Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Portals guideline

Essays on consensus building strategies

 * RefactoringWikiPages
 * GoodWikiCitizen

Creating a draft
Hi all, I'm pinging you because you commented on the portal guidelines thread at the Village Pump. It's worthwhile to develop a new proposal that reflects current consensus based on the last RfC. While a lot of people were opposed to deleting all portals, there was a variety of opinion on what to do with them once they were kept. There's a lot of debate about what to do with portals, partly because the current guideline is so vague. By getting a summary of ideas we can hopefully develop an RfC to determine which ideas have widest support. You can help by refactoring the draft at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/RfC: Portals guideline and inviting others to do so as well. pinging VPPOL participants Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 22:05, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
 * We need to remember that the purpose of this exercise is to develop an RFC to ask well-formulated questions, not to develop the answers at this time. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:11, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
 * A good point. The "Proposals" section has been retitled to "What questions should the RfC ask?" with existing discussion put under headings for specific questions.

Proposed Breakdown
The input that we have so far is very useful but needs organizing into parts of the RFC, or RFCs. I suggest that the RFC consist of at least the following parts:
 * 1. What are the intended purposes of portals?  Vote Yes or No on each; vote for 0 to N purposes.
 * 2. Should the existing portal guidelines be authorized/re-authorized and given the status of a guideline?
 * 3. What should be the status of Regional Portals?  (I am about to write this up on the front side.)
 * 4. Should the three-part Action Plan of User:BrownHairedGirl be put into force as a plan?

Robert McClenon (talk) 20:07, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Additional Reasons for Portals
Reasons 9 and 10 are conclusions from the discussion of deletion of portals. There is sometimes considerable discussion of the Did You Know items, such as that new DYKs illustrate that a portal is being maintained. For reason 10, which, like most of the other reasons, is a good-faith reason, see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Folklore. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:03, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Is It Time?
Should the first two parts of the RFC, the reasons for portals, and re-activating the portal guidelines, be published, and started running for 30 days? Robert McClenon (talk) 00:40, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 * As good a time as any. I refactored the "why portals" section to make it a bit better for an RfC. What's your plan for starting it? Wug·a·po·des​ 03:13, 17 July 2019 (UTC)