Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Dublin

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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: speedy delete. WP:G7 per request of the creator @Gazamp, who has also proactively asked me to speedy delete their other remaining portal creations, which I have done. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 11:04, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Dublin

 * – (View MfD)

Junk pseudo-portal on a topic which probably cannot in practice sustain a separate portal.

In this case the city of Dublin has a history over 1,000 years old. It is the capital of one of the most prosperous states on earth. Being English-speaking it is well-documented on Wikipedia. It has been the home of many notable writers, artists, scientists, political leaders, sportspeople, etc, including 5 Nobel Laureates. It has dozens of notable buildings and monuments, and its history and politics are well-documented. So IF (big "if") editors were willing and able, this could in theory be the topic of a fine portal.

Note that the fine city of Dublin is a Level-4 vital article, i.e. it is in the 1,001–10,000 range of priority topics. That seems to me to be a marginal set. As of now there 2,840 portals, of which 1,535 are being discussed at MFD, leaving only 1,305 whose existence is not currently being debated. So it seems to me to be unlikely that the editing community has the resources to extend portals far (if at all) into VA-4 topics. (For currently-existing portals, see Category:All portals, live population count=). Many of those 1,305 portals are in poor or mediocre shape, and some have been that way for many years, indicating that the community has in practice shown itself over a long period to be unwilling and/or unable to devote enough resources to maintain that many portals.

But regardless of whether anyone thinks there should be a portal for Dublin, the reality is that all versions of this pseudo-portal are junk. It was created in November 2018‎ by  with its article list selected from a single navbox. Per MFD:Mass-created portals based on a single navbox and many other discussions, there is an overwhelming consensus that a portal built off a single navbox is a useless WP:REDUNDANTFORK of the head article.

Yet this particular portal managed the heroic achievement of outdoing the bog-standard uselessness. As created in November it built its list off the navbox. As should be obvious from the title, that navbox is actually about the surrounding County Dublin, and areas of 922 km2, of which the city is a mere 115 km2.

So it was actually a WP:REDUNDANTFORK of another topic.

It remained as such until 8 April 2019, when the creator Gazamp appears to have belatedly realised that a county and a city are not actually the same thing. So Gazamp converted the navbox-based pseudo-portal to use an embedded list. This might have been a good idea in principle, but in practice the list used is comically bizarre:


 * Datalex
 * Hibernia REIT
 * Northside, Dublin
 * Greater Dublin Area
 * University College Dublin
 * Royal Dublin Society
 * RDS Arena
 * Technological University Dublin
 * River Liffey
 * Spire of Dublin
 * Aviva Stadium
 * Dublin quays
 * National Museum of Ireland
 * Croke Park
 * Grand Canal Dock
 * Bewley's
 * Richmond Park (football ground)
 * Aldborough House
 * Phoenix Park
 * Temple Bar, Dublin
 * Dublin Corporation
 * Ringsend
 * Raidió Teilifís Éireann

For example:
 * it includes two universities, but omits both the oldest and most notable (Trinity College Dublin) and the newer Dublin City University.
 * it includes three neighbourhoods (Ringsend, Northside, and Temple Bar), but Category:Towns and villages in Dublin (city) has 54 pages, plus hundreds more in the parent Category:Places in Dublin (city) and its subcats
 * Dublin has two ancient cathedrals and a pro-Cathedral, but neither of them is listed. Nor are any of the dozens of other churches
 * Neither of the two permanent seats of parliament are listed, despite both being internationally-noted historic buildings. Nor is the provisional seat, the Mansion House
 * There are no biographies. No Emmet, Walton, Glúniairn, Haughey, Tone, Wilde, Joyce, FitzGerald, Guthfrithson, Cosgrave, Swift, Loftus, Bertie, Drew, Kelly, Talbot, Synge, McQuaid, Byrne, Toal, Bang Bang, Grattan etc etc etc: there are thousands of notable Dubliners.
 * There isn't even an attempt to provide the separate lists which would give the portal some utility. There could be rich sections on each of buildings, biographies, streets, neighbourhoods, history, politics, arts, and religion. But instead there is just a tiny general list with an bizarre selection of only 23 pages.

In other words, this is a piss-poor summary of an ancient city and modern capital, created by an editor who appears to both know nothing about the city and have no inclination to learn before publishing a portal. Per WP:PORTAL, portals should "serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". Instead, pages like this and the 11-year-old piss-poor Portal:Angola (see current MFD), pages like this mock their subjects and waste the time of readers.

I do not want to prejudge the outcomes of any RFCs which define more precisely which portals the community does actually want. So I propose that this junk portal be deleted without prejudice to recreating a curated portal not based on a single navbox, in accordance with whatever criteria the community may have agreed at that time.

I also strongly urge the creator @Gazamp to refrain from creating any more portals, ever. Any repetition of anything like this junk would start making the case for a WP:CIR-based ban. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 16:39, 20 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete. As a capital city of a moderate-sized country, with a population of 1.2 million, and one of the top 30 cities in the world, Dublin seems a sensible topic for a portal. Unfortunately, as the nominator points out, this isn't it. There's sometimes a reason behind apparently spotty coverage based on article quality (it used to be strongly advised that all portal articles were FAs, or at very least GAs, and orange-level tags are prohibited) but I'm not seeing that here; on spot checks most of the content is assessed as start (though some has clearly since progressed); Hibernia REIT is notionally start but actually stub; Northside, Dublin has an orange-level tag; vs the obvious omission of Trinity College Dublin, a very well-known university, which is B class with a decent lead and no obvious problems. (And what about Book of Kells, a featured article on perhaps the most beautiful book in the world, currently in TC Dublin library?) And the images are also very odd: what's "Electronic sign at a Luas stop indicating the minutes until the next tram.", "The Luas Park and a junction at Sandyford", "Stillorgan Luas stop with the ticket machine and CCTV warning", "Luas tram in Dublin City Centre.", "Sign warning of Luas track ahead", "Sign welcoming Luas to South Dublin in 2004" and several more plus the Luas logo doing in there?? At least The Transhumanist one-click wonders pulled the images willy-nilly from the head article. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:51, 21 April 2019 (UTC)


 * No prejudice against re-creation of a hand-made, old-style portal with subpages. North America1000 04:33, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete I would urge page creators to do a bit of research when making pages. This is inferior to our articles on the city. Legacypac (talk) 05:30, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete: The creation of hundreds of unnecessary portals was a bad idea in the first place without any evidence they were needed or could be maintained. If portals are created they should have a least one editor committed to their maintainence, otherwise they will be stale and not be updated. There does not appear to be any indication that will ever happen. Besides which, this portal surely comes under the umbrella of the Portal:Ireland which itself needs more support and maintenance. Several Dublin related pages can be connected there if people are interested and they can make suggestions by posting using the suggestion links provided. I'll happily support if a maintainer steps up. ww2censor (talk) 10:38, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete  - Automated portal,  0 subpages, created 2018-11-29 18:48:38 by User:Gazamp, useless navigation tool, redundant to the existing articles and navboxes, and of lower quality: Portal:Dublin. Pldx1 (talk) 15:34, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - This isn't as bad as Portal:Angola, which is saying nothing. But if an Irishwoman says that this portal needs deleting, it needs deleting for the reasons that she specifies.  This is two editors who should be topic-banned from creating portals.  At least it isn't clear that Gazamp needs to be banned from edits in portal space.  Robert McClenon (talk) 19:02, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - With prejudice, as the lawyers say, and indeed with a review of the creating editor, as this is a disgraceful mess, AGF nothwithstanding. I'm only sorry I did not come to this idea myself sooner, so thanks to BHG!SeoR (talk) 20:24, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Speedy delete per G7 - Indeed, this portal is a mess and it seems it would be better to just delete and start again. As suggested, I will not be creating any more portals in the near future and my sincerest apologies for my portal 'spree', as it were. I can only say that it was all in good faith. Gazamp (talk) 09:44, 22 April 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.