Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Drawing

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

The result of the discussion was:  delete. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 02:08, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Drawing


A probably-broad-enough topic, but this is just a fake-curated portal, which in reality is just another variant of portalspam.

Drawing appears to be a broad topic, well-covered in Wikipedia. Category:Drawing has plenty of well-populated subcats, and while I haven't tried any sort of detailed assessment, it look like there is plenty of content there to sustain a rich portal.

Unfortunately, this spam portal makes no attempt to showcase those riches.

This portal was created on 15 September 2018‎ by @The Transhumanist (TTH). There is no prior manual version.

It was initially created to draw its "selected general articles" list from, which resolves to Template:Drawing. Since that doesn't exist, that section of the portal just contained "Lua error: No page specified".

So instead TTH used an embedded list of articles, which in principle is a great way to build a portal: it combines all the befits of automation, while still allowing curation, but without the maintenance headaches, vulnerabilities and other failings of the old WP:REDUNDANTFORK model of numerous subpages.

Unfortunately, what TTH actually did was to simply grab the list of 52 articles which were then directly in Category:Drawing (without subcats), and with no curation involved. Yes, I checked, using AWB, and there is an exact match between the list here and Category:Drawing as as it existed on 15 September 2018‎. It includes none of the topics in the subcats.

Just as importantly, 21 of the 52 articles in the list are stub articles, which are listed on the face of the portal. It's a long-standing point of WP:Portal/Guidelines that articles selected should be "not marked as a stub."

So this page is just another indiscriminate piece of portalspam: a hastily-created page without any curation, which differs only in its method (but not its brokenness) from the 2,555 such portals deleted in the two mass deletions of TTH-created spam portals: one, and two, where there was overwhelming consensus of a very high turnout to delete.

Note that this sloppy method of looks-like-it-was-curated creating pseudo-portals was used by TTH in at least a dozen other portals: see e.g. Electricity, Julius Caesar, Habitats, and Shipwrecks, Volume.

Since this is a broad topic, but there is nothing to keep here I propose that this portal be deleted without prejudice to recreating a curated portals, in accordance with whatever criteria the community may have agreed at that time.

Note that if anyone does want to build a portal under this topic, it takes only a few seconds to make the shell by entering {{subst:Basic portal start page}} and saving. So deleting this page is no impediment to anyone who wants to research the topic properly and create a portal which actually adds value for readers. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 22:34, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete:
 * The analysis by BHG is detailed and interesting.
 * Since a museum does house drawings, this portal can go in the portal museum.
 * This is actually a good subject for a portal.
 * Delete this one, without prejudice (and without xenophobia). Robert McClenon (talk) 02:43, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.