Requests for closure[edit]

These requests for closure are transcluded from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure.

Administrative discussions[edit]

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Topic ban appeal[edit]

(Initiated 13 days ago on 29 March 2019) Would an admin assess the consensus at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Topic ban appeal? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 09:20, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

• Discussion has been archived at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive307#Topic ban appeal. I am waiting for a formal close. Capitals00 (talk) 16:09, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Place new administrative discussions above this line using a level 4 heading[edit]

RfCs[edit]

Template talk:Subscription required#RfC: Replace template with CS1/2 mechanism where possible[edit]

(Initiated 78 days ago on 22 January 2019) Would an experienced editor assess the consensus at Template talk:Subscription required#RfC: Replace template with CS1/2 mechanism where possible? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 01:48, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

• I think a formal close is unnecessary for this one as it just seems to be a discussion of the implementation of some technical specifications without much disagreement, but would appreciate it if an editor more experienced with templates could confirm this assessment. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:19, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

• I think a formal close would be useful for the Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval. The RfC initiator wrote:

  Maybe the purpose of this RfC is not clear? I will write a bot to fix this problem. It's no problem (well it won't be an easy bot). But, I can't open a BRFA as the only person who wants a bot. Thus this RfC. It's where you say "Yeah I want a bot" so the BRFA admins can check off community support for the bot.

  Cunard (talk) 09:20, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

• @Cunard and Rosguill:  Done. Thryduulf (talk) 22:32, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Ministry of Transport#RfC: Transport governance article titles[edit]

(Initiated 71 days ago on 30 January 2019) Would an experienced editor assess the consensus at Talk:Ministry of Transport#RfC: Transport governance article titles? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 09:20, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

• @Cunard:  Done Thryduulf (talk) 22:47, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:2 Hearts (2007 song)#RFC: Original version/Cover version[edit]

(Initiated 70 days ago on 30 January 2019) I'm looking for the closure of the RFC if consensus has been reached. © Tbhotch^™ (en-2.5). 15:22, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#RfC regarding the use of "alt-text" for all FACs[edit]

(Initiated 56 days ago on 14 February 2019) Would an experienced editor assess the consensus at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#RfC regarding the use of "alt-text" for all FACs? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 01:15, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

 Note: archived without closure to Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/archive76 --DannyS712 (talk) 20:32, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Macedonia)/2019 RFC[edit]

(Initiated 54 days ago on 15 February 2019) Would a panel of three experienced editors (or administrators if they so choose) please assess the consensus at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Macedonia)/2019 RFC? The closure will be a bit of a minefield, with many simultaneous discussions taking place in the various sub-sections. The closure is already overdue since the closure date was set as 17 March and listed at the top of the page from the outset, a date which has now passed. This RfC was conducted in accordance with the following ARBCOM motion: [1], and its closure should conform to the motion as well. Closers might want to additionally take a look at discussions on the corresponding talk page for the RfC Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Macedonia)/2019 RFC. - Wiz9999 (talk) 11:24, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

 In progress Closing RfC discussion for recording consensus. On hold Until 2 more editors are willing to close. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 17:41, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

@QEDK: I'd like to help - only 1 more needed --DannyS712 (talk) 19:27, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

@DannyS712:: sorry, nothing personal against you, but I'm not quite convinced you have the necessary experience for this task. What we need here are highly experienced editors who are deeply familiar with the relevant content policies and with the intricacies of content creation in POV-sensitive areas. Sorry, but you've been around only for six months and I can find no record of you dealing with policy issues of this complexity before. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:05, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

@Future Perfect at Sunrise: [2] His level of contribution seems adequate to me, despite the 6 month period his account has been active. - Wiz9999 (talk) 09:34, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

He seems to me like an editor who has been racking up a high edit count by means of a lot of routine gnoming work in the areas of XfDs, responding to edit requests and the like, but no substantial content maintenance experience in politically sensitive areas, and nothing I can find that shows him deeply engaging with complex policy issues. Sorry, but no. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:38, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I probably should not have an opinion as someone who is volunteering as one the closers but I do agree with FPAS' viewpoint that editors might regard Danny as inexperienced due to their relative inexperience in edits and age. I'm moving this to the main AN noticeboard for more visibility — and more opinions as to who should be part of the closing panel; and an opportunity for editors to opine on the suitability of editors. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 12:02, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive307 § Closing panel needed for Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Macedonia)/2019 RFC

Talk:RuPaul's Drag Race#RfC on names of transgender contestants[edit]

(Initiated 52 days ago on 17 February 2019) This RfC needs to be reclosed after the intial one was reverted through AN. If you close it, please be mindful of the actual arguments made and the consensus reached. Nihlus 19:56, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Aurora, Illinois shooting#RfC: Victim names[edit]

(Initiated 50 days ago on 19 February 2019) Could an experienced editor please review the consensus at Talk:Aurora, Illinois shooting#RfC: Victim names? --Jax 0677 (talk) 19:36, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

{{Not done}} - RFC is still active. There are reasonable arguments being advanced both for and against, so that the snowball closure rule does not apply. RFC left open. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:01, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Reply - @Robert McClenon:, the RFC has been open for over one week. --Jax 0677 (talk) 15:39, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

@Jax 0677: Indeed, it's been open for 16 days; but WP:RFCs typically run for thirty. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:36, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

That's what I tried to say at User talk:Jax 0677, and was told by Jax0677 to provide diffs and keep the discussion in one place, when I was trying to keep the discussion in a less public place. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:50, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Would it be possible to un-archive the RfC as the bot has archived it? Bus stop (talk) 07:30, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

@Bus stop: You are allowed to close it even if its archived, but if you want I suggest manually copy-pasting it from the archive to the talk page, with a note explaining. --DannyS712 (talk) 08:16, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

@DannyS712: I don't want to close it as I am a participant in it. I wanted it un-archived to allow further discussion. Bus stop (talk) 12:49, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Reply - @Bus stop:, I have moved the discussion back to the talk page, and changed the archive age to 30 days. --Jax 0677 (talk) 19:43, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you very much @Jax 0677:, that looks perfect, to me. Bus stop (talk) 21:29, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────┘

• Reply - @Bus stop:, good to hear, we can close the discussion at the end of this week. --Jax 0677 (talk) 14:06, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - @Robert McClenon:, this discussion, which is now close to 150 kB in size, has now run for 30 days, and can be closed or relisted. --Jax 0677 (talk) 13:30, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  Comment - User:Jax 0677 - I do not plan to close this RFC. For two reasons, both of which I do not need to disclose, I might not be neutral. Also, RFCs are not relisted. XFDs, which run for 7 days, may be relisted, but RFCs, which run for 30 days, are not relisted. They may be closed as No Consensus, and the closer may advise that a new RFC be posted, but they are not relisted in the way that XFDs are. Perhaps you are confusing different procedures. If so, please read the policies on Requests for Comments and Deletion and Deletion Debates. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:33, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  Comment - @Robert McClenon:, thanks for observing WP:COI. Note that I said "closed or relisted", which means not that it should ever be relisted, but that I am indifferent between the two. Regarding the 30 days minimum for RFC, I will keep it in mind in the future, but I never asked any closer to go against policy. --Jax 0677 (talk) 17:19, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  User:Jax 0677 - See my comments on your talk page. No, I do not have a conflict of interest. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:10, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  @Robert McClenon: RfCs can be relisted - Cunard (talk · contribs) does it frequently - see WP:RFC#Length, paragraph beginning "To extend a current RfC". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:27, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  User:Redrose64 - Okay. As long as I am not told that I should be closing an RFC that hasn't run 30 days, and as long as I am not planning to close the Aurora RFC for two reasons that have nothing to do with COI, fine. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:43, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  @Robert McClenon: My understanding is that an RfC is no different from an ordinary content discussion in the following regard: It can be closed whenever it seems to have run its course, when all stated arguments have been sufficiently discussed and the likelihood of any significant new arguments is deemed to approach zero. That can be one week or twelve weeks or more (I recently closed an RfC after 8 days), and it is not connected to the amount of time before the bot de-lists the RfC. If most RfCs are closed after 30 days, that's only because (1) editors misinterpret the de-listing as "time to close" and (2) there is often resistance to closing "early" even if the circumstances warrant it, and most of us prefer to avoid that controversy. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:09, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Comment - It is true that the closer will need to distinguish between statements of position (!votes), some of them well-reasoned, and a lot of mostly marginal discussion. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:33, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Should a 4th CSD for unused templates be added?[edit]

(Initiated 48 days ago on 21 February 2019) Would an administrator (as it's about deletion policy an admin is needed) please assess the consensus of this discussion and formally close it. Although consensus looks (to me as someone involved) clear, it does need formal closure to avoid a similar discussion in the near future. Thryduulf (talk) 19:19, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Historical rankings of presidents of the United States#Request for comment: Aggregation of rankings[edit]

(Initiated 45 days ago on 25 February 2019) Would an experienced editor assess the consensus at Talk:Historical rankings of presidents of the United States#Request for comment: Aggregation of rankings? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 09:20, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Rent regulation#RfC about describing extent of disagreement[edit]

(Initiated 44 days ago on 25 February 2019) Would an experienced editor please assess whether there is a consensus at Talk:Rent regulation#RfC about describing extent of disagreement and close if so? Qzekrom 💬 ^they_them 23:29, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

On hold the discussion has been open for 10 days and is fairly divided; RfCs normally run for 30 days --DannyS712 (talk) 05:20, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

@DannyS712: Circling back - do you think there's a strong enough consensus here? Qzekrom 💬 ^they_them 05:22, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

@Qzekrom: its only run for 30 days, and since I'm not familiar with the topic I'd prefer not to close it myself. But, leaving it here means it will get closed eventually. --DannyS712 (talk) 05:24, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

I probably do have enough knowledge to close this RfC but will likely not get to it for a few days (at least) so if someone else is ready feel free to jump me and do it but know it's on someone's radar. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:52, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Century#RfC: Describing positions about the beginning of centuries AD[edit]

(Initiated 39 days ago on 3 March 2019) Would an experienced editor assess the consensus at Talk:Century#RfC: Describing positions about the beginning of centuries AD? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 09:20, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Ilhan Omar#Request for Comment: Should Anti-semitism accusations be included in the lede?[edit]

(Initiated 37 days ago on 5 March 2019) Would an experienced editor assess the consensus at Talk:Ilhan Omar#Request for Comment: Should Anti-semitism accusations be included in the lede?? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 09:20, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Conspiracy theory#Lead (RfC)[edit]

(Initiated 36 days ago on 5 March 2019) Would an experienced editor assess the consensus at Talk:Conspiracy theory#Lead (RfC)? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 09:20, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Carnage (comics)#merge back with Cletus Kasady[edit]

(Initiated 35 days ago on 6 March 2019) Would an experienced editor assess the consensus at the RfC at Talk:Carnage (comics)#merge back with Cletus Kasady? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 09:20, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Fascism#RfC: Should "right wing" be added to definition of fascism[edit]

(Initiated 35 days ago on 6 March 2019) Would an experienced editor assess the consensus at Talk:Fascism#RfC: Should "right wing" be added to definition of fascism? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 09:20, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

The RfC opened on March 6th and was closed by bot after 30 days. petrarchan47คุก 02:23, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

It wasn't "closed" - Legobot always removes a {{rfc}} tag thirty days after the next timestamp following the tag. This is not closure; bots are not able to judge consensus so they cannot close a discussion. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:13, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Oh, thanks. This is my first time asking for an RfC close, my terminology is wrong. petrarchan47คุก 01:53, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:List of music considered the worst#RFC for Sgt. Pepper's inclusion[edit]

(Initiated 35 days ago on 6 March 2019) Would an experienced editor assess the consensus at Talk:List of music considered the worst#RFC for Sgt. Pepper's inclusion? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 09:20, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Gender feminism#Request for comment: merge proposal[edit]

(Initiated 33 days ago on 8 March 2019) Would an experienced editor please assess the consensus at Talk:Gender feminism#Request for comment: merge proposal? Thank you. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 06:00, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RfC: The Points Guy[edit]

(Initiated 32 days ago on 9 March 2019) Would an uninvolved experienced editor please assess the consensus at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RfC: The Points Guy? Thank you. — Newslinger talk 10:11, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Achziv#Merge[edit]

(Initiated 31 days ago on 10 March 2019) Needs an un-involved editorn to close regarding place and placename. Thanks in advance. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 23:38, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Template talk:Article history#RfC on proposed link in template[edit]

(Initiated 23 days ago on 18 March 2019) Can an uninvolved experienced editor please assess consensus at Template talk:Article history#RfC on proposed link in template and close the discussion? It is a fairly technical question unlikely to garner many more comments. Ergo Sum 00:31, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Motion picture content rating system#RfC: Should we install a color scheme with 9 colors in the comparison table?[edit]

(Initiated 20 days ago on 21 March 2019) I am requesting a technical "Close without prejudice" of this RFC. The RFC is effectively a re-run of an earlier one at Talk:Motion_picture_content_rating_system/Archive_1#RfC: Should the comparison table in the article use a color scheme accessible to color-blind users?, where the consensus was to select a scheme accessible to color-blind readers. The latest incarnation of the RFC was initiated by an editor now blocked for sockpuppetry. The RFC itself is contaminated by sockpuppetry, as well as putting forward a proposal that deviates from Wikipedia policy. Betty Logan (talk) 14:52, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

I cannot close this because I am WP:INVOLVED, but I urge the closer to look at two separate issues here: (i) is there a need for additional level(s); (ii) is there a need to alter the colour scheme of the existing levels in order to fit in the desired new level(s). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:12, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

RfC on List of Photographers[edit]

(Initiated 20 days ago on 22 March 2019)

Would an experienced editor kindly assess, summarize, and formally close the discussions on multiple aspects of edits to the List of Photographers article? There has been some vigorous discussion, but things have died down now. The RfC is structured into multiple sections, so I encourage the closer to address each section individually. Qono (talk) 20:42, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Place new discussions concerning RfCs above this line[edit]

Deletion discussions[edit]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2019 January 6#Bridges by city & Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2019 January 12#Bridges by city in Ukraine[edit]

(Initiated 94 days ago on 6 January 2019) Would an admin assess the consensus here. Marcocapelle (talk) 22:41, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2019 March 1#Category:Establishments_in_New_York_City_by_year[edit]

(Initiated 41 days ago on 1 March 2019) Discussion stalled since 16 March. Please would an admin assess the consensus here. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:13, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Crabapples[edit]

(Initiated 28 days ago on 13 March 2019) This MfD is so old and so horrible that it somehow got removed from the MfD "Old Business" section despite not being closed. Please, someone close it - I commented, so I can't. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 20:11, 6 April 2019 (UTC) (Note: it's been replaced on the page, but it's still in need of a close ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:11, 8 April 2019 (UTC))

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Evangelical Christianity[edit]

(Initiated 26 days ago on 15 March 2019) I feel that the discussion has received adequate input for a close to occur. A participant in the discussion who has !voted for deletion later relisted it, possibly in hopes for more delete !votes to potentially be posted. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 09:20, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff[edit]

(Initiated 26 days ago on 16 March 2019) One of a number of non-unanimous portal or complicated MfDs that were clogging up MfD to the point that they were no longer displaying properly on the page. The teechnical issues have been fixed by Xaosflux, but the discussions still need closure. I am involved by way of having strong opinions on portals, so I'm avoiding closing contentious portal MfDs. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:32, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:The Ohio State University[edit]

(Initiated 20 days ago on 22 March 2019) One of a number of non-unanimous portal or complicated MfDs that were clogging up MfD to the point that they were no longer displaying properly on the page. The teechnical issues have been fixed by Xaosflux, but the discussions still need closure. I am involved by way of having strong opinions on portals, so I'm avoiding closing contentious portal MfDs. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:29, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Place new discussions concerning XfDs above this line[edit]

Other types of closing requests[edit]

Wikipedia talk:Citation overkill#Merging Wikipedia:Bombardment here[edit]

(Initiated 82 days ago on 19 January 2019) Proposal to merge two project pages. Would an experienced editor please assess and close the discussion? Qzekrom 💬 ^they_them 19:52, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Implementing edit filter warnings for deprecated sources[edit]

(Initiated 80 days ago on 20 January 2019) I don't think this was advertised as an RfC, but either way it would probably benefit from a formal closure by an experienced editor. Sunrise (talk) 07:54, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

No, it wasn't a formal RfC - no {{rfc}} tag was used. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:24, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

I just requested a closure of the same discussion, but didn't realize this request was already active (in the "RfCs" section). I second this request, and have moved it to "Other types of closing requests". — Newslinger talk 05:45, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/2019/January[edit]

(Initiated 76 days ago on 25 January 2019) Could an experienced editor assess the consensus at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/2019/January? --Jax 0677 (talk) 20:33, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/2019/February[edit]

(Initiated 46 days ago on 23 February 2019) Could an experienced editor relist these, or assess the consensus at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/2019/February? --Jax 0677 (talk) 14:38, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Stub sorting proposals don't get relisted, they stay on the same monthly page until closed. See WP:WSS/P#Proposing new stub types – procedure item 6. I'm guessing that Pegship (talk · contribs), who usually closes these, is letting debate proceed for a while longer - after all, there are still some open from November 2018. Pegship, do you want somebody else to close these? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:55, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

If anyone can determine a consensus, they're welcome to close them. I've left them un-closed just to see if anyone has more to say; if not, I'll be happy to close them by end of March, which is not that long a stretch for the (much-depleted) troupe of stub sorters. Cheers! Her Pegship (speak) 22:08, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/2019/March#2010s single stubs[edit]

(Initiated 24 days ago on 18 March 2019) Could an experienced editor assess the consensus at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals#2010s single stubs? --Jax 0677 (talk) 13:31, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2019 March#Hearts (disambiguation)[edit]

(Initiated 17 days ago on 25 March 2019) Would an experienced editor assess the consensus at Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2019 March#Hearts (disambiguation)? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 09:20, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

 Done by B dash (diff) --DannyS712 (talk) 04:44, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2019 March#Patrick Moore (consultant)[edit]

(Initiated 15 days ago on 27 March 2019) Would an experienced editor assess the consensus at Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2019 March#Patrick Moore (consultant)? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 09:20, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Pages recently put under extended-confirmed protection[edit]

Thousands of Portals[edit]

Closing initial discussion. UnitedStatesian (talk) 14:12, 9 April 2019 (UTC)(non-admin closure)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

The purpose of this posting is to discuss portals, hundreds of portals. There is already discussion at Village pump (Proposals) (see WP:Village pump (proposals)#Hiatus on mass creation of Portals) to stop the creation of large numbers of portals by User:The Transhumanist, and the consensus is going strongly in favor of a hiatus, and there have been no new portals created since 22 February, but there has been no agreement to stop the creation of portals. The discussion at VPR appears to have slowed down, with a very clear consensus for some sort of hiatus, although it is not clear whether everyone agrees that the consensus is to stop the semi-automated creation of portals, or to stop the semi-automated creation of portals by TTH, or to stop all creation of portals by TTH (since there seems to be disagreement on what is semi-automated creation). Some editors have suggested that these portals are the equivalent of redirects by Neelix that warrant mass destruction. Anyway, proposals at VPR are just that, proposals. I am bringing the discussion here.

Perhaps I don’t understand, but User:The Transhumanist appears to be saying that we need to use portals as an experiment in navigation and in innovation. I am not sure that I understand whether, by experiment, they mean testing, a new initiative, or what, but I am not sure that I understand what is being innovated, or why it requires hundreds or thousands of portals. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:51, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Note that the mass hiatus wasn't on me per se, but applicable in general. It applies to everyone. It's so that nobody mass creates portals for the time being. That includes me.    — The Transhumanist   05:53, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

An Example and Some Comments[edit]

One of the portals that has been proposed by User:Legacypac for deletion is Portal:English language. A look at it, with its error messages, is sadly informative. It was one of Wikipedia's earliest portals, preceding the involvement of the current portal team of TTH and a few other editors. However, the current portal team has made breaking changes to Portal:English language, apparently in order to attempt to improve the maintenance of portals. They apparently don't know how to keep our existing portals working, so what business do they have creating thousands of additional portals? We are told that the new portals are maintenance-free or nearly maintenance-free, but have the new portals been created at the cost of breaking existing portals? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:39, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Also, TTH says, above, that there is a hiatus that applies to everyone so that nobody mass creates portals for the time being. What is meant by mass creation, as opposed to individual creation? Are they agreeing not to create any portals for the time being? How long a time? Will they defer the creation of any new portals until (and unless) there is a consensus arrived at the criteria for the creation and maintenance of new portals? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:39, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Also, if any editor wishes to propose mass deletion of portals, similar to Neely redirects, that can be Proposal 3 (or 4). Robert McClenon (talk) 03:39, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Further investigation found 2 of the 8 portals linked off the top of the Mainpage had similar Red Script Errors where content should be. User:Moxy has now reverted these to pre-automation status. A lot of effort goes into keeping content linked from the Mainpage error free, yet this little Portal Project group replaced featured article quality portals with automated junk. Legacypac (talk) 03:46, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

See WP:AADD#Surmountable problems. "Something broke but could be fixed" isn't a deletion rationale. Much less a deletion rationale for different pages; that's the guilt by association fallacy. Note also the ad hominem fallacy in there too, making it about specific people and getting back at them and suggesting they're too incompetent to create a new page, etc., instead of the argument focusing on content and our systems of presenting and navigating it. Tsk tsk.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:11, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal 1: Interim Topic-Ban on New Portals[edit]

Proposal 2 - Indefinite ban on page creation[edit]

Proposal 3: Relax tagging and notification requirements for Grouped Portal MfDs[edit]

Concerning further proposals[edit]

Proposal 4: Provide for CSD criterion X3[edit]

Clearly both sides feel strongly about this question and both have advanced reasonable arguments. Those in favour typically cite the large amount of community effort required to clean up these portals through the normal MfD process, while those against often do not want to see useful content thrown out with the useless. There is also a significant minority who see a need for some fast-track process to avoid wasting community time, but think that this proposal goes too far. As it seems likely that a less-aggressive proposal would gain the support of most of the supporters as well as a large segment of those opposed, the arguments in opposition seem somewhat stronger. So, while there is a small majority in favour of the change, there is no consensus for it. GoldenRing (talk) 10:28, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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 Administrator note: This proposal is being advertised at WP:VPP and WP:CD, and it has been requested that it stay open for at least 30 days. ~Swarm~ {talk} 05:14, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

---

I am entering and numbering this proposal in order to get it into the record, but am requesting that action on it be deferred until the current round of MFDs are decided.

As per User:UnitedStatesian, Create Criteria for Speedy Deletion criterion X3, for portals created by User:The Transhumanist between April 2018 and March 2019. Tagging the portals for speedy deletion will provide the notice to users of the portals, if there are any users of the portals. I recommend that instructions to administrators include a request to wait 24 hours before deleting a portal. This is a compromise between the usual 1 to 4 hours for speedy deletion and 7 days for XFD. The availability of Twinkle for one-click tagging will make it easy to tag the pages, while notifying the users (if there are any). Robert McClenon (talk) 04:21, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

This proposal should be posted in a wider venue, such as WP:VPR or WP:MFD. Many of those portals have been in place for months, making WP:AN too narrow a venue for them. CSD notices wouldn't be placed until after the discussion is over, and therefore would not serve to notify the users of those portals of the discussion. A notice to the discussion of this proposal, since it is a deletion discussion, should be placed on each of the portals, to allow their readers to participate in the discussion. The current round of MfDs are not a random sampling of the portals that were created, and therefore are not necessarily representative of the set. The portals themselves vary in many ways, including scope, the amount of time they've been accessed by readers, quality, number of features, picture support, volume of content, amount of work that went into them, number of editors who worked on them, length, readership, etc.    — The Transhumanist   07:09, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

How would you suggest to get a representative sample? Legacypac (talk) 07:20, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for asking. That would be difficult now, since there are already a bunch of portals nominated for MfD. If those were included, then the sample would already be skewed. I expect a truly random sample would reveal that some portals are worth keeping and others are not. A more important question would be "How would we find the portals worth keeping? Which is very similar to the question "what should the creation criteria for portals be?", the very thing they are discussing at the portal guidelines page right now. Many of these portals may qualify under the guideline that is finally arrived upon there. For example, they are discussing scope. There are portals of subjects that fall within Vital articles Level 2, 3, 4, and 5, and there are many portals of subjects of similar scope to the subjects at those levels. And many of the portals had extra work put into them, and who knows how many had contributions by other editors besides me. Another factor is, that the quality of the navigation templates the portals are powered by differs, and some of the portals are powered by other source types, such as lists. Some have hand-crafted lists, as there are multiple slideshow templates available, one of which accepts specific article names as parameters. Another way to do that is provide a manual list in the subtopics section and power the slideshow from that. Some of the portals are of a different design than the standard base template. Some are very well focused, contextually, while others are not. For example, some of the portals have multiple excerpt slideshows to provide additional context.    — The Transhumanist   07:46, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support in principle. Looking at the existing MFD discussions, TTH seems determined to drag and wikilawyer as much as possible to try to derail the discussions, even for blatantly and indefensibly inappropriate microportals like those discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portals for Portland, Oregon neighborhoods; it's not a good use of anyone's time to go through the same timesink 5000+ times. (The cynic in me says that a speedy criterion wouldn't work as while the creators wouldn't be able to decline the templates themselves, TTH and Dreamy Jazz would probably just follow the tagger around removing the speedy templates from each other's creations.) In practice, it would probably be more efficient to do what we did with Neelix and have a streamlined MFD nomination process, in which "created by TTH" is considered sufficient grounds for deletion at MFD and they default to delete unless someone can make a strong argument for keep. MFD is less gameable and also gives a space for people to defend them in those rare cases where they're actually worth keeping. (Every time I look, I find that the flood of inane and pointless TTH portals has spread further than I thought; shipping containers portal, anyone?) ‑ Iridescent 08:26, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

  Dreamy Jazz seems unlikely do that, having already decided during this debate to stop donating their time to Wikipedia. Certes (talk) 18:06, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• Comment – Another option would be to move these to draft space. The templates and lua modules could be modified so that the portals render right in that namespace (I wish I would have thought of this before). Being in draft space would give time to fix their various problems (keeping in mind that micro-scope is not fixable), and identify the ones worth keeping. I would agree not to move any of them personally, and would propose/request such moves after the new creation criteria guidelines for portals are settled upon. I would also be willing to tag those that did not meet those guidelines with CSD (as creator), saving Legacypac the trouble of nominating them at MfD (he mentioned somewhere that he thought I should help clean up this "mess"). Another benefit of this strategy is that if any of them sit in draft space too long without further development, they automatically become subject to deletion per the draft space guidelines, and those that reach that age without any edits can be deleted en masse without time-consuming effort-wasting MfD discussions. This course of action would of course need the participation of some lua programmers to add the necessary functionality to the modules, which would be a good upgrade for those, to allow for portal drafts to be created in the future.    — The Transhumanist   09:15, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

P.S. @Iridescent and Legacypac: (pinging)    — The Transhumanist   09:28, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• Absolutely not. The problem is that hundreds of portals on obscure topics makes an unmaintainable mess. Passing it to another namespace does not solve the problem which is that the portals are not helpful and are not maintainable. Automated creation of outlines/portals/anything must stop. Johnuniq (talk) 09:36, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• No. I tried moving one broken portal to Draft as a test and it broke even more stuff. Not worth the effort to modify everything for draft space and then let the same little group of editors release them willy nilly back into portal space. Since this group ignored their own Wikipedia:Portal/Guidelines "portals should be about broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers." why should anyone trust them to follow stricter guidelines? Legacypac (talk) 09:57, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Definitely not. What possible benefit would there be to cluttering up another namespace with ≈5000 pages that will never serve any useful purpose? If you want to goof around with wikicode, nobody's stopping you installing your own copy of Mediawiki; we're not your personal test site. ‑ Iridescent 15:38, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• As a general rule, Portal pages should not be draftified. In fact, we should not usually move anything not designed to be an article to draft space. Draft portals should be in portal space, just like draft books should be in book space and draft templates in template space (pages with subpages are a pain to move, and many namespaces have special features that suggest keeping drafts in the same space if possible). If a portal is not ready for viewing by the general public, tag it with a relevant maintenance template and make sure it is not linked to from mainspace or from other portal pages.
• In the case at hand, TT's mass created portals do not seem like they will all be soon made ready for wider consumption, so deleting them seems the better option. —Kusma (t·c) 20:15, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support nuking from orbit: It's the only way to be sure. ——SerialNumber54129 09:32, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• How is this the "only way" to be "sure"? What about actually viewing the portals themselves, as opposed to mass deleting them all sight unseen? North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 03:08, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support enough with the wikilawyering and obstruction. This proposal is a little too narrow though - TTH created 3500+ automated portals but others in his little team created around 1000 more. I just grouped some by User:Dreamy Jazz into Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion#US_County_Portals Legacypac (talk) 09:57, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support These useless broken portals have to go. CoolSkittle (talk) 14:54, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• Could you provide any evidence that all of the portals are "broken"? Many of them that I have viewed and used are fully functional, and not broken at all. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 03:09, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support, too many, too quickly, not enough thought went into their creation. Nuke these, revert other portals that were better before TTH "restarted" them. Automation should help with portal maintenance, not replace portal maintenance or move the maintenance burden to navboxes or other places. —Kusma (t·c) 14:57, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support, sensible and fair way to deal with these. Johnbod (talk) 16:53, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support: MFD could never handle the overwhelming amount of unnecessary and unsustainable portals, considering the magnitude of TTH's portal creation entering the thousands. –eggofreason^talk 20:12, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support nuking. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:30, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Transcluded to Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 20:31, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support mass creation of portals on these topics isn't appropriate without wider discussion, and the automated/semi-automated method used to create them doesn't produce high quality output. Portal:Sierra County, California, for example, is about a county with a population of 3,240, and consists of the lead of the main article, a few random contextless images grabbed from that article (mostly maps or logos) and portal boilerplate. Cleaning these up will require a temporary speedy deletion criterion, I don't think MfD could handle the load. Hut 8.5 22:25, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support as proposer. I had already suggested deferring, but am satisfied that it is going ahead to mass-delete. I will add that, after a consensus is reached on whether and how to use portals, any that were deleted and are needed are available at Requests for Undeletion. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:01, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
• This mass page creation went against WP:MEATBOT and at least the spirit of WP:MASSCREATION if not the letter. An appropriate remedy for automated script and semi-automated creation is speedy deletion. Did you know they were driving for 10,000 portals at a rapid pace? It's here [10] Legacypac (talk) 04:44, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose any and all notions of creating new CSD criteria at any drama board. Discussions here are too rushed, too emotive, too reactionary. Use WT:CSD. Consider using a WT:CSD subpage RfC. Do not attempt to mandate the detail of policy from a drama board. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:52, 4 March 2019 (UTC) Transclusion is not good enough. The discussion needs to be searchable from WT:CSD, and the specifics of any and all new criteria need to address the Criteria for a new CSD criterion. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:55, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Many editors at the Village Pump discussion, the Tban discussion above, and at MfDs also supported this. We do not need to fragment this discussion further. Legacypac (talk) 05:12, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Proposal 1 will make this Proposal 4 moot. This Proposal 4 is not a proper CSD implementation. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:41, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe: Proposal 1 is about stopping TTH from creating new portals. Proposal 4 is about deleting those he created in the last couple of months. How is P1 going to make P4 moot? —Kusma (t·c) 10:19, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

List them all in an MfD, if they must all be deleted. A CSD that enables self appointed decision makes for which should go and which might be ok, is inferior to MfD. MfD can handle a list of pages. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:24, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

If you want them all at MfD stop objecting to the listing of specific Portals at MfD. Legacypac (talk) 01:34, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

No. Some of the Portals I would support for deletion, and others definitely no. This makes the proposal for a CSD invalid. It fails the CSD new criterion criteria. The proposal is neither Objective or Uncontestable. It would pick up a lot of portals that should not be deleted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:44, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support. No care at all went into these portals, they are mindless creations with loads of errors and little actual benefit for our readers. I would also support the restoration of all pre-existing portals to the pre-transhumanist version, the new "single page" version may require less maintenance, but is way too often clearly inferior (see e.g. this, which is more like vandalism than actual improvement, and has been reversed since). Fram (talk) 10:31, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment. Anyone restoring old multi-subpage portals should bear in mind that they will require maintenance. If there is no-one willing to maintain them, they, too are likely to be MfDed. No old-style portal with a willing and active maintainer has been converted as far as I know, so I suggest that anyone restoring them should be willing to maintain them. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 16:47, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
  • No. Converting an unmaintained but well-designed portal into an unmaintained semi-automated worse portal is not the way forward. Any claims that the new portals are maintained or don't need maintaining is false, as the many problematic new portals demonstrate. Fram (talk) 17:00, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Portal:Germany was converted (more than once) although it has maintainers. To make sure your portal isn't "improved", you need to put a specific template on the page, which isn't very obvious. There are old-style multi page portals that require only minimal maintenance, and where the conversion removed specific features. All those should be reverted, also to protect the subpages from overzealous deleters (the worst is deleting the /box-footer subpages; this breaks all old revisions by removing a necessary closing div). —Kusma (t·c) 17:21, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose A mass-deletion of the new generation portals. Listing them at MfD will be sufficient for any that do not meet the criteria laid out in the portal guidelines (which are still under discussion). It makes little sense to remove the whole batch because some of them are problematic. They would need to be properly triaged to ensure the good ones are not caught in the process. I would of course, help with said triage. We're not trying to create more work for the community, just preserve good content. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 23:47, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - You created more work for the community by creating thousands of portals, some of which do not work, and with no intention to maintain them. I see no evidence that this effort created good content that needs to be preserved. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:17, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

There is no new content in the automated portals, it's all poorly repackaged bits of existing content. Legacypac (talk) 04:40, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

All portals, old or new, good or bad, manual or automated, repackage existing content. That's their job. New content belongs in articles. Certes (talk) 11:20, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

• Strong oppose per wumbolo below: criterion P2 already covers a number of these, the rest should be discussed. I still stand by my original comment which follows this addition. Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 22:37, 13 March 2019 (UTC) Original comment: Weak oppose on principle. CSD is a necessary evil, and I don't think we should be hasty to add another criterion that skips our usual consensus process. I'm fine with nuking these portals and not opposed to deleting them, any diamonds in the rough will prove their worth by being created again, but I would prefer one big MfD with the rationale "created by The Transhumanist" which allows proper determination of consensus and gives those who want to spend their time triaging a chance to do so. Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 08:03, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Building multipage MfDs like Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portals for Portland, Oregon neighborhoods is time consuming and tedious. A temporary CSD is rhe way to go. Consensus against this mess of new portals has already been established at VP, AN and in the test MfDs. Legacypac (talk) 17:20, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support due to the massive amount of time it would take to put the ~4500 portals through MfD. MfD has been swamped with portal deletion requests from some time ago, and I can't see all this stuff removed via MfD in the foreseeable future (as someone said earlier, there is still a lot of Outlines left over from one of TTH's previous projects, so who knows how long it would take for MfD to delete all of this). This CSD X3 would streamline the process, and it would probably only take a few days to a week. It would help, as also mentioned earlier, to extend the criterion to the other users involved in the mass creation of these portals. Rlin8 (☎·✎·📧) 03:31, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  • MfD has never had an issue to nominations of list of pages. 4500 separate MfD nominations would be absurd, but a list would be OK. If each is new, and has a single author, notifications of the author will be trivial. A CSD proposal shortcuts a discussion of the merits of the new portals, and pre-supposes deletion to be necessary, contrary to deletion policy. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:01, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

TTH demands we place notification on every portal. We can skip notifying him, but building even 20 page MfD's is very time consuming. How do you propose to discuss 4500 or even 100 assorted portals at a time? These took 3 min to make - but far more than 3 min to list, tag, discuss and vote, then delete - when you add up all the time required from various editors and Admins. The test MfDs are sufficent and the very strong opposition to this automated portal project justifies this temporary CSD. Legacypac (talk) 04:16, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

"TTH demands we place notification on every portal"? Legacypac, I have missed that post by him. If he did that, it needs to be repudiated. If these are new pages, and he is the only author, it is sufficient to notify him once. If all 4500 are essentially variations on the same thing, as long as the full set is defined, and browsable, we can discuss them all together at MfD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:34, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

User:SmokeyJoe during the Portland Oregon neighborhood MFD I specifically said I was not tagging all the related portals but he insisted I tag here [11] I could not get support in the section above to relax the MfD tagging because others wanted this CSD. During the Delete Portals RFC TTH went all out insisting every portal including the community portal be tagged for deletion - then he did it himself. That brought in all kinds of casual infrequent editors who were mostly against deleting the community portal. (Even though that was Pretty much pulled out of consideration for deletion before the tagging project). That massive tagging derailed the deletion RFC. By making cleanup as hard as possible TTH is making a lot of people want to nuke everything. Legacypac (talk) 06:11, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Legacypac's analysis is erroneous and misleading. The WP:ENDPORTALS RFC was a deletion discussion, and posting a notice on each page up for deletion is required by deletion policy. Note that the Community Portal was only mentioned twice. A portal that was the basis for about 50 oppose votes was the Current Events portal. Neither the Community Portal nor the Current Events portal were exempted in the proposal at any time. If you didn't count those, that left the count at about 150 in support of eliminating portals to about 250 against.    — The Transhumanist   07:25, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe: (edit conflict) See the top of this section for the referred to statement, which is not exactly as he quoted. A notice posted at the top of the portals slated by this proposal would be appropriate. Legacypac has been posting notice for his multi-page nominations using the {{mfd}} template, which auto-generates a link to an mfd page of the same title as the page the template is posted on. Rather than following the template's instructions for multiple pages, he's been creating an MfD page for each, and redirecting them to the combined mfd. Then a bot automatically notifies the creator of each page (me), swamping my user talk page with redundant notifications. Thus, Legacypac believes he'll have to create thousands of mfd redirect pages, and that I somehow want 3500+ notifications on my talk page.    — The Transhumanist   07:10, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

You want us to manually tag pages for deletion that you used an automated script to create? You flooded Wikipedia with useless pages in violation of WP:MEATBOT but you are worried about having to clean up your talkpage notices? Just create an archiving system for your talkpage like we did for User:Neelix's talkpage. If you don't want notices you could start tagging pages that fail your own guidelines with "delete by author request" instead of commenting on how we will do the cleanup. Legacypac (talk) 08:37, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

TTH, if you don't want so many deletion notices on your talk page, then remember in future not to create thousands of spam pages. Please help with the cleanup, rather than complaining about it.

@Legacypac: good work MFDing the spam, but it does seem that you are using a somewhat inefficient approach to tagging. Have you tried asking at WP:BOTREQ for help? In the right hands, tools such as AWB make fast work of XfD tagging. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:21, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support whatever course of action that will result in every portal created in this manner being deleted with the minimal of time and effort required. TTH has set up his automated tool, created a massive mess, and left it unattended for others to sort out. It should take less time to clean up this mess than it did to make it, not more. Nuke the lot and if there is anything of value lost then TTH can manually request pages to be restored one at a time at DRV. Fish+Karate 11:19, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support per Fish and karate. RGloucester — ☎ 14:20, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
• Strong oppose as written. I could support something that explicitly excluded portals which are in use and/or are being developed, but the current proposal to indiscriminately delete everything, including active portals, unless the admin chooses to notify any editors and the ones notified happen to be online in a narrow time frame is significantly overly broad. Thryduulf (talk) 01:54, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support Not that portals are that bad, but I don't think we need portals on smaller subjects. (Portal:Spaghetti when we already have Portal:Pasta? Portal:Nick Jr., anyone?) Some might be worth keeping, but a lot are unneeded and unmaintainable. At least it's not a Neelix case. SemiHypercube 16:57, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @SemiHypercube: "Some might be worth keeping" is actually an argument against this proposal. Thryduulf (talk) 12:08, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
    • @Thryduulf: Kind of, but that might be a reason not to just mass delete all at once. In the Neelix case there were some redirects that were actually useful, so a separate CSD criterion was used to keep some redirects at the admins' discretion, so this might be a similar case (before you say that contradicts my "it's not a Neelix case" statement, I meant that in terms of what the redirects were about) SemiHypercube 12:23, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
    • It violates points 1 and 2 of the requirements for CSD criteria: objectivity and unconestability. Unless all the portals covered should be speedily deleted then none of them should be. If you only want to delete some of them then you should be opposing this criterion (just like you should have opposed the subjective Neelix criterion). Thryduulf (talk) 12:34, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

*Support Only realistic way to deal with these. Johnbod (talk) 01:57, 11 March 2019 (UTC) Duplicate !vote struck. GoldenRing (talk) 10:16, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

• Request the posting of a notice at the top of each of the pages being nominated here for mass deletion, as required by the Deletion Policy. This proposal is currently a gross violation of the deletion policy because it is a discussion to delete 3500+ pages, that have been created over the span of a year, that are presently being viewed hundreds of thousands of times per month (projected to millions of times over the coming year) by readers of Wikipedia. The proposal for mass deletion has been made without the required notice being posted at the top of the pages to be deleted. This is being decided by a handful of editors unbeknownst to the wider community, namely, the readership of the portals to be deleted. It may be that those reading such notices would decide that the portals should be deleted, but the point here is that you are denying them the opportunity to participate in the deletion discussion as required by the deletion policy.    — The Transhumanist   21:12, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Request you stop wasting people's fucking time. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:41, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

• He switched back to Outlines Special:Contributions/The_Transhumanist which are another unpopular plague for Wikipedia. The assertion that hundreds of thousands of readers a month are looking at his 3500 portals is fanciful at best and not supported by readership stats. Legacypac (talk) 21:58, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Support opposing anything TTH says from now on. Per OiD. ——SerialNumber54129 13:30, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Strong oppose taking ad hominem arguments into consideration. Thryduulf (talk) 13:49, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Oppose WP:BLUDGEONING. ——SerialNumber54129 15:48, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

• @Legacypac, technically he's probably telling the truth. Even obvious drivel like Portal:Coconuts averages around five views per day, thanks to webcrawlers and people who have the articles watchlisted and are wondering "what's this mystery link that's just been spammed onto the article I wrote?"; multiply that by 3500 and you have 500,000 pageviews per month right there. ‑ Iridescent 22:52, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

• Comment Neelix created about 50,000 redirects, which were reviewed by the community. The number of portals is an order of magnitude smaller. If X3 is to be introduced, it should involve a similar review process. We should certainly delete portals which have too narrow a scope or are of poor quality and cannot be improved. However, systematic deletion of all portals which qualify for consideration, purely on an ad hominem argument, would be as wrong as semi-automatic creation. Certes (talk) 10:51, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Absolutely not. Look at the rate these were created [12] sometimes several dozen an hour, and sometimes an average of 12 seconds each. If so little thought went into creation, why make deletion so difficult? The Neelix cleanup took far too long (I was a big part of it) and we deleted the vast majority of those redirects anyway the extra hard way. As far as I could see the editors who insisted we review everything did none of the reviewing. Also, these were created in violation of WP:MEATBOT which is a blockable or at least sanctionable offense Legacypac (talk) 11:04, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Two wrongs do not make a right - it is much more important that we get the cleanup right than it happens quickly. Whether or not TTH is blocked or otherwise sanctioned is completely irrelevant. While many (maybe even most) of the created portals should be deleted not all of them should be, and this needs human review: see requirement 2 for new CSD criteria at the top of WT:CSD. Thryduulf (talk) 12:07, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

@Thryduulf, Certes, SmokeyJoe, and Legacypac: Concerning the rate, Legacypac's observation is not accurate. What the edits he is citing do not show, is the method by which the pages were created: they were created in batches, in tabs. Before saving, all the pages/tabs were inspected. For the pages that did not pass muster, such as those that displayed errors (this did not catch all errors, because lua errors can be intermittent or turn up later due to an edit in source material being transcluded), the tabs for those were closed. In a batch of 50, 20 or 30 might survive the cull (though batch sizes varied). Some tabs got additional edits in addition to inspection, to fix errors or remove the sections the errors were in, or further development. After all the tabs in a batch were inspected and the bad ones culled, the remaining ones were saved. That's why the edits' time stamps are so close together. If you look more closely, you'll see the time gap is between the batches rather than the individual page saves. Therefore, WP:MEATBOT was not violated.    — The Transhumanist   18:55, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

He claims [13] he created 500 portals in 500 to 1000 minutes. and is using a script Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion#User:The_Transhumanist/QuickPortal.js If this is not MEATBOT we should refind MEATBOT as meaningless. Legacypac (talk) 19:07, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

A minute or two per portal of the new design sounds about right. Note that the script doesn't save pages. It puts them into preview mode, so that the editor can review them and work on them further before clicking on save.    — The Transhumanist   19:39, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

@Legacypac and The Transhumanist: As I said above, the method of creation is irrelevant to this proposal, as is what (if any) sanction is appropriate. Likewise discussions of WP:MEATBOT don't affect this at all. What matters is only that these pages exist but some of them should not, this proposal needs to be rejected or modified such that it deletes only those that need deleting without also deleting those that do not. Thryduulf (talk) 20:42, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

• Procedural note I have advertised this discussion at WP:VPP and would encourage others to add links where they think interested editors might see. I think this should remain open for 30 days, as it is quite a significant policy change. GoldenRing (talk) 09:24, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support now that the MfDs (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) are closing with strong consensus around delete, it is clear this is the fastest path to improving the encyclopedia (which is what we are here for, remember?) Any argument that 3,500 more portals have to go through MfD is strictly throwing sand in the gears. It is going to be enough manual labor pulling the links to the deleted portals from all the templates and pages they have been added to. UnitedStatesian (talk) 15:15, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
  • That shows that a speedy deletion criterion is possibly warranted for some, but several comments on those discussions - including your own at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Spaghetti - indicate that this proposed criterion is too broad. Thryduulf (talk) 15:33, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
    • You misunderstand my comment at that MfD: I strongly support that portal's deletion and all the others that would be covered by this proposed criterion. UnitedStatesian (talk) 15:37, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
      • You supported the deletion of Portal:Spaghetti because the topic was covered by Portal:Pasta, even though Portal:Pasta would be deleted under this criterion? That's rather disingenuous at best and very significantly and unnecessary disruptive at worst. Portal:Pasta is an example of a portal that should not be deleted without discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 16:00, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
        • Again, you misunderstand my reasoning: I was specifically pointing out to another editor that the existence of Portal:Pasta could NOT be a reason to delete Portal:Spaghetti, since in my opinion Portal:Pasta would likely also be deleted. Instead, I think the current Wikipedia:Portal/Guidelines provide ample OTHER reasons for deleting both portals (and many, many others, of course). Hope that clarifies. UnitedStatesian (talk) 17:55, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
• Strong oppose and keep all. WP:P2 covers unnecessary portals, and there is no rationale presented other than WP:IDLI to delete a large proportion of all of them, which were all kept after a RfC in 2018. The next time content policies are created at AN by the cabal of admins, I am retiring from Wikipedia. wumbolo ^^^ 16:40, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

  @Wumbolo: Well, if it came to that, take it to WP:RFARB first. Given the past history of WP:FAITACCOMPLI and WP:LOCALCONSENSUS extremism (i.e., WP:FALSECONSENSUS) cases, I have little doubt that ArbCom would agree to take a case about a gaggle of anti-portal people WP:GAMING the consensus-formation process by inventing sweeping policy changes out of their butts in a venue few content editors pay attention to and which is clearly out-of-scope for such a decision, even if it somehow had sufficiently broad input (e.g., via WP:CENT). I'm skeptical any alleged consensus is going to come out of this discussion, anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:33, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support This is a repeat of the Neelix situation. ―Susmuffin ^Talk 00:01, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @Susmuffin: The situation has similarities, but the proposed criterion is not comparable. Criterion X1 applied only to redirects created by Neelix that the reviewing administrator reasonably believed would be snow deleted if discussed at RfD (i.e. they had to evaluate each redirect), this criterion would apply to every portal created by TTH in the timeframe without any other conditions and without the need for anyone to even look at anything other than the date of creation. Thryduulf (talk) 00:13, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
    • Honestly, there are far too many portals to be deleted through the usual channels. However, an quick evaluation would be reasonable, provided we keep the portal system itself. ―Susmuffin ^Talk 00:24, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Unlike Neelix who created some reasonable redirects along the way, these autogenerated portals are of uniformly low quality. The community has looked at representive samples across a variety of subject areas at MFD and the community has already deleted 143 of the 143 portals nominated at closed MfDs. The yet to be closed MfDs are headed to increasing that number. No one has suggested any alternative deletion criteria for X3. Legacypac (talk) 00:45, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

That nobody has suggested an alternative is irrelevant - it's not up to those who oppose this proposal to fix it, and those who support it are by-and-large ignoring the objections. The MfDs have been selected as a representative sample of those that, after review, are not worth keeping and have been reviewed by MfD participants. This does not demonstrate that deletion without review is appropriate - indeed quite the opposite. Remember there is no deadline, it is significantly more important that we get it right than we do things quickly. Thryduulf (talk) 09:59, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Not particularly similar to the redirect situation that occurred; portals are vastly different in nature and composition from simple redirects. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 03:16, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose as unwarranted and dangerous (and circular reasoning). First, we do not modify CSD without a strong community (not admins' star chamber) consensus that an entire class of material is not just categorically unwanted but so unwanted that it should be deleted on sight without any further consideration. It's our most dangerous policy, and a change like this to it should be an RfC matter at WP:VPPOL. In theory, it could be at WT:CSD, except there is not yet any establishment of a consensus against these portals, and VPPOL is where that would get hashed out, since it's a project-wide question of content presentation and navigation (and maintenance, and whether tools can permissibly substitute for some manual maintenance, and ...). The cart is ahead of the horse here; we can't have a speedy deletion criterion without already having a deletion criterion to begin with. I strongly agree with SmokeyJoe: "Oppose any and all notions of creating new CSD criteria at any drama board. Discussions here are too rushed, too emotive, too reactionary."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:05, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose – WP:P2 covers problematic portals just fine. A concerning issue here is that some users herein appear to simply not like portals in general, and so there are several arguments above for mass deletion as per this "I don't like it" rationale. Mass deletion should be a last step, not a first step, and portals should be considered on a case-by-case basis. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 22:22, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

You created some with the same tools. One or two of your creations are now at MfD which is why you are now engaging against this solution. We will consider each of your creations at MfD. Legacypac (talk) 02:34, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

My !vote here is based upon my view of the matter at hand, and as such, it stands. Period. Regarding my portal creations, so what? You come across as having a penchant for scolding content creators on Wikipedia if you don't like the medium that is used. Please consider refraining from doing so, as it is unnecessary, and patronizing. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 01:12, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• @Northamerica1000: I agree - for example, I actually welcome the creation of Portal:Economics because I think econ should be established as distinct from business as in Portal:Business and economics. Qzekrom 💬 ^they_them 02:20, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose - this CSD seems have to no more objective criteria than "shoot unless someone defends it". For this to be justified, they'd have to explain how no-one reacting within 24 hours was sufficient reasoning. As far as the initial proposal included, it didn't contain any acceptable objective criteria for something warranting deletion on quality grounds. Far worse, it didn't contain suitable justification (whether popularity/quality) for these portals to impose such a major hindrance to Wikipedia as to warrant a process with as few eyes (per consideration) as CSD. The nominator might have had more luck with a PortalPROD mechanism. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:09, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

This CSD exactly meets each criteria for CSD's at the WP:CSD page. It is clear. It is easy to decide if the page meets the CSD. We ran 145 of these portals through MfD already and none survived. Numerous editors suggested this CSD in the Village Pump discussion. These mass created portals universally have the same flaws. Therefore this oppose rational is flawed. Legacypac (talk) 02:34, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support: will allow to quickly manage the auto-created portals of zero utility. --K.e.coffman (talk) 02:23, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support enthusiastically. Taking all these portals through MFD would be a massive drain on community resources. TTH created these portals at sustained speeds of up to 40 per hour, so even the time taken to apply a CSD tag and assess it 24 hours later will require more editorial time than TTH took to create them. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:23, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
• Strong oppose - There are good quality portals that will be excluded, few maybe, but deserve to remain. For example Portal: Cities, Portal: Architecture Portal:Sculpture.Guilherme Burn (talk) 11:40, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @Guilherme Burn, maybe those are worth keeping. Or maybe not. But even if they are good, they are not worth the price of the community committing huge amounts of time to individually debating every one of the thousands of useless portals which members of the portal project have spewed out over the last year (often as drive by creations, and which project members have then piled into MFDs to keep.

If the Portals Project had exercised discretion so far, then we would be in a very different place. But it's utterly outraegous to ask the community to devote more time to assessing this spam than the Portal Project put into creating them. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:10, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Could these portals be marked to be spared?Guilherme Burn (talk) 13:03, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@Guilherme Burn: not according to the proposal as written. The only chance of saving is if an admin chooses to notify and wait 24 hours and somebody objects within those 24 hours and someone spots that CSD has been declined previously if it gets renominated. Thryduulf (talk) 14:01, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@Guilherme Burn: Portal:Cities is totally moribund and unread, and has never had a single participant. Portal:Architecture dates from 2005 and wasn't created by TTH or this tag-team, so wouldn't be deleted regardless (although I imagine the enormous wall of pointless links which TTH's bot dumped onto the page a couple of months ago would be reverted). ‑ Iridescent 14:08, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@Iridescent and BrownHairedGirl:One portal that does not meet Mfd criteria is enough for me to keep my opinion. Portal:Cities Although poor visualized is an important and good quality portal and the Portal:Sculpture (erroneously I quoted another portal) as well.Guilherme Burn (talk) 13:20, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

@Guilherme Burn: please can you clarify that statement that One portal that does not meet Mfd criteria is enough for me to keep.

Are you saying that you are willing to personally scrutinise a few thousand drive-by Portals at MfD in order to find the one which should be kept? Or do you want others to do that work?

TTH as made it very clear that these portals took on average between one and two minutes each to create ([14] Have you tried creating 500 portals? It is rather repetitious/tedious/time-consuming (from 500 to 1000 minutes)). So many multiples of that-one-to-two minutes per portal do you think it is fair to ask the community to spend scrutinisng them? And how much of that time are you prepared to give? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:12, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

So many multiples of that-one-to-two minutes per portal do you think it is fair to ask the community to spend scrutinisng them?Yes. The community also failed to set criteria for creating portals. What is the difference of Portal: Lady Gaga to Portal: ABBA? For me both should be excluded. If the community not had problems to create a portal for a unique singer, why now have problems with someone who has decided to create portals for lot of singers? And to be honest I do not think so much work like that, Mfd can be executed in blocks excluding several portals at the same time.Guilherme Burn (talk) 17:11, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose per SmokeyJoe et al. Completely unnecessary to override already existing procedure. Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  17:12, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @Paine Ellsworth: the administrative work of trawling through several thousand drive-by-created micro-portals is huge. Cleaning up this flood of portalspam through MFD requires a huge amount of editorial time, vastly more than was involved in creating the spam.

If you think that existing procedure is fine, why aren't you devoting large hunks of your time to doing the cleanup by the laborious procedure you defend? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:33, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Because...? I don't know, I guess I think this whole thing is rather more of a knee-jerk reaction than a brainy, measured response. Sure I've done my share of big, teejus jobs for the project and plan to continue (on my terms). I have a lot of respect for editors like yourself and TTH who've been lifting this project out of the primal soup of its beginnings even longer than I have (I went over ten in January, or was it Feb? whatever) and I'm tired of seeing good, solid editors get reamed for their work and retire, just leave or get banned. Don't think it can't happen to you, because as good as you are, neither you nor the rest of us are immune to the gang-up-on-em mentality that turns justice into vengeance 'round here. Think you should also know if you don't already that I'm about 95 farts Wikignome and 5 parts other, and it takes a lot less for us to think we're being badgered and handled. I voted correctly for me and my perceptions, and I don't expect either of us will change this unwise world one iota if you vote you and yours! WTF ever happened to forgiveness? REspectfully, Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  13:28, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• @Paine Ellsworth: Thank you for adding the words that I dared not write in case I was next against the wall. Certes (talk) 16:31, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• @Paine Ellsworth and Certes: I genuinely don't in any way doubt the good faith of either of you.

But it seems to me that the unintended effect of what you are both saying is something like "I am not making any effort to assist the cleanup of this mass portalspam, but I will take the effort to oppose measures which reduce the huge burden on those who are actually doing that necessary cleanup work".

As I say, I do not believe that is what either of you intend. But all I see from either of you is opposition to any restraint on the portalspammer, and opposition to anything which would assist the cleanup. I respect the fine principles from which you two start, but I urge you to consider the effects on the community both of not easing the cleanup burden and of continuing to describe the likes of TTH in positive terms. Look for example at my post in a thread above about the #Lack_of_good_faith_from_User:The_Transhumanist, and at Iridiscent's observation above that of TTH's previous history of spamming useless pages.

As to lifting this project out of the primal soup of its beginnings ... that's an extraordinary way to describe TTH's spamming of hundreds, if not thousands, of useless, unfinished micro-portals. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:53, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

I am not making any effort to assist with mass deletions, beyond !voting to delete the clearer cases. We already have enough enthusiasts working in that department. Until recently, I had been adjusting individual portals and enhancing the modules behind them to improve quality, but I slowed down when it became obvious that my contributions in that area will be deleted. Certes (talk) 00:19, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

So that's as I feared, @Certes: members of that WikiProject are leaving it to others to clean up the mess created by the WikiProject and its members.

That only reinforces my impression of a collectively irresponsible project, which doesn't restrain or even actively discourage portalspam, doesn't try to identify it, and doesn't assist in its cleanup.

That's a marked contrast with well-run projects. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:06, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

To BHG: not a surprising perspective, possibly a hasty generalization, however that's not your worst move. Your worst move is to consider "mass deletions" of what you deem "portalspam" as better than the "mass creations" of portals. Who's really to say? As an editor mentions below, "...these portals are doing no harm so great that they can be deleted without due process." So maybe you're wrong about those mass deletions that portray some portals as WMDs instead of the harmless windows into Wikipedia that they were meant to be? No matter, at present you are part of the strong throng. If you're right, you're right. But what if you and the strong throng are wrong? May things continue to go well with you! Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  07:01, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support and also apply it to those created by Northamerica1000, who has made such useless portals as Portal:Strawberries and Portal:Waffles. Reywas92^Talk 08:26, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @Reywas92: Northamerica1000 has created only 70 pages in the portal namespace (excluding redirects) in the relevant timeperiod. In no conceivable scenario does that justify a speedy deletion criterion. Thryduulf (talk) 11:58, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support per F&K (whatever course of action that will result in every portal created in this manner being deleted with the minimal of time and effort required) and SN (nuke from orbit). I'll be honest I don't know enough to know whether it should be a X3 or a P2 or a single MfD list with 4,500 entries... but it should not need to involve manually tagging pages that were created by a bot or otherwise spending any real time figuring out which should be kept and which should not be kept. Delete them all. If editors feel like this portal or that portal should be kept, let them make the case for undeletion afterwards which can be examined on a case-by-case basis. (If that process is followed, it goes without saying that the portal creator should be banned from making any such undeletion requests.) Leviv ich 17:25, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  How are we supposed to work out what is worth undeleting, short of downloading all portals in advance lest they be deleted? Certes (talk)

  If an editor is not aware of a portal existing, then that editor shouldn't be asking for it to be kept. If there are particular portals that editors know they want saved, then they should have an opportunity to request that it be saved. But there should be no one-by-one examination of thousands and thousands of portals created by one user using semi-automatic methods. Leviv ich 19:39, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  Kill them all and let God sort them out is very much not the way Wikipedia works and is very much not the way it should work. Why should the review be restricted to administrators (as your proposal would require)? Why is it preferable to significantly harm the encyclopaedia by deleting good portals than to do the job properly and delete only those that actually need deleting (which are doing significantly less harm by existing than deleting good ones would cause)? Thryduulf (talk) 18:06, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  So let me create several thousand pages semi-automatically, and then I'll put it to you to go through them one by one and tell me which should be deleted and why? I don't think that's how it should work. It should work in reverse. The default should be delete them all, with some process for allowing people to request that particular portals not be deleted. BTW, when I say "all portals" I mean all portals covered by this proposal, not all portals that exist on Wikipedia. Leviv ich 19:39, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  If an editor created several thousand pages semi-automatically, the correct sequence of events is to analyse a representative sample to determine whether consensus is that they are (a) all good, (b) mostly good, (c) all bad, (d) mostly bad, or (e) a mixture. If (a) then no action is necessary, if (b) then individual deletion nominations are the correct response. If (c) then a CSD criterion to remove all of them is appropriate, if (d) or (e) then a CSD affectingly only the bad ones should be explored. In this the situation is somewhere between (d) and (e) depending on your point of view, but this proposal is treating them as (c). As I've said several times, I'm not opposed to a criterion proposed (in the right place) that caught only the bad ones and allowed for objections - that is not this proposal. This situation is frequently compared to Neelix, but the proposal is very different - this one: All pages created between Time A and Time B, unless anyone objects to the optional tagging within 24 hours. Neelix: All pages created between Time A and Time B that would be snow deleted if nominated at RfD, retargetting would not lead to a useful redirect and no other editor has materially edited the redirect. Do you now understand the fundamental difference? Also remember that pages can be tagged by bot. Thryduulf (talk) 20:56, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  Yes. We also need to clarify one important detail of the proposal: would an editor be required to look at the portal before applying CSD, or is there an assumption that everything created by this editor in that time period is automatically rubbish and does not deserve assessment? Certes (talk) 22:29, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  If a human being didn't spend a lot of time making a page, then human beings should not spend much time deciding whether to keep it. I put it to you again: suppose tomorrow I create 5,000 new pages and ask you to go through them and decide which to keep and which to delete. That would be insane; this is a website of volunteers; my doing such a thing would be disruptive. It would make work for others. Nobody reading this thinks it would be a good idea for me to do such a thing. Yet this is what is essentially being asked of us. Insofar as I have a !vote, I !vote no. Delete them all. They are all bad. Any that are good can be recreated as easily as they were created in the first place. Letting people flag keepers in one way or another is a perfectly reasonable way to prevent the baby from being thrown out with the bathwater. But yes, my starting point is that all of them should be deleted because none of them should have been made in the first place, and they do not have content value. Some portals are the product of careful creation and extensive work, but not 5,000 or however-many automatically created by one editor. The quantum portal idea is a much better idea, anyway. Leviv ich 02:38, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

  I've alreadyanswered this immediately above, but as you apparently don't like the answer I'll respond again. If you create 5000 new pages in good faith (which TTH did), then the correct response is for others to go through and look at a representative sample, then gain a consensus about whether they are all bad, mostly bad, a mixture, mostly good or all good. This has been done with TTH's portals and while you may think they are all bad that is not the consensus view, especially as others have taken over some and either have improved them or are working on improving them. This means that it is important that only the bad ones are deleted meaning any proposal (such as this one) to delete all of them is overbroad and needs to be opposed. Thryduulf (talk) 10:03, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

  This statement by Thryduulf is incorrect on many levels. Who has taken over and improved any of his creations? Where is the concensus view that they are not all bad when so far zero of his creations have been kept at MfDs. Where is the proof any of this was in good faith when he admits several sections down that no one (including him) has followed WP:POG Legacypac (talk) 10:38, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

  Are you even reading the comments made by those who disagree with you because I'm not seeing evidence of it, especially when it comes to the MfDs (to reiterate, a reviewed selection of the worst pages being deleted by consensus but not unanimously in all cases does not provide evidence of the need for deletion of all of them without possibility of review). Thryduulf (talk) 16:36, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

  Thryduulf, so I spend less than 1 minute per page creating 5,000 pages; you and others spend–what, an hour, cumulatively, at least?–per page to analyze it, discuss it, vote it, close it, and delete it. I spend 5,000 minutes; the community spends 5,000 hours. With all due respect I am flabbergasted to hear such a high-ranked Wikipedian express the view that this is OK or preferred. Even with your representative sample approach, say it's 100 portals that are looked at, that's still 100 hours of labor forced upon volunteers. In my opinion, no one should be allowed to make 5,000 pages without going through something like a BAG process to seek community approval. There was once a time, years ago, when it made sense to, for example, automatically create a stub for every known city and town in the world. I believe that time has long since passed; there are not 5,000 pages that can be created automatically that we need to have that we do not already have (IMO). And as for consensus, if they're not being kept at MfD, the consensus is clear. Those portals that people maintain manually are the same ones that can be flagged as exceptions to a mass-deletion. So I feel like we're on the same page about consensus, but I'm saying the consensus to keep a particular portal can be effectuated by allowing people to flag them as exceptions to mass deletion, whereas you seem to be suggesting: let's get together and spend an hour per portal to decide if it should be kept, even though nobody spent anywhere near that time creating it in the first place. If that's where we are, we'll have to agree to disagree, because I fundamentally don't believe these portals are worth a one-by-one analysis, and I believe the representative sample approach you advocate has been done and has led to the conclusion that these are worth mass deleting with exceptions. I guess that's for a closer to make the ultimate decision about, but for my part, from uninvolved editors, I'm seeing a lot more support than oppose for mass deletion. Leviv ich 14:42, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

  @Levivich: If you're just going to ignore all the explanations I give in response to you (twice) and all the explanations elsewhere from me and others about why a reviewed selection of the worst being deleted (and not unanimously in all cases) is not evidence of the need for all of them to be deleted without possibility of review by others then it is clear we will never agree. Fortunately, per WP:VOLUNTEER, nobody is being forced to do anything they don't want to do - including you - and it's really disappointing that someone as experienced as you feels the need to prevent that work being done by others just because you don't want to. Perhaps between now and the time this is closed those in support of this overbroad proposal will actually choose to address the points in opposition but unless they do the only possible outcomes are no consensus or consensus against. Thryduulf (talk) 16:36, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

  Thryduulf, I heard you say: pick a representative sample and decide if they're all bad, some bad, etc. As I understand it, a representative sample has been sent to MfD with consensus to delete almost all of them, if not all of them (I'm not sure if lists I've seen are complete). Then you say that just because the sample is all-delete doesn't mean the whole category is all-delete. I infer you think the sample is not well-chosen? By TTH's admission there are like 4,500–5,000 portals, and a tiny tiny percentage of those are being manually maintained–like less than 5%. Are we on the same page about the facts so far? If so, where do you see consensus other than "delete 95% of these things"? Why can't we tag the 100 that are manually maintained and delete the remaining 4,500? I am reading what you're writing, but I am not understanding it. Leviv ich 16:44, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support: these portals are easy to create semi-automatedly and contain no information not found in articles so we're not losing any information from Wikipedia, which sets this apart from most other CSD criteria. An alternative proposal I would support is to expand the remit of P2 to apply to any portals with fewer than one-hundred pages under their scope (or alternatively, fewer than one-hundred notable topics if there is evidence that the portal creators and users are planning to create such topics as articles). If a topic doesn't have 100 pages on it at the bare minimum, there's absolutely no reason to focus a portal around it. Even for portals covering tens of thousands of articles, reader interest is very, very low and the current semi-automated busywork is not serving the readers. — Bilorv (he/him) _(talk) 19:05, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @Biorv: a proposal for expansion of speedy deletion criterion P2 is being discussed currently at [[Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion}} (which is where proposals related to speedy deletion criteria should be held, not AN), so I will refrain from explaining here why I oppose your suggestion to avoid splitting the discussion. Thryduulf (talk)
• Support with exceptions. I support the speedy deletion of all portals auto-created in recent months as it seems excessive and unnecessary. However, those few portals which are manually maintained in good faith should be kept. Down the line we need to take another look at a notability threshold to keep a lid on portalmania. Bermicourt (talk) 22:37, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • If you believe there should be exceptions for portals maintained in good faith (and I agree there should be), then you should be opposing this proposal in favour of an alternative one that allows for that. Thryduulf (talk) 22:59, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  X3 only covers the mass created automated portals started by TTH so already excludes the type of portal User:Bermicourt wants to exclude. Thryduulf is muddying the facts. Legacypac (talk) 23:08, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose because a) on procedural grounds this shouldn't be discussed at the AN "closed shop" and b) because these portals are doing no harm so great that they can be deleted without due process. It is not TTH's fault that the guidelines for portal creation are permissive. Triptothecottage (talk) 02:56, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment: I have already voted here but I just wanted to provide an example of how much thought was going into the creation of these portals. Portal:Aquatic ecosystem was created by TTH on Aug 15 2018 and in classified as "Complete" despite having 4 selected images. An identical portal was created at Portal:Aquatic ecosystems by TTH on Nov 24 and is classified as "Substantial" (the portalspace equivalent of B-class). One wonders, which portal is of better quality, how was this determined, and how was this oversight not caught? — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 13:33, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose: Criteria are supposed to be uncontestable - almost all pages could be deleted under this criterion, according to consensus. Looking at the most recent 50 portals created by TTH, I see a lot of frivolous ones, but I also see Portal:Pumpkins, Portal:Woodpeckers, Portal:International trade, and Portal:World economy, all of which represent subjects with well-populated categories. And I could add at least as many that are debatable. If TTH, now under a topic ban, were to create more portals, they could be speedy deleted under WP:G4. But the pages considered here were created before the ban, so they should stand or fall on their own merits. RockMagnetist(talk) 06:05, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @RockMagnetist: I think you mean WP:CSD#G5 (Creations by banned or blocked users) rather than WP:CSD#G4 (Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion). Thryduulf (talk) 14:49, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
    • WP:CSD#G5 cannot be used here. The locus of G5 revolves around obliterating the edits of LTA's and sockpupeters and for ban-evasion in a generalized scope. << FR ^(mobileUndo) 15:12, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
      • G5 can be used to delete pages created in violation of a topic ban, if deletion is the best course of action. I would never use G5 on a page that was a borderline violation, but that's not relevant here (I can't think of any page creation that would be anything other than clear-cut one way or the other). It's all theoretical though as TTH hasn't created any pages in violation of his ban and I think it unlikely they will. Thryduulf (talk) 15:37, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
      • @FR30799386 and Thryduulf: My point in mentioning G4 (oops - G5!) was that it is a more appropriate standard for deleting pages based on who created them. The current proposal is too broad. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:09, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose I have gone over many of the portals. It seems that there are a mix of topics which are mainstream and some which should not have been created. This isn't a white or a black issue, the wheat must be carefully separated from the chaff. << FR ^(mobileUndo) 12:04, 18 March 2019 (UTC) !vote from sockpuppet struck. GoldenRing (talk) 10:17, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

• FR, is there some issue with deleting them without prejudice to re-creating existing ones? These were basically made by a bot in what amounts to a single spasm, so deleting them all could be seen as a BRD reversion. The next step would be to let uninvolved editors recreate any worth keeping. Yes, that might take a while. There is no deadline and if some potentially useful portals have gone uncreated up til now, it's fine if they stay absent a little longer. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 04:07, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose - the proposal assumes that none of the portals should have been created, and that is an incorrect assumption. Certainly the are some that perhaps should not exist, but equally there are some that definitely should, and some that need a bit of discussion to determine consensus. Speedy deletion is not the way to resolve this. WaggersTALK 16:45, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • No, the proposal assumes (correctly) that 95% should never have been created, and that the tiny amount of time spent on those few that might be worth keeping doesn't justify the hours needed to discuss them all at MfD. The ones that get speedy deleted and would be an acceptable portal anyway can easily be recreated if someone really wants them. No effort has gone into creating these portals (usually not even the effort of checking if the result was errorfree, never mind informative or not a duplicate of existing portals), so demanding a week-long discussion for all of them because sometimes the mindless effort created an acceptable result is putting the cart before the horse. Fram (talk) 08:28, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

  Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is not a sensible solution. Also, given WP:PAPER, could you explain why the existence of these portals is such a problem? This is nothing more than a massive exercise in punishing a user for the crime of trying to improve the encyclopaedia and getting a bit overenthusiastic. It's horrible to see and I honestly thought the Wikipedia community was better than this. WaggersTALK 11:42, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

  The existence of these portals is a problem because they add extra clutter to already link-intensive articles (the lower part of our articles has become more and more overcrowded over the years, with authority links, navboxes, links to sister projects, ...) and removing links with no or very little value makes the articles better and avoids sending readers to utterly useless pages created in a completely mindless manner without oversight or care. Deleting pages which are useless is not "punishing a user", that is a WP:OWN approach you show there which should not be taken into consideration when debating whether to keep or delete pages. Punishing the user would be blocking or banning them. Fram (talk) 12:10, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

  And that is happening (or has happened) too, so my point very much stands. Describing an editor's good faith hard work as "useless" isn't exactly conducive to a civil discussion either. Certainly some of the portals created are worthy of deletion, others are worthy of being kept. I could support a new PROD criterion, but CSD is not the right tool for this job. WaggersTALK 12:51, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose—CSD is for stuff where there's zero grey area. At best, this should be a specialized PROD. Gaelan 💬✏️ 14:42, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Arbitrary break (CSD criterion X3)[edit]

• Oppose Although the vast majority may not be needed: that does not mean they should just be deleted (without oversight or consensus). The arguments for this critera seem to be centered around: 'so little work was put into them, therefore we shouldn't need to put in any work to fix it'. Why not just let them sit there then? Is there a deadline? Seeing as portals themselves are an auxiliary aide to our main focus (of writing articles) this seems unnecessary. I'm surprised that this is (at least) the second time that a Private Bill has been proposed for the cSd, I guess times have changed a bit. It seems uncollegial to respond to opposers by saying: "then you better help out with all the MfD's'. I agree with the points made by SMcCandlish and RockMagnetist among others. Crazynas ^t 23:54, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
  • "Why not just let them sit there then"? Have you actually looked at the pure drivel many of these portals are? Most of these portals are not an "auxiliary aid", they are random shit, bot generated without bot permission but without actual human oversight. Sending any reader to such total shit is a disgrace. The below image is how one of these portals looks right now, after it has existed for 7 months and after this discussion highlighting many problems has run for a month. Time spent discussing these (time spent looking at these) is time wasted. Any portal which people think is necessary after all can be recreated (in a much better fashion) afterwards, the speedy deletion of these doesn't restrict this. But keeping the shit an editor mass produced because their may be some less shitty pages included is doing a disservice to the people who actually wander to these portals and can only stare in dsbelief at what we show them. "'Calamba, officially the ', (Tagalog: Lungsod ng Calamba), or known simply as Calamba City is a class of the Philippines in the province of , . According to the ?, it has a population of people. " Fram (talk) 09:16, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

have you looked at all the shit that sits in the mainspace (some of it for years)? There are like 182,000 unreferenced articles live right now, but this is the hill we're choosing to die on? Crazynas ^t 21:57, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Large in-line image

Thank you for identifying a problem with a small number of Philippines portals where the lead contains {{PH wikidata}}, a technique designed for use in infoboxes. I'll pass your helpful comments on to the relevant WikiProject. Certes (talk) 11:02, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

No, please pass my comment on to all people supporting these portals, but not bothering to actually look at what they propose or defend. Creating and supporting pages with such blatant problems is basically the same as vandalism. There are e.g. also quite a few portals which confront their readers with the below "selected article" (as the default selected article, not even when scrolling deeper). Or with the same image two or three times. Or... The list of problems with these portals is near endless (selected categories only consisting of one redlink? Sure...). The fact that adding a category can cause a page to look completely different and generate different errors (like in the example above) should be a major indicator that this system, used on thousands of pages, is not as foolproof and low in maintenance as is being claimed. Fram (talk) 11:36, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Large in-line image

Thank you for your continued help in identifying portal issues. I have found and fixed three pages which had repeated "Read more" links. If you could be kind enough to reveal which portal you have depicted as "PortalShit2.png", we may also be able to fix that case and any similar ones. Certes (talk) 12:20, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

There are two very simple solutions: either support X3, and all these portals are instantly fixed. Or actually take a look at all these low maintenance, automatic portals of the future, find the many issues, and fix them. Which still won't solve the problem that many of them are utterly pointless, mindless creations of course. I've noted more than enough problems with these portals to wholeheartedly support speedy deletion, since spending any time "corecting" a portal like the Calamba one is a waste of time (as it should be deleted anyway, speedy or not). Fram (talk) 12:42, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

@Fram: You are clearly not understanding the opposition to this proposal. It is not about supporting the inclusion of poor content, it is about opposing a speedy deletion criterion that fails the criteria for new and expanded criteria and would delete content that should not be deleted in addition to content that should. Thryduulf (talk) 13:41, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

No, I often have trouyble understanding burocratic opposition which creates tons of extra work for very little actual benefit. Furthermore, I'm not convinced that this actually fails the four criteria: it is objective and nonredundant (I guess we all agree on these two?), it is frequent (in the sense that having 3K portals at MfD is quite a heavy load, it's not just one or two pages), so we are left with "Uncontestable", which doesn't mean that as soon ass someone opposes it, it becomes contested, but that "almost all pages that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus.". Looking at this discussion and the MfDs, I believe this to be true. Opposing this new CSD rule "because it is contested" is circular reasoning, as you are then basically saying "it is contested because it is contested", which is obviously not a valid argument. Having a significant number of portals which fall under the X3 but should not be deleted (which doesn't equal "should never exist", only "should not exist in the current form or any older form in the page history") would be a good argument, but I haven't seen any indication of such. Fram (talk) 13:57, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Frequent is not an issue (it wouldn't be as a permanent criteria, but as a temporary one it's fine), non-redundant is not an issue for most (although a few might be caught by P2 that's not a significant proportion so not a probelm). This proposal (unlike the ones being discussed at WT:CSD) is objective as written (created by a single user within a defined time period). Uncontestable however very much is, the requirement is "It must be the case that almost all pages that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus. CSD criteria should cover only situations where there is a strong precedent for deletion. Remember that a rule may be used in a way you don't expect, unless you word it carefully." It is very clear from this discussion and others around these portals that not all of them should be deleted - several have received strong objections to deletion at MfD, some are argued to be kept and others merged. "it is contested because it is contested" is exactly the point of this requirement - nobody argues in good faith against deleting copyright violations, patent nonsense, recreations, or specific types of articles that don't assert importance. There is consensus that were these to be discussed they would be unanimously deleted every time. There is no such consensus about these portals. Some, perhaps most, should be deleted but not all of them. Thryduulf (talk) 15:47, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I am pleased to report that a recent module change should eliminate the problem where articles too short to be worth featuring occasionally appear as "Read more... Read more...". This should fix the mystery portal depicted above next time it is purged. Certes (talk) 11:26, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

User:Thryduulf your opposition to X3 is baffling. You oppose it basically because some topics where Portals were mass created using automated tools against policy may warrant portals. But none of these pages have any original content to preserve. They are mindless spam poorly repackaging existing content. Kind of a poor Wikipedia mirror effort. MFDing these has proven they are unwelcome - yet you want to force us to spend a week debating pages that the creator spent seconds to create without even checking for compliance against their own criteria or for major errors? If these deletions were actually controversial (the only one of the 4 CSD criteria you say is not followed) we would expect a significant number of the MfDs to close Keep. We might expect the creator to defend and explain, but instead the creator freely admits he ignored WP:POG. Seriously makes me doubt your competence and judgement. Admins should show better judgement then this. Legacypac (talk) 17:12, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

@Legacypac: Assuming you mean X3, then I have explained every single one of my reasons several times and you have either not listened or not understood on every single one of those occasions so I Will not waste even more of my time explaining them again. Thryduulf (talk) 17:16, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Second Legacypac. Additionally, part of what I meant by "some might be worth keeping" is that they can be deleted, but if any were actually worthy they could be recreated, perhaps with more care and effort than this. SemiHypercube 17:19, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

• It seems like a lot of what is objected to can be covered by a judicious use of P2, G1, and A3 (via P1) but there's probably something I'm missing. @Fram:, I'm not here to support bad content, but bad policy (and precedent) can be far more harmful to the project than 'repackaged nonsense' existing for a bit longer than some people want it to. This would have the side effect of saving the portals worth saving. Crazynas ^t 22:07, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose let's discuss deletion based on content and merit of individual portals. No need to throw the baby out with the bath water, this is not how we do things here. You're proposing deletion of many very good portals here. ɱ (talk) 15:41, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Please identify 35 out of the 3500 (1%) that are "very good portals" so we can run them through MFD to test your statement. Also there is no baby - there is no original content at all. No work done by humans is lost with X3 deletions because they were created using an automated script that was used without BAG approval to repackage existing content. Therefore WP:PRESERVE is not an issue. If someone started creating thousands of articles called "Foo lite" that just copied Foo mindlessly we would CSD them without debate. These are just in another mainspace but they are really Foo lite. Legacypac (talk) 17:12, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Except that's not comparable at all. The point of portals (which the community has repeatedly endorsed) is to duplicate article content and provide links to related content - which is exactly what these portals are doing. They might be doing it poorly in many cases, but that's qualitatively different to one article duplicating another. Thryduulf (talk) 18:10, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be faster to delete them all and then recreate the ones that need recreating, rather than go through them one by one to see which to keep? Because the number of "keeps" is like 5% or 10% and not 50%? (It would have to be 50% to be equal time between the two approaches.) If you're not convinced that it's 5-10% keep and not 50% keep, what sort of representative sampling process can we engage in to test the theory? Leviv ich 19:13, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Yes it would be faster, but there is no deadline so it is very significantly more important to get it right than it is to do it quickly. Deleting something that doesn't need deleting is one of the most harmful things that an administrator can do - and speedily deleting it is an order of magnitude more so. As only administrators can see pages once they have been deleted, and doing so is much harder, deleting it first makes the job of finding the good portals very significantly harder. Thryduulf (talk) 21:30, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Timing matters because this issue is being discussed in several forums at once. If the first debate to close decides to delete, the portals may be gone by the time another discussion reaches a consensus to keep them. Certes (talk) 21:48, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

• CommentI listed The Transhumanist's portal creations, latest first, and examined the top entry on each page, i.e. every 100th portal.

Assessment of a sample of TTH's recent creations

Portal:Polar exploration – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 50 excerpts with more links at the bottom. Four other images, plus plenty more in the 50 leads. Manual input: refining the search criteria for Did You Know and In the News (DYK+ITN). Portal:Nick Jr. – Lua error: No images found. (To be fair, there may have been images before a recently requested module change to suppress images without captions.) 13 excerpts. No manual input: the wikitext matches that generated by {{bpsp6}}. Portal:Alternative metal – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 11 excerpts; one other image. Manual input: refining DYK+ITN. Portal:Modulation – decent but minimal portal with no obvious errors. 30 excerpts; four other images. Several manual improvements. Portal:Spanish Civil War – potentially good portal but with a couple of display errors which look fixable. 30 excerpts; 20 other images. Manual input: routine maintenance, probably of a routine technical nature rather than creative. Portal:Carl Jung – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 40+ excerpts; six other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Reba McEntire – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ other excerpts; six images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Romantic music – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 40+ excerpts; two other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Anton Chekhov – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 36 excerpts; 17 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Media manipulation – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; no image section. Routine maintenance. Portal:Desalination – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 15 excerpts; six other images. Manual input: refining DYK+ITN. Portal:Abuse – This portal has display errors which make it hard to evaluate properly. It's had plenty of manual input, possibly in attempts to fix it. Portal:Emmy Awards – decent appearance; one minor display error which looks fixable.(fixed) 50 excerpts; two other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Shanghai cuisine – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 19 excerpts; four other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Saab Automobile – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; 14 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:High-speed rail – decent appearance; one minor display error which looks fixable.(fixed) 40+ excerpts; 30+ other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Tetris – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 30+ excerpts; two other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Azores – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 20 excerpts; 18 other images. Some manual improvements. Portal:Musical instruments – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 40+ excerpts; 13 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Hidalgo (state) – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 11 excerpts; 16 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Sporting Kansas City – decent appearance; one minor display error which looks fixable;(fixed) narrow scope. 11 excerpts; 7 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Piciformes – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 9 excerpts; one other image. Routine maintenance. Portal:Birds-of-paradise – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 50 excerpts; five other images. Some manual improvements. Currently at MfD with the rationale that woodpeckers are not a family. Portal:Coffee production – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; 11 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Albanian diaspora – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 30+ excerpts; three other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:University of Nebraska–Lincoln – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 18 excerpts; eight other images. Routine maintenance. Currently at MfD with the rationale that Portal:University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff contains only two articles. Portal:University of Gothenburg – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 10 excerpts; two other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Transformers – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; two other images (everything else is non-free). Some manual improvements. Portal:Boston Celtics – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; 16 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Newbury Park, California – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 16 excerpts; 34 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Vanessa Williams – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 30+ excerpts; two other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Bette Midler – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40 excerpts; seven other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Ozzy Osbourne – generally decent appearance but several minor display errors;(fixed) narrow scope. 50 excerpts; 17 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Carnegie Mellon University – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 15 excerpts; 28 other images. Routine maintenance. Portal:Milwaukee – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 15 excerpts; 47 other images. Some manual improvements. Too few excerpts but potentially good. Portal:Billings, Montana – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. Four excerpts; 27 other images. Some manual improvements. Portal:Empire of Japan – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; 20 other images but with a couple of repeats. Routine maintenance. Portal:Cheese – decent appearance; no obvious errors. Nine excerpts; 50+ other images. Extensive manual improvements. Too few excerpts but potentially good.

It appears that most of the portals have a narrow scope and should go but a significant minority are either already of a good enough standard to keep or show sufficient potential to merit further attention. This impression is based not on cherry-picking but on a random sample. Certes (talk) 21:42, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for this, this is a very good illustration of why this proposal is too broad - it will delete portals that clearly should not be deleted, and others that may or may not need to be deleted (e.g. I've !voted to merge several of the portals about universities). Thryduulf (talk) 21:58, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

• Query Why don't we have a CSD for pages created by unauthorized scripts or bots? WP:BAG exists for a reason right? (And this seems to be a good example of it). Crazynas ^t 21:50, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @Crazynas: because not all of them should be deleted, as [[user:|Certes]] analysis immediately above demonstrates perfectly. Thryduulf (talk) 21:58, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: You're missing my point. Just like we have a policy that banned users are to be reverted in all cases not because they might not make good edits (to game the system or not) but because they are a disruption to the community; so we should have a policy that pages created (or edited I suppose) by unauthorized bots are inherently not welcome, because of the potential for disruption regardless of their merit (by disruption I'm talking about this AN thread as much as the pages themselves). This is the whole reason we have a group dedicated to overseeing and helping with bots right? Crazynas ^t 22:12, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

No bots were involved. The pages were created using a template. One of your last page creations was a user talk page, where you welcomed a new editor using Twinkle. You did a very professional job, by applying a template which introduces the new editor with the sort of carefully considered and neatly arranged prose that we don't have time to write every time a new contributor appears. Using a template is not a valid rationale for mass deletions. Certes (talk) 22:22, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Curious, what template did you use? I guess the difference I see is the twinkle is highly curated and subject to extensive review (as are the templates it calls). If all these pages were manually created, then what happened in the example of (what to me looks pretty much like G1) that Fram posted above? Why didn't the human that pressed the button take responsibility for that (so to speak) pile of rubbish? To clarify, Bot here covers scripts, AWB (which is 'manual'), java implementations etc. In short: "Bot policy covers the operation of all bots and automated scripts used to provide automation of Wikipedia edits, whether completely automated, higher speed, or simply assisting human editors in their own work." The policy explicitly references mass page creation as being under the purview of BAG here. Crazynas ^t 22:39, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I haven't used any of these templates myself but recent portals have been created by variants on {{Basic portal start page}}. The numbered versions such as {{bpsp6}} cater for portal-specific conditions such as there being no DYKs to feature. Certes (talk) 23:07, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

@Crazynas: I was simply answering your question about why we do not speedy delete every page created by an unauthorised bot, etc - simply because not every page created by such means should be deleted. You are also mistaken about banned users - they may be reverted but they are not required to be. Certes analysis shows that some of the portals created by the script have been improved since, sometimes significantly. Thryduulf (talk) 22:46, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: Sure, and this is tangential to the proposal here (which I'm still opposing, if you noticed). In any case the thought I'm having wouldn't be applied ex post facto but it would make it explicitly clear that mass creation of pages by automated or semi-automated means without prior approval is disruptive. Crazynas ^t 23:02, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

• Comment. The problem with many of these recently created template-based portals is that it is difficult or impossible to improve them. I've edited portals for over a decade but cannot work out how to change the portal code to include or exclude a particular article or image. (For articles I believe one has to change the template or mark the article as stub to exclude it; for images I believe it just harvests those from the main topic article.) Thus they are not drafts that could be further improved, they are static uneditable entities for which the only solution is to start from scratch. There is no thought to be preserved that is not equally present in the list of articles in the template/images in the root article. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:12, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
• The key issue is that traditionally, portals are viewed as entry points to broad topic areas. However a page generated by the helper templates that draw content from an underlying navigation box is more akin to a second screen experience: it provides an X-ray view into the navigation box. It's not clear this is the experience the community wants to provide for readers visiting something labelled a portal. isaacl (talk) 20:47, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
• the automated scripts are so easy to fool. Even if everything looks perfect when the portal is set up, as soon as someone adds an new link to a nav box (that may make sense in the nav box but not for the portal), adds an image to a page, or creates a DYK completely unrelated to the topic which includes the five letters "horse" within someone's name behind a pipe, you get random inappropriate stuff in an automated portal. The editor adjusting the nav box, adding a picture without a caption per WP:CAPTIONOBVIOUS or creating the DYK has no idea the portal is being busted. There is no edit to the portal to review so watch listing the portal does not help. You have to manually review the portal display regularly. That is before looking at lua errors. Autogenerated content is a bad idea. Forcing other editors to review your auto generated crap is wrong. Ignoring the guidelines because they are "outdated" and leaving 4500 pages that need to be checked and discussed against the guidelines by other editors is wrong. The only reasonable solution is to nuke these from orbit. Then if someone willing to follow the guidelines and use intellgently designed and applied tools want to recreate some titles, that is fine. Legacypac (talk) 21:23, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Everything you say before "The only reasonable solution..." may be true but is irrelevant to this proposal as written. "Nuking them from orbit" is not the only reasonable solution, as fixing the issues so that the portals don't break is also reasonable. As is not deleting the ones that have been fixed so that the errors you talk about don't occur. Thryduulf (talk) 00:46, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

    Portal creation ... is down to about a minute per portal. The creation part, which is automated, takes about 10 seconds. The other 50 seconds is taken up by manual activities, such as finding candidate subjects, inspecting generated portals, and selecting the portal creation template to be used according to the resources available. Tools are under development to automate these activities as much as possible, to pare portal creation time down even more. Ten seconds each is the goal.
    — Portal Update #29, 13 Feb 2019

    Someone spent less than 50 seconds creating the page; requiring editors to spend more time than that to delete it has an extortionate effect, even though there's a good faith intent. If we don't nuke from orbit, then those who want these automatically-created portals deleted will be forced to spend far, far more than 50 seconds per portal discussing them one by one (or ten by ten, or one hundred by one hundred, it'll still be a lot of time). 50 seconds "taken up by manual activities" is how we end up with a Portal:Sexual fetishism that includes Pedophilia as one of the selected articles–probably not the best selection–but that's been there for five months now. Leviv ich 03:04, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

    • Two wrongs do not make a right and there is no deadline. The only reason for deleting them all you seem to have is that you don't like that these portals were created so quickly, and that some of them are bad. That's fine, you are entitled to your opinion and some of them are bad. However that does not equate to a reason to delete all of them without checking whether they are good or bad. If you have problems with specific portals then they should be fixed and/or nominated for deletion, as I see you have done in this case, but just because X is bad doesn't mean that the entire set of pages of which is a part should be speedily deleted. Thryduulf (talk) 09:35, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

      • "There is no deadline" is a complete non-argument. There is no deadline to have these portals either. Knowingly advocating for keeping problematic portals around until someone not only notices it but also decides to MfD it is exposing readers to shitty, thoughtless reproductions of content for no actual benefit (the benefits" of these portals are addressed dequately by the navigation templates they are based on) and with the risk of showing them all kinds of errors which gives a very poor impression. Luckily very few people get actually exposed to these pages, but this also means that the very hypothetical damage deleting some of these pages would do is extremely minimal. Fram (talk) 10:09, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

        • There was indeed no deadline for their creation, now they have been created that is irrelevant. If we follow your logic though we should delete every article and then just recreate the ones that admins vet as meeting an undefined standard. Yes, deleting more slowly does increase the risk that some readers will see errors, but thtat's exactly what happens in every other namespace without a problem. Thryduulf (talk) 16:35, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

          • No, that's not my logic. Your use of "no deadline" when it suits you, and the dismissal when it doesn't, is quite clear though. Deleting articles is losing content, deleting these auto-portals is losing nothing. Furthermore, we have in the past speedy deleted large groups of articles by one or two creators once it became clear that too many contained errors. This has been done with thousands of articles by Dr. Blofeld, with thousands by Jaguar, and with thousands by Sander v. Ginkel (the last ones moved to draft and then deleted afterwards). Once we know that with one group of creations by one editor, there are many problems, we had no qualms in the past to speedy delete them. That didn't mean that they can't be recreated, or that admins will first vet them, no idea where you get those ideas. Please don't make a caricature of what I support here, and please don't make absolute statements which don't match reality. Fram (talk) 17:41, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose 1) Let's not create precedents where we hand single admins editorial control, admins may well be great editors (some better than others), but let's keep editorial control as much as possible only with all editors. 2) The formulation of this supposed CSD criteria seems to be a WP:PUNISH against a single user. (As an aside, different perspective: there are perhaps millions of pages in article space that are "poor", so portal space is bound to have them, too - just work through it -- and if we come-up with new forward looking policies and guidelines for all portals (or mass creations) consistent as possible with the 5 P, all the better). Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:42, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support - per Fish & Karate. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:08, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. I feel there are much better ways of handling the situation, including but not limited to: expanding P2, Portal PROD, and even MFD. This is too broad of a sword that doesn't even cut in the right places since it's only limited to one user in a given time frame. -- Tavix ^(talk) 16:15, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
• Thought I had voted here but I guess I hadn’t. Regardless, my thinking on this has changed because of Certes’ in-depth analysis of TTH’s portal creations. Anyway: Oppose. The mass creation of portals is something that should be dealt with preferably quickly, but this proposal as written is not the right way to do it. Sure, there are a lot of crappy portals that could be deleted fairly uncontroversially, but there are also a lot of good portals as well as edge cases that deserve more community discussion on whether they should be deleted, or at least a longer waiting period so users may object. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 12:40, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose for now. I still hope that the proposal might become limited to portals looked at and determined to be poor by some objective criteria, which I could support, but that hasn't yet happened. Speedy ad hominem deletion regardless of subsequent tuning, current quality or even potential for future improvement is likely to throw too many babies out with the bathwater. Certes (talk) 12:46, 29 March 2019 (UTC) Duplicate !vote stricken. GoldenRing (talk) 10:14, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
• Regretfully support: as an editor I dislike the idea of creations made by certain users being deleted en masse but, quite frankly, MfD cannot cope with the influx at the moment. Hell, I've got a decent laptop and MfD is getting so big scrolling down causes a bit of lag. SITH (talk) 20:57, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
• Strong support of something to this effect, per WP:MASSCREATION and WP:TNT (i.e., the babies thrown out with the bathwater can be recovered later). However, opponents raise good points of localizing control to a few members, and while I do argue that portals are not content, they are a navigational tool, so community control of them can be a bit "stricter" than mainspace articles, perhaps something like PROD would be better. Regardless of how this pans out, for future portals going forward I proposed Portals for Creation at RfC, and created a mockup here if anyone wants a look. — Preceding unsigned comment added by John M Wolfson (talk • contribs)

  Why is requiring administrators to comb through deleted portals to find those that should not have been deleted in order to restore them, having inconvenienced those people who use the portals in the mean time, in any way better for the project than deleting only those that need to be deleted? Thryduulf (talk) 07:34, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

• Support. Worthless pages which take 12 seconds to create shouldn't take more than 50000 times that for multiple users to delete. If a subject WikiProject or person interested in the portal's subject is willing to "adopt" that portal, or even assert that the portal is not useless, a more nuanced consideration may apply. And, I should point out, some of the individual deletions are incomplete, as user-facing pages (mostly categories and navigation templates, but some actual article pages) still point to the deleted portals. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 10:25, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

---

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal 5: Shut down or reform WikiProject Portals[edit]

I know, me proposing shutting down a WikiProject I'm in? What am I thinking?

Well, I mainly joined to make sure things would go smoothly after that RfC to delete all portals - clearly it has not. As thus, I think a solution (among the others) would be to shut down the WikiProject responsible for many of the bad portal creations. Right now it appears all its doing is creating new portals, not maintaining or improving them - which is what a WikiProject is supposed to do.

However, a less extreme solution would be to reform the project to actually maintain and improve the portals it creates, and creates portals sparingly. I'm fairly certain a task force making sure portals meet standards would be beneficial to the issue, and also making it clear that not everything needs a portal.

I'm going for the latter option to reform - however, I'm going to leave the shutdown option up in the air in case people find good reason for it to be considered.

Addendum 13:48, 15 March 2019 (UTC) - Since I forgot to clarify ( Self-trout) here's two examples of reforms I could see being useful:

• A quality scale for portals, like we use for articles - this could help with knowing which portals are good and which ones need improvement
• Dividing the Project into task forces to make sure necessary tasks for the maintenance of portals are completed, as right now they clearly are not

• Sub-reform for this would be to make a task force that deletes bad portals that don't meet quality standards and are not needed

Hopefully this can help clarify this proposal somewhat - if none of these can be done reasonably (which I doubt they can't) the shutdown option should be considered.

Kirbanzo ^{(userpage - talk - contribs)} 23:01, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Survey on sub-proposal to shut down WikiProject Portals[edit]

Survey on sub-proposal to reform WikiProject Portals[edit]

• Support as proposer and per above. Kirbanzo ^{(userpage - talk - contribs)} 23:01, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose as the proposal is in the wrong forum and contains no details of what reform is being suggested, let alone how these reforms would solve the issues identified. Thryduulf (talk) 01:05, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• This is related to the discussion as the WikiProject is headed by the user being discussed here. Kirbanzo ^{(userpage - talk - contribs)} 13:48, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Wikprojects are a collection of editors, not just one person. There is no evidence presented that there is any admin action required regarding the WikiProject as a whole collectively (not that I can immediately think of what that action could look like if it were), and there isn't even consensus that admin action regarding the single editor is required. Thryduulf (talk) 13:57, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• Fair point, but considering the discussion below it should still be considered. Kirbanzo ^{(userpage - talk - contribs)} 14:00, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support. I’ve been doing some reform work of this type by creating a page to clean up some of the damage done to the older portals. WikiProject Portals has an assessment page but I’m not sure how much it gets used. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 19:49, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • It took quite a lot of discussion to form a consensus for those assessment criteria. Any portals would need to be evaluated against them to ensure they meet at least minimal quality standards (not including the other criteria in the portal guidelines). It will take a while to go through all of the portals and rate them on the quality scale, and that is one of our backlog tasks. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 19:48, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support in theory. It makes more sense than the above "I disagree with you so I will try to just erase you" bullshit. However, it's not at all clear that the wikiproject, as such, needs any "reform"; rather, some specific decisions and actions taken by its participants have turned out to be controversial, and the community will discuss that (hopefully in a more sensible venue like WP:VPPOL), and the wikiprojects should abide by the result of that process. We don't have any indication this would not happen, so there isn't actually a "reform" to perform, nor is there yet any consensus of what form that should take anyway. Some people here seem to be under the impression that WP is going to come out against portals; others that it'll be against automated portals; others that it'll be against portals on minor topics (and sub-sub-sub-topics) that people aren't likely to seek a portal for; others that nothing is actual broken; others that .... There isn't a single direction of "reform" being proposed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:03, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose The way to reform a project is to get involved with it. We've already had multiple discussions about how the project should be structured and how it should operate on the project pages themselves, and further suggestions there are always welcome. But proposing "reform" without specifying what particular changes are being suggested isn't exactly helpful. WaggersTALK 16:53, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Exactly right, Waggers, exactly right. You've hit the nail on the head. ~Swarm~ {talk} 18:22, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

But is you see little need for portals why get involved? Legacypac (talk) 23:18, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Nominating hundreds of portals for deletion is getting involved. If you see little need for them then fine, live and let live, they're not doing you any harm. The community has decided to keep portals, so either you respect that consensus and ignore them, or you respect that consensus and get involved with resolving whatever problem you have with them. WaggersTALK 12:58, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

• Qualified support. The current project is far from perfect but it's hard to give unqualified support without a statement of specific reforms. We don't want thousands more portals, but last year's RfC shows that it would be equally inappropriate to "reform" into WikiProject Nuke All Portals From Orbit. I removed my name from the project's roster when portal creation grew rapidly. Since then I have done some maintenance but I see little point in improving pages that other editors are working so hard to delete. I could rejoin a project that combined improved existing portals with the right blend of identifying poor, narrow portals for deletion and creating portals in small numbers where clear gaps exist. Certes (talk) 13:32, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Discussion on proposal to reform WikiProject Portals[edit]

• Query @Kirbanzo: - do you have any early thoughts about what some good reforms would be to shift the primary focus of the project towards maintenance/improvement over creation? Nosebagbear (talk) 23:11, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

• See addendum. Kirbanzo ^{(userpage - talk - contribs)} 13:50, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• Transcluded to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 23:36, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
• No, do not transclude important discussions from AN to the relevant talkpage. Hold the discussion on the relevant talk page. Transclude to here is there is good reason, which there is not. Holding hte discussion here means watchlisting it doesn't work, and it wont be archived in the right place. Shutting down a WikiProject is not in scope for WP:AN. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:20, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
• The Portals Wikiproject members can't even come up with a proper new guideline for what topics get a portal even when faced with a village pump imposed moratorium. The discussion is all over the place with no focus. Heck they did not even follow their old guideline about picking subjects broud enough to gain reader and editor interest. The only thing they appear to agree on is MORE MORE MORE and using WP:VITAL as a to do list. Their newsletter said they are pushing to 10,000 portals (off a base of 1500 old line portals). Now the number of portals will shrink until and unless they get new guidelines passed by an RFC. Legacypac (talk) 09:57, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• That old guideline wasn't generally followed, ever. That's because portals (except those on the main page) get about 1 to 3 percent of the amount of traffic that their corresponding root articles get. In other words, "not a lot". That's because almost all their traffic comes via WP internal links. Almost nobody googles "Portal". So, for the vast majority of topics, large numbers of readers and editors will never be forthcoming, and never were. Out of the 1500 portals, about 100 had maintainers (maintained by around 60 editors), and maybe 20% of them regularly edited the portals they maintained.

The WikiProject, and the community, need feedback in the form of hard numbers, in order to get a sense of what will even get used. How hard would it be to make a chart listing all the portals in one column, and their page views for the past month in the second column, and then sort the chart by the second column? That might provide some insight.    — The Transhumanist   11:05, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• Sigh. :TTH, you had this data already. You know that portal pageviews are miniscule. At the RFC on deleting the portal namespace, stats were posted on pageviews, and not even all the portals linked from the front page had decent viewing rates.

Yet despite knowing all that, you personally created thousands of new portals, despite having all the evidence in front of you that they are useless.

And when I presented the evidence to you again, and asked you to desist, you were furious. Instead of assessing the issues, you posted multi-screenfull unfocused ramblings replete with shouts of "bias", "personal attack" etc.

The problem is not any shortage of information. The problem is that as @Legacypac notes above, the discussions in the WikiProject have no focus, no regard for available evidence, and no respect for community consensus.

Legacypac and usually disagree, but in this case we see exactly the same problem: a WikiProject which has a long and sustained track record of being utterly incapable of acting responsibly wrt the page within its purview.

This is not solely TTH's doing. TTH bears by far the highest responsibility because TTH has been both the most prolific creator and the most angry objector to calls for restraint, but several other regulars at WikiProject Portals have been equally unfocused and equally bonkers. For example:

• Only 15 days ago, WT:Portal/Guidelines#Portal_creation_and_deletion_criteria_proposal_5: a proposal to create portals up to VA Lelevl 5, when even VA level 4 would be about 10,000 portals.
• 17 days ago, WT:Portal/Guidelines#Portal_creation_and_deletion_criteria_proposal_1: a proposal for portals to have minimum of only 20 articles. Precisely the sort of microportal of which the community has had enough.

So the community simply cannot rely on this group to set and uphold resposnsible guidelines. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:53, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@BrownHairedGirl: I make the proposal 5. And it was a proposal. I Support a reform in WikiProject Portals. My idea is the existence of approximately 1000(level 3) single page portals layout, directly linked in tree model with the main page. The role of the wikiproject should be to organize this tree and develop tools to transform all portals into single-page layout portals.Guilherme Burn (talk) 12:11, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@Guilherme Burn, no technical diversions. My point is not about how the portals operate; it's about their scope. And 20 pages is insanely narrow. A 20-page portal is just an bloated navbox. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:36, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@BrownHairedGirl: I'm trying to figure out how you've come to the conclusion that WPPORT completely ignores evidence and consensus. The project discussions I've participated in have been rational and reasonable, and far from unfocused. Also, please try not to conflate individual editors' behavior with the project as a whole. I've seen no evidence that the WikiProject has acted irresponsibly regarding the Portal system. If you're referring to the several thousand new portals created by TTH, you should keep in mind that WikiProjects don't have any actual authority to dictate who can and can't create something (even if we were opposed to creating new portals). That's what guidelines are for.

We've been working to develop updated criteria for the Portal guidelines since November (rebooted from even earlier discussions in April) - which you already know, since you've participated as well. We're still working on the guidelines so that we have better, more concrete criteria to judge new and existing portals against (and which would make MfD easier for those that fail). Once we've developed consensus on these, they can be applied to the namespace to fix the portals that can be fixed, and remove the ones that can't (new or old). (Side note: Anyone with input or ideas is welcome to participate at WT:PORTG.)

Actions in the Portal namespace itself (for most of us, it seems) has mostly been technical fixes and tweaks to our tools. Also, your not agreeing with particular proposals does not make those proposing them irresponsible or incompetent. Talk pages are a place to discuss new ideas so that we can find the benefits and drawbacks of each. If we constantly had to worry about being labeled as irresponsible or incompetent for suggesting something, we'd never have any new ideas or get anything done. I've made plenty of suggestions that didn't pan out later, as I'm sure you have, and everyone else here. That's how we learn what works and what doesn't and build a better encyclopedia. In the end, that's what we're all here for right? — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 19:48, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

@AfroThundr3007730: that's not at all how it looks from outside.

1. Last year, the project began developing automated portals, whose advocates claimed need little or no curation. No attempt was made to hold an RFC to determine whether the community found these automated portals to be a worthwhile addition. (I think I see an emerging consensus that they are not useful, or maybe useful only in some curcumstances)
2. Following the WP:ENDPORTALS RFC which decided not to actually delete the whole portal namespace, the project decided to massively expand the number of portals, despite the clear evidence at RFC that many editors wanted fewer portals. At no point did the project initiate an RFC to establish whether there was a community consensus for the project's enthusiasm to bizarrely interpret "don't TNT the lot" as "create thousands more".
3. You are right that a WikiProject has no powers of restraint on an individual editor. However, the project does have an ability to watch what is done, and to act a venue to monitor inappropriate creations, and to initiate cleanup as needed. I see no sign at all that the project has done any of that ... and on the contrary, when outsiders have challenged TTH's sprees of portalspam, other project members have rallied to TTH's defence.
4. Even now, as a cleanup is underway, I see next to no assistance from project members. V few even comment in the MFDs. For example, take the most extreme case so far: MFD Portal:University of Fort Hare, an utterly absurd creation for which there exists precisely zero relevant selected articles ... yet none of the project regulars is visible.
   In my view, a WikiProject which shows zero interest in removing inappropriate pages within its scope is dysfunctionally irresponsible.
5. The project's efforts to develop guidelines have been exceptionally poor. The discussions have been rambling and unfocused, with a persistent failure to distinguish between factors such as technical ability to create, availability of editors to maintain and monitor, actual usage data, etc.
6. Above all, none of the proposals has been put to an RFC to gauge community consensus, so the guideline discussion have effectively been the work of a small group of editors who are united by a common desire to massively increase the number of automated portals.
7. The result of this failure has been a walled garden of thousands of micro-portals, sustained only by the enthusiasm of the portal project ... and the absolutely inevitable massive shitstorm at the village pump.

What this needs now is a structured RFC, which brings together some or all of the proposals made at the project, adds proposals from outside the project, and seeks a community consensus. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:18, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Proposal 6: Proposed Deletion for portals[edit]

Proposal 7: Toss it to the WikiProjects[edit]

I suggested at the Arbcom case that this be imposed by motion as an interim measure, but I'll put it as a proposal here to allow people to support or oppose it.
Proposal: All editors intending to create a portal must consult with the relevant WikiProject for that topic as to whether they feel a portal would be useful. All existing portals should be raised at the talk pages of the relevant WikiProjects and deleted if there is no consensus at any one of those projects that the portal should be kept. If the topic has no relevant WikiProject, it should be deleted. ‑ Iridescent 10:42, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support as proposer. This would have the advantages of avoiding bulk speedy deletions, avoiding personalising disputes or naming-and-shaming individuals on either the pro or anti side, avoiding flooding MFD, putting the decision on each portal in the hands of those who actually know about that topic and can make an informed call as to whether the portal would be potentially useful (if a topic is so obscure that it doesn't have a relevant project, then it's reasonable to assume that it's unlikely there are sufficient people with an interest in the topic to maintain or use a portal), and providing an opportunity to neutrally assess whether the older portals are still deemed to be serving a useful purpose. The process could probably be largely automated; a bot could presumably scrape the WikiProjects listed on the talk page of the parent article for each portal, and post a "Do you find this portal useful?" question to the talk pages of those projects, and after a reasonable time (presumably 30 days) we could then go through at leisure and see which portals are considered worth keeping. It might annoy some projects, as e.g. WT:WikiProject Food or WT:WikiProject United States will be flooded with 50 different discussions, but unless we're going to speedy delete or speedy keep every portal there will be a flooding effect somewhere, and at least this way it spreads the flood to a manageable level across multiple pages, rather than dumping 4000 pages into WP:MFD or CAT:EX. ‑ Iridescent 10:42, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support as the compromise candidate. It's not guaranteed to annoy no-one or be loved by all, but it's better than, as we seem to be enjoying atm, a process that annoys more and is loved even less... ——SerialNumber54129 10:56, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
  • It won't be liked by anyone, as it concentrates the decision-making in the hands of small cliques of people, but at least it (1) spreads the load regarding where the discussions take place, (2) notifies people interested in the topics who may not be aware of the existence of the portals, and (3) means the fate of Portal:London transport is decided by people who have an interest in either London or Transport and hopefully have a better idea than the rest of us of what would be useful to readers. ‑ Iridescent 11:05, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
• (edit conflict) Support with minor tweaks: To avoid flooding WikiProjects there should be a limit on the number of concurrent discussions on each project (somewhere in the 5-10 region would be my first suggestion) and the 30-day deadline should not be absolute - e.g. if discussion is ongoing at that point there is no rush to close it, equally if consensus is abundantly apparent (by the standards of WP:SNOW) before that there is no reason to delay taking any necessary action or inaction. Discussions should also be framed neutrally (i.e. don't describe it as "spam", "worthless", "essential" or anything like that.) Also, to avoid edit warring, arguments, etc there should be no extended discussion of which projects are asked - if any editor in good faith believes that a project is worth asking then they are worth asking. Finally there should be a list kept somewhere (probably at the portals project) of which projects have been asked about which portals so the same project doesn't get asked about repeatedly. Thryduulf (talk) 11:15, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

  On the neutral point, it might be worth agreeing a standard wording that can be added with a template that also provides links to basic information about portals so people don't have to keep repeating themselves. Thryduulf (talk) 11:18, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose - See the bullet points below for my various rationales.

• Wikiprojects are perenially understaffed and underwatched, with some having no participation for months or even years at a time on their talk pages. Some are marked as semi-active or inactive. Making it a requirement to consult with projects with such problems would amount to muzzling portal creations for many topics, because nobody may actually come along to discuss a portal proposal.
• This proposal would further denigrate Wikipedia in the wrong direction, with an increasing nanny state type of governance regarding content, where permissions have to first be made to create pages. This would result in even more chilling effects than already exist in various areas of the encyclopedia at this time.
• The proposal goes entirely against the grain of WP:5, point #5, concerning being WP:BOLD. Wikipedia having no firm rules is one of the fundamental principles of the encyclopedia. The proposal also goes against the grain of WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY in several ways.
• Regarding the notion that if a topic has no project, the portal would then be procedurally deleted: some topics may not have a direct Wikiproject, but may have a related one. For example, there is no direct project for the topic of air conditioning, but a related project would be WikiProject Engineering.

Furthermore, many of the discussions listed at WikiProject Council/Proposals receive very little input, sitting in limbo. If a Wikiproject cannot be created without first consulting a forum that receives little input, and therefore a portal could not be created without a project backing it, all without a means for a project to get off the ground in the first place, it would amount to a vicious circle of automatically denying portal creation for some topics based upon the already largely broken system at the WP Council.

• Would older portals also be automatically, procedurally deleted if no project exists, or would this only apply to the newer ones, with a grandfather clause existent for the older portals? Either way, automatic deletion in this manner goes against several core principles of Wikipedia, and would serve to unnecessarily stifle the creation of functional, useful content.
• Regarding having discussions for all existing portals raised on talk pages of relevant Wikiprojects: this is very unlikely to even be viable. Who would ultimately be responsible to perform creating and then watching all of these discussions? Would said posited discussions be a subjective straw poll, or based upon actual objective discussion about a portal's content and how it relates to a topic? Importantly, this would significantly and negatively shift Wikipedia from being a volunteer project to one that requires specific actions, in this case, mandatory discussions for all content in the portal namespace. This would set a very poor precedent for the encyclopedia.
• Regarding the notion of procedurally deleting portals if no consensus exists in a talk page discussion: at AfD, MfD, and other areas of deletion on Wikipedia, a no consensus result typically results in retention of a page or pages, rather than deletion.
• There's more, but I will leave my post at that for now.

– North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 12:16, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose I appreciate this proposal as one made in good faith using reasoned language. We should certainly invite WikiProjects to have more involvement in portals, including their creation and deletion. However, Northamerica1000 makes enough convincing arguments that I don't need to add any. Certes (talk) 13:40, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
• Unfortunately reasonable, but WikiProjects do not own topics within their scope. (See also WP:CONLEVEL.) --Izno (talk) 13:48, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
• An essentially similar proposal is under discussion at the portal guidelines talk page. The issue is not one of ownership; it's integrating support for portals with the same interested editors who maintain the navigation boxes and articles for the topic area. Particularly if the helper templates are used, editors need to take portals into account when modifying any associated navigation boxes and articles. But in general, portals can only be successful in the long term if they are supported in the same way as the rest of the related content. Accordingly, decisions on their creation and maintenance should be made by those editors, either under the aegis of associated WikiProjects, or through other methods of identifying editors active in the area. isaacl (talk) 15:11, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
• If a portal is of high quality, it does not really matter whether there is a WikiProject about a related topic or not. Usually there will be a WikiProject (we have projects covering almost everything), but probably not a very active one. I do agree with the inviting subject experts to portal discussions, though. —Kusma (t·c) 15:25, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support - I have tossed this out at the Village Pump. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#RFC:_Portals_and_Project_Sponsorship . Robert McClenon (talk) 21:28, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - I will argue that NorthAmerica1000's argument about understaffed WikiProjects is a valid consideration that will serve as a check on the creation of rogue portals. (We are not discussing rogue WikiProjects here.) Robert McClenon (talk) 21:28, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

• Comment – Wow, so now we have two identical discussions occurring about the same topic in two different places, now at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § RFC: Portals and Project Sponsorship. As such, pinging all users who have participated here who have not commented at the new discussion, so their opinions here won't be lost or discounted at the new discussion: @Serial Number 54129, Thryduulf, Certes, Isaacl, and Kusma: Per the new discussion, I feel that this discussion should now be closed, with a redirect provided to the new discussion in the closure. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 00:22, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Three places, counting the discussion started in February at the portal guidelines talk page. isaacl (talk) 02:05, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
• Request Closure This is at multiple venues and since this is not a proposal that affects administrators (specifically) this one should probably be procedurally closed. Crazynas ^t 15:59, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support - I belong to a number of wikiprojects, some active, some moribund. I have been shocked to find out there are portals that should be associated with the projects, that I've never heard of. Usually these portals are.... well... not in great shape. At the very least the project members should be alerted so there's some (even slim) hope of cleaning up the portals. Or an informed decision to delete them, based on the assessment of those who would be in the best position to deal with it all. - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 20:50, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Portal MfD Results[edit]

Discussion on MfD results[edit]

We get the message. 3% of portals, selected from the worst examples, have successfully been removed. I !voted to delete most of them myself. You are also working hard to get portal-related tools deleted while discussions on the project's future continue. However, AN is not the place to list every tiny victory in the War on Portals. This trophy cabinet is now full. Certes (talk) 13:15, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that not all of these were deleted uncontroversially, so do not demonstrate a need for a speedy deletion criterion. This list, if you wish to maintain it, belongs in userspace. Thryduulf (talk) 13:19, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

This list is very relevant to a discussion about creating a CSD for similar pages. It provides an easy way for users to assess discussions unfiltered by opinions which go against community consensus. Legacypac (talk) 15:52, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• I agree with Thryduulf; the trophy case belongs in userspace. Furthermore, most of the pages deleted were from bundled nominations. However, at WP:MULTIAFD, it states, "For the avoidance of doubt, bundling should not be used to form consensus around policy decisions such as "should Wikipedia include this type of article". Bundling AfDs should be used only for clear-cut deletion discussions based on existing policy." (Bold emphasis mine.) While WP:MULTIAFD technically applies only to articles, it comes across as an inappropriate list for this venue, where policy decisions are being discussed. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 19:59, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Yet this list was broadcast via the Portals Update #30 Newsletter. It can't be all that bad. No one wants to debate each neighborhood of Portland or each of the 723 Indian districts one by one. If someone listed a dozen very similar pages for debate there would be a lot of pushback to bundle them. Can we assume from these comments you insist on debating 4500 automated portals one by one? Legacypac (talk) 02:57, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

• Exactly that. This isn't one of our most frequently cited policies – mainly because attempts to do things that like that haven't been common since the early 2000s – but anyone deeply steeped in policy should already know it by heart, especially if they're big into deletion. Proposing major changes to deletion policy without actually understanding deletion policy is a competence failure.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:05, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
• @Legacypac: Bundling closely related discussions together is a Good Thing but completely different to using a bundled nomination of portals about 723 Indian districts to claim that there is consensus to speedily delete all single-page portals. Thryduulf (talk) 14:45, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

As an Admin you really should be required not to post such misleading characterizations of what I said and the list of MfDs. The community deserves better than this. Legacypac (talk) 15:13, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

While that is slightly more extreme than your position, I did not claim it was your position and it is far from being grossly misleading - certainly far less so than your mischaracterisations about what I am advocating for. This is particularly true as looking through the bundles, many are nowhere near as clear-cut as "Indian districts" - e.g. Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Crabapples is quite likely to end as a trainwreck, and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Bottom Importance Portals is a clearly inappropriate bundling of unrelated pages. Thryduulf (talk) 15:40, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

• I think it should be reformatted and moved to our existing page, Wikipedia:Record of MfDs of portals (please see the bottom on how to correctly add the closes, this seems to have been neglected lately). — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 16:02, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

List now hosted at Wikipedia:MFD Portals but needs updating again. Legacypac (talk) 21:03, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Thousands of Autogenerated "Quantum Portals" with no human curation?[edit]

Non-open drafting of an RfC about portals, and BHG behavior in relation to it[edit]

Proposal 8: Help with unlinking[edit]

Now that the number of deletions is going up, I propose we use a bot to remove the resulting redlinks from the articles and templates that link to the deleted portals? Twinkle doesn't really do the job, because it leaves a non-link on the template or in the article's See also section, which doesn't really seem to make sense (see {{Agoura Hills, California}} for Twinkle's result). This will become important if the X3 proposal gains consensus. Absent that, I propose we get a dedicated group of editors to help with this task? It would be really nice if some of the members of WP:WikiProject Portals who created these (now red) links helped with the cleanup instead of taking their toys and going home. Ideas welcome. UnitedStatesian (talk) 06:37, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Have you tried Evad37's Xunlink.js|? It's better than Twinkle, though it too may leave the non-link on the template I guess. SD0001 (talk) 05:13, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

I have removed the links which I created to portals which have since been deleted. The rest I will leave, to be part of the usual deletion process. Certes (talk) 16:34, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks so much, appreciate it. UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:09, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Proposal 9 - delete the ones with no human improvements, leave the rest open to MFD[edit]

Human improvement can just mean that a bot checks whether anyone else has edited the portal. It could be announced a week or two in advance so if someone wants to preserve a particular portal, all they have to do is edit it. This is similar in spirit to the bot operation in the Darius Dhlomo (DD) CCI of a while back. DD had created around 10000 pages with suspected copyvios, and maybe 2000 of them were subsequently edited by other people. So after much discussion, someone launched a bot that blanked articles touched only by DD, leaving others for manual review.

Obviously people should not wp:game the mechanism by editing portals without making improvements or having some other argument that the portal is worth keeping, particularly on large numbers of portals. This comment by Voceditenore shows how thoughtless the auto-creation was. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 18:54, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

• Comment - Can a registered editor please restate this proposal a little more clearly? Robert McClenon (talk) 07:02, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. "No human input" could equally well mean "on this occasion the bot didn't make any mistakes so there's nothing to fix". The only way this would work is if we set up a whole WP:NPP-esque paraphernalia of flagging each portal as reviewed/nonreviewed, which would be a pointless waste of resources given the lack of time pressure. (At NPP the pages are publicly visible so it's important a human editor reviews them as soon as possible after they go live; as the portals are effectively invisible to readers that isn't really a factor here.) ‑ Iridescent 07:09, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Iridescent, making the portal at all was presumptively an error: there is no evidence that the portal is worth keeping, as they were made as WP:IINFO. No human engaged any significant decision or selection skills in making them. Robert McClenon, the proposal is for a bot to examine the portals, see which ones have been edited by humans, delete the ones that have not been edited, and leave the rest alone. There is no prejudice towards protecting the remaining ones from MFD (if someone wants to nominate any of them) or preventing people from recreating the deleted ones. It all seems pretty straightforward to me. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 08:35, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose The utility and quality of a portal are independent of whether it was created by a human manually, a human using a script, a bot, or by some other means. It would also produce an artificial deadline, diverting time and energy away from improving portals that can and should be improved. Thryduulf (talk) 09:19, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
  • There's no deadline, in the sense that if someone wants to recreate a deleted portal, they can (or any specific ones can be restored on request at REFUND). It's not like it's been MFD'd and can't be recreated without consensus. It can be treated more like a PROD. But I'm sufficiently persuaded by the various analyses people have posted that the portals are mostly crap. Per MASSCREATION they should not be treated on an equal basis with pages created by normal human effort. It's fine to just roll back the operation except in the cases where someone else contributed some work or selectivity. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 10:04, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support these were made with 10 seconds of work and 50 seconds hunting articles down that have nave boxes. [37] Legacypac (talk) 21:18, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Proposal 10 - Criterion for Deletion of Portals[edit]

In their supervote closing proposal 4, User:GoldenRing stated that there is a consensus that some fast-track process would win a larger majority of support. So this heading is being created to allow the specification of a fast-track process. Will someone please describe a criterion for fast-track speedy deletion of portals that were created recklessly or that will not be maintained or that need deleting? Robert McClenon (talk) 07:17, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

• I already suggested one. Since you're not going to get consensus for either "delete all" or "keep all", my proposal is probably the best you're going to get. If Goldenring thinks there's a proposal that has consensus to justify his supervoting, I suggest he tells us what it is. ‑ Iridescent 12:10, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

22 in favor of X3 deletion and 14 opposed, plus in the VPR thread a number of other editors spontaneously suggested and supported what became the X3 proposal. I'm still trying to understand how better than 2:1 is not consensus when most discussions can be decided by a single vote one way or the other. Legacypac (talk) 21:15, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Because WP:CONSENSUS is not a WP:VOTE. Thryduulf (talk) 23:09, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Proposal 11 - Remove all links to portals from mainspace[edit]

OK, with tongue firmly in cheek, I'll bite. Enormous amounts of energy are being spent, time wasted, and ill-will generated, by various attempts to keep or delete some or all portals. The acrid atmosphere of some discussions is doing serious social damage to our community which will be hard to repair.

All we really need to do is to agree that portals aren't very important or useful in the scheme of things, and that we don't want to link to them from mainspace; then get a bot to go round and remove the links. Anyone who reads a portal will still be able to get to the main part of the encyclopaedia, people who want to improve the encyclopaedia won't have to worry if portals are defective or don't have enough scope. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:08, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

• Portals are promoted as a gateway to mainspace so should not be an exit from mainspace. Reader stats show almost no one searches for portals, so presumably they wander into the portal space from links. Like everything else on the internet, let popularity and relevince be decided by who links to it. Delink from mainspace and watch the traffic or lack there of. Legacypac (talk) 21:26, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose If portals stay, being linked from mainspace is a good way to let people know they exist, plus a well constructed portal will help you dive deeper into the topic. SportingFlyer T·C 00:44, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Proposal 12 - Ask on the article talk pages[edit]

OK, I'll bite:
Proposal: Post a comment on the talk page of the primary article of every portal (e.g. Talk:Cheese for Portal:Cheese), asking anyone who feels the portal should be kept and are willing to undertake to check it for errors and to maintain it to post a message to that effect on the portal's talk page. After a reasonable period (30 days?), any portal which still does not have a message on its talk page from someone explicitly volunteering to maintain it can be speedily deleted without further discussion. ‑ Iridescent 21:33, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

• Support as proposer. It's a reasonable assumption that most of the people with the strongest interest in any given topic are going to have that topic's article on their watchlist, and that even if they don't this will prompt those who do see the notification to post "hey have you seen this?" messages at the relevant wikiprojects, talkpages of editors they think might be interested, and so on. This preserves the spirit of my earlier Wikiproject proposal, in that it provides a mechanism by which the people who know about the topic are the ones to decide if the effort of maintaining a portal on that topic is worthwhile, but doesn't penalize topics which don't have an active project. I'd suggest that if this process is used, it be used on all portals not just those created in the mass-creation spree, as there may well be some portals manually created in the early days of Wikipedia which are no longer kept up to date or serving any useful purpose. It will also have the benefit that, for those portals which are kept, it will generate a list of names of people who've expressed an interest in maintaining that portal and who can subsequently be contacted in the event of further issues. ‑ Iridescent 21:33, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
• Comment I'm not going to support or oppose this yet, but my initial thinking is that there won't necessarily be an exact 1:1 between portal and article, e.g. someone prepared to maintain a Portal:Fruit may be watching articles like Strawberry and Apricot but not necessarily Fruit; and that speedy deletion is too harsh (this proposal would need to be at least advertised at WT:CSD and maybe also WP:VPP before speedy deletion would be allowable anyway) however this plus regular MfD would leave this bit pointless so maybe something between the two - but I'm not immediately sure what. More thought is needed and I'd like to see whether other people think of anything I've missed before placing a bold !vote. Thryduulf (talk) 23:18, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

• Comment I'd tweak the idea to say that the proposed maintainer(s) should be advised to post their intent on the portal talkpage for easy referance. I expect this plan will lead to a flood of MfDs on portals. Every attempt to pull in interested editors to save portals at MfDs (via posts to Wikiprojects or deletion sorting) has backfired by drawing in often harsh delete votes by subject matter experts. The Birds and Math fans case in point. Legacypac (talk) 05:39, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

  Well, that is exactly what I proposed (anyone … willing to undertake to maintain it to post a message to that effect on the portal's talk page)… ‑ Iridescent 08:31, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

• Spam 1000s of talk pages? No thanks, we've already been spammed with 1000s of useless portals. We don't need more spam. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 09:22, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Proposal 13 - Require that users be autocofirmed before they can create pages in the Portal: space[edit]

I was shocked when I found that User:NAMDAR56 (contributions) was able to create a portal a mere 3 days after setting up an account. This seems to me an enormous BLP/Vandalism/sockpuppet/other problems risk. Users should have to be autocofirmed before they can create pages in the Portal: space.

• Support as proposer. UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:16, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support especially since we have no NPR for Portals. Legacypac (talk) 15:02, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support GiantSnowman 15:04, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. The risk involved in allowing non-auoconfirmed users to create pages in portal space seems to be about the same as allowing them to create pages in draft space. The only problem is that we don't have a quick way to delete {{subst:Basic portal start page}} portals at the moment. —Kusma (t·c) 15:54, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

• Completely disagree: Portals are indexed, while the draftspace is not, so the risk of a problem hitting a search engine or mirror is infinitely larger. UnitedStatesian (talk) 15:56, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

• The main problem with vandalism is vandalism to existing (and popular) pages, not page creation. I have seen vandalism in portal space, but almost none done via page creations. It is probably hopeless to try to convince me: I also think Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed article creation trial/Request for comment on permanent implementation is one of the worst things this community ever decided. —Kusma (t·c) 19:13, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose per everything Kusma said. Thryduulf (talk) 19:17, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
• Strong Support - Two new editors have created portals. One has created two portals and made no other edits. I suspect sockpuppetry but cannot identify the sockmaster. This hole in WP:ACPERM should be closed. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:02, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Unless those portals are actively harmful to the project (in which case they can probably be speedily deleted) then this is not evidence that this proposal is necessary. If the users are sock puppets then existing policies apply. Please focus on the content not the contributor. Thryduulf (talk) 09:21, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
• Completely irrelevant and making one or two bad portals isn't especially worse than making one or two bad edits. The issue we're trying to deal with involves 1000s of portals. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 20:15, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support - Anything to improve the quality of these things. - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 20:52, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
  • How would this proposal make any difference to the quality of portals (positive or negative)? The portals that sparked this whole debacle were created by autoconfirmed users. Thryduulf (talk) 10:12, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
    • But there were so far six portals that had to go to MfD because they were set up by non-ac users. UnitedStatesian (talk) 12:12, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
      • Six portals is not evidence of any sort of problem, even assuming they were all very low quality. Six hundred maybe a different issue, but not six. Thryduulf (talk) 12:48, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Proposal N+1 - Close this entire thread as off the rails[edit]

I agree that the portals situation needs amelioration. This entire thread, however, has gotten off the rails and I'm not sure it's being productive in solving the problem. We now have (as of this writing) 13 separate proposals, started at different times, some closed, some still open, some even mutually exclusive in their aims, on how to deal with some, or all, or parts, or tangents, of the main problem. There is basically zero chance of this thread producing a workable solution. I propose the following:

Without prejudice towards restarting the discussion elsewhere in a more organized and productive manner, the current discussion is no longer productive, is not heading towards a useful consensus, and should be closed down without any action, decision, or summary.

• Support as nominator. --Jayron32 16:08, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
• Mostly support. Before there is going to be any agreement on how to deal with portals there needs to be (1) some administrative action to cool the discussions down and remove from the topic area those who aren't interested in consensus and/or compromise; (2) agreement on what makes a good portal, what makes a bad portal and what makes a portal that is somewhere between the two; (3) agreement on which, if any, bad portals are actually causing serious problems and how to identify them. None of these things can come from the unfocused mess that this thread has become. My support is "mostly" though because I would close some of the proposals as "no consensus", some as "consensus against" and the rest as "closed without prejudice". Thryduulf (talk) 19:24, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support we need something that is more organized and that will be more likely to be produce a clear consensus. Lepricavark (talk) 19:28, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support closing this and waiting for Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Mass-created portals based on a single navbox‎ to close. Whatever the result of that (and the likely follow-up nomination for the large group of portals which were briefly bundled in to that discussion before being removed) is will drastically shift the landscape; only after that's reached a conclusion will it be the appropriate time to start holding indicative votes to see if there's a process that's acceptable for handling whatever remains. ‑ Iridescent 19:29, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support – agree about waiting for the MfD to close and that future policy proposals probably would be better off posted somewhere other than AN. Leviv ich 02:08, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
• There's a dispute going on and arbitration was already declined on the theory that discussion was still making progress. Maybe the MFD will advance things, maybe not. If progress has stopped then there should be a new arbitration request. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 20:23, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
• I'm not hanging the whole solution on one single MfD result. If that fails we go back to discussion one by one or of small bundles by topic″. We already have deleted hundreds of portals in individual and group nominations building up significant precent. Legacypac (talk) 20:29, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
• Please move the discussion/proposals elsewhere, this is not appropriate subject for AN. –xeno^talk 12:07, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support - Move to WP:RFC. --Jax 0677 (talk) 13:15, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support Close here/Move This is not what AN is for. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:40, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support - wrong venue. It's time to move along. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 22:45, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support – There are way too many discussions on too many various pages occurring about portals simultaneously, to the point that it's highly disorganized and nobody is in touch with what others are doing or discussing. Said discussions should all occur in one area, the Village Pump. Discussions started elsewhere should be moved to the Village Pump. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 01:14, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

HuffPost article on WP COI editing[edit]

Thanks to JamesG5 I bumped into this HuffPost article of yesterday (or today depending on your timezone). It is dedicated to a particular COI editor on WP:

• Ashley Feinberg (14 March 2019). "Facebook, Axios And NBC Paid This Guy To Whitewash Wikipedia Pages. And it almost always works". Huffington Post.

Does it offer ideas for anything actionable? — kashmīrī ^TALK 00:05, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• So long as he has disclosed and not directly edited pages, there's nothing we can do. If someone wants to change the policy to be stricter and prohibit it completely, I'll be the first to support, but I don't think we have that consensus yet (though I believe we eventually will. Also, note I'm talking about PR nonsense, not Wikipedians-in-residence, which is always a sticking point.)
  I'll add that articles like this make us look ridiculous and that our official begrudging acceptance of disclosed paid editing is even more of a threat than undisclosed paid editing because it ruins our reputation when major media outlets runs stories like this.
  Finally, I'll put my 2¢ in that admins and others should not let declated paid editors do what I refer to as TOU bludgeon: declaration is the minimum required to edit. It is not a free pass to spam. WP:NOTSPAM is still local policy and if someone openly declares themselves a spammer and the content matches, they should be indefinitely blocked without warning. Native advertising is very much a thing, and just because spam doesn't look like it did in 2005 when out policies were written, doesn't mean that our policies don't apply. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:14, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

TonyBallioni I completely and passionately agree with your last paragraph. However, If a media organization wants to take issue with the calls we make on controversial topics they can and they will and we might not come out the otherside so great - they're tough areas for a reason. The fact that we have transparency means we can, if we want, revisit any of these editorial decisions. If there was no declaration those changes would be made and we wouldn't know or be any wiser and the community would have no option to re-evaluate the thinking. There are no good decisions for us to make here only least awful ones. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:47, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Which headline makes us look more like fools:

1. Wikipedia blocks hundreds of 'scam' sock puppet accounts
2. Facebook, Axios And NBC Paid This Guy To Whitewash Wikipedia Pages And it almost always works

The first headline is about Orangemoody. The second one is about someone following our TOU and policies. Anyone who has ever worked a day in a marketing department can tell you which headline they'd prefer.

This is significant because we've fought for years to have our credibility accepted. I'm not saying that this is worse ethically than Orangemoody. Of course it isn't. I am saying that to the general public, this looks significantly worse. In Orangemoody, we were the heroes: fighting a bad guy scamming people out of their money. Here we are the bureaucrats that allow Big Tech to whitewash their own articles.

Regardless of what the actual impact is on individual articles, the perceived impact is worse from declared PR editing, and that in turn makes all of the featured articles on notable topics that are extremely well researched worth less to the reader.

I'm well aware that these are tough calls, but I'm saying that the community does need to consider perception here, and the perception from "white hat" editing on the outside is worse than some of our biggest sockfarms. I don't want an RfC on this now, but I do think it is something that is missing from community discussion on the topic, which is why I'm raising it. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:57, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Not to detract from TonyBallioni's points, but just to answer one of the original questions of whether there is anything actionable, I didn't see such a thing. Problematic, sure. Actionable? Well, since the editor in question responds reasonably to comments, I don't see anything in particular right now. HuffPo also I feel is being a bit misleading. Regarding the Oppenheimer/Farrow thing, for instance, looking back, the section we had in his article was completely inappropriate for a BLP given what the sources actually stated. If what was previously written were verifiable, then those sources should have been added if the content was to stay like that. The wall-o-texts that HuffPo complains about don't seem big to me. And whether an article on a website needs to mention a criminal complaint against the founder is a completely ordinary coat rack discussion. Well, I guess CORPORATE PR PHONY WIKIPEDIA EDITOR WHITEWASHES ARTICLES is more compelling clickbait than Several companies pay Wikipedia editor to file routine boring complaints about content that arguably violates Wikipedia's own policies. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:26, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

I don't think today's headline is worse for us than Wikipedia’s Top-Secret ‘Hired Guns’ Will Make You Matter (For a Price) and at least today we can decide if the changes really were policy compliant or not. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:58, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Damn, what's next? Soon they'll discover that I've been taking millions to edit Intel articles. THE JIG IS UP Drmies (talk) 02:06, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Millions?! I only get a few rubles! You need to hook me up. PackMecEng talk) 02:10, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Bedoel je niet wij, goede dokter ;-). TonyBallioni (talk) 02:12, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Nice try, Tony, but that you are me (I?) is only a rumor on Reddit, and at any rate I AM NOT SHARING THE MILLIONS I GOT FROM INTEL FOR EDITING THAT ARTICLE WITH YOU. Damn I hope that that person who exposed me AS A PAID EDITOR FOR INTEL doesn't read this. Drmies (talk) 02:14, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

I once made a rather noncontroversial edit about compact fluorescent bulbs being more efficient than incandescent bulbs (this was before LED bulbs became affordable) and was accused of being "a paid shill for the Twisty Bulb Cartel". How did they guess? --Guy Macon (talk) 20:11, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

• Back on point, while I agree the headline isn't great for Wikipedia, making policy in response to headlines is a slippery slope that I, for one, don't want to embark upon. Of course HuffPo is going to write the most sensational headline they can coin out of a relatively scant set of facts. I'm not really convinced that there is a lot in the story we should be worried about, which just leaves the headline. If you're looking for headlines critical of Wikipedia handling of material, there are plenty out there and they really do affect our credibility with a big section of the population; we shouldn't make policy in response to those headlines, either. GoldenRing (talk) 10:41, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

The headline itself is useless, but the rest of the text could possibly be of use for those who want to take a look at the mentioned articles. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:05, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Just to make it clear, we are talking about BC1278--Ymblanter (talk) 15:21, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

And I think the question the HP asks in our language would be whether their actions are compatible with WP:CANVASSING.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:39, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi. BC1278 here. Overwhelmingly, my Request Edits are made through a Request Edit flag. The format is usually very concise, as suggested by User: Spintendo, a frequent reviewer to the Request Edit queue: e.g. Talk:Pace_University#Request_Edit, Talk:Jonathan_Swan#Request_Edits. The "wall of text" complaint the author of the HuffPo column picked up on happened in an article about Noah Oppenheim during extended discussions about controversial issues with multiple RfCs. The consensus decisions ultimately reached by independent editors were not remotely like my original proposed edits, as the HuffPost author falsely implies. Instead, independent editors did their job and came to their own conclusions. One outcome of participating in a couple of these very contentious discussions was a chat last year with DGG, who advised me that he had learned over the years there's very little advantage in getting involved in debates after you've made your point once - you're not going to convince people to change their minds anyway. I have tried to adopt his style since. The HuffPost column is focused on a few high-profile media-related Wikipedia articles which involved public controversies (the author's beat), rather than how I conduct myself on Wikipedia in general. It's click bait. It is also rife with mistakes and misleading statements too numerous to explain here. I am going to ask for HuffPo for multiple corrections. For example, she ignores that I was the editor who suggested expanding into a robust paragraph, the few words mentioning the Matt Laeur firing on NBC News, despite the subject being very unflattering to them. But I wanted the NBC News article to be up to date anyway. The HuffPo author cherry picked one sentence she didn't like in my proposed edit, even though, as per a normal independent review, another editor chose to use entirely different language than anything I submitted (and I added words of encouragement, saying it was well done.) Talk:NBC_News#Expanded_info_on_Matt_Lauer Her example of alleged canvasing are notifications to editors who had already participated in extended discussions on Talk:Noah Oppenheim that more discussions were continuing in a new RfC. If she looked carefully, she would have seen that I notified (or tried to) all the recent editors, including those who opposed my proposals previously, such as User: Peter K Burian. This was my first RfC and to me, there appeared to already be consensus, when JytDog re-opened the question as a new RfC. I thought the previous editors discussing the same matter should be notified again. Today, having been through a few, I would have added all the notifications right on the RfC page, to be transparent, and let others double check I didn't mistakenly leave anyone out. Or, to be honest, I just wouldn't bother to notify anyone - at the time, I didn't know how RfC editors were even called upon.BC1278 (talk) 20:36, 15 March 2019 (UTC)BC1278

FYI, if you'd like to know what its like to field inquiries from prominent organizations, PR firms or individuals who think articles about them have problems, or want a new article, many balk when I tell them how I work - with full disclosure of COI as a paid editor and submitting all suggested edits for independent review. They don't want to take the risk of appearing in articles like the one by HuffPo. So I turn down their business, as my entire premise is that I do "white hat" work, only for those who want to follow the rules. Sometimes, a few months or a year down the road, I check to see if the articles of those who chose not to work with me nonetheless were edited or published as they wanted -- and it's usually the case they have been, but never with a public disclosure of COI or prior review. As the editing is anonymous, I can't be sure what happened, of course. I do know it will be more difficult to get subjects to publicly disclose because of this article, but it won't slow down the organizations/individuals from violating Wikipedia policy and making direct edits. Not in my experience. Only a much more radical change will solve the problem -- for example, the elimination of anonymous editing, with all user accounts requiring a LinkedIn profile. Then, COI and agenda editing will be more obvious. It would also go a long way toward solving the civility issues. But given the sanctity of anonymous editing on Wikipedia, I guess it isn't viable.BC1278 (talk) 20:36, 15 March 2019 (UTC)BC1278

Hi guy here who thinks you're right that UPE is worse. But do you understand why as a volunteer how your 700+ words are troubling and could be seen as WP:BLUDGEONing this conversation in contradiction of WP:PAYTALK. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:33, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Yes. Sorry/ I re-read it a bunch of times to try to cut it. But I'm responding to a major press article that made a slew of misleading and inaccurate statements about me, personally, and that now seems to be swaying discussion on Wikipedia policy itself. For four years, I've worked to convince organizations and PR firms to abide by COI disclosure rules because that's what Wikipedia has decreed is kosher Someone from the Wikimedia Foundation needs to publicly stand up to this young media reporter who thinks UPE is more ethical than declared PE or declared COI editing. That's what this author is explicitly saying! I received calls and emails from major PR agencies all day -- if this is the new normal, they're going to direct business away from the "white hats." There are board meetings taking place next week to formalize this, affecting some of the largest corporations in the world. Unless something changes, the outcome will be a lot more business for "black hats."BC1278 (talk) 04:00, 16 March 2019 (UTC)BC1278

I don't agree with this. UPE is bad, and we obviously need to root it out when we can; but I feel that Wikipedia is large enough now that the damage it can do is ultimately containable. Declared paid editing, on the other hand, hurts Wikipedia's reputation by making it seem as though we don't care about the potential issues raised in articles like this one at all. And, more generally - "if you ban this, people will just evade and do it anyway" has not, I think, generally been a strong argument for anything. People get away with violating all sorts of policies. (I would also add, as I mentioned down below, that I feel that the nature of paid editing and the confusion over it allows paid editors to get away with clearly WP:TENDENTIOUS editing that would get a normal editor in far more trouble, since people feel that that one-sided editing is "expected" from them. An undisclosed paid editor cannot devote the same intensity, passion, and time that you have brought to your work here, since it would attract attention, opposition, and, eventually, sanctions.) But more generally you're not wrong that everyone has POVs and that most tendentious editing goes unsanctioned - the really serious problem for disclosed paid editing is the damage it does to Wikipedia's reputation, which I feel is, today, a more serious problem than any other aspect of the issue. --Aquillion (talk) 01:52, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

• I mean, yeah, it does. BC1278 is alleged to be a serial POV-pusher and professional whitewasher, who games the system to get his edits through with a combination of relentless bludgeoning and canvassing. That's extremely alarming and I was ready to crucify this guy. I was even pissed to see the lighthearted reactions above. But, when you actually examine the article, I'm not seeing any violations. In fact, I'm not really seeing anything of major concern. The article itself seems to quietly concede that he doesn't actually violate any policies. In fact, it comes across as extremely misleading and obviously written by someone who doesn't understand Wikipedia at all. He "spent over a year lobbying" for the creation of Caryn Marooney? Come on, he created it as a draft and got it approved through the AfC process, not because he's some relentless lobbyist. Relentless bludgeoning, based on this? Really? He's literally just discussing something in the discussion section, because he was refraining from !voting. Obviously the writer has never witnessed true bludgeoning. Canvassing? The supposed incidents of "canvassing" are usually explained as simply being notifications to relevant users who are involved in some way, such as WikiProject members. I have not seen any refutations of that point. I mean, one of the warnings cited was literally for notifying the only other contributor to an article about a deletion discussion.[38] There's nothing even particularly unreasonable about that. Most of the supposed "whitewashing" seems to be mundane matters that don't harm articles at all, if not actual improvements, like making articles better comply with BLP. "It almost always works"? Uh, yeah, if you're in compliance with policies and are making reasonable requests that are being vetted by established editors who decide to approve them, then good for you, you're not terrible at what you do. It certainly isn't because the community has no problem with paid COI editors, on the contrary, they're among the most stigmatized editors within the community. This article seems to be little more than an unfortunate piece of trumped-up clickbaity garbage, and I actually feel bad for the paid editor here. I hope both the editor and the Foundation will push back in some way. If COIN wants to do an in-depth investigation of this editor, that's perhaps a reasonable reaction, but based solely on the allegations and supporting evidence presented in the article, which, I assume was the worst they could find, there's nothing actionable there. ~Swarm~ {talk} 21:02, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Swarm I have spent some time examining this user's editing. I think on the whole I agree with your analysis. But even in that rather long analysis above you're still about 55% as verbose as BC1278 is in his response here. I think given PAYTALK, which I value as a volunteer editor, he could learn how to be more concise. The problem with him at Oppenheim, as I see it, isn't with the RfC, it's with what came before. Similar verbose behavior can be seen at other of his pages. I compare that to this paid editor who accomplishes their work in a far more concise manner. But to emphasize I think that the HuffPo article, like much of the media commenting on Wikipedia practices, gets things wrong, and in this case does so with a clear agenda in mind. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:24, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• I think that that's a misreading of the article, which is clearly written from the perspective that all paid editing is inherently problematic and that our policies allowing it are the core issue here. Obviously people here disagree on that, but it's not a reason to disregard the source - I don't think there's anything inherently wrong or questionable about positing that paid editing, even by someone who follows all our rules, might unbalance articles due to the disparate levels of energy and time devoted. (Although the article doesn't say this, I think it's also worth pointing out that the nature of Wikipedia has changed a lot since we originally decided to allow paid editing, generally in ways that make it more problematic - controversies over low-to-mid-tier articles are more likely to get hashed out on talk pages in general, say, which makes many of the restrictions we place on paid editors moot and calls into question whether the image problem they create for the project is worth what we get by having them declare themselves instead of inevitably just evading successive bans.) --Aquillion (talk) 01:16, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

I think that there is a "money is bad" mentality that induces people into writing articles of debatable accuracy about paid editing on Wikipedia. In a way it's similar to the POV-pushing process. I agree that the "bludgeoning" there isn't, plenty of people write mildly detailed arguments. And if memory serves this would be far from the first time where a news article about Wikipedia has turned out to be partially or mostly wrong. Some caution is due before citing newspaper articles about Wikipedia as arguments for a policy change or on-wiki action. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:16, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks Swarm for taking time to go through the edit history and this way answering my original question.

As to COI editing, Jo-Jo Eumerus has put it right. We often distrust those who have vested financial interest in what most of us are doing for free, ergo, in our view, selflessly.

Hopefully, in the longer run, common sense will prevail. Maybe a day will come when for example we will allow company infoboxes to be edited by company staff, or person infoboxes by article subjects. Until we find an open and transparent way of managing COI, we will see articles like the HuffPost piece. — kashmīrī ^TALK 00:44, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Swarm, Barkeep49, Jo-Jo Eumerus, Kashmiri, Ymblanter, GoldenRing, TonyBallioni, PackMecEng, Drmies, Gråbergs Gråa Sång and anyone I missed here: Given the subject of the Request Edit here Talk:Caryn_Marooney#section=1 and the already removed language from from NBC News (editors using this HuffPo article to include accusations of Wikipedia impropriety in the WP articles about the organizations mentioned), would it be possible for an official consensus as to whether this article is or is not a reliable source for alleging paid editing impropriety such that it can be included in the Wikipedia mainspace articles about or related to the organizations highlighted in HuffPo? Or, whether the article is reliable in general? This is going to repeat over and over.BC1278 (talk) 23:10, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

I'd say it's reasonably reliable for alleging (by which I mean "according to HuffPost" or whatever) paid editing impropriety, but will currently probably fail on WP:UNDUE/WP:NOTNEWS (and maybe WP:BLP, depending on use) aspects. I was thinking of Conflict-of-interest_editing_on_Wikipedia#Miscellaneous, but it seems a little weak on it's own. HuffPost is not Daily Mail, but it's not Washington Post either. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:59, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

• @BC1278: In response to your request for "an official consensus", I've started a discussion on the reliable sources noticeboard at WP:RSN § HuffPost for paid editing at Axios (website), NBC News, Caryn Marooney, and other articles. — Newslinger talk 17:51, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

• Speaking of WP:BLUDGEON and WP:PAYTALK... 2600:6C44:E7F:F8D6:8694:953B:9EC1:FBC (talk) 04:27, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

• If you're implying that's an example of "bludgeoning", then no. In fact, based on the above, the user presents a perfectly reasonable case. If anyone is unclear on what "bludgeoning" looks like, check out the discussions I collapsed at Talk:Origin of the Romanians/Archive 18. If you're really a glutton for punishment, keep scrolling past that. Eventually, you may reach the bottom of the page. ~Swarm~ {talk} 20:14, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Maybe you missed the part of those 572 words where he asserted AN consensus that HuffPo is not a reliable source? That's a misrepresentation at best, and the whole thing is a classic example of throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. 2600:6C44:E7F:F8D6:8694:953B:9EC1:FBC (talk) 01:40, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Suggestions and proposals related to paid editing[edit]

• We should at least say "paid editors are not to directly edit articles"... Even info boxes maybe problematic as they try to exaggerate the number of employees ect. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:11, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
• This part concerns me:

Posts calling attention to Sussman’s lobbying of other editors rarely stay up for more than a week. According to his Talk page history, Sussman deletes criticism frequently and any record of it in his user logs often gets buried by his prolific posting and editing.

Should paid editors be restricted from deleting other editors' comments from their user talk page? Combing through a history like this is unnecessarily arduous, and the status quo hinders oversight from other editors by allowing important discussions to be obscured. — Newslinger talk 10:25, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

I don't see this incident going away anytime soon. A new discussion was started at ANI just today: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Whitewashing?. What I find most offensive to those of us who edit for free, and worse, what may prove damaging to WP in the long term, are sites like this one and the claims they make while marketing their business. I don't know how long volunteers can be expected to keep working for free in order to make an article encyclopedic and compliant with our PAGs knowing it's for the benefit of paid editors. Think about that for a minute. Our own paid editing/COI PAGs lack common sense. So paid editor John Doe gets a nice check for $400+/- (probably a great deal more if worth their salt) to write/protect an article but unpaid editors are actually the ones writing the article for them. How is this not insanity? ^Atsme _Talk 📧 00:49, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

It's insane that Wikipedia's rules are that you cannot be paid to edit an article, you can only be paid to get unpaid volunteers to edit the article for you. Leviv ich 02:10, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

I highly agree with User:Atsme and User:Levivich. Why should volunteers edit an article for someone getting paid wads, while us volunteers get paid nothing at all? While I understand that we've opted to keep some COI editing aboveboard instead of outlawing it and just driving paid editing underground, paid editing is still highly problematic. Captain Eek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 03:55, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

I don't begrudge the way any person makes an honest living, and if a paid editor is complying with policy, they're doing nothing wrong in my book. The policies are kafkaesque, but that's the inevitable result of trying to police editors instead of edits. Leviv ich 04:39, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Nor do I, Levivich, but it's wrong to do it at the expense of volunteers who are committed to building a free knowledge-based encyclopedia. The marketing material of companies like White Hat Wiki is an insult to everything WP represents. Phrases like "We Bullet-Proof Your Wikipedia Presence", and "Wikipedia is a byzantine labyrinth of policies, guidelines and internal politics" are far from flattering to the project and its volunteers. Paid editing changes the landscape and the very definition of knowledge-based encyclopedia and converts it to a Whose Who in business. Catch phrases like "We use sophisticated strategies and our knowledge of the complex rules to get results is an insult - "get results"?? And what results might that be? When a company is notable enough to be included in WP, a volunteer (typically patrons or fans) will eventually write the article. To do otherwise weakens the very foundation WP is built on. I can't help but wonder how much money paid editing actually diverts away from Jimbo's fund drives and the much needed contributions that keep this project alive. Why should companies contribute to WMF when they're paying an independent company to write/oversee their articles? I truly believe this is something WMF needs to carefully reconsider, but I'm only one voice. Perhaps the time has come for WMF to pay its own select group of qualified editors to work exclusively on business/corporate articles, and keep that money going to the project instead of independent companies, unless the goal is to grow, support and protect the cottage industries that are sprouting up around us. I shudder to think all the time and energy that is being devoted to COI by editors like Doc James and the volunteers he's worked with is for naught, or worse, driving COI editors to become/work with independent companies at the expense of other WP volunteers. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 12:03, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

• This "Should paid editors be restricted from deleting other editors' comments from their user talk page?" by User:Newslinger is an excellent suggestion. They can use automated archiving but Talk pages are here to improve Wikipedia so they do not belong to any single editor. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:14, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

If I were making the rules here, I'd require all new corporate articles to be moved immediately to draft space and EC-protect the creation of each title in main space, forcing each new corporate article to go through review. If the paid editor has to wait for it, that isn't our problem. If disclosed paid editors complain, that also isn't our problem. I would also EC-protect any approved/established corporate article in main space, to force the PR folks to request changes on the talk page. These rule changes wouldn't have any effect on long-term paid editors with a long contribution history, but this would likely eliminate a lot of the undisclosed paid crap. I mean, we have these tools already, let's stop whining about the situation and use them. ~Anachronist (talk) 04:40, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

• How come this guy hasn't been blocked indef? It is most detestable and infuriating to have the fruits of our volunteer labor ripped by these paid editors walking away with swathes of cash. Another second that these parasites are accomodated here is an insult to us all. Concur with talk page post removal restrictions at the very least. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 19:49, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

  Because he hasn't broken any policies? We cannot and will not simply block someone because you don't like what they do. This was not a ban discussion, by the way; it's a discussion about a HuffPo article. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:20, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

  Is that actually true? I'm aware of Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure, but WP:NPOV and WP:TENDENTIOUS still apply. It seems to me that paid editors are in constant danger of falling afoul of those policies, since if their services go even a hair beyond "generally improve Wikipedia on this topic", they are not here to make neutral edits or simply to build an encyclopedia - they are here to represent the POV they've been paid to represent. As far as I'm aware, the tension between what Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure allows and what WP:NPOV and WP:TENDENTIOUS disallow has never been properly resolved. But WP:NPOV and WP:TENDENTIOUS are absolutely policies; a paid editor is subject to them just as thoroughly as anyone else. I feel this article makes a reasonable argument for tendentious editing in particular. If what an editor is doing is WP:POV or WP:TENDENTIOUS editing, then clearly it's a concern (and I feel that some editors have allowed "paid editing is allowed, under certain circumstances" to blind them to that fact.) EDIT: On reflection, I think that most paid editing is also a violation of WP:NOTHERE, especially the point forbidding editors from edits that are trying to score brownie points outside of Wikipedia. An editor trying to maintain the favor of their employer is the purest representation of that sort of WP:NOTHERE behavior imaginable. --Aquillion (talk) 01:31, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

  Unfortunately, most people interpret Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure as allowing paid editing; at least, it has never been formally banned (though I think many parts of WP:NPOV, WP:TENDENTIOUS, and WP:NOTHERE make it dubious in most practical cases, including this one.) Either way, I feel that a lot of people underestimate the harm that that does to the project, but that's how things are at the moment. If you want to help, one thing to do is to start pushing more firmly for an unambiguous ban on paid editing; but absent that, you can also spend time reviewing past work by paid editors and challenging things that seem questionable. It might also be worth considering a Wikiproject devoted to reviewing suggestions by paid editors with a critical eye and generally weighing in on related discussions in order to provide a counterbalance to the amount of time and effort that a paid editor can devote to pushing the particular POV they've been paid to represent. --Aquillion (talk) 01:31, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

• Random thought bubbles - would general sanctions work for some subset of articles prone to paid editing (say the highest risk topics: advertising, marketing and public relations or leveraged financial products targeted at retail investors)? Can we repurpose existing DS regimes to the same effect (WP:ARBIPA, WP:ARBCAM in particular)? The quality of cryptocurrency articles has improved since WP:GS/Crypto was put into place, but sometimes I feel tired keeping up with the influx of SPAs. MER-C 21:39, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

  MER-C I agree that Crypto has improved since GS. However, I don't know that advertising, marketing, and public relations are the topics most likely to have UPE and so I don't know that we could define this in a way that would make GS possible in this area given the broad scope of topics which potentially have UPE as it encompasses biographies, companies, and products. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:59, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

  Advertising is high risk because that's what spammers do. If they get the idea that we tolerate them creating articles about themselves and their companies, then it is not a stretch that they think we tolerate them creating articles about their clients. I also forgot we have WP:NEWBLPBAN for biographies. MER-C 09:29, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

• It looks like BC1278 removed the notice of this discussion and the notice of the prior conflict of interest noticeboard discussion (archived at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Archive 141 § Jytdog's efforts against paid editing covered in Media) from their user talk page on March 29. You can see the removal at Special:Diff/890053760.

Since there has been some interest in the suggestion to restrict paid editors from deleting other editors' comments from their user talk page, I think an RfC to include new guidance at Wikipedia:User pages § Removal of comments, notices, and warnings (WP:BLANKING) may be warranted. For the RfC, the proposed addition could be a new bullet point at WP:BLANKING that states the following "important matter" may not be removed by the user:

For editors making paid contributions, any comments and templates (from other editors) related to their edits on a topic in which they have a conflict of interest. Examples include deletion notices, Articles for Creation notices, noticeboard discussion notices, and comments on the editor's paid contributions.

Alternatively, here's a stricter option:

For editors making paid contributions, any comments and templates from other editors, with the exception of obvious vandalism.

Would this be helpful, and can this be improved? I'd like to hear your thoughts and suggestions. — Newslinger talk 06:58, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't think this would help with anything. Feels like we are hunting for solutions to non-existent problems, here. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:37, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Agenda editors, who use Wikipedia to smear the subjects of articles (this happens all the time, including from competitors, oppo research firms, disgruntled former employees and foreign governments - it's just not something Wikipedia can easily identity), also like to use User Talk pages to discredit those opposing them. So do overly zealous editors who use User Talk to attack paid editors or their positions, instead of confining their discussions to Article Talk or noticeboards. Two contributors to my User Talk now have indefinite blocks. One of these two verbally attacked me both on User Talk and offline. The HuffPo article's allegations have been discredited. I consider the allegations potentially libelous. Talk served its primary purpose by notifying me of the ongoing discussions. Why should I offer further credence to a discredited article by linking to discussions about it from my own User Talk? BC1278 (talk) 16:30, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

what I read in the Huffpost article was that there is a paid editor who knows the system of Wikipedia and its rules very well, and sometimes causes disruption in the pursuance of their business goals. What I see here is:

• this large ANI thread,
• a huge wall of text at the Caryn Marooney talk page, and
• a new thread over at Reliable Sources Noticeboard.

That's a lot of gaslighting as far as I am concerned, and to me it confirms the techniques claimed in the HuffPo article. So the HuffPo article is by no means discredited-- unless you also think that the border wall is getting built too.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 23:53, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Do you know what the word gaslighting means or did you just use it as a synonym for "thing I don't like"? 199.247.43.170 (talk) 08:49, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

If the community has reached a point where we no longer want paid editing of any kind and are willing to tolerate the drawbacks of making all paid editing UPE then let's do that. However, I don't think we should be imposing new restrictions of this sweep on declared paid editors. Frankly I would rather come up with some better incentives to motivate people to declare their paid editing. However, I haven't figured out what those incentives might be and acknowledge that what's good for the project might be to just ban all paid editing (though I'm personally not quite there yet). But I am confident that the "middle ground" isn't to stigmatize people following the rules further in ways we don't other editors especially those with strong but unpaid COI. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:47, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

• I think that this would at least be an improvement. If we're going to allow paid editing at all, it's important to allow editors to know when they're interacting with a paid editor, and to know the general scope and history of that paid editing (ie. understanding that the editor they're trying to convince is unlikely to change their mind on a topic because their paycheck depends on maintaining a particular point of view.) Other notices exist, but preserving talk page discussions would be useful for this purpose. It would also make it harder for a paid editor to conceal a history of WP:POV or WP:TENDENTIOUS editing, which is something they're obviously at a higher risk for. Regarding some of the concerns above about other sources of POV existing, or about whether declared paid editors may simply choose to violate the rules and edit covertly if we make things too burdensome for them - this is clearly a risk, but I feel that declared paid editing poses a particular problem for the project's reputation. An editor with a personal POV can still be reasonably convinced; an editor who is being paid to push a particular POV or to make particular edits realistically cannot (at best, they can be convinced that their edits are unlikely to stick, and even then they have incentives to maintain pressure long past the point where anyone else would have compromised or gone elsewhere.) For these reasons, it's important to be harsher with them and to generally make every effort to ensure, as much as possible, that they're refraining from tendentious editing, and to make it harder for them to conceal it if it exists. --Aquillion (talk) 01:47, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

• This DPE is wasting a lot of community time (cf the list of discussions two comments up), and as far as I can see it is all in pursuance of improving his business. The current model wherein a group of volunteers fulfills the desires of paid editor is, well, fundamentally flawed. I'm certainly not here to do corporate volunteer service. Additionally, I can't see how the quality of the encyclopedia is going to be that much poorer if paid editing is blocked on all counts (with an exception for Wikipedians in residence). For one, with a no paid editing policy, we will know that the primary intention of all editors is to edit with a neutral view and without COI. And in turn, we will know that the encyclopedia is primarily constructed on a non-commercial basis. Just a thought.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 00:12, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Well, we wouldn't know for certain, but I broadly agree. I feel like some of the people depending paid editing above don't realize how bad this looks from an external perspective (especially the somewhat befuddling argument that this breaks no rules - I think the article is clear on that; the point is that the fact that it breaks no rules makes the entire encyclopedia look bad.) It is probably true, as some people have worried, that if we banned all paid editing, people would just do it undisclosed. But I feel that the harm to Wikipedia's reputation from intentionally allowing such paid editing is worse than the damage we'd suffer from people doing it subtly, especially since at the end of the day really controversial stuff goes through talk pages anyway and often comes down to things like knowing the rules and sheer stamina to carry on a protracted dispute - not stuff that our restrictions on paid editing actually do anything to mitigate. Maybe a decade ago, when someone could have swept in and quietly rewritten a medium-profile article with nobody noticing, the danger of undisclosed paid editing was higher and just keeping paid editors off of article-space was helpful. But right now I don't feel it's helping at all. --Aquillion (talk) 01:03, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Prohibiting all paid editing is likely to have unintended consequences. At one time the US reasoned "drinking is bad. It ruins lives. We should make drinking illegal." Guess how well that worked out?[39][40] The approach found at Wikipedia:Best practices for editors with close associations is far superior to any blanket prohibition. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:00, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

• I have a thought and I'm not sure if it is any good, but I'll share it anyway. A concern that is raised in some of the recent media is that some paid editors do not declare their status. One way to possibly respond to this is to require every single editor to declare whether they are a paid editor on their user page. This would at least require covert paid editors to lie. Of course some of them are probably liars who will just lie. But I suspect that not every covert paid editor would feel comfortable lying like this, and so such a policy might serve as a modest deterrent to at least some covert paid editing. Shinealittlelight (talk) 18:23, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Firstly this is completely unenforceable - not only are new users created all the time, but only a minority actively edit (only 139,000 of the 36,000,000 registered users have contributed in the past 30 days according to Wikipedia:Wikipedians). Secondly, being required to answer a question like this (which they don't fully understand - even experienced editors disagree on what exactly constitutes paid editing in all circumstances) will put off a significant number of innocent new contributors while almost all of those who this is policy is designed to target will just lie. Finally, we need to be really careful to avoid McCarthyism with regards to paid editing. Thryduulf (talk) 10:22, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't get the worry about McCarthyism. McCarthy was forcing people to reveal private facts about themselves; whether you are a paid editor is not supposed to be private by current policy. So I don't see the analogy. Your point about the definition of paid editing is well taken. But perhaps the question could be asked in a way that is clear and targets the clearest kind of paid editing, without worrying about the more controversial cases. I think you are probably overestimating the number of liars out there, but hard to be sure. Finally, I can think of a number of ways to enforce this. Rather than asking the question at sign-up, it could be asked at the point of editing. Or at the point of editing sensitive articles that are likely to attract paid editors. Or...there are lots of possibilities. Shinealittlelight (talk) 11:52, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Prohibition on all paid editing[edit]

The comments above show some interest in prohibiting all paid editing (declared or undeclared), with the exception of edits from Wikipedians in Residence (WiR). The procedure to enact this is described in WP:PAID § Changing this policy:

An alternative policy can revoke the disclosure provision of the terms of use as it applies to the English Wikipedia and replace it with a new policy, which may be stronger or weaker. A proposed alternative policy must be clearly identified in a Request for Comment (RfC) as revoking the WMF policy. Upon approval, the new policy must be listed on the alternative-disclosure policy page. The RfC must be conducted in a manner consistent with the standard consensus-based process for establishing core policies.

A former disambiguation page for Wikipedia:Paid editing lists three failed proposals for paid editing policies and guidelines from 2007 to 2011. Our current policy, Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure, was created in 2015 for consistency with the prohibition of undisclosed paid editing in the WMF's terms of use in 2014. I found only one previous RfC on paid editing (Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Paid editing), which took place in 2009 and resulted in no consensus. It has been almost 10 years since that RfC, and many editors have accumulated enough experience dealing with disclosed paid edits to determine whether they are a net positive/negative to Wikipedia.

I think it's time to re-evaluate community consensus on whether disclosed paid contributions (excluding WiR) should continue to be allowed in Wikipedia. What are your thoughts on this? — Newslinger talk 23:25, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Late clarification: Since the scope of the exceptions is unclear, I cite Wikipedia:Conflict of interest § Wikipedians in residence, reward board, which describes the "forms of paid editing that the Wikimedia community regards as acceptable". Edits meeting these criteria should be excluded from the proposal. — Newslinger talk 20:10, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

• Note the lack of consensus at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Undeclared Paid Editor (UPE) product that being solely UPE product is even a reason for deletion.

Also, oppose exclusion of Wikipedian in Residence. Why should Wikipedians in Residence not declare? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:54, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

To clarify, the proposal continues to allow declared edits from Wikipedians in Residence (i.e. WiR would not be affected by the prohibition). WiR would continue to declare their status. — Newslinger talk 00:10, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

I think all paid contributions should be prohibited unless declared. Includes WiR, includes WMF. Simple, no exceptions. I think all COI contributions to mainspace should be prohibited, they must use the talk page, or AfC for new pages. However, undeclared UPE and undeclared COI can only be “suspected”. So how can this prohibition have teeth? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:37, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Undisclosed paid contributions are already prohibited in WP:PAID and the Terms of Use. Despite our current policies, Wikipedia already deals with undisclosed paid editing on an ongoing basis, and this activity is discussed and handled on the conflict of interest noticeboard. — Newslinger talk 00:58, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

That’s a toothless prohibition. UPE product is rife, COIN only sees a subset of the inept. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:22, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

• Disclosed paid contributions? Do we have evidence that honestly declared paid editors have produced such bad product that “prohibition” is required? I think it is an overreaction as likely to succeed as was US Prohibition of alcohol. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:40, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes, without a doubt. Just peruse the archives at COIN. John from Idegon (talk) 02:38, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
    • The archives of COIN will be massively biased to problem cases. Why would non-issues be in the archives? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:19, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

  Condoning paid contributions (even if disclosed) reflects poorly on Wikipedia's credibility, as it tells readers that Wikipedia's neutrality is up for sale. There is no financial incentive for a company to hire paid editors to make neutral contributions. In fact, it would be irrational (and in publicly traded companies, a violation of fiduciary duty to shareholders) for a company to hire paid editors, and then instruct them to not portray the company in as favorable of a light as possible. The interests of most companies are not aligned with Wikipedia's goals to provide readers with neutral, trustworthy content. — Newslinger talk 01:19, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Hypothetically, what if it was something more crowdsourced like (for example) a Patreon page? I could see that working in a small handful of cases, one of which is my own (See my signature). Not that I intend to: Frankly, the benefits I get from image editing helping with my anxiety disorder are immense. But it does seem like it should be an acceptable case. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 6.5% of all FPs} 05:26, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

That's an interesting case. Since Wikimedia Commons is not subject to the rules of the English Wikipedia, this proposal would not affect contributions related to most freely licensed images. (As you already know, all featured pictures are required to be freely licensed.) On the other hand, paid edits related to non-free images would be prohibited by the proposal. If there's a benefit to allowing paid edits to non-free images, we can carve out the File namespace as an exception. — Newslinger talk 05:49, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

@Newslinger: There is the {{PD-US-1923-abroad}} exception - freely licensed in the US, not its home country is welcome here, but not commons. It'd also likely include a certain amount of edits to add the files into articles. Anyway, it's more hypothetical than reality, but thinking through the kind of exceptions we'd want helps make good policy. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 6.5% of all FPs} 06:22, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. I've added "most" to my previous comment to fix the inaccuracy. Since the File namespace isn't nearly as vulnerable to neutrality issues as article space, it would probably be okay to make an exception here. — Newslinger talk 06:29, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

As has been noted, no; the alternative to kosher paid editing is a lot more undisclosed paid editing. This is an extremely counter-productive idea. There is always going to be paid editing; giving them a proper way to do it is a mitigating factor, not an enabling one. 199.247.43.170 (talk) 05:48, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

199.247.43.170 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) is registered to Symantec Corporation. — Newslinger talk 05:51, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Yeah I'm bored and editing from work, call the FBI dude. WP:AGF 199.247.43.170 (talk) 06:01, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't think "a lot more" is a reasonable estimation, and paid editing is hardly "kosher" when it carries neutrality concerns. Prohibiting disclosed paid edits would cause some of the current paid editors to cease their operations. The remainder would turn into undeclared paid editors, and are subject to blocks/bans when their editing patterns are identified. When evaluating this proposal, we're weighing whether it is better to have a larger volume of disclosed paid edits or a smaller volume of undisclosed paid edits. — Newslinger talk 06:25, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

The correct venue for this proposal is Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). MarnetteD|Talk 06:28, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

I can move this discussion to WP:VPP if it would be more appropriate there. — Newslinger talk 06:31, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

• You should re-start this discussion, as a straightforward proposal, with an RfC, and advertised at WP:CENT. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 06:37, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

  Okay, this looks like the best course of action. — Newslinger talk 06:48, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Regardless of what specific wording you consider "reasonable", the fact is the result would be more, not less. By "kosher" I just meant in line with the rules; obviously paid editing will always be controversial at best. "Prohibiting disclosed paid edits would cause some of the current paid editors to cease their operations" sure, publicly, only to quietly resume under new accounts. There is literally no reason for them not to. After all undisclosed paid editing isn't illegal, it's just against the rules, and switching IPs is trivial. "we're weighing whether it is better to have a larger volume of disclosed paid edits or a smaller volume of undisclosed paid edits." Well then you're "weighing" a fallacy because the more disclosed paid editing we have the less undisclosed paid editing we'll have. This is plain common sense. 199.247.43.170 (talk) 06:53, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Clarifying the wording: There is a certain number of disclosed paid editors. If disclosed paid editing were prohibited, some of them would cease to operate, and some of them would resume editing as undisclosed paid editors. The resulting number of new UPEs would be smaller than the current number of DPEs, as the UPEs are subject to blocks/bans when discovered. Under our current policies, paid editors already have the option to operate undisclosed (in violation of the policies), but DPEs choose to disclose because they believe that they would be more successful this way. — Newslinger talk 07:04, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Why do you presume that any significant number of paid editors would just cease to operate under such a hypothetical? Because they're such nice fellas? These aren't common school-library vandals we're talking about. They're making cash money doing this. Nobody quits a job just because someone politely asks them to please stop. If anything the number of paid editing REQUESTS might decrease as companies wouldn't want to be associated with vandalism. But the paid editors will be there as long as wikipedia can be edited by anyone and as long as humans use currency to trade. 199.247.43.170 (talk) 07:18, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

If declared paid editing were prohibited by policy, all paid editing would become undeclared and forbidden by the WMF's Terms of Use. Any public relations firm that continues to offer paid editing services would become vulnerable to legal action from the WMF. — Newslinger talk 07:28, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

In a bit of unintentional comedy, that link is blank. In any case, I'm not a legal scholar, but my understanding is that lawsuits based on internet terms of service violations tend not to do very well in the courts. 199.247.43.170 (talk) 07:36, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks. As other editors have asked me to move the discussion elsewhere, I'll stop commenting here. You're welcome to discuss this with me on my talk page. — Newslinger talk 07:39, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

I've lost interest so I won't, but I appreciate the discussion that was had. 199.247.43.170 (talk) 07:43, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Cheers. — Newslinger talk 07:45, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

• It seems rather straightforward that banning all paid editing in response to a negative media report would be a knee-jerk, reactionary, ill-considered move. Disclosed paid editors are not permitted because we want paid editing, they're permitted because this is one of the biggest websites in the world, and is the primary source of information for a significant portion of global society, and "anyone can edit" it. So, biased and paid editors are going to exist, because there are always going to be influential people and PR departments who can just pay someone to edit to improve the way they or their company is portrayed. So we can choose whether to regulate it and to keep its impact manageable, screening out POV-pushing and actual justifiable improvements, or we can choose to prohibit it, which will not actually remove any of the paid editing, it will just drive it underground and remain undetected. The former scenario isn't perfect, but is the latter really a superior result for the integrity of the project? ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 06:37, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

In addition, why are we discussing this on WP:AN - which is not a venue for proposing policy changes - and on top of that in reply to a news media report that appears to be demonstrably untrue in many aspects? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 07:58, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

I posted this discussion here because it's related to the previous discussion, but I understand that it has gone outside the scope of this noticeboard. If I comment further, it will be on WP:VPP. — Newslinger talk 08:07, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

• I strenuously disagree with this logic. Vandals will continue to come no matter what we do; WP:POV and WP:TENDENTIOUS editing (of which paid editing is, I think, axiomatically a subset) will always be a thing. But we maintain rules against them and ban them just the same. I don't see why paid editors should be treated any differently. We might not catch all of them, but we would catch some of them - and the simple fact that we ban them would serve an important purpose in upholding Wikipedia's reputation. And, of course, given the blowback when a paid editor is discovered and has attention called to them (both to Wikipedia and to whoever employed them), people already have an incentive to engage in secretive paid editing, which we have mostly managed to endure. More generally, I feel that the damage to Wikipedia's reputation by allowing paid editing vastly exceeds any damage that undisclosed paid editors might do before they're caught and banned. --Aquillion (talk) 20:47, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Your comparison of policy-compliant paid editing to vandalism is one of the most ridiculously-unhinged arguments I've ever heard. It cannot even be fairly debated because it is so ungrounded from reality. I cannot even take such an argument seriously enough to refute it. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 07:53, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

While I'd like to see commercial editing banned, it is almost impossible to enforce. For discussion purposes, it may help to think about what the spammers want to spam as that is readily observable and regulate editing in those topic areas instead. Therefore, general sanctions along the lines of the following might mitigate the problem and increase the cost for spammers:

• Editors with less than 500 edits and 30 days tenure are prohibited from creating articles about:
  • Privately held companies founded after (say) 2000 and their products and services;
  • Businesspeople whose interests are substantially involved with the above;
  • Digital marketing and adtech, broadly construed;
  • Speculative financial instruments targeted at retail investors, broadly construed;
  • Blockchain and cryptocurrencies, broadly construed (amendment to WP:GS/Crypto).

For the avoidance of doubt: moving a draft into mainspace counts as creating an article, but having an extended-confirmed user perform the move does not.

• Standard general sanctions are authorized for all pages related to:
  • speculative financial instruments targeted at retail investors (broadly construed);
  • digital marketing and adtech (broadly construed).

• Use WP:NEWBLPBAN against suspected paid spammers creating spam pages about living people and WP:ARBIND when appropriate.

Why these topic areas? The first two cover the generic startup spam I see so often at NPP. Digital marketing, because that's what spammers do by spamming Wikipedia. The last two cover areas where corporate spam has the potential to cause harm in the real world and have substantial problematic editing (retail forex, binary options) in the past. I do occasionally see articles created about businesspeople as a result of editathons but the percentage of articles about startups worth keeping is rather small. This isn't a formal proposal, but something for discussion purposes. MER-C 08:56, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

• • I think this proposal by MER-C is very sensible, and far more likely to actually work than other ideas. I would like to see added, although not critical, a change to the onus for finding minimum suitable sources, and putting the onus directly onto the author to add WP:THREE sources. If that is not done, and especially if it is instead WP:Reference bombed by low quality sources, it can be deleted at AfD without AfD reviewers having to do a systematic review of the listed sources. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:10, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
• Per Swarm and others this proposal is not capable of producing a result that will benefit the encyclopaedia. In addition to the points raised by others, not all paid editors cause problems - not even all undisclosed paid editors actually cause problems (if an editor writes good quality, sourced neutral prose about a notable topic, nobody spends any time looking to see if they are paid or not), not all editors with a conflict of interest are paid (far from it) and not everybody with a conflict of interest causes problems (see any example of such editors contributing constructively on talk pages). Thryduulf (talk) 09:31, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

The subjects of articles will send in requests for corrections by any means the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia provides. It's Wikipedia that has currently mandated these requests be posted at "Talk" and presented and discussed in a manner that conforms with Wikipedia policy. Wikipedia can switch over to handling complaints or requested corrections by private email, by a ticketing system, by phone or by snail mail, if it wants. Paid editing of Wikipedia articles has already been banned under the Wikimedia Foundation ToU. The fact that the term "paid editing" is also used to describe posting a requested correction to Talk (the complaint system set up by Wikipedia itself) is completely confusing to the general public and to Wikipedia volunteers. "Paid editing" should only refer to actually editing Wikipedia articles - and it's already banned. Wikipedia needs a new term like "Article Subject Requests" for handling requests by the subjects of articles. The people who post these requests should be referred to as "Article Subject Representatives" or something like that. Once you're clearly established a differentiation like this, then you can go hog wild against "paid editing" since it will clearly refer only to behavior that's banned. But as a publisher, Wikipedia has an ethical and legal responsibilities to address complaints/corrections by Article Subjects - especially since its editors are anonymous and can publish without prior review. BC1278 (talk) 19:31, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

I would support MER-C's proposal as helpful. But I think BC1278 has hit on a point not yet discussed - by calling what Paid Editors do paid editing we're shooting ourselves in the foot. There has been no expose that I'm aware of about Wikipedians in Residence, including by college papers who would focus on college activities, despite that being a form of permissible paid editing. Why? We don't call it paid editing. For the editors who are concerned, fairly, about the reputational harm of media coverage about existing policies calling it something else could help to mitigate that reputational damage. Subject Sponsored Requests proposed by Subject Sponsored Representatives or some other such nonesense could be helpful here. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:09, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

@BC1278: Are you sure about Paid editing of Wikipedia articles has already been banned under the Wikimedia Foundation ToU? My understanding is that "Paid contributions without disclosure" is prohibited, but not necessarily all paid editing. There's a whole category of editors who have declared they are paid editors. Not trying to nitpick, but I think it's important to be clear on this. A "paid editor" is essentially subject to the same guidelines as a COI editor, but neither of the two is expressly prohibited from editing articles they may have a connection to, and a "paid editor" can edit an article as long as they do so in accordance with relevant policies and guidelines. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:51, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: The Wikimedia Foundation Terms of Use are further modified by policies of the specific projects. Wikipedia is one such project. Although WP: PAID and WP: COI only say direct editing of articles is "very strongly discouraged", in practice, that's just to allow for a very narrow set of exceptions, like the removal of libel in a BLP; removing vandalism; fixing citations. Anyone who is a declared COI editor and operates by directly editing is very quickly rebuked and reversed. I don't see why anyone would go to the trouble of declaring themselves as "paid" or "COI" on Talk, then doing widespread direct editing anyway. The typical scenario is the use of Talk as the Contact Us channel for the subjects of articles, following | Contact Us/Article Subjects. If "declared paid editing" or "declared COI editing" is "banned", should Wikipedia stop providing a Contact Us mechanism (Talk) for the subjects of articles to request corrections? It's the same thing just with a different label.BC1278 (talk) 15:49, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

• I feel that the people defending paid editing severely underestimate how badly it hurts Wikipedia's reputation to allow it. Even when their contributions are "good" according to our policy, the inherently WP:TENDENTIOUS nature of paid editing results in one-sided pressure that pushes articles towards a particular POV; and people outside of Wikipedia understand this. We can deal with tendentious editors and undisclosed paid editors (we do so constantly.) But the statement that we allow paid editing is harmful to the encyclopedia, and I don't feel that any of the proposed "benefits" we get from allowing it (ie. encouraging paid editors to "be good" in whatever abstract way your mean) are solid enough to justify that harm. More to the point, if an undisclosed paid editor is generally good, and doesn't screw up, and never attracts attention - so what? That's not going to cause problems. But it's important for us to be able to easily ban ones who are so WP:TENDENTIOUS in pushing their paid POV that they get caught, and I feel that allowing disclosed paid editing paradoxically makes this harder because the fact that paid editors are tendentious by definition means that allowing it gives people the impression that that behavior is allowed on their part; and, more importantly, it's important for us to establish in a general sense that Wikipedia will do what it can to prevent a company from just hiring a bunch of people to push our articles in a particular direction, or to push back against that activity and limit its impact when it occurs. Doing so is necessary for us to maintain Wikipedia's reputation as an encyclopedia. --Aquillion (talk) 20:53, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Is there a lot of coverage out there to suggest that Wiki's rep has been significantly harmed by the existence of DPE? Because if the assertion is based on one article, and particularly this one article, then it's a weak one. 199.247.44.170 (talk) 06:07, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Among reliable sources, here, here. There's a lot more coverage from more sensationalist media - but, again, we're not writing an article about this (yet, although perhaps we should), we're discussing Wikipedia's reputation. Regardless of how you think about it, this article has had an impact on our reputation, and there will always be other such articles pulling at that thread; and it's an easy thing to fix, since we gain so little from paid editors in the first place and they already, inherently, go against many of our policies (again, virtually all paid editing is by definition WP:TENDENTIOUS.) --Aquillion (talk) 05:54, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

I think that we need to discuss what things would be acceptable, and what aren't. Because if some historical society pays someone to make articles on a narrow field of interest to them, say, the history of some small city, which are intended to be neutral, and are encyclopedic, that's effectively a Wikipedian in Residence. The use of a program shouldn't be the guide here. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 6.5% of all FPs} 18:17, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Another possibility, which I mentioned indirectly above, is to make it completely clear that WP:TENDENTIOUS, WP:NPOV, and WP:NOTHERE apply to paid editors, and that declaring yourself as a paid editor in no way loosens their restrictions (I feel a core problem is that many people have implicitly allowed it to do so.) In particular, the vast majority of paid editors are by definition tendentious, in that they are here to represent the point of view of their employer. That said, I favor a hard ban on all paid editing. --Aquillion (talk) 20:47, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────┘ This is simple. We cannot allow paid editors to add text content to our encyclopaedia either in mainspace or in draft space because that content is deceptive advertising, illegal under United States law, which is the law that governs Wikipedia. It makes absolutely no difference whether the content looks like an advertisement (any more than it matters if a murder looks like a murder); content created for pay to promote a person or entity is advertisement, advertisement is content created to promote a person or entity. It is just possible to imagine an editor being paid to create an attack page – has that ever happened? Equally, we cannot accept paid-editor edit requests of the "I've got a 5000-word advertisement in my sandbox, would you kindly publish it for me" type. Finding ways to deal with UPE may be a lot of work (MER-C's suggestions look like a good starting point), but would they really be more work than this kind of thing? Even if we can't agree to ban all paid editing, let's at least try to agree to ban it from articles and drafts. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:41, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers: content created for pay to promote a person or entity is advertisement, advertisement is content created to promote a person or entity The problem is that not all content created for pay is (intended to be) promotional, and not all content that is (intended to be) promotional is created for pay. The problem is promoitonal content, not whether the editor who created that content was or was not paid to do so. Thryduulf (talk) 23:06, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Thryduulf, I'm with you on your second point, not all promo is paid promo – we are bedevilled by every kind of COI editing. But what we are talking about here is the paid kind. I can't imagine why anybody would pay to have content added if it was not to promote a person or entity? Could I get paid to drink beer? Yes, probably – but I'd have to be promoting something while I did it. The problem is the paid aspect, because (quoting from WP:Deceptive advertising): "The [FTC] has long held the view that advertising and promotional messages that are not identifiable as advertising to consumers are deceptive if they mislead consumers into believing they are independent, impartial, or not from the sponsoring advertiser itself". We can't host that deceptive content, because it is illegal to do so. If it doesn't immediately appear to be promotional, it is worse, not better. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:26, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Philanthropists, GLAMs, organisations with a charitable budget, etc are all examples of people/organisations who would pay for neutral content. However even if you are correct that everybody is out to harm the encyclopaedia through insidious means (spoiler: they aren't), the problem is the content not the contributor so any proposal that aims to resolve the issue or issues (almost all the proposals related to paid editing actually target a very poorly defined bunch of overlapping issues, not all of which are actually problems) by focussing on the contributor is doomed to failure because it literally cannot work. Thryduulf (talk) 23:35, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure why people say it can't work. We can and have caught paid editors in the past; and when we do, we can more easily go over their contributions and rip the one-sided ones out without an editor paid to be tendentious on the subject fervently defending every point using every policy as their 9-5 job. It's much easier to fix problems caused by such editors, since once they've been identified they will no longer be around to protect their work (and even if they evade their bans, they can't easily go back to the pages they were previously being paid to target without outing themselves once more.) I'm not at all convinced, in other words, that declared paid editors are preferable to paid ones - yes, it requires more work to detect undisclosed ones, but the problems they cause are more easily solved once they're detected. --Aquillion (talk) 05:54, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

The most pressing concern of major organizations and prominent individuals is that inaccurate information not be in Wikipedia articles about them, which are frequently the top result in Google. Wikipedia articles are often attacked by Agenda Editors, such as competitors, oppo research firms, foreign governments, disgruntled former employees, litigants, unhappy customers, political opponents, etc. Aside from Agenda Editors, there are also just ordinary mistakes that lead to inaccurate content. The second most pressing concern is out of date information. e.g. U.S. News and World Report ranks a college as #7 for three years running, but WP says they are ranked #14 based on a 5-year old article. WP Talk is currently the official mechanism for sending in corrections or complaints. I suggest those who use it for this purpose should not be referred to as "paid editors" or even "editors," since the fundamental concept of abiding by [[WP:PAID] is that there is no direct editing of articles by the representative of the article subject. This policy discussion, if it ever happens again on the right forum, would more productively be re-framed as: how do we want to receive and process corrections and complaints from article subjects and their representatives? If not article Talk, then what?BC1278 (talk) 01:17, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Without getting too deep into the weeds of the Federal Trade Commission Act (or indeed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act), it's not at all clear that legal liability exists merely for hosting deceptive advertising; after all, we don't generally think of a magazine as being liable for a misleading ad if it had no way of knowing of the deception. Rather, we think of holding the actual advertiser responsible. But I think a crucial part of WP:Deceptive advertising is being missed--namely, the part that defines deceptive advertising as "any text placed in an article by, or on behalf of, a business that is false or misleading, or does not disclose, in accordance with FTC or SEC standards, that the text was placed in the article by that business." (Formatting adjusted). Thus, if you have text that is materially true and placed by a disclosed business, it is, by definition, not deceptive. That's why I think it's a good policy to ask paid editors to identify themselves. And, indeed, I am in agreement with the reasoning that an absolute ban would ultimately be counter productive. All that being said, reasonable minds may differ. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 01:28, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes, but disclosure must be done on the article itself, near the paid-for text. MER-C 07:14, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's correct; an appropriate disclosure can be made in both the corresponding edit sum and on the concerned article's talk page as explained in WP:PAID#How to disclose. A "disclaimer" doesn't need to be directly added to the article. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:34, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Apologies for not being clear - it is the FTC/SEC that require disclosure on the article itself (e.g. [41]). Unsurprisingly, our TOU is grossly inadequate. Nobody is going to rummage through our page histories and check the edit summaries AND the user page of every significant editor to determine payment status. They can't even be bothered looking at the talk page. MER-C 18:16, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Getting weedier than I intended (sorry!), but you are of course correct as a general proposition. If we're really looking at it this way, however, we'd have to review everything for materiality--that is, whether t is likely to affect consumers’ choices or conduct. Thus, if I, a paid editor on behalf of Acme Widget Inc., were to add text to an article reflecting the date of the company's founding, that's almost certainly not material to anything. I actually think Wikipedia does a decent job getting rid of the blatantly promotional and a fair job at the more subtle promotional text. But I might be wrong! Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 18:50, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

• I think Paid Editors should be disclosed parenthetically in their username. User:Example (paid). I also think it could be very helpful for productive discussion to distinguish between users who are paid and editing articles, and users who are paid but are abiding by COI guidelines and only posting talk page requests. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:09, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose prohibition per several others above. User:Thryduulf's comment at 09:31, 7 April 2019 says everything I would have. --Jayron32 13:14, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support - In my view, paid editing makes a mockery of the core principles of Wikipedia. Paid POV editors have the time, motivation and resources to grind down volunteers with endless WikiLawyering and walls of text, creating a very unfair editing environment. From governments, corporations and billionaires concerned with reputation management, forces focus on Wikipedia to create PR-type articles. Enough. Ban all paid editing and make the Wikipedia Terms of Use clear: there will be accountability for those trying to game the system. As a corollary, the WMF needs to stop taking all corporate donations, starting with Google. Jusdafax (talk) 13:59, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

  Actually, it's simpler than that. "grind down volunteers with endless WikiLawyering and walls of text, creating a very unfair editing environment" should get a block/ban regardless of whether or not the person doing it is being paid or not. If you block the behavior, whether or not someone is paid becomes irrelevant. --Jayron32 16:15, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

• Are we actually voting on this here? The so-called ban is a bad idea for multiple reasons, and it is unethical to have such a pretend ban (that won't/can't work): readers deserve to know it is being done, and deserve to know who is doing it (to the extent they can). -- 16:01, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Now in The Daily Caller: TAKALA: EVIDENCE OF PAY-TO-PLAY OPERATION SCRUBBED FROM WIKIPEDIA. The HuffPo piece was better. And Wired: Want to Know How to Build a Better Democracy? Ask Wikipedia Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:06, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. Firstly the proposal doesn't make the distinction between paid editing and commercial paid editing - the latter is almost exclusively bad, and by construction removes the WiR and most of the other edge cases where people are being paid to improve the encyclopedia. Commercial paid editing has an exclusive for-profit motive. I will support a ban of commercial editing as an important symbolic gesture. General sanctions and article creation prohibitions are still needed to counter the behavior and deny the spammers their products - GS are more objective, don't discriminate between paid and unpaid spammers and blow the "oh, I am a fan of this company's products" or other similar excuses used by paid spammers out of the water by making them irrelevant. MER-C 18:27, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
• Moral support, although I think it will be very difficult to achieve in practice. More helpfully, a comment: discussions around this issue tend get bogged down in semantics. For example, we often hear "except Wikipedians-in-Residence", but this is a diversion, because nobody actually believes that Wikipedians-in-Residence are abusive paid editors. It only comes up when someone is trying to make a rhetorical reductio ad absurdum. Working on refining the concept of paid editing, and considering alternative terminology (commercial editing, commissioned editing, etc.), might be a productive first step to achieving a prohibition. – Joe (talk) 19:05, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
  • @Joe Roe: the WIR comments are not reductio ad absurdum. If you ban "paid editing" that by definition includes all Wikimedians in residence and similar activities. If you don't want to ban WIR editing then you actually need to propose a ban on some paid editors and define what you actually mean by "some" in some objective terms. However what almost everyone who proposes to ban paid editing actually wants is either (1) ban edits that introduce a POV in favour of* commercial entities and/or their products/services. (*sometimes only this, others also want to ban edits which introduce the opposite POV too), (2) ban editors who make money from Wikipedia in ways they disagree with (regardless of whether they are harming or improving the encyclopedia), and/or (3) ban edits that are a poor proxy for one of those. Thryduulf (talk) 19:39, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

• We already have an established policy defining WIRs, though, so it's simple to carve out an exception for them if necessary. We could also allow specific exemptions as with bots (eg. have an approval process they have to go through, requiring that they disclose their employer and any terms of their contributions, to make sure they're not being paid to represent a POV.) But, really... the overwhelming majority of paid editing is type 1 (although you left out "public figures trying to improve their own image" and a few related things, eg. countries that want more tourism, etc), and that is an unambiguous violation of our policy on WP:TENDENTIOUS editing. Anyone making such edits should already be banned as soon as they're identified. The problem is that since that describes virtually all non-WIR disclosed paid editors (who, therefore, ought to be banned the moment they disclose themselves), and since most people recognize that paid editing can generally be expected to be tendentious, the policy of allowing it has lead to an implicit acceptance of things like the editor under discussion - who, I think, is unequivocally and unabashedly tendentious on his employers' behalf (it's the entire service he's selling!) The only real solution to that problem is to bite the bullet, recognize that the vast majority of paid editing is incompatible with our core policies, and ban paid editors (outside of whatever limited exceptions we find it necessary to carve out.) Then we can roll up our sleeves to catch and remove further undisclosed paid editors as they appear - which we've been doing anyway. --Aquillion (talk) 06:11, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. The only thing a blanket prohibition would do is just drive it underground and not really solve anything. A large amount of our paid editors are not declared in the first place and are already at risk of being blocked on that basis alone, so they try to keep their noses down. The issue won't magically go away because we say so; it will go away once Wikipedia's Alexa rank is not single-digit. Nothing we do on the policy end will change that. —A little blue Bori v^_^v ^Bori! 19:49, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
• There has never been, as far as I am aware, any serious push to eliminate WiR, or any serious contention that WiR is a problematic form of paid editing. What there has been is never ending side bars, rabbit holes, and red herrings about WiR any time paid editing is brought up in any meaningful way. For anyone who is super concerned about WiR, don't be, and just assume for the sake of trying to have a discussion that everyone pretty well understands that WiR has been a long standing exception to the issue we're talking about. We're also perfectly capable of having a pragmatic discussion about the issue without having to reach absolute existential certainty about the nature of the universe as it relates to paid editing and WiR. An exception for WiR is a given, and pretty much always has been.

Having said that, paid editing is a cancer and the worst of it often doesn't even happen at COIN. Much of it happens at the Teahouse, the Help Desk, AfC, and OTRS. Paid editors are the most motivated to overcome the learning curve, and they are the most tenacious when it comes to pushing the issue, repeatedly asking questions, and absorbing as much volunteer time from our helping regime as possible. They simply have more time and motivation than your average volunteer...because it's their job. Even in the circumstances of the HuffPo story, a large part of the strategy is bludgeoning talk pages because they can, and simply overwhelming any reasonable volunteer response until they win, all the while waving a white flag in the air saying "don't be a meanie, I'm following the letter of the law which explicitly allows me to undermine the basic fabric of the project."

The choice our current pussy-footing-around-the-issue policy leaves our helping regime with is to give a weak but technically correct answer along the lines of "we'd really rather you didn't pretty please" or to simply ignore the letter of policy and give the practical answer, which is "don't edit the article and don't waste our time otherwise".

Just ban it. Call it "commercial paid editing" or whatever packaging helps you sleep at night, and at least empower people to say what we're all mostly thinking, which is "Feel free to come back as a volunteer, and we don't want you here until you do." If paid editors ignore it, then fine. People ignore policy all the time. See also the entirety of WP:SPI. When they do, we ban them, and we block them, and we carry on. GMG^talk 21:46, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

• Support, if we're doing it like this. Long overdue, and the arguments against it are entirely unconvincing. "If we don't allow it, they'll break the rules and do it anyway" is not a reason to allow anything; we have caught paid editors in the past, and as long as it's universally against the rules, we can easily reverse most of their edits once they're caught. The limitation of disclosed paid editors to talk pages and draft spaces is meaningless - it may have been meaningful in the past, but today, most dramatic edits to medium-profile articles go through those places anyway, so they effectively get to represent the POV they're being paid for the same as any other editor. Allowing disclosed paid editors gives them implicit license to be WP:TENDENTIOUS (since the whole reason people pay them is to represent a particular perspective or to add additional weight to something); it serves as a constant millstone dragging down Wikipedia's reputation whenever attention is called to it; it distorts articles through the constant one-sided pressure that paid tendentious editing causes; and it broadly undermines the core goals of the project by allowing editors who are axiomatically not editing from a neutral POV. Even the most well-meaning employer, hiring someone to edit Wikipedia for the most noble and neutral of reasons, is still inevitably an employer, whose desires for the things they're paying someone to add carry monetary weight to their employees and therefore guide their edits. And it is naive to believe that such "innocent" paid editors are meaningful thing; the vast, vast majority of paid editors are being paid explicitly and unambiguously to violate our policies against WP:TENDENTIOUS editing and to push a particular WP:POV. It makes a mockery of our policies and the standards to which we supposedly hold ourselves and our editors; and the "but they'll just break the rules anyway!" arguments people are making above are shockingly weak and irreverent for such a serious matter. Indeed, I would argue that an argument of "well, we can't enforce the rules, so we might as well give in" is axiomatically an argument without grounding in core policies (it is in fact an argument that seems to say that we should intentionally discard core policies, that we are unable to ever uphold them), and that comments premised on that position should therefore be disregarded. Core policies - including WP:POV - are non-negotiable. We cannot allow editors who are paid to represent a particular position to do so on Wikipedia, even via our talk pages, even if (as people have unconvincingly argued above) the alternative is that they'll... what, evade their bans and try to edit via hidden alts? People do that already. We can cope. Such veiled threats from paid editors are obviously not enough to make us abandon our core policies and drag Wikipedia's name through the mud in the hopes that they will graciously confine their tendentious paid editing to pushing POVs via talk pages. --Aquillion (talk) 05:54, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose - not since I support commercial editing (overall bad, in limited circumstances can be good) - but because driving it underground more than it currently is will only make things harder. Whether we ban it or not - commercial companies will edit here. The question is do we want complex sock farms - or declared editors. I think that loosening the noose (just a little bit) on declared editors may be of benefit (to reduce evasion). In a perfect world where such a ban would be enforceable - I could support it. In the imperfect environment where we can't really stop banned activity - I do not.Icewhiz (talk) 06:34, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support - the way things are being handled now is (excuse my frankness) a clusterfrap, and it needs to be unclustered and unfrapped. Either we all get paid or nobody gets paid. Expecting volunteers to work for free on any part of an article that another editor was paid to create/edit/protect does indeed make "a mockery of the core principles of Wikipedia" (quoting a statement by Jusdafax above). It is an abuse of volunteers, and while it all may sound reasonable on paper, it simply does not work in practice. I wonder how many in the community actually believe all paid editing has been declared? ^Atsme _Talk 📧 22:39, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

RfC Closure Review (Talk:RuPaul's Drag Race)[edit]

I am requesting a review of the closing of Talk:RuPaul's Drag Race#RfC on names of transgender contestants on the grounds that it is not a reasonable summation of the discussion. My attempt to discuss this with the closer can be found here. The RfC takes a look at how the wiki should handle using a transgendered individual's name and is an extention of this RfC. The close is almost incoherent and makes little sense when you actually read the discussion and take in the view points of those that participated. The last sentence alone makes no sense and is not a representation of the points made in the discussion. The two prevailing viewpoints are 1) to remove all real names from the articles as they are not included in the credits of the show and are essentially pulled from other sources and 2) to only list the current names of individuals and not the name they used at the time of filming. Most of those supported using their current name supported the idea of removing all the names entirely. Removing real names was not included in the original wording of the RfC but is clearly meant to remove all names from the articles. Removing only the names of transgendered individuals is inappropriate and makes no sense. I request that the community review, revert, and reclose this discussion to represent the consensus that is clearly there. Thanks. Nihlus 04:28, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

• I happened upon this shortly after closing and so I read the close and then the RfC and was also puzzled by it also not fully understanding what point QEDK was trying to make with MOS:GENDERID (which is obviously relevant here). I agree with Nihlus that the consensus, as I see it, is to remove real name from the seasons entirely and to only include their stage names (e.g. how they were referred to on the show). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:00, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
• I don't read this closure as prohibiting the removal of all non-credited names from the articles in question. I think the closer intended on answering the original RFC question, which related to trans contestants who transitioned after their TV appearance. Iffy★Chat -- 09:17, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

  I tried to clarify this with the closer and got no where. The consensus that is reached need not necessarily be a direct response or even a level response to the question asked. Nihlus 10:34, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

• I would like more participation in this topic before I revert the close myself based on what is here. Thanks. Nihlus 02:48, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
• (Uninvolved, did not know about the RfC till now): I don't know where to post this, but I agree with Nihlus both on his !vote and its rationale, and his points here in this thread. Plus it's confusing (for the reader) for a WP article on a TV show not to use credited names. Softlavender (talk) 03:38, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
• QEDK, I will be altering your close based on the information in this discussion. If you would like to alter it yourself, feel free to do so. Nihlus 22:21, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

@Nihlus: Remove my close (not alter) and do as you see fit. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 15:04, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

QEDK, I wasn't asking whether I can alter it. I will alter it/add an addendum that clarifies the close and corrects it to the right consensus. Nihlus 22:35, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

@Nihlus: I don't think you're understanding how it works. You can't alter my close, because then it's not my close anymore. Feel free to add an addendum but an addendum that contradicts my close is against the point. If you're challenging a close, it's for a reversal. And I'm telling you to do as you see fit, as long as you reverse my close first. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 06:54, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

QEDK, again, I was not asking. Nihlus 13:21, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

@Nihlus: For someone who doesn't understand how reverting a close works and goes for a reversal on minimal consensus, you seem hell-bent on not asking or whatever that is supposed to mean. Again, I'm not really doing anything here but telling you that if you intend to alter my close, you have to reverse the close. Please do not ping me again if your intent is to voice your redundant battleground-y point. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 14:00, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

QEDK, do not tell me what I do or don't know. I've been dealing with this mess for long enough due to your poorly thought out and at this point disruptive close. I will fix this situation in the manner I see fit as it falls into policy. As I stated before, I was not asking for your input on how I should proceed. I don't need that information from you nor do I want it. I was merely advising you to alter your close if you saw fit as a courtesy to you. Since you are not taking it, then I will proceed as I originally intended. Thanks. Nihlus 14:32, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

@Nihlus: Do me a favour and respect someone's choice when an editor asks you to not ping them. I do not care about your pointless accusations (disruptive close), I've asked you to do literally what you want and you refuse to let me be. I am not willing to waste my time on your shenanigans, so I recommend you drop the stick. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 14:39, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

My accusation is not pointless, and I have no stick to drop. No one if forcing you to comment here, yet you keep doing it and whine when I reply. There is no policy in forcing someone to not ping someone as communication is important on a platform such as this. Additionally, pinging me in every reply while asking me to stop is rather odd, as is throwing a subjective condition on your request for me to not ping you. I suggest you just stop contributing to this discussion if you are truly done with it as that is the route I am taking. Nihlus 14:48, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Answers in Genesis[edit]

Behavioral issues[edit]

Let's reopen this for another purpose, please. I respect Oldstone James' tenacity and that he keeps his cool in a situation that is no doubt extremely frustrating for him. However, can we get an uninvolved admin to review the behavioral issues going on at Answers in Genesis?

• It seems like no change made by James isn't followed by a brief edit war, going back a couple years, though typically stopping short of 3RR.
• I have mixed feelings about the copious amount of text on the talk page. In part I can empathize with repeatedly trying to be understood or come to an understanding, but now that it's sprawling to multiple noticeboards, too (AN3, ANI, DRN), it's hard not to see this as disruptive given the way the discussion has gone so far.
• I was furthermore concerned about canvassing. There was this seemingly blatant example that resulted in predictable support shortly thereafter. I didn't bother mentioning it at the time, because, to be fair, 1990'sguy had participated on the page and would likely have supported this anyway, but it's not a good look. It was furthermore followed a little while later by three YGM notifications to three people who just happen to be editors that have taken issue in the past with the way AiG is characterized along the lines of e.g. pseudoscience. Unlike 1990'sguy, these are not people who were already involved in the current discussions. Again, to be fair, we don't know the content of those messages, and the recipients didn't participate in the discussion, but again, it's not a good look.

I'm not proposing anything in particular -- just suggesting an uninvolved admin take a look, for the sake of all the time that's being expended over the last few days (and potentially much more, now that it's at DRN, too). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:22, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

What you mean by edit war is actually an attempt to find consensus through editing, as I change my edit every time. I did not know about WP:BLUDGEON, hence the large amount of text. I have since reduced the amount of text I post. As for multiple noticeboards, I have clearly only tried DRN after being told so in ANI. As for canvassing, I only tried to notify users who have previously proposed changes that are similar to mine. However, since you mentioned behavioural issues, it would be unfair to not also look into User:Roxy the dog, who has launched several WP:PERSONAL attacks at me, including telling me to "fuck off" and admitting that is a personal attack ([44]), implying that I can't count ([45]), implying that I am blind, and others; as well as user:Guy Macon who has launched 1/2 personal attacks (implying that I am an unreasonable person and ungrounded accusion of me not abiding by consensus) in this post.^Ol^Ja 03:46, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Oldstone James has been blocked for a week by User:Black Kite. Doug Weller talk 19:44, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

On 31 March, after the previous protection expired and the edit warring immediately resumed (without Oldstone James who is still blocked), the page was protected for a week. That protection expires tomorrow. If the edit war starts up again, perhaps we should consider blocking individual edit warriors. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:41, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Dendrobium[edit]

Through a series of page moves, most of the historical edits to Dendrobium seem to have ended up at Draft:Dendrobium. Can an admin please have a look and merge the page histories as needed? Thank you. Deli nk (talk) 20:16, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

There's also Draft:Dockrillia and Vappodes. I'm headed out the door right now, but this is rather odd... Primefac (talk) 20:35, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Update: also Epigeneium and Dockrillia. There's discussion at Talk:Dendrobium#Drafts, and I'll look into what is going on. Primefac (talk) 21:43, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Okay, so I've reversed all of the page moves and dealt with attribution and copy/paste issues. Out of curiosity, is it worth deleting the ridiculous number of moves out of the page history? Vappodes isn't too bad but the history of Dendrobium is rather frightening. Primefac (talk) 03:45, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Unblock request[edit]

Hey admins--can one of you please have a look at an unblock request that's been open for a while? It's on User talk:YOUSAFVENNALA. Drmies (talk) 17:24, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

 Done and declined. This is their 5th (I think) unblock request. I told them about WP:SO but this is getting disruptive. If they post anymore unblock requests between now and September I would turn off their TPA. -Ad Orientem (talk) 17:54, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Wanted to create a page for Anthology Resource Vol. 1: △△[edit]

One of the subsections on Music of Twin Peaks, Anthology Resource Vol. 1: △△, has enough citations to warrant its own page, Anthology Resource Vol. 1: △△. However, when I tried creating the page, it said the page I was trying to create has been restricted to administrators at this time. Likely because of the "△△" at the end of the title. However, that is the name of the album. Can this be un-restricted? Flowerkiller1692 (talk) 20:24, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

It can be an admin, template editor, or page mover. However, I do not think it does "have enough citations to warrant its own page". --Izno (talk) 21:02, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Created at Anthology Resource Vol. 1: △△, currently as a redirect to Music of Twin Peaks, since the redirect is harmless if it turns out there isn't enough to warrant a standalone article. Once you write the article, make sure you also create Anthology Resource Vol. 1 as a redirect to it as realistically nobody searching for it is going to type the triangles. ‑ Iridescent 21:04, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

User talk:Vlad Sandulescu[edit]

User:Vlad Sandulescu (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

All of this editor's contributions seem to be to their user page and user talk page. Many new editors similarly focus on their user space and it's hoped that they will eventually move on to editing articles, etc. This particular editor, however, seems to be moving into WP:NOTWEBHOST territory particularly with respect to their user talk page. The revisions made to the Teahouse welcome template added by HostBot and the self awarding of various barnstars seems strange. Some of the content is not in English so I'm not sure what it says, but the stuff in English seems to be WP:UPNO stuff which shouldn't be on their user page yet alone his user talk page. So, I'm wondering if a few admins could look at this and see if something needs to be done. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:33, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Most of the text is in Romanian and could be construed as antisemitic. Tgeorgescu (talk) 06:38, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Deleted from his talk page at [46], reason: WP:NOTWEBHOST. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:28, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

• Sandbox talk page deleted as copyright violation of http://basarabialiterara.com.md/?p=22135 and per WP:U5
• User talk page revisions deleted as copyright violation of http://www.ziaristionline.ro/2011/02/01/de-ce-a-fost-mazilit-caragiale-din-piata-universitatii-addenda-justificarea-unor-expulzari/
• User blocked https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=User%3AVlad%20Sandulescu&type=block

Suggesting closure; any appeal needs to be made on User talk:Vlad Sandulescu anyway. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:54, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

User ‘Snowflake91’ deleted information[edit]

user just deleted Momoland’s (South Korean Girl Group) music show wins from their page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.174.116.0 (talk) 03:14, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

• Snowflake91 (talk · contribs) wasn't notified about this report, I've notified him now. This appears to have evolved into some moderate puppet-farming, see for example Talk:Momoland or User talk:Chubbybangs for some of the actors. In any event this doesn't belong on WP:AN. (And if it did, should be on AN/I.) ST47 (talk) 00:25, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Clarification of WP:3RR[edit]

WP:3RR says An edit or a series of consecutive edits that undoes other editors' actions—whether in whole or in part—counts as a revert.

El C appears to believe that a user's first edit on a page that undoes other editors' actions—whether in whole or in part— does not count as a revert, which is completely contradictory to that brightline policy. In fact, making four changes to an article in 24 hours is what famously got Winkelvi blocked for three months in 2017, and he tried unsuccessfully to argue that he didn't know the first change "counted" [47]. Can someone please alert El C as to how 3RR works? By the way, Drmies once gave me a lecture via email about the definition of 3RR and how it includes the first change.

Also, by the way, could someone look at WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring#User:Krimuk2.0 reported by User:Softlavender (Result: No violation)? Krimuk2.0 is edit-warring (five reverts so far in less than 2 hours [48], [49], [50], [51], [52]), WP:CANVASSING, and battlegrounding on Jack Lowden, despite a usertalk warning, but El C initially closed it as "no violation", and even with an explanation of and link to 3RR and links to two more reverts by Krimuk2.0, that has not changed. Thank you. Softlavender (talk) 12:30, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

It would include the first edit if a specific editor's edit would be undone, but that is not the case here. It is merely longstanding text which is partially replaced with a new addition, which I do not count as a revert. El_C 12:39, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

What do you mean by "if a specific editor's edit would be undone"? 3RR reads: An edit or a series of consecutive edits that undoes other editors' actions—whether in whole or in part—counts as a revert. Any change to existing text in an article by definition undoes other editors' actions in whole or in part; there is no getting around that. And 3RR does not specify any loopholes. Softlavender (talk) 12:49, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

A removal of text isn't automatically a revert, is what I'm saying. El_C 12:56, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

For the purposes of 3RR, any removal of text is indeed a revert; that is precisely why WP:3RR is worded precisely that way. Softlavender (talk) 13:04, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

I disagree that that first edit constituted a revert. El_C 13:07, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

In context, I do not think the first series of edits to the lede constitute a revert. These appear to be bold changes.This is a really grating type of revert. Bold changes don't need prior discussion. Beyond this, Krimuk2.0 should self-revert to the status quo. Discuss possible improvements to the lede on the talk page, and then implement them. Mr rnddude (talk) 13:05, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Mr rnddude, WP:3RR says An edit or a series of consecutive edits that undoes other editors' actions—whether in whole or in part—counts as a revert. It does not exempt the first time that occurs. You might think it does, but it does not. A change to existing article text undoes other editors' actions by definition; there's no getting around that. Softlavender (talk) 13:12, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Both WP:BOLD and WP:BRD would disagree with the "a change to existing article text" interpretation. From BRD: Be bold, and make what you currently believe to be the optimal changes based on your best effort. Your change might involve re-writing, rearranging, adding or removing information. Not all removals and changes are reverts. Mr rnddude (talk) 13:45, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) I agree with El_C and Mr rnddude's interpretations and believe the wording of the policy should be amended via RfC if necessary. Alpha3031 (t • c) 14:44, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I agree with El_C's interpretation as well. A revert is pretty simply defined as an edit that undoes another edit. It has nothing to do with if it's your first edit on the page or not. This is not a revert, it is a change that's being made for the first time. (On the other hand, Softlavender's first edit in the war does count as a revert, because it is a revert.) Also, [53] and [54] definitely aren't reverts. I don't think there's any need for an RfC, as I'd be surprised if you could find any admin who would consider those reverts. ST47 (talk) 22:53, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

• No need to ping me about something I may have emailed you at one time, Softlavender. Drmies (talk) 21:20, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

This is something I always wondered about. Is an edit that changes or removes any existing text always a revert? For instance, if the longstanding text of an article says "X alleged Y" and I, citing WP:SAY, change it to "X said Y", is that a revert? By replacing that word, I am undoing someone's work, clearly, but I think that if the text was longstanding and the article hadn't previously contained anything similar to my preferred version, few people would consider it to be a revert. Or, a more specific example: If I remove a sentence that has been in the article for over a year (one that nobody has previously disputed), is that a revert, on the principle that someone somewhere back in the history added that text, and I am now reverting them? My general impression is that this is not usually treated as a revert, but it seems like a strict reading of the rules would imply that it is. People above seem to be disagreeing over this point. Assuming it isn't a revert, where's the dividing line? Do you have to be reverting a specific person's text (which someone above mentioned?) What if eg. I could dig through the history and find the edit, seven years ago, that added the sentence you removed - does that make your edit a revert of that sentence? Does the length of time matter? (Usually, I think WP:3RR is clear it does not, but it seems like in a lot of examples there's a point where uncontroversial text simply becomes "part of the article" where editing or removing it is a proposed change, rather than a discrete revert.) What if I expressed objection to an addition, but didn't touch it; then I swing back seven years later and remove it - is my edit now a revert? What if I merely tweaked it slightly? (I think most people would agree a removal in this case is definitely a revert, but unless you go with "all removals / edits to established text are reverts", the dividing line is strange; the implication here, I think, is that my intention makes it a revert, since in this example I'm not just proposing a random change to the article but am deliberately reverting something even if it was from seven years in the past.) --Aquillion (talk) 21:07, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

• If you're this far in the weeds, you're probably already edit-warring. Per WP:EW: " The three-revert rule is a convenient limit for occasions when an edit war is happening fairly quickly, but it is not a definition of "edit warring", and it is perfectly possible to edit war without breaking the three-revert rule, or even coming close to doing so." and per WP:3RR: "Even without a 3RR violation, an administrator may still act if they believe a user's behavior constitutes edit warring, and any user may report edit warring with or without 3RR being breached. The rule is not an entitlement to revert a page a specific number of times." If a user disclaims any further editing after an edit war, I generally take them at their word, and won't block. If a user makes it clear they intend to continue to edit war, even so far as to WP:WIKILAWYER their way out of 3RR, it usually means they need a block anyways. Once a user has been told to stop edit warring, and they don't, they need a block, period. --Jayron32 16:12, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

• Sure, but the purpose of the WP:3RR is to have a clear-cut red-line rule that makes it easy to halt obvious revert-warring, not to cover all possible sorts of revert-warring (which, as it says, requires admin discretion.) Even if an admin can step in and say "this is obviously revert-warring" regardless, it's still better for the WP:3RR to be as clear as possible in order to serve that purpose. Another common situation: Multiple people are working to update an article (so my edits aren't contiguous.) I make many small, non-contiguous changes tweaking or removing long-standing text. Nobody objects to any of these edits at the time, and there is no reason to think they're controversial (perhaps I'm updating old text to reflect breaking news) but I've made more than three of them within 24 hours. Am I now in violation of the WP:3RR? I think that's an obvious no - no revert war is occurring, since there was no dispute at the time when I made my edits - but each edit is technically undoing some edit someone made at some point in the past. (And the same thing I mentioned above comes into play where if I knew those sections were previously controversial, it might be different.) --Aquillion (talk) 17:41, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

• "small, non-contiguous changes tweaking or removing long-standing text" is not reverting. It isn't covered by the rule. 3RR is a sub-rule of WP:EDITWAR, and if you aren't edit warring or otherwise using the ability to revert or remove text as a means of winning a a battle with other people or force your preferred version on the article, it isn't a problem. In the other direction, who is threatening to block you for "small, non-contiguous changes tweaking or removing long-standing text"? Who has been blocked for "small, non-contiguous changes tweaking or removing long-standing text"? If no one has, you're just inventing problems in search of solutions. --Jayron32 18:40, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

• Applying the rule as written, I think you would read it as not applying to a bold edit to a section of an article that hasn't had recent edits. But the default outcome when there is a dispute should generally be a return to the status quo while the discussion is ongoing. Which is of course contrary to not counting the first edit for 3rr purposes. Ultimately, as Jayron32 points out, if you are in a position where this distinction matters, you are already edit warring, regardless of whether you violated the letter of the 3rr rule. Which is probably why the rule has never been clarified, more so than everyone agrees on what it means. (And the best use of the 3rr rule is when one party has blatantly broken it and is on revert 5+, not looking for a chance to drop blocks on exactly revert 3) Monty₈₄₅ 04:13, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

  The purpose of 3RR is that it is one of the very few places in Wikipedia where there is expected a block without warning. It is fairly narrowly defined and easy to spot, and it's designed as a quick-stop trigger for to handle rapidly-occurring disruption. The idea is that, when caught in a cascade of rapid reverts, we need to stop that behavior quickly. I rarely invoke 3RR for any debatable edit war, but when I have invoked it, it has only been in clear cases, where someone is just repeatedly mashing the "undo" button over and over. For other, more subtle types of edit warring, it's not a great tool to use, and should not be cited or referred to. Other forms of edit warring should also get pre-block warnings handed out. 3RR is an emergency tool used in emergency situations where we need to stop a disruption now. If you're in the territory of "well, maybe we should count this as a revert? Was this one really less than 24 hours ago? It looks like 26 to me? Well, maybe we shouldn't count this here", we've probably delved into the "we should probably give at least one warning and see if they can all talk it out first before we hand out blocks" territory. Good, experienced admins know when to hand out 3RR blocks, and it's really only for when we see the clear pattern that a person is not interested in discussing, and is just blindly clicking "undo" to whatever anyone else does. --Jayron32 13:47, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Deletion[edit]

The deletion of 2019 Kashmir airstrikes citing A10 suggests WP:BIAS within this highly controversial topic area. How about deleting 2019 Balakot airstrike for the same reason to make it even? Or better still restore the former and let the AfD decide if someone has issue with its existence. 110.93.250.2 (talk) 13:15, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

We don't speedy delete articles to score political points. We delete articles according to the criteria for speedy deletion. If you want a deleted article to be undeleted, contact the admin who deleted it. If that admin declines to undelete the article, go to deletion review and ask there. However, articles about an India-Pakistan conflict are now under general sanctions that prohibit anyone from editing them unless they are extended confirmed. In short, that means no IP editors are allowed to edit an article about a conflict between India and Pakistan. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 13:50, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

See User talk:Iridescent#Deletion for some background to this. ‑ Iridescent 18:22, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Edit summary vandalism[edit]

Would someone please remove the lengthy nonsense edit summary here, as it remains highly visible in page history: Bhunacat10 (talk), 14:36, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

 Done —DoRD (talk)​ 16:15, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Range block assist[edit]

Hi all, rangeblocks intimidate me. That said, over the last few months (maybe since February) several Indian entertainment articles have been hit by an Indonesia-based vandal. If you look at the edit history of Thapki Pyar Ki and set your results to 500, you'll see the extent of the problem. Some examples:[55][56][57][58] Often there's numerical vandalism, changing numbers to 9999 and such. Here are some of the IPs used, in numerical order:

• 182.1.66.127
• 182.1.74.209
• 182.1.76.106
• 182.1.77.62
• 182.1.77.195
• 182.1.92.122
• 182.1.94.78
• 182.1.95.23
• 182.1.101.220
• 182.1.102.151
• 182.1.104.10
• 182.1.106.198
• 182.1.123.108

Can someone please set up a rangeblock or two to cover these, if possible? Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 00:35, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Looks like 182.1.64.0/18 would cover all of that in one block. I don't see much collateral damage in terms of logged out users, have a look at the contribs and see what you think. It looks like Thapki Pyar Ki is the biggest target, can we just semi-protect that? ST47 (talk) 00:50, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

@ST47: Thanks for the assist on this. It's not just Thapki Pyar Ki, it's Porus (TV series), List of programs broadcast by Colors, Mahakali — Anth Hi Aarambh Hai and some others. Also, I don't typically mind leaving a honeypot to make it easier to spot these people. I'm not seeing a whole lot in the way of constructive edits from this range, so I'll likely block. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 01:59, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

BLP ban lift[edit]