus.man ✍ 23:32, 8 April 2019 (UTC)*[reply]

{{Box-header colour|Selected general articles}}
{{Transclude list item excerpts as random slideshow | paragraphs=1-2 | files=1 | more=
| Template:Wildlife of India
|
}}

• Delete all - The vast majority are narrow topics that do not support a portal. But the following exceptions consider broad topics, Portal:Quantum mechanics, Portal:Game theory, Portal:Paleolithic, Portal:Communication, Portal:Electronic components, Portal:Automation, Portal:Pueblos, Portal:Prostitution, Portal:Aztecs, Portal:Simple living, Portal:Climate, Portal:Political ideologies, Portal:Irreligion, Portal:Green politics, Portal:Software engineering, Portal:Ancient Mesopotamia, Portal:Prehistory, Portal:Pathology, Portal:Bodybuilding, Portal:Meteorology, Portal:Meditation, Portal:History of technology and Portal:Jewellery, these can be discussed individually?Guilherme Burn (talk) 00:11, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

We should avoid WP:TRAINWRECK so since these can be recreated in about 10 seconds from a template and then built out properly, let modivated users do that, as is proposed. Legacypac (talk) 00:20, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Guilherme Burn, please re-read the nominator's rataionale at the top of this page. I know that it is a bit long, but I have bolded the key points.

The reason for this mass nomination is nothing to do with the scope of the topics. It is that these portal pages are automated spam which simply duplicates a navbox in a less usable form. Some of them may indeed be suitable topics for a properly-crated portal; but no topic befits from TTH's automated spam.

Note the final apara of the rationaleSome of these portals cover narrow topics which should never have a portal. Others cover broad topics which might be capable of supporting a thoughtfully-designed and properly-curated portal which used a selected article list extending way beyond the navbox. So I propose that these pages be deleted without prejudice to recreating a curated portal not based on a single navbox, in accordance with whatever criteria the community may have agreed at that time.

Hope this helps. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:37, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

OK @BrownHairedGirl and Legacypac:. So I change my vote to Delete all, understanding that I can recreate some of these portals from the same source. In addition, it would be better a MfD with a smaller number of articles, to not repeat the same impasse that occurred in Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Proposal 4: Provide for CSD criterion X3Guilherme Burn (talk) 18:43, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all, but allow recreation of properly built out portals (for reasonably broad topics) if editors have an actual interest in building one by hand. Kaldari (talk) 07:56, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Portal:Contract Bridge as it is a card game comparable to chess with millions of players worldwide and a huge amount of literature, rules, championships and so on. I would be very happy to have such a portal in de.wikipedia ;-)--Bodhi-Baum (talk) 14:18, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Portal:Glass has DYK "... that living glass anemones can be dissected in the laboratory and then put back in an aquarium, where they will heal?" These things are designed to automatically have errors and were not checked. Legacypac (talk) 00:17, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • There's surely potential for a fun party game somewhere in here. Quick - without using Special:Whatlinkshere, which portal ask if you knew "... that Wolfgang Fortner composed the chamber opera In seinem Garten liebt Don Perlimplin Belisa after Lorca for the Schlosstheater Schwetzingen, where it opened the Festival in 1962?" How about "... that in 1948, Oreste Pucciani, champion of the "direct method" of language teaching, banned English from his classroom at UCLA?" —Cryptic 02:48, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Percentages will give you a real laugh - then go vote to delete it. Legacypac (talk) 18:56, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - Would there be any value in draftifying the portals? That way, people who consider creating a portal that is actually a recreation can see that there is a draft and look at it to see what they want to achieve with the portal. The case I see for having these portals in draft space is that they provide an idea of what existing material can look like, a case against is that the editable content of these pages provides no useful basis for seeding the article. — Charles Stewart (talk) 06:34, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose draftifying. Moving namespaces doesn't solve the problem of what to do with this stuff. A demo of something that in your words, provides no useful basis for seeding the article is not sufficient reason to keep. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 07:29, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose draftifying as the reason these portals are all up for deletion is because there's nothing of content, value or use on them. They are basically just navboxes with a bit of the main page attached. To the point of being able to use the draft to help make a new portal, the thing is though that all these portals follow the same template - there are all the same and have nothing unique in them towards the content they are a portal for. Thus, in my opinion, draftifying would serve no purpose. Meszzy² (talk) 07:40, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Meszzy2: Thanks for your input, just a point to clarify: draftifying is rather like deleting, in that the content has to go through the WP:AfC process (I think: can it apply to non-article content?) before recreation. I think this would count as doing something serious about the problem. — Charles Stewart (talk) 07:50, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Chalst: I definitely see your view and hope I didn't come across as a bit impudent or anything. I think my issue with moving the portals to the draftspace would be that since there seems to be a consensus against these navbox type portals - we don't want them to come back in which case it would be wrong to provide these portals as models for constructing new ones. Additionally, I would say that using them for reference in creating new portals would also not be of any help, since there is nothing unique to any of the pages - they are all built off one auto-generated template and as such there's nothing specific to each portal that you could really reference in creating a new one. Also on a side note, I do believe that once a user is autoconfirmed they can simply move content in draftspace to mainspace themselves. Meszzy² (talk) 08:02, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Dear User:Chalst, you missed the point. The 1300+ portals that are discussed here were created by keying {{subst:bpsp}} into a blank page and hitting [return]. No less no more. Thus your proposal amounts to overflow TTH userspace with 1300+ identical messages saying "if you want to recreate your junk portals --and be banned-- you only have to key in a 14 letters incantation". How useful ! Pldx1 (talk) 12:41, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all - No added value beyond the more usable navboxes the portals are based on. Galobtter (pingó mió) 07:47, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all - "Delete without prejudice to recreation in a more thoughtful manner by others.", as per pythoncoder. Since quantity not quality drove creation of these, quantity here should not make anyone shy of deleting these. Shenme (talk) 10:13, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - At WP:Miscellany for deletion/Mass-created portals based on a single navbox/Selection process, User:BrownHairedGirl has published the process she used to build her three lists of resp 1390, 36, 1308 portals. According to my own homework, using other methods, list 1 (the current list under discussion) and list 3 (the withdrawn set) were sound: clear and blatant cases of TTH-created junk portals, with no collateral damages. On the contrary, list 2 (cases excluded by precaution) is to be sorted again. There are genuine exceptions, but most of the 36 items are based on a single template, using 'Transclude list item excerpts as random slideshow' rather than 'Transclude linked excerpts as random slideshow'. Perhaps User:Thryduulf could take the timeto do due diligence on this set of 26 ? Pldx1 (talk) 12:28, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Many, many thanks for the scrutiny, @Pldx1. It's always helpful for something like this to be checked, whatever the result, and I am pleased to have confirmation that the main lists are sound. I hope that reassures both @Cactus.man and @Thryduulf.

  Thanks for drawing my attention to the pages which transclude Template:Transclude list item excerpts as random slideshow. I still think that I was right to have removed them from this nomination, because they did not meet the precise criteria set out in the nomination. However, if there is consensus to delete this batch, then I will include those in another group nomination ... unless, of course, @Thryduulf has done due diligence and organised their deletion already. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:46, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete these automatically generated portals do not meaningfully expand on the main article and aren't of sufficient quality. There is no point in draftifying them. Hut 8.5 12:55, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all per nom. ZettaComposer (talk) 14:06, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all. Although I cannot imagine it, it's possible that one of these automated portals might serve some purpose. If a Portal advocate could provide one appropriate portal meeting BHG's conditions I might reconsider. I also think that automated portals, meeting the criteria except for not being created by TTH, should also be nominated for deletion, although there we could still assume good faith, as we cannot in regard TTH's creations. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 10:57, 10 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all: per Arthur Rubin's comment, I think portals whose scope doesn't meet WP:POG should be nominated, just not alongside TTH's creations. There is evidence that TTH wanted to create as many portals as possible in as short amount a time as possible. I'm going to assume good faith and assume TTH was unaware of WP:POG and just copy-pasted {{subst:bpsp}} into these thousands of pages, but that's all the effort that went into creating them so we shouldn't be wailing over the amount of effort we put into deleting them. Either way, these are recently-created and in contravention of WP:MEATBOT as a behavioural point and WP:POG as a content point. So yes, they should be deleted. SITH (talk) 14:53, 10 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Your assumption would be incorrect. In an early MFD TTH explained that all portals were nominated for deletion but not deleted at WP:ENDPORTALS therefore all 1500 existing portals had been kept. He explained the WP:POG (which he extensively modified btw) were obsolete and non-binding. Any new portal like any old portal that was kept is now an acceptable scope. User:StraussInTheHouse Legacypac (talk) 17:49, 10 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I was unaware of the guideline-editing to suit behaviour. Yeah, that's not good faith. Still, my point stands that they should be deleted. SITH (talk) 17:56, 10 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all- these automated portals are a lot of the sort of junk that brings WP into disrepute. My attention was drawn to them by Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera of which I am a member. I learned that a group of editors decided to "revitalize" WikiProject Portals. The original plan was to weed out and delete the hopeless portals and improve the ones on major topics that had been neglected. Well, it was a disaster. They developed a tool to fully automate portals, i.e. turning them into glorified navboxes with no human input as to the choice and quality of the articles and images and then we were notified that Portal:Felix Mendelssohn was up for deletion to which the same editor explained that This is an example of one of 2000 recently created automated portals that I wrote about above. It was not created and is not maintained by this project. Ditto WikiProject Classical Music. It is a good illustration of how these "instant portals" work. Basically, the "Selected article" section simply rotates those listed in Template:Felix Mendelssohn (regardless of quality). The "Selected picture" simply rotates all the images in the article Felix Mendelssohn (regardless of quality). The "Did you know" section mines the list of Main page DYKs looking for the word "Mendelssohn". Fortunately, the name is so unique that the DYKs will probably all be relevant. But problems have occurred in other automated portals such as Portal:Bears where you get DYKs like "...that American surgeon Dallas B. Phemister created a bone grafting technique which now bears his name?"... Portal:Spiders includes DYKs on Spider monkeys, Spider ants, and a flowering plant known as the long-stalk spiderhead. You get my drift. [10] I can't believe there is even any debate about it, these recently created automated portals are total trash and must be thrown out ASAP, every one of them.Smeat75 (talk) 15:17, 10 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all. I'm admittedly a little new to the drama surrounding portals but it seems that in general, they are not very effective at their supposed job. When portals as a whole are on the ropes like this, and I see a big list of automatically generated portals, I get suspicious immediately. It seems to me like this is the sort of trash which makes portals so disliked by some editors. I have to say, I'm ordinarily very inclusive. I love big pages, I love lots of content, and I have a very broad view of what belongs on Wikipedia. That said, I really don't think that these belong. If anyone can cite an individual example of a good portal(s) in the list, I will be happy to support removing it from the list. As far as I'm concerned, this needs to be opt-out. If you really believe that one of these portals is important, say something now or let it walk the plank with the rest. Prometheus720 (talk) 22:06, 10 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I think it might have been better to break these up into smaller batches (maybe ~200 each). Not that the eventual fate of most of the pages listed would change, but it would make processing and reviewing them for outliers easier. ~1300 pages is quite a large collection that can lead to manifesting false positive/negative errors in the listings, which will not be easy to check for. I trust AWB a lot but it can't accommodate every scenario. That being said, I agree in principle that a portal based solely on a single navbox - and nothing else - should be deleted unless some extra TLC was put into making it worthwhile to keep. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 01:05, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  AfroThundr, in theory you're right. However assume on average 6 people review each, and assume they spend one page per minute on average. That works out to 140 person-hours for pages in this batch, and 270 hours when you add the rest. That's 270 person-hours diverted away from article building, reviewing other XfD's, NewPagePatrol, vandalism patrol, administrative tasks, and everything else. Reviewing these pages represents a steep cost in human capital. Not to mention all the other person-hours that have been spent and will be spent dealing with these pages. Alsee (talk) 11:10, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  @Alsee: You have a point there, although for a case like this, a single person checking per page would be more than sufficient to establish their state, so maybe 1/6 of the man hours. Still a lot, I know. In either case, this particular batch seems to have been curated pretty well, so I'm leaning toward deletion. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 14:57, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Guess the automated portal before clicking DYK...... that the slipper sea cucumber is avoided by most predatory fish, crabs, and gastropod molluscs, but is preyed on by starfish, especially the leather star? Bet you get it wrong. Legacypac (talk) 06:05, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all. While the pages were well intentioned, the related topicban implicitly establishes a consensus that these indiscriminate low quality formulaic microportals are actively unhelpful. Dealing with these pages on an individual basis would be unacceptably and pointlessly costly. If someone wants to develop one of these titles as a worthwhile portal it would be more efficient to undelete or recreate those page(s). Mass-nominations raise special concerns as some note above, but I'm seeing evidence of good care to pull out any potentially controversial cases. I trust that any unusual/nonconforming pages found during cleanup will be set aside to avoid unnecessary drama.
  Note: Running a second discussion for the second half of these pages would be a bureaucratic waste of time. I would endorse a WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY/WP:SNOW close rationale to include the rest of these pages. Perhaps future commenters will endorse that sort of outcome. Alsee (talk) 09:55, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  I think because there was significant objection to adding the second batch before, that it would still need its own MfD page though. It will likely have the same outcome, but it's not adding too much overhead to the process, since it will be knocking out another ~1300 pages. That should satisfy anyone (including me) who think they still deserve a discussion, if only for a second chance to spot-check them before they get the axe. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 14:57, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete, reluctantly. Many of these portals should exist and I'm glad the proposal allows for their recreation with a bit more thought; I can only support it on that basis. Automating the maintenance of portals is great, but a portal is more than a navigation tool, it's a showcase, and a bit of thought needs to go into which articles are included for selection. I agree in principle with TheTranshumanist's view that if a topic is sufficiently broad to merit a navbox, it's sufficiently broad to merit a portal; but with a caveat around which articles are worthy of inclusion. WaggersTALK 15:39, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Per my comments above, and Waggers as well. These appear to have gone through sufficient vetting to satisfy my concerns over the high volume. I also want to thank @BrownHairedGirl: for taking the time to triage these to pull out the "bottom bin" portals for deletion. We don't always see eye-to-eye on these discussions, but I happen to support removal of most micro portals, so long as it doesn't jeopardize the others that have had more effort put into them. I would have preferred smaller batches, but everything seems to be in order here. I was thinking of a similar method to cull the namespace of low effort pages, but never got time to work on it due to real-world concerns that have kept me very busy these last several weeks (and likely will for several more). Normally I would not be so quiet while watching my second favorite namespace on the chopping block. :) — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 16:27, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Many thanks, @AfroThundr3007730. I would actually have preferred to do a bigger batch (the full 2,698), because when the same issue is common to all of them, it seems to me that it is not good a use of the community's resources to have the same discussion multiple times.

However, I started out by examining a subset, and spent a whole day developing and testing my methodology, and when I found it worked I didn't feel like re-running the process on the full set before I had gauged the community's reaction. As you can see, I added the rest as a second batch to this nomination, pinging all participants to an explanation of what I had done, but there were objections to that, so I reverted. So if this batch is deleted, there will be a second nomination of the rest of the single-navbox portals. I think that once that is done, we will all be in a better position to assess the remainder. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:12, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all I objected to X3 on the basis that it was an ad hominem deletion rationale; this is a policy-based, objective, content-related reason for deletion, so I'm happy to support it. Well done to BHG for the hard work putting it together. Triptothecottage (talk) 00:32, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all without prejudice for recreation on any of these as bespoke portals. I hope this will end, as EEng called them the portal crusades, and allow us to move forward as a community. SportingFlyer T·C 00:54, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Soft Delete all. Speaking as an editor with several thousand portal edits, I see few issues deleting these spam portals, holding zero issues with motivated individuals rebuilding them using whatever appropriate curation tools are available now or in the future. As a portal maintainer I am excited that the curation process might be simplified by using some of the techniques WikiProject:Portals has devised. All pagespace needs maintainers; the watchlist allows us to monitor articlespace sufficiently to maintain. Portalspace is far more complex to watch and maintain. Think about how many eyes and hands go into maintaining the main page daily, portals are less challenged, but similarly so. I believe mass creation of these portals (and many other edits by Transhumanist) a very pointy reaction to the village pump discussion about eliminating all portals. I think the community has gained some useful information during this process, though I'm not sure myself the question of whether portals are sufficiently useful or viewed to warrant inclusion has been resolved. BusterD (talk) 22:55, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for directing me to this discussion through the Portal talk:Submarines page.

Christopher, Sheridan, OR (talk) 08:20, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• One of the ones in this group is Portal:Submarines created even though Portal:Submarine existed. TTH ignored the editor that posted about this dupliction on the talkpage proving he can't and will not manage these pages. Legacypac (talk) 23:56, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Support: I was unaware of this discussion when I suggested merging Portal:Submarine into Portal:Submarines. Having been made aware of it on the Portal talk:Submarines page, I feel confident that the final decision reached will be carried out as accurately as possible, and will greatly benefit Wikipedia and the community. I concur with replacing Portal redundancy with more utilitarian navboxes.
  Christopher, Sheridan, OR (talk) 08:57, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow recreation of old-school, curated portals that meet portal guidelines. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 09:52, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all: no value to the readers. --K.e.coffman (talk) 15:00, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Portal:Multan as Multan is Pakistan's fifth largest city, and the portal has some affiliation with WikiProject Pakistan. The portal also has some unique elements to it. 39.40.67.7 (talk) 22:27, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry, but that's nonsense. Portal:Multan (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has precisely zero unique elements. It is just more drive-by-portalspam, one of ten portals created in a 17-minute period by the portalspammer @The Transhumanist. The only non-trivial subsequent edit to the page is this[11] by the now indef-blocked-as-WP:NOTHERE User:Pakieditor, which added links to other portals. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:17, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.