Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Donald Trump: Difference between revisions

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Portal:Donald Trump

Ingrained with WP:NPOV failure throughout. A POVFORK of the article Donald Trump. Barely viewed, it serves no purpose, and it just a project liability. The purpose of Portals was to stimulate interest in Wikipedia topic expansion, and article expansion on this topic is absolutely not a problem due to lack of interest. SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:27, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Question - Is this a coded portal or a single-page portal? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:18, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Question - How is this a POV fork? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:18, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- How is this a POV fork?

Well, it obviously is a fork of other Wikipedia pages.

Why POV? Why is it not WP:NPOV compliant? Because it is Wikipedia-editorialisation. The presentation is not external-source based. It gives WP:UNDUE visibility to what Wikipedians think is important. While the forking of the parent article lede, as tranclusions is fine, what follows is not bias-free. What struck me to start with is the listing of Good Articles. Taking a wide-eyed reader perspective, going below the fold, and there is a list Good Article dot points: Crippled America; Impeachment March, Insane Clown President. This listing is out of context, is not reflective of NPOV rules as applied to articles. It instead reflects what Wikipedians think worthy to work on to elevate to Good Article status, it is Wikipedian biased. This is inherently a problem, subject to biases, and unconnected to sourcing as the basis of WP:DUE. If this were intended for editor consumption, it would be ok, but it is not, it is intended for readers.

It is a poor excuse that no real readers read it. What value it has for editors should be moved to WikiProjects, and value there is for readers should be at the parent article. Navigation from the parent article via wikilinking, navigation templates, and the category system, is structurally rigorous, unlike the structure of a portal that reflects editor bias. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:14, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Deferring !vote for more information from other editors. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:18, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - this is better than many/most portals - although still having minor faults (e.g. displaying "{{{1}}}" and currently for me displaying two photos of the same thing next to each other). I'm not convinced the portal (currently) has a POV problem (e.g. it currently includes "Trump has made many false or misleading statements during his campaign and presidency."). The quotes may (I haven't checked) all be quotes by, rather than about, Trump but that may be what any readers of the portal would expect. I think a case could be made to delete all single-person portals (especially for recent/living people), but this MFD nom isn't convincing. DexDor^(talk) 07:20, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. This portal shares the basic flaw of most old-style (pre-automated) portals, viz. that it forks the MOS:LEAD of Wikipedia articles to a set of subpages of the portal: Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Donald Trump. Those subpages are unreferenced and under-scrutinised.

The subpages system was set up in good faith as way of building portals, and in most cases it seems that in practice the only significant problems relate to maintenance, as the snippets in the subpages tend to ossify.

However, cases like this illustrate how a portal could be used for POV-pushing purposes, both in the selection of topics and in the wording of the subpages. If a miscreant chose to target the head article Donald Trump, that page has 2600 watchers who will soon revert; but while Portal:Donald Trump doesn't show a count of watchers, the page stats show only 56 editors having edited the page, which is probably similar to the number of watchers. Meanwhile the subpage Portal:Donald Trump/Selected article/1 has been edited by only one editor, so any miscreant wanting to use the portal as an attack vector would likely be undetected if they chose that path.

In Jan–Feb 2019, the portal got only 59 pageviews per day, so there can't be many editors monitoring its output.

It is possible to reduce the vulnerability by automating the creation of excerpts, thereby making subpages redundant and I will now do a demo of that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:41, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Article subpages bypassed, in this edit[1]. However, that leaves the 14 selected quote pages, the 7 selected picture pages, and the 4 "Did you know" pages as vulnerabilities. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:56, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep – Trump qualifies for a portal as per meeting Wikipedia's Wikipedia:Portal/Guidelines: enough content available about the subject, a broad topic relative to the significance of the subject, and a decent amount of Recognized content. How is this a POV-fork? The content in the portal is rather neutral, and does not come across as hand-picked to present a particular point-of-view. The portal provides an objective overview of the subject and present POTUS. Concerns about page views can be alleviated by adding links to the portal to various related articles, templates and category pages. More links = more visibility, which directly equates to more page views. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 11:09, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This portal looks good and has been improved to address the criticism made in the nomination. (Further comment withdrawn after noticing that the nominator's criticisms were directed at an old version of the portal.) Certes (talk) 11:22, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- @Certes: my tweak addressed only part of the vulnerability. As noted above, the 14 selected quote pages, the 7 selected picture pages, and the 4 "Did you know" pages remain as unsourced an probably unwatched pages, vulnerable to attack; and the portal itself is so little watched that a stealthy addition of an inappropriate item to the list of selected articles might go undetected for some time. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:00, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  - As with most portals and some other derived content, there are a couple of dilemmas. Do you automate DYK/ITN, or leave a manually created version to rot? Do you worry that a page is likely to deteriorate because no one looks at it, or decide not to worry because no one looks at it? There is a case for "might get vandalised later" becoming a valid deletion rationale, but if so then we should consider an RfC on mass-deleting little-watched pages from all namespaces. Or just pre-emptively protect high-risk pages. Certes (talk) 12:27, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    - Certes, you seem to be assuming that the choices are either automation or let it rot. Which is interesting, because as you know WP:POG says that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". However, this one attracts neither viewers nor -- as you acknowledge -- enough maintainers to avoid the expectation that it will rot.

So basically you are telling us that the available options if we keep the page are both poor, and that we may need to revise protection policy. So you have persuaded me to choose a better option. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:45, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@BrownHairedGirl: You're undoubtedly far more expert than I on protection policy, but with regard to BLPs, I would be prepared to IAR preemptive protection of little-watched subpages on a polarising BLP if that proved necessary. Espresso Addict (talk) 12:59, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The main Trump portal page gets about 50 edits a year and, of course, also changes when transcluded pages are edited. The nominator considers that level of activity as Barely viewed, which I can't really argue with as it's an opinion rather than a fact, so I'm simply commenting on that basis. Certes (talk) 13:07, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Espresso Addict, preemptive protection of little-watched subpages on a polarising BLP if that proved necessary???? If proven necessary, it's not pre-emptive. And once the subpages are protected, maintenance will become even harder.

@Certes, my comment barely viewed is not an opinion, it is a fact. One view of the portal for every 839 views of the head article. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:37, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well, a valid interpretation of "barely viewed" would be the absolute number of hits, rather than the relative, imo. And maintenance isn't necessarily needed for (1) pages that extract from a dynamic source; (2) images that continue show that they showed; (3) quotations that the subject said and can't retract that fact; (4) main-page DYKs that ran and aren't date sensitive. In this case I doubt getting an admin maintainer would be too tricky. Espresso Addict (talk) 13:50, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to do absolute number of views, I went too look for some obscure topic in upstate NY. I thought I'd look at a ridge on the Erie Canal, but didn't find any, so I took the first school I found: D'Youville College in Buffalo, with 51 pageviews/day. The portal barely exceeds that obscure school.

Some maintenance is needed on subpages, as comments become outdated. And a watching eye is need for vandalism.

The head article is so heavily watched that that it subject to disputes and sanctions; meanwhile with the portal, all we have is an observation that a maintainer would need to be actively recruited ... which just reinforces my point about the POG guidance. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:53, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

For an example of a portal subpage with lots (at least relative to the number of constructive edits) of vandalism see Portal:Physics/Intro. DexDor^(talk) 15:43, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I've had a couple of discussions where I essentially challenged editors to bring Portal:Donald Trump to MfD; I didn't expect to be taken up on it. Does it meet the current guidelines: clearly yes. The problem with PoV is true for all polarising political figures, but is particularly difficult where the subject is living and doubly so when they are in office and when elections are upcoming. If stealth vandalism is an issue, could we edit-lock the subpages? I'm not sure how major a problem vandalism is on portal subpages in general. I've just gone through all the text subpages of one of my portals, looking at the history, and found literally no vandalism at all over its more than a decade of existence. I'm gonna say this in bold, sorry: If this portal is deleted it is because it is found to pose insuperable problems with PoV pushing/vandalism of a BLP, NOT because it's on a single individual. As portals go, the hits are quite healthy, and as one would expect, very variable (range 21–177 since start of the year)[2]. Espresso Addict (talk) 12:49, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Espresso Addict: you ask Does it meet the current guidelines?, and answer clearly yes.

But as far as I can see, clearly no. See WP:POG, that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers"

The single person Donald Trump is not a "broad subject area". The scale only becomes big by widening the focus onto his whole administration, but a focus on topics that are broadly about him and his career gives us about 100 or 200 pages. In an encyclopedia with nearly 6 million pages, that's narrow.
It demonstrably does not "attract large numbers of interested readers". Your comment on that is qualified by as portals go, which is a bit like describing something as "quite dry, as things in the ocean go".
It also doesn't attract maintainers. Only 8 selected articles? That first-draft levels of maintenance. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:51, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

100 or 200 articles? Wikipedia:WikiProject Donald Trump counts more than 1,000 articles. There were so many articles that Trump's navbox was split into five navboxes a long time ago: generic Trump, business, family, media and presidency. The Trump sidebar includes only articles of greatest importance, based on editorial judgment and breadth of coverage by sources, and even with this severe culling it includes about 100 entries. If there are any arguments for deleting this portal, lack of subject matter is surely not one of them. — JFG ^talk 18:55, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I admit I didn't actually look at it in detail. Insert comment here that breaks the BLP guidelines. It does seem to have only had 8 selected articles before Transhumanist took it over. But Wikiproject Donald Trump exists, and has tagged more than a thousand articles/&c (though I note there's a lot of categories/redirects in there), and there are >20 project-tagged FA/FL/GAs , so I'd assume that one of the many editors who work in the area of US politics could flesh it out in a flash. Espresso Addict (talk) 14:34, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Espresso Addict: Came here from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics/American politics Now I am sad because you didn't challenge me to nominate this portal because I totally would have. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 20:14, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I was unimpressed by the nomination, and unsure what option to support, but the points made by Certes crystallised my thoughts: this portal just has too many downsides. So despite I think that the nominator is at least pointing in the right direction: this is a delete.

WP:POG says that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". The narrowness of the topic is self-evident: it covers only one of the 45 holders of a political office, and its scope is elegantly covered by a single navbox: {{Donald Trump}}. WP:PG's warning against narrowness is also supported by the fact that this page attracts neither interested viewers (only 59 views of the portal per day, compared with 49,479 per day for the head article) nor maintainers. We have already deleted dozens of portals on individuals for similar reasons, and should do the same here.

Per WP:PORTAL says that "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". But with only 8 rotating selected articles and the next one viewable only after purging, this page offers no enhancement of the B-class head article. The head article covers far more topics without needing to refresh the page to view the next one; it has far more pictures; and with the sidebar Template:Donald Trump series and the comprehensive navbox Template:Donald Trump, it provides massively better navigation than the portal.

So as well as being a narrow topic, this portal is redundant. All of its objectives are better served by other pages.

And as a neglected page on a very high-profile person, it is highly vulnerable to attack, a vulnerability which portal advocates tell us can be reduced only by reducing quality, and eliminated only by pre-emptive protection (which policy doesn't allow).

The result is that this portal is all downside with no upside. Time to uphold policy on narrow-topic portals, and also listen to our readers ... and just delete this barely-used fork. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:28, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - This disaster is one of the best possible argument for a whole deletion of the portal space. Keep it absolutely ! I like to see this rationale endorsed (at least partially) by User:DexDor, saying [this one] is better than many/most portals. And I like also the !vote: this portal provides an objective overview of the subject and present POTUS, by User:Northamerica1000. May I respectfully underline that Portal:Donald Trump itself, this would-be best thing ever from the discovery of kimchi, is far from concurring. According to Portal:Donald Trump/Selected article/4, the actual POTUS had to wait until 2017-04-01 before being in charge.Pldx1 (talk) 13:54, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
<joke> Canvassing comment - All of the politically correct people should vote "delete" since Portal:Donald Trump is likely to assert that Trump is the actuel POTUS even six months after the end of his term. </joke> Pldx1 (talk) 13:54, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks to BHG for fixing that problem by deploying the despised semi-automation tools. That addresses the new points hastily invented after the original deletion rationale was so easily solved. The only argument now left is that one of the most important world figures with his own WikiProject is too narrow a scope. Certes (talk) 15:05, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It often happen that a bad nomination leads to scrutiny of the page, and other issues are discovered which lead to a delete "!vote", just a good nomination may overlook issues which lead to a "keep". It's thoroughly ABF to call the results of that hastily invented, any more than "keep" !votes derived from scrutiny are hastily invented.

Every XFD should scrutinise involve such scrutiny, and smearing it as "invented" is a very nasty way to approach a consensus-building discussion.

And as you know, the original rationale was only partially solved. As I noted above, the portal still draws on 25 subpages, which are attack vectors. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:25, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep – The political ascension of Donald Trump since 2015, and the relentless press coverage of anything related to his person or his presidency, have made him indeed a "broad topic area". The Wikipedia:WikiProject Donald Trump currently tracks more than a thousand articles. While I personally fail to see how portals in general are not redundant to WikiProjects, this particular portal certainly needs to stay around unless all portals are some day obliterated from enwiki. — JFG ^talk 19:03, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. When saying Thanks to BHG for fixing that problem by deploying the despised semi-automation tools, User:Certes has proved how wrong BHG was when trying to fix anything in this portal. The usual way of doing of the portal-fans is simply to wait until other people do the job in their steed, rather than doing the job by themselves. And then, they only have to say: better, better, so strike your !vote. They can even add a sarcastic comment about the despised tools. What could be described as semi-automated when replacing a list in a subpage by the same list in the main page? Here is the code: {{Transclude random excerpt | paragraphs=1-3 | files=1 | more= | Trump National Golf Club Westchester | Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago) | Donald Trump presidential campaign, 2000 | Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign | Melania Trump | Business career of Donald Trump | Donald Trump (Last Week Tonight) | Trump Tower | }} . Pldx1 (talk) 19:25, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. There isn't a valid reason to have this portal, there are presidents who definitely have done more that a portal would be good for, there is enough work for Wikipedians to deal with Already. - Nolan Perry ^{Yell at me!} 22:47, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 *'''Question''' - Is this a coded portal or a single-page portal?  [[User:Robert McClenon|Robert McClenon]] ([[User talk:Robert McClenon|talk]]) 03:18, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
 *'''Question''' - How is this a POV fork?  [[User:Robert McClenon|Robert McClenon]] ([[User talk:Robert McClenon|talk]]) 03:18, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
+** How is this a POV fork?
+::: Well, it obviously is a fork of other Wikipedia pages.
+::: Why POV?  Why is it not [[WP:NPOV]] compliant?  Because it is Wikipedia-editorialisation. The presentation is not external-source based.  It gives WP:UNDUE visibility to what Wikipedians think is important. While the forking of the parent article lede, as tranclusions is fine, what follows is not bias-free. What struck me to start with is the listing of Good Articles.  Taking a wide-eyed reader perspective, going below the fold, and there is a list Good Article dot points:  Crippled America; Impeachment March, Insane Clown President.  This listing is out of context, is not reflective of NPOV rules as applied to articles.  It instead reflects what Wikipedians think worthy to work on to elevate to Good Article status, it is Wikipedian biased.  This is inherently a problem, subject to biases, and unconnected to sourcing as the basis of WP:DUE. If this were intended for editor consumption, it would be ok, but it is not, it is intended for readers.
+::: It is a poor excuse that no real readers read it.  What value it has for editors should be moved to WikiProjects, and value there is for readers should be at the parent article.  Navigation from the parent article via wikilinking, navigation templates, and the category system, is structurally rigorous, unlike the structure of a portal that reflects editor bias. —[[User:SmokeyJoe|SmokeyJoe]] ([[User talk:SmokeyJoe|talk]]) 02:14, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
 *'''Comment''' - Deferring !vote for more information from other editors.  [[User:Robert McClenon|Robert McClenon]] ([[User talk:Robert McClenon|talk]]) 03:18, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
 * '''Comment''' - this is better than many/most portals - although still having minor faults (e.g. displaying "{{{1}}}" and currently for me displaying two photos of the same thing next to each other). I'm not convinced the portal (currently) has a POV problem (e.g. it currently includes "''Trump has made many false or misleading statements during his campaign and presidency.''"). The quotes may (I haven't checked) all be quotes by, rather than about, Trump but that may be what any readers of the portal would expect. I think a case could be made to delete all single-person portals (especially for recent/living people), but this MFD nom isn't convincing. <b>[[User:DexDor|DexDor]]</b><sup> [[User talk:DexDor|(talk)]]</sup> 07:20, 4 May 2019 (UTC)