Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Contents/Outlines

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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 Keep as a somewhat active sub-portal of Portal:Contents, with considerable related content. There is some sentiment for marking the project as historical, but much of the delete and mark historical argumentation appears directed at deprecating the concept of outlines generally or even deleting all of the individual outline pages, which is too broad of a scope for the MFD of a particular portal page. --RL0919 (talk) 05:21, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Contents/Outlines[edit]

Notice of this deletion request has been posted at Wikipedia talk:Outlines#Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Contents/Outlines,Moxy (talk) 16:56, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that this idea was rejected by the community at WP:ROOT. There doesn't seem to be any discussion I can find where outlines were accepted as legitimate types of articles at Wikipedia. This style of article leads naturally to WP:SYNTH issues and is better suited to other projects such as DMOZ. I recommend deleting without prejudice due to the failure to gain consensus of the community that such articles should exist. jps (talk) 04:39, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Addressing this point by point....
  1. WP:ROOT is a failed proposal, and outlines are not mentioned on it or its talk page. Please point out where the community rejected outlines there. I can't find anything about outlines there at all. Your statement concerning WP:ROOT appears to be false.
  2. Please show any instance in which WP:SYNTH has become an issue in any outline or other structured topic list. Structured topic lists have been around since the beginning of Wikipedia, and so far as I know, to date there have been no discussions of actual synthesis problems in any of them ever, and certainly not with this page. Your statement concerning WP:SYNTH appears to be false.
  3. Outline articles are list articles. There is no requirement to seek approval to create articles of any type, including list articles - this is a core wiki principle and it is why Wikipedia has grown into the most comprehensive encyclopedia in the world. Your statements concerning "acceptance" and "consensus for existence" are not based on policy but imply that they are - this is very misleading.
  4. There is no approval process for portals, including this one - consensus is not required for creating portals, and anyone can start a portal (see Portal:Cannabis). A department for proposing portals was established a few years ago, but it was rejected by the community and shut down (that MfD also discussed page creation in general).
Conclusion: the entire nomination appears to be frivolous, based on blatantly false premises. The Transhumanist 17:06, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Outlines are root pages. They are the same thing. If we don't want root pages, we don't want outlines either. Just claiming they are different doesn't make them so. jps (talk) 16:52, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You've misread WP:ROOT - It was a proposal to hook regular articles together with branch and back-link templates. Under WP:ROOT, regular (prose) articles having "several branches needing further explanation" would be nominated to be "root" articles. So geography would be a root article. If the nomination went through, the root-system's templates would be added to the article. The community didn't reject root articles, they rejected the root article designation and the proposed link template system. By the definition presented in the proposal, any article that expanded into sub-articles would be subject to the root article designation. Under that proposal, geography --> regional geography --> North America --> United States --> Alabama --> Jefferson County --> and Birmingham would all be considered root articles. You've totally misunderstood the meaning of the term and the proposal. The rejection of that proposal has nothing to do with outlines. Please withdraw your nomination. The Transhumanist 08:02, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete or otherwise make them historical. Duplicate system which is worse than what we have otherwise. After 9 years, we still have the "Entertainment - Fiction - James Bond" tree as an example of where this goes wrong in its terrible incompleteness and randomness. Fram (talk) 09:59, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Mark historical//failed/gone fishin'/whatever, per Cybercobra SmokeyJoe. Outlines serve no useful purpose; on the contrary they're full of duplicated content, largely unreferenced and are content-forks waiting to happen. pablo 15:19, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Er, what? I haven't expressed an opinion on the issue. --Cybercobra (talk) 20:10, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Corrected. Apologies. pablo 21:20, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete As per above reasons. Also there is just no need for outlines since the outlines have articles that have references. Marking them is also alright. I just know that they have caused a lot of controversy with the way the project got started and how the outlines themselves got started. Let's finally get closure to this as a project. --CrohnieGalTalk 15:28, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep does not matter if some think its no good the page gets viewed 200 times a day. Its clear that some of our readers like this Outlines. I see many are basing there vote on a personal belief that Outlines serve no useful purpose, yet if you were to look at view counts on Outlines you would see that many many of our readers do like them - (WP:IDONTLIKEIT). Its best to let our readers chose what they would like to use as some like the index with ABC order and others like the Outline with TOPIC order. We are here to make navigation of Wikipidia easier, not to poss our layout views on our readers. Should always think of what our readers do and view. Moxy (talk) 16:45, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The page is viewed 200 times a day probably because it has a top-level link from Portal:Contents. We should remove this if the consensus is to delete. (talk) 17:03, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I lean toward delete, but don't have any additional comments to add. Per WP:NOT#Democracy, I'm not further commenting unless I have something to say. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:08, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Mark historical/failed. This bad idea keeps coming up, and deleting it will just mean that someone reinvents the bad idea in perfect innocence. It's much better to document the community's rejection so that we can point to it and say "don't do this". For the record, I would have no problem with content outlines in Portal space, but of course they are never implemented in Portal space. — Gavia immer (talk) 17:31, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Request for clarification. Even if this portal is marked historical or deleted, there will still be Wikipedia:Outlines and umpteen Outline of ... articles. Isn't this nomination a bit half-baked? Fences&Windows 00:56, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I assuming the deletion its for just the page, but like others i commented on Outlines in general. Would need to do much more to get the project rejected then peoples POV on the project.Moxy (talk) 01:02, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The nomination is obviously referring to Outlines in general, so how does deleting one part of the Outlines project, i.e. this portal, match with that rationale? This discussion is going nowhere if the scope and rationale is not crystal clear. Fences&Windows 02:31, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Do you have a better proposal for how to start? I believe that this portal deserves deletion as it is purporting to be something it is not: a collection of similar content. There is the meta-question of whether outlines deserve inclusion at all. I believe that they probably should all be deleted but, please, one thing at a time! If there is consensus to get rid of this bit then we can work on the WP:OTHERSTUFF. jps (talk) 02:35, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ok well this is done all wrong then...I will change my vote from historical to keep, was not aware this was a back door attempt to get them all deleted.Moxy (talk) 02:47, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not asking for them all to be deleted. I'm asking for this Portal to be deleted. jps (talk) 03:35, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  1. The page does not purport to be anything other than what it is. As the whole title indicates, it's a content page, part of Wikipedia's content navigation system. It is intended for browsing outlines, in the same way that Portal:Contents/Portals is for browsing portals and Portal:Contents/Glossaries is for browsing glossaries.
  2. The issue as to whether outlines should be deleted is irrelevant here - the proper place for that discussion is under an WP:AfD nomination for all outline articles. What is relevant here is whether or not outlines should be listed and included in Wikipedia's content navigation system. And since one of their primary purposes is navigation and because the pages listed here contain more than 50,000 links to topics related to core subjects presented in a way that supports browsing, as long as outlines exist this browsing tool should remain available to the readers of Wikipedia!
Please withdraw this frivolous nomination, so that we can get back to editing the encyclopedia. The Transhumanist 17:36, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Claiming that this nomination is frivolous does not, to me, seem to indicate good faith. I understand that this is one of your pet projects, but sometimes pet projects don't belong on Wikipedia. There are other projects (e.g. DMOZ) which do handle content in this fashion, but Wikipedia does not and the community consensus has been for a very long time that it shouldnot in favor of developing actual content. jps (talk) 23:58, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. jps, can you please explain how, on the basis of one bad idea, this proposal justifies the deletion of an another idea which is independent of it? If you don't like A, can you justify that B is to be deleted? --Ancheta Wis (talk) 02:12, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - These articles are lists, and fall under the WP:List guideline. The fact that they have been renamed to "Outline" in their titles is irrelevant - they are still lists. There is no requirement for approval to create an article or 500 articles. That they haven't acquired approval is an invalid argument - in order to delete articles, one much show how they fail to meet Wikipedia's guidelines. These don't fail to meet them. By the way, this page was created by Larry Sanger, one of the creators of Wikipedia, way back in October of 2001. Thousands of editors have collaborated on the development of these pages over the past 10 years, and that's a pretty strong show of consensus. The Transhumanist 02:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • They are rather different from most lists in that they contain disparate items (e.g. varied tabular facts about a country) rather than items all of the same type (e.g. List of Governors of Texas). --Cybercobra (talk) 05:33, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • True. That's because they're topic lists — so are Glossaries and Indexes. Of this familiar trio, outlines serve as tables of contents. Just as books have tables of contents, glossaries, and indexes, so do the subjects on Wikipedia. These browsing tools have been standard for centuries, proven to be very effective. The Transhumanist 17:55, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • There was explicit consensus at the failing of WP:ROOT to not organize Wikipedia as a directory. That's what Outlines try to do. That's why we shouldn't have them. We certainly shouldn't have a portal to them to confuse the reader into thinking that the encyclopedia is organized in this fashion. jps (talk) 23:55, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • There was no such consensus, explicit or otherwise. The root page proposal had nothing to do with directories or directory pages, and in its discussion the issue of directories or WP:NOTDIRECTORY never came up. Throughout this entire discussion, you've been referring to root pages as if they were a new type of page that was proposed and rejected. Root pages weren't rejected, because the proposal had nothing to do with accepting or rejecting root pages. Almost all articles are root pages. The proposal was about hooking root pages together in a particular way using specialized templates. It has become clear that you made this nomination without knowing what a "root page" is, or specifically what the root page proposal intended to do, or why it failed. Your nomination and arguments make no sense. The Transhumanist 23:29, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • Also, outlines are not directories as defined in WP:NOTDIRECTORY, and that guideline has never applied to Wikipedia's navigation pages. The Transhumanist 23:29, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy keep, and speedy close, as an inappropriate approach - This page is not a wide enough venue to propose the deletion of 500 articles! It's a proposal to delete all outlines, posed as a deletion nomination for the page that lists them - this approach is backwards. This page should be deleted last, after there are no outlines left to list. Together, outlines get somewhere around 25,000 views per day (give or take a few grand). In order to delete outlines from Wikipedia, you would have to nominate them all for deletion, and post the deletion nomination tag on all of them, so that everyone who uses outlines is aware of this debate. This hasn't been done, which has the same affect as forum shopping or process manipulation. Many readers access outlines via routes other than this page, and they will never see this page's deletion notice. The Transhumanist 02:48, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Deleting the portal does not reflect on the individual articles outlines. Speedy keep is inappropriate, and this (MfD) is the proper venue if the WikiProject were to be deleted. Although I feel almost of the outlines shouldn't have been created, I'm not actually sure they should be deleted; possibly they could be absorbed into one of the other topical lists. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:53, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    The nomination is directed at outlines, and therefore reflects upon and affects every single one of them. You'll be removing a major route of access to those pages. Doing so without posting a notice at the top of every outline page is inappropriate. The Transhumanist 03:08, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The nomination is directed at the page listed in the nomination, that's all. There's no secret conspiracy to corrupt your precious bodily fluids here. — Gavia immer (talk) 04:04, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Every word of the nomination is directed at outlines. The Transhumanist 16:16, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Every word of the portal is directed at outlines too. This is a meaningless argument. jps (talk) 23:57, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Not sure what the nominator is using as a deletion criteria? This sounds like the deletion is for ALL outlines? But if it really is for this PORTAl, then nothing in the deletion policy is referenced, WP:ROOT is a failed proposal! What should I read from it? Please be more specific. Since this is a portal I do not think WP:SYNT even applies? If it does I think most portals should be deleted? 'failure' as far as I know there have never been any effort to get consensus for the PORTAL, if that is really the case please show the discussion, if there really is a question for consensus of having this portal it should be discussed, please open discussion at the talk page or maybe at WP:COUNCIL or somewhere, do not put up a portal for deletion. If this deletion is for ALL outlines, then there IS consensus for outlines see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Inclusion criteria for Lists so I am confused, please if you really are serious, state a better reason for deletion, remeber this is NOT a vote, we are supposed to state Justification and evidence and what policies this page breaks and why or why not it does for the closing admin to consider. I see no policy broken and no reason for deletion. --Stefan talk 05:53, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If the community consensus is to not have root pages and outlines are root pages, then having a portal to outlines or root pages is not something we should have. jps (talk) 07:27, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
WP:ROOT was a proposal for a convoluted system of link templates with some major design flaws. It was rejected on the basis of those flaws. Topic lists predated that proposal, which differed drastically from them, and lists were unaffected by the discussion. The Transhumanist 22:23, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Community consensus might be to not have ROOT pages as per defined in the ROOT proposal, but it is very different from this page, I'm pretty sure the community consensus is for other SYNTy portals, see e.g. P:FC and P:FP for many examples of similar kind that DO have consensus. So WP:ROOT is not a consensus to delete this page. This is not a ROOT page.
Checking up a bit more, sinc this is a PORTAL page, see WP:PORTAL for a definition of a portal page, it reads The idea of a portal is to help readers and/or editors navigate their way through Wikipedia topic areas through pages similar to the Main Page. In essence, portals are useful entry-points to Wikipedia content. So to argue WP:SYNT or DMOZ is clearly wrong, SYNT is for articles not portals. --Stefan talk 00:35, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
WP:ROOT was rejected in favor of article-writing and categorization which are the proper ways to approach a top-level discussion of sub-articles and their relationships. The claim the proposal was rejected because of technical problems is just false — it was rejected because Wikipedia is not a directory. The objection to this page is not the objection that it is a portal. I have no problem with portals. The objection is that this a portal to a class of articles that are not an encyclopedic subject and probably should be excised completely from Wikipedia in favor of people improving Top-Level articles that will do the job. jps (talk) 23:53, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
So you are saying that this page is OK and should not be deleted since you are OK with portals but the issues is that you dont like outlines and therefore this page should be deleted? Sorry I am a bit confused?
Also as a side question does that mean that P:FC and P:FP should also be deleted since they "are portals to a class of articles that are not an encyclopedic subject???" Featured content, Featured portal (redirect to the portal, the redirect should probably be deleted if you wanted to be strict in wikilaw). I thought the reason that portals are portals is just that they are not articles?? Please go and try to delete the outlines if that is what you want to do, so far I would guess that about 90-95% of all outlines that have been suggested for deletion have survived. --Stefan talk 00:32, 16 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm asking for deletion because I believe this is the same page as a hypothetical Portal:Contents/Root pages. I have no objection to portals existing on Wikipedia. I have an objection to Outlines and Portals to outlines. There may be some content in the outlines worth saving, and so we have to carefully consider how to deal with the article-level outlines, but I believe starting with this top-level portal will give us the impulse needed to fix this problem. jps (talk) 00:48, 16 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Outlines have no similarity to the WP:ROOT proposal. You've misinterpreted WP:ROOT. See explanation at the top of the page. The Transhumanist 22:12, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep -- Outlines are a wonderful format. They are more organized than a list. I think we need to recognize them formally once and for all. This issue has been the subject of on-going attack for too long. Get over it. Outlines are here to stay. Quit wasting everyone's time and effort with the campaign against them. Greg Bard (talk) 14:04, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Per Stefan, Transhumanist and, especially, Gregbard - Highfields (talk, contribs) 14:57, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Also delete all outlines and mark project as failed. Discussion should be expanded to cover the whole outlines project. A thoroughly bad idea that has failed before, and now rebranded as Outlines has failed again. If less time was spent pursuing this kind of project, we would have a well written and structured set of articles that would serve the purpose of outlines much better. wjematherbigissue 21:20, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Outlines haven't failed, the set of outlines work very well, and they are improving over time. Lots of people use them. Also, they aren't a rebrand of a failed project. They have nothing to do with WP:ROOT, never have, never will. Prose articles can't be structured to serve the purpose of outlines without becoming outlines. The large link collections from outlines can't be placed in See also sections without changing MOS first (which limits the size of those sections and disallows links already embedded in article prose). Templates aren't a good solution either, because they are much more cumbersome and tedious to work with than lists - many list editors avoid working on them. The size of templates is also limited. Deleting outlines (structured topic lists) would violate WP:CLN.

But this entire discussion is in the wrong venue. No arguments have been posed as to how this portal violates Wikipedia policy. The truth is, this portal page doesn't violate any policy.

The entire discussion is about outlines, not this portal page. Outlines can only be deleted at WP:AfD, and a nomination to delete them will likely fail due to WP:SNOW. It is inappropriate to delete the navigation aid to outlines without deleting outlines first. There has been no justification given for removing the navigation page for a live set of pages. That's what needs to be discussed here. The Transhumanist 01:21, 16 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep. Outlines help make the entire encyclopedia more navigable. Big changes to project organization are acceptable under community standards IMHO. ~AH1(TCU)
  • Keep and mark inactive--the status remains undetermined as it is currently. This is an MfD about this particular page only. We still need ways of providing top level orientation.. There are many systems; they have different uses, and people have preferences. We have no stable way of deciding once and for all on any particular way, and that;'s a good thing, because there is no reason way an electronic resource like this cannot be arranged simultaneously in many different ways; we're NOT PAPER. If we wish to activate this proposal as originally conceived, we'd need a wider discussion, and so would we if we intended to end it entirely. I hope we do neither--that we continue to let people organize the material in whatever way best pleases them, as long as there are enough to do it in a particular way, and as long as they do not attempt to dictate to others . If nothing else, let those who want to enforce a particular way realize that if it came down to a choice, their way might well not be that choice; it is more prudent as well as moire in the spirit of the encyclopedia to allow for multiple systems, as long as they do not interfere. (Personally, I much prefer outlines to portals, but that's just me. I think in outlines, but that does not mean that anyone else must.) Wikipedia is not a directory of the outside world, but by its nature as a complex work it must contain a directory of its own contents -- at least one--not directory has no relation to internal organization. The people who object to outlines are certainly free to object, and show it by working on other means of organization. There are no dictators here. DGG ( talk ) 06:15, 16 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    But it's not inactive. There has already been a debate about this recently, in response to someone removing the links to this page from it's parent page Portal:Contents and the portal's navigation bar and footer - that is, they tried to remove it from Wikipedia's contents system. After the removal, a proposal was made to restore the links. The proposal was successful, officially establishing this page's active status. The discussion also determined where on the contents page outlines should be listed. By the way, in relation to activity, the traffic to this page and all the outlines is further proof that they are active. The set of outlines get many thousands of visits per day. If you estimate 25,000 per day, that works out to 750,000 per month, which is 9 million per year. That's a lot of activity. Outlines are alive and well. The Transhumanist 06:50, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep it is VERY important that users of Wikipedia have as many easy to use ways of navigating through the millions of articles as we can generate. I also have good evidence that outlines lead to increased traffic and improvmenet in teh quality of articles, as editors see added value in improving them if they are featured in an outline. Thruxton (talk) 14:00, 16 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • If we are restraining ourselves to only commenting on this one page, then I don't have a real strong opinion, but it does seem to me the "outline" concept is along the lines of busywork, in that it is creating unnecessary replication. To take an example I have some familiarity with, for Alaska we have the main page, Alaska, Portal:Alaska, Outline of Alaska and the Index of Alaska-related articles. Sometimes providing too much help can be as confusing as not providing enough. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:00, 16 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What your showing me here above is a topic that our readers will be able to navigate very well, as there is 4 distinctive pages that cover the topic in a different manner and format. Look at the view counts of this pages its clear our readers like the choice of formats and use all 4. Its beyond me Y people dont understand that whatever helps our readers is good....who cares if there is some info is repeated, as long as we give our readers a choice and not push layout POV's.Moxy (talk) 21:35, 16 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The benefits of redundancy and Wikipedia's approach to it are covered in WP:CLN. That guideline encourages the development of multiple navigation systems, and explains why redundancy is not a criteria for deletion. The Transhumanist 07:36, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Mark as historical and delink except from discussions of historical and failed proposals. The proposed schema is poorly conceived and poorly executed. Someone please ping me when we have the omnibus discussion on the outline format or the omnibus discussion of the inappropriateness of mass renaming. - 2/0 (cont.) 01:33, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment There are practical issues re sourcing of content on outline pages - particularly where living people are referenced within the article. I have seen list articles which require each entry to be referenced. The same criterion should (but does not seem to) apply to outlines, which are hierarchical lists.
    The hierarchy is subject to the point of view of the list compiler, and this needs to be looked at carefully for each proposed outline.
     pablo 00:01, 19 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Keep in mind the same issue applies to the heading/subheading hierarchy of prose articles. The Transhumanist 00:06, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. As long as outlines exist on Wikipedia this page is beneficial and it would not be an improvement to delete it. There is a small community of editors that actively work on these outlines, although there is currently no consensus, or rather a lack of consensus, amongst the wider community as to whether these outlines should exist on Wikipedia, until that is settled we should default to keeping any related essential pages such as this. -- œ™ 02:20, 20 December 2010 (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.


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