Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/7 pseudo-portal forks of outline pages

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. — JJMC89 (T·C) 02:00, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

7 pseudo-portal forks of outline pages

Each of these automated pseudo-portals has a "selected articles" list drawn solely from a single "Outline of Foo" page, making it simply a WP:REDUNDANTFORK of that Outline.

The Outline page offers a superior navigational hub, because it displays all the links simultaneously on one page, whereas the portal displays only one link at a time, and offers only a clickthrough of a randomly-selected subset of the list. For readers who have not logged in, mouseover of links offers a popup preview of the linked page, replicating the snippet of the selected article format. So the portals are redundant both in scope and function.

The first six of these portals were created by the portalspammer @The Transhumanist (TTH), and have no previous history. The seventh, Portal:Computing, was created in 2007 as a redirect to Portal:Information technology. It remained a redirect until TTH converted[1] the page to a portal in December 2018, but it never had any substantive content before TTH's conversion.

So I propose that these pages be deleted without prejudice to recreating a curated portal not based on a single other page, in accordance with whatever criteria the community may have agreed at that time.

(Aside: I am unpersuaded that the "Outline of Foo" pages serve any substantive purpose which is not better performed by well-built navboxes. At some point, there should be an RFC on their future. But so long as they exist, there is no point in making portals which are simply WP:REDUNDANTFORKs of them. Interestingly, a high proportion of the "Outline" pages were built by TTH). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:49, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Related discussion: WP:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Cairo, another pseudo-portal built off a single Outline. Many thanks to the nominator there @MJL, who noted the method. That prompted me to make an AWB module to find this set. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:59, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate the sentiment, but it may be worth stating that I am also the conductor of this train. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 23:53, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Rite of passage, @MJL. Your first very own WP:TRAINWRECK! It's as much a part of the journey as your fist real-life car crash.

So carve a notch in your sacred tree, and thank the goddesses for a lesson learnt. Anyone who hasn't created at least one XFD trainwreck hasn't done much serious XFDing. Bundles need a strongly dominant common factor which is spelt out with great care, and now you have learnt one way not to do it. Not too may dead, all considered.

(The way to survive on Wikipedia is not to entirely avoid mistakes, which is impossible because humans are all flawed ... but to acknowledge them promptly, fix them if possible, and try to avoid a re-run.) --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:26, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all these 7 portals - useless navigation tools, redundant to the existing articles and navboxes, and of lower quality

Listing one by one, to be sure

- Automated portal, 4 subpages, created 2019-02-04 22:26:16 by User:TTH : Portal:Construction

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2019-02-04 22:29:36 by User:TTH : Portal:Electrical engineering

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-07-13 13:26:54 by User:TTH : Portal:Florence

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-11-04 07:58:43 by User:TTH : Portal:Industry

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-07-13 07:54:22 by User:TTH : Portal:Kyoto

- Automated portal, 0 subpages, created 2018-09-15 11:45:03 by User:TTH : Portal:Sculpture

- Automated portal, 0 subpages,launched 2018-12-21 14:49:xx by User:TTH : Portal:Computing, above a redirect created 2007-11-23

Pldx1 (talk) 18:35, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I looked at Outline of Florence and found it to be a stripped down content forking link farm version of the main article on Florence, so I redirected it. Knowing how the portal is built, it is no surprise that broke Portal:Florence which nicely illustrates that portals gathering links from other articles or nav boxes can be easily wrecked by normal editing of those pages by editors who may not even know the portal exists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Legacypac (talk • contribs) 20:34, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as WP:REDUNDANTFORK portalspam. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 21:11, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per above. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 23:53, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete All 7:
- - As Pldx1 notes, Computing was on top of an old redirect, but never had any life there, so is not a zombie.
  - As BrownHairedGirl states, these portals add nothing to the outlines as navigation tools.
  - The Outlines are original research, and I may be taking some of them on for future MFD.
  - Without prejudice, as noted above. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:51, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I'm not aware of any consensus that outlines form an inadequate basis for a portal. I see no reason to automatically prefer an outline to a portal. In principle, it would make perfect sense to delete the outlines in favour of moving the content into the portal. Or just leave both versions where they are, as different ways of presenting an outline of the topic, depending on whether one prefers links or summaries+images (which might depend whether one is logged in or out). Espresso Addict (talk) 04:15, 27 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: it's a redundant fork of extant content. No prejudice against thoughtful recreation, but automatic duplication isn't in scope. SITH (talk) 22:36, 27 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep all. The scope of these is clearly sufficient for a portal to exist. They might need some work due to the way they were created, but that's not a valid reason for deletion. Waggers TALK 10:49, 30 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.