Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Windmills

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: No consensus to delete. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:55, 15 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Windmills

Delete Narrow-subject (failing the WP:POG guideline on that count) one-click-created single-page portal. Is missing content that makes portals "enhanced main pages": no news, no links to featured content, no links to editor collaboration areas. UnitedStatesian (talk) 12:38, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. @UnitedStatesian, I am leaning to keep here, for three reasons:

This is not a narrow topic. Category:Windmills+subcats contains 762 articles, of which 624 are neither tagged nor assessed as stubs, and 327 are specifically assessed as FA, GA, A, B, C or list-class.
It's a significant topic. Before the invention of the steam engine to generate power from fossil fuels, windmills were the main machine for food processing in areas which lacked significant water power, and also for pumping water in low-lying areas. They were in widespread use for about 900 years in various forms, and in Europe alone there were about 200,000 windmills at their peak in 1850[1]
This is not a one-click creation. Instead of using a navbox, its selected articles list comes from an embedded list. That may be a junk list scooped from one category, as with e.g. Electricity, Julius Caesar, Habitats, and Shipwrecks ... but I note that in this case, the list is subdivided into sections, which suggests that TTH may for once have done some actual curation. I haven't analysed it yet, but it does need analysis. However, the only grounds I see for possible deletion is that the list may be yet more splat-pasting, so unless it is established that it this actually is a splat-paste, I can't support the nomination. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:01, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. As per above, it's a very broad topic so plenty of scope for the portal. As for the means of article selection etc., those are content issues that can be dealt with via editing - it's not necessary to delete the whole portal in order to to alter the list of selected articles, or to add the features listed as missing in the nomination (which are not necessary for a portal to exist, in the same way that we don't delete articles just because they lack a navbox/infobox etc). WaggersTALK 14:16, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Waggers, articles are content, so deleting them removes content.

Portals are not content. They are a navigational device and/or a showcase for existing content, so the case for their existence depends on whether they do that well enough to add value per WP:PORTAL: "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". If they don't do that, they should be deleted, just like we routinely delete redundant or non-defining categories.

In this case, it's unclear whether this one adds any value. It looks a lot like many bundles of drive-by spam, but with some small hints that it might be one the rare occasions where the portalspammer wasn't actually spamming. That needs investigation, but so far the possibilities are either than it's just spam, or that it's an abysmally poor start which might just about be better than nothing. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:54, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral at this time, based on the reservations of BHG, reserving the right to change that to a Weak Keep or Weak Delete. I am skeptical of whether TTH has done any actual curation, and of the quality of any curation, but may wait for more discussion. Neutral at this time. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:03, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment On the talk page for this portal, Legacypac wrote: This portal pulls featured pages from several curated lists that are embedded in the single. The topics are all displayed so a reader can click without scrolling or refreshing. The topic is broad with many articles in the scope. The DKY includes a cave without any windmill in it but we have seen worse. If all portals were built this carefully the mass deletions would have not happened. I just think that is noteworthy and is why I watchlisted this page. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 15:28, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@MJL, in theory I agree with LP ... but unfortunately LP doesn't seem to have been aware of how TTH created many portals with embedded lists which appear at first glance to be curated, but in practice are just co-pasted spam. See e.g. Electricity, Julius Caesar, Habitats, and Shipwrecks.

I have not yet evaluated whether this one is just spam, or actually curated. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:39, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I don't agree this is a narrow topic. Windpower has been used for centuries to make flour and pump water. I don't know about the US but the UK is peppered with the things, as is the Netherlands, and there's quite a bit of interest in their conservation. BrownHairedGirl's analysis above is more detailed. This portal has more than the minimum articles, and portals created by the embedded-list method are easy to edit and improve. Espresso Addict (talk) 15:49, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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.