Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Arabic

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. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:08, 23 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Arabic

A fully-automated, navbox-cloned portal. No curated version to revert to it.

Most automated portals based on a single navbox were deleted in April at two WP:CENT-advertised mass deletion MFDs: one, and two. There there was overwhelming consensus of a very high turnout to delete a total of 2,555 such portals as redundant forks of the navbox.

This one draws its "selected articles" list from two navboxes: {{Arabic language}} and {{Varieties of Arabic}}. They could logically have been combined, because there is significant overlap between the two navboxes: 25 of the 86 article-space links in {{Varieties of Arabic}} are also in {{Arabic language}}. If there was an editorial choice to keep them separate, it seems to derive solely from the visual bulk of each.

Both navboxes are transcluded on the head article Arabic, so the portal adds nothing to head article.

Detailed explanation of the redundancy

The automated portal consists of 2 elements:

a slideshow of articles, drawn from two pages: Outline of performing arts and the navbox {{Performing arts}}
a slideshow of images, drawn from the head article Arabic

Two newish features of the Wikimedia software have made this redundant. Both features are available only to ordinary readers who are not logged in, but you can test them without logging out by right-clicking on a link, and the select "open in private window" (in Firefox) or "open in incognito window" (Chrome).

mouseover: on any of the link, mouseover shows you the picture and the start of the lead. So the preview-selected page-function of portals is redundant: something almost as good is available automatically on any navbox or other set of links. Try it on {{Arabic language}}, and/or on Arabic.
automatic imagery galleries: clicking on an image brings up an image gallery of all the images on that page. It's full-screen, so it's actually much better than even a click-for-next image gallery on a portal. This automated portal draws its image gallery solely from the head article Arabic, so try clicking on any image. Then compare that full-screen slideshow with the tiny slideshow on Portal:Arabic.

Similar features have been available since 2015 to users of Wikipedia's Android app.

So the slideshow of article lead excerpts is redundant to the built-in preview of all Wikipedia pages. If you want a preview of the articles linked from Arabic or {{Varieties of Arabic}} or {{Arabic language}}, just go the page and put your mouse over the link. Instant preview! (works only if you are not logged in. Like ordinary readers, for whom we create Wikipedia)

If you want a slideshow of the images in the head article Arabic, then go to the article and click on any image. Automatic slideshow! (again, works only if you are not logged in. Like ordinary readers, for whom we create Wikipedia)

The Arabic language is obviously a broad topic. It has been used in various forms since the 4th century, and is the native language of over 300 million people. The official language of 26 states, and the liturgical language of the religion of Islam. So the topic meets the WP:POG requirement that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers".

Per WP:PORTAL, "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". But this automated portals is less useful in every respect than the head article Arabic. Anyone who wants to build a curated portal which actually adds value for the reader can re-create the shell in seconds, simply by entering {{subst:Basic portal start page}} and saving ... so there is no benefit to anyone in keeping this automated spam.

So I propose that this portal be deleted per WP:TNT, without prejudice to recreating a curated portal in accordance with whatever criteria the community may have agreed at that time. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:31, 16 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - This portal (at its previous name) had 7 daily pageviews, which does not illustrate that it is attracting large numbers of interested readers. (The head article has 2821 daily page views, but the total traffic to related articles is much higher.) Portals are basically an archaic way of using the Internet and Wikipedia, that exist because of one ancient historical mistake and a subsequent reasonable decision. The ancient historical mistake, that is so deeply rooted in the history of Wikipedia that it will not be corrected, is the inclusion of portals as a feature. The subsequent reasonable decision was not to delete the portal namespace, keeping the ones that we already have. However, creating portals in the hope that portal maintainers will come, or that portal maintainers are not necessary, is silly. Portals should, in my opinion, only be created by the portal maintainer. Otherwise they are just putting doors to nowhere in a system. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:35, 16 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete:

The portal is a redundant fork of several navboxes.
The portal's automatic creation warrant automatic deletion.
Portals require active maintenance and curation to fulfil their purpose.
The topic is potentially broad enough, so this is without prejudice to curated recreation, but, as evidenced by the page views, the portal's dire state already makes users browse in a different way.

SITH (talk) 11:26, 17 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.