Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Austin

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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: delete. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 07:23, 12 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Austin

Portal:Austin (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Abandoned micro-portal on the city of Austin, Texas, in the USA. Redundant to the B-class head article Austin, Texas and its navbox Template:Austin.

Created[1] in July 2007‎ by‎‎ Sahmeditor (talk · contribs), whose last edit to any part of the portal was in later in 2007[2].

In September 2018, the portal was converted[3] by @The Transhumanist (TTH) to an automated format which drew its "selected articles" list solely from the navbox Template:Austin and its image gallery solely from the head article Austin. That made it simply a bloated redundant fork of the head article. (For a full explanation of why this type of portal is redundant, see the two mass deletions of similar portals: one, and two, where there was overwhelming consensus of a very high turnout to delete a total of 2,555 such portals).

In May 2019, I restored[4] a non-automated version.

The leaves a static portal with a small set of sub-pages, listed at Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Austin:

  • Portal:Austin/Austin news, display "news" from 2008
  • Portal:Austin/Did you know, containing two items added in 2008. Per WP:DYK, "The DYK section showcases new or expanded articles that are selected through an informal review process. It is not a general trivia section" ... but this 11-year-old set loses the newness, so its only effect is as a trivia section, contrary to WP:TRIVIA.
  • 4 selected pictures, the most recent of which are Portal:Austin/Selected picture/3 added in 2013, and /4 added in 2016. (By contrast the head article has about 50 images, with a built-in slideshow)
  • 2 selected biographies, each displaying the same topic as when created in 2007
  • 2 selected articles, each displaying the same topic as when created in 2007

Per WP:PORTAL, "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". But this set of 4 articles displayed two at a time is massively less useful in every respect than the head article Austin, Texas and its navbox Template:Austin.

Two newish features of the Wikimedia software means that the article and navboxes offers all the functionality which portals like this set out to offer. 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).

  1. mouseover: on any 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 by right-clicking on this link to Template:Austin, open in a private/incognito tab, and mouseover any link.
  2. 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 a click-for-next image gallery on a portal. Try it by right-clicking on this link to the article Austin, open in a private/incognito tab, and click on any image to start the slideshow

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

Those new technologies set a high bar for any portal which actually tries to add value for the reader. But this portal fails the basic requirements even of the guidelines written before the new technologies changed the game:

  • WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers" ... but this portals has been unmaintained for nine years, and it has abysmal page views. In Jan–Feb 2019 it got an average of only 12 pageviews per day, which is a tiny 0.38% of the 3,161 daily views for the head article.
  • WP:POG#Article_selection requires that portals have "a bare minimum of 20 non-list, in topic articles". But after ten years, this one has only 4 articles, just a fifth of the bare minimum.

Maybe someday someone will build and maintain a portal which actually adds value for readers. But if so, they will do better to start afresh, rather than building on these 10-year-old content forks. And in the meantime, it's unfair to readers to lure them to this page which is simply a waste of their time.

So I propose that this portal and its sub-pages 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) 07:04, 5 June 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.


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