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
Delete Portal recreated by a user six days after joining the project, just squeaking under the newly applicable autoconfirmed requirement. And just like
Delete - I disagree with the admin who declined the
G4, but we are here. There is no reason to think that this portal will attract readers. It is not a broad subject area. At best, what the author is proposing may be a slide show, but a portal should be more than a slide show. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:08, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply
]
Comment - On inspection, this portal does not rely on subpages, which is an improvement over the old portal design that relies on subpages. However, this portal appears to consist of lists of topics and articles that function as a tree of navboxes, but are less intuitive and less convenient to use than a navbox. What the author is doing can be done at least as well with a navbox. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:15, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - As the person who created that portal, I am willing to improve whatever concerns you have with the quality of the portal. None of these concerns have been brought to my attention though. Hecato (talk) 06:58, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Too narrow a topic, and redundant to
Template:Climbing navbox
.
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).
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:Climbing navbox
, open in a private/incognito tab, and mouseover any link.
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 Climbing, open in a private/incognito tab, and click on any image to start the slideshow
Those new technologies set a high bar for any portal which actually tries to add value for the reader. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 11:55, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the notability please consider my comment below. @BrownHairedGirl:Hecato (talk) 12:49, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
WP:Notability is a concept which applies to articles. This discussion is about a portal, which is not an article, so notability does not apply. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 13:08, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The first Portal:Climbing was deleted 10 years ago with two votes, things change a lot since then. The deletion proposal of Portal:Rock Climbing specifically said the portal could be recreated again properly by a dedicated editor. According to the old deletion discussions the Portals were deleted due being abandoned, half-way finished and low quality. None of this is the case with this portal and I am willing to improve the quality according to what the community thinks is reasonable. Regarding the claim that climbing is not a notable broad enough topic. I think the collected article topics in the portal show a different image. But if that is not enough, climbing as a sport is part of the Summer Olympics in 2020 and 2024.[1][2] According to PetScan (depth 20) Category:Climbing has 7874 articles. To put that in reference with some categories with associated portals: Gymnastics has 8029, Isle of Wight has 1737. Hecato (talk) 12:25, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Note That figure of 7874 is almost certainly nonsense. Blindly using Petscan to a depth of 20 sucks in all sorts of articles which have a tangential relationship to the topic. It includes for example the 610 articles in Category:Lists of mountains+subcats, and the first item returned by that search is America the Beautiful. The 25th item is Clint Eastwood.
So basically, those are garbage statistics ... and @Hecato will have known when posting them that they are garbage. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 15:09, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I am limited by functionality of PetScan. Depth 10 has the same results by the way. I just used depth 20 because when I tested it with some portal categories I got extremely low results, which I found unlikely. Mountains that have information about climbing ascends are very much in the scope of the Climbing project by the way. Mountaineering is a sub-topic of Climbing. I don't appreciate these assumptions of trying to mislead. Hecato (talk) 15:26, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
There are two possibilities.
that you didn't even glance at the results to assess their relevance, so and thereby didn't notice that the very first item is a song which not about climbing
that you did notice that irrelevance at the start, but used the junk numbers anyway.
So which is is? Did you make no check of the data you presented? Or did you intentionally mislead? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 23:25, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The tool is not perfect, one article being miscategorized does not disprove the trend. I did not write that piece of software so such things are outside of my control. PetScan is the best tool available to my knowledge, if you have a better tool for counting articles in categories and subcategories, then please present it. Hecato (talk) 06:12, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You misunderstand the problem: there is no miscategorisation involved. The problem is that your search was badly designed, and AFAICS you appear not to have done even the cursory checks which would have revealed that there is a design flaw.
So any such result set needs to be checked to see whether it has picked up tangential articles. You are new to Wikipedia, so may not be aware of the nature of categories. But since you have stated that you are a software developer, I am sure that you know to quickly examine a data set to see whether it is plausible. The presence near the top of the list of both America the Beautiful and Clint Eastwood should have been a clear indication that this search was not working as you hoped.
This same pattern has been replicated by you several times: you make strong assertions which turn out to be ill-founded because you made mistaken assumptions about the data and didn't test those assumptions. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 15:27, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
PetScan is a wikimedia tool listed at Wikipedia:Categorization. I use the tools recommended to my be the guidelines. Meanwhile what do you base your concept of "breadth of subject" on exactly, a feeling? Hecato (talk) 16:39, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Your claim to be a software developer looks less and less plausible with every comment by you. The problem here is that you used the tool without understanding its effects, and without even a preliminary sanity-check on its results. The result was garbage-in, garbage out. If you were genuialey a software developer, you'd understand the problem without having it explained to you.
I assess breadth by a number of factors, including number of directly relevant articles in scope, but also on experience of the number of readers and editors attracted by other portals. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 17:44, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
How many articles are in the scope then? And I don't know why you are bringing up my occupation again and again as if I had used that as an argument. Another user asked a personal question about how I could create a "technically sophisticated, excellent quality portal" (their words, not mine) while being a new user, so I answered their question. You barged into that conversation uninvited by the way to throw some self-defeating argument about pageviews at me and insult me personally. I maintain that I used the best tools available to me and did not try to mislead while you are constantly abusing and misinterpreting policies to suit your rather concerning anti-portal agenda. Hecato (talk) 18:02, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You used a tool without understanding what it does, and without sanity-checking the results, and seem wholly unconcerned by the fact that on that basis you made definitive statements which are demonstrably untrue.
You also seem entirely unconcerned about your transparently bogus use of statistics in that other discussion. So at this stage you don't look like either a software developer or a person of integrity. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 18:20, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
WP:Notability is a concept which applies to artices that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". But in prles. This discussion is about a portal, which is not an article, so notability does not apply.
The relevant guidance here is
WP:POG, which requiractice, the repeated experience of sports portals is that the only those portals which relate to mass spectator sports attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 13:12, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply
It is hard to attract a large number of readers and dedicated maintainers if the portal gets deleted right after its creation. I have demonstrated that climbing is a broad subject area as per comment above. And climbing is already a broader subject than just rock climbing. Also please consider that this discussion is about this portal and not the concept of portals as a whole. There was a community decision which came to the conclusion that portals as a feature are valuable and should be kept. Please apply your reasoning in that context. Hecato (talk) 13:25, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Hecato, there are a bunch of misunderstandings there:
WP:ENDPORTALS
did not ask whether portals as a feature are valuable and should be kept. It asked whether all portals should be immediately deleted. The answer to that question was a clear "no", but "don't delete everything now" does not mean "keep everything" or that "portals as a feature are valuable". Please apply your reasoning without misrepresenting the RFC.
The test of whether a portal is a "broad topic are" is not just how many articles are within its scope.
WP:POG
applies two other criteria: it requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". You have offered no evidence that this portal has attracted any maintainers other than yourself, and we have the evidence of the previous portal that viewers didn't want it, and the evidence of other sports portals.
There is a whole list of reasons that were found against deleting portals, see here. How do you measure breadth then? And you are deleting this portal right after its creation. This portal is not abandoned, as you might have noticed by my presence. Hecato (talk) 07:39, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As you well know, nobody is arguing that this portal is abandoned. Please do not make straw man arguments like that, because straw man tactics are deeply corrosive to collaborative discussions.
The problem is that as I have explained to you above, the breadth test of a portal is defined in part by its ability to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers. Your lone presence is evidence of the existence of one lone maintainer, not of large numbers of maintainers. And we need to weigh that evidence of your presence against the fact that a similar portal was abandoned for nearly a decade. So the balance of evidence I see is that you are a lone enthusiast for creating this portal, which make sit very likely that it will join the list of many many hundreds of other portals which were built by one enthusiastic good-faith editor like yourself ... but which had nobody else to maintain them when that editor moved on to other things. Nearly 600 such abandoned portals have been deleted in the last few months (on top of about 4200 automated spam portals crated by TTH and his partners-in-crime), and I have just today found another dozen to bring to MFD. So if you want this portal to be kept, the most persuasive thing you could do is to is to link to a discussion where a large number of other editors have committed themselves to working to maintain this portal indefinitely. That could change my mind, though I would have to weigh it against the likelihood of very low readership. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 13:41, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't tell me about bad faith debate tactics and ask me in the same breath to present a large number of dedicated maintainers and readers for a portal that I have just created. By that logic Wikipedia should have deleted itself right after its inception because it did not have any readers. Hecato (talk) 20:46, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This is not right after Wikipedia's creation. It's nearly two decades after Wikipedia's creation, when we have long-established guidelines requiring multiple maintainers for portals because of 14 years of experience of portals being created in good faith by lone enthusiasts who later abandon them. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 23:33, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You mean this? Please bear in mind that portals should be about broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers. Does it say anywhere that you need to have more than one maintainer when you create a portal? To me it reads like you need to create a portal that is attractive to maintainers, which I did not have time to demonstrate since you are trying to delete the portal right after its creation. Hecato (talk) 16:58, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Then you have reading comprehension issues. The text clearly refers to broad subject areas which attracts maintainers and readers. It does not refer to designs which attract editors.
You continue to ignore the points I have been repeatedly making; that we have evidence that other climbing-related portals did not attract either maintainers or editors; and we have evidence that non-spectator sports generally don't attract them. Hence the request for evidence that the clear trends have been bucked. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 18:39, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As was established in the deletion discussions, the other portals were low quality, halfway finished and not maintained. Why would they attract readers and maintainers? Your argument is flawed. A portal needs to have a broad topic, which is demonstrated by a large number of readers and maintainers. And a portal needs to have a large number of maintainers and readers, which meanwhile must be caused by a broad subject. This ignores all other possible factors playing into the success of a portal. At no point have you demonstrated anything or set out a clear definition for breadth of subject. You just use this policy as it suits you and you make it out to be more clean cut than it actually is. ...should be about broad subject areas... and ...which are likely to... is such vague language, meanwhile you treat this like it was a clean cut demand for X amount of maintainers and Y number of readers with a topic that has a breadth of Z, otherwise we need to instantly delete the portal with no breathing room. None of that is actually written anywhere in that guideline. I don't even want to know how many portals you have deleted with that draconian interpretation of that innocent lead section for a guideline about creating high quality portals. Hecato (talk) 19:18, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Average daily pageviews of portals on en.wikipedia in April–June 2019 Hecatio, just look at graph of average daily pageviews for portals (data source here). Very very few portals achieve anything other than risible pageviews. Only 6.2% of portals exceed even 100 pageviews per day. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 17:58, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - User:Hecato - I have changed the level of your References because second-level and third-level headings in an MFD break the flow of the MFD. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:48, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Tangential Question for @Hecato: , and I am genuinely interested, with no axe to grind here: by all appearances you joined the project on June 14, on June 20 you were creating a technically sophisticated, excellent quality portal (its quality is not my issue, only the breadth of its subject matter), and on July 6 you are running Petscans to depth 20? Can I ask if you came from a different WikiProject, since if there are other editors like you there we would love to repeat your recruitment with them. Please do not read any sarcasm into this, I am genuinely interested in hearing your story and improving English Wikipedia. Thanks in advance. UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:55, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I will answer on your talk page as not to influence the vote. Hecato (talk) 07:39, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment as user BrownHairedGirl pointed out, this Portal has 29 average daily pageviews (since the day I created it), more than the Portals Golf and Tennis. If we measure the value of a portal by its pageviews alone, then this portal should not be deleted. But if we do not, then you should ask yourself this: by what measure do you judge the value of a portal? If there is no objective measurement of breadth of subject, like numbers of articles in the scope, and pageviews themselves are not trustworthy, then maybe you need to reassess your procedure for deleting portals. Maybe if you vote for deleting portals no matter what, you are violating the meaning of consensus and democracy on this website. If you want to delete all portals start a new RfC. Hecato (talk) 16:49, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As @Hecato well knows, the figure of 29 reflects a period of only a few days, in which the portal was being built and the being discussed at this MFD. So those figures are predominantly the views by editors participating in those processes, not of readers. As evidence of reader interest, they are utterly useless. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 23:21, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I have build most of that portal in my sandbox. And if this one and only statistic you seem to care about, pageviews, is distorted and not applicable because of the young age of this portal, then this AfD must have been premature. Hecato (talk) 06:12, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Keep per now, while there is no consensus about WP:POG. I consider this topic somewhat narrow, but this portal is better than "90%" of portals related to sports.Guilherme Burn (talk) 20:41, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with WP:POG is that it is too lax. This portal fails even the lax interpretation. At 29 views per day, it fails its reason for existing. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:38, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@
here show me that the community has no consensus about what a portal is. I agree with your statement and by my mfds history would vote delete here, but I expect a consensus from the community so that portals like this one are deleted(or keepd) in block and not individually.Guilherme Burn (talk) 01:55, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply
]
Agree. There is not simple statement as to what a Portal is, or should be. ENDPORTALS showed considerable dissatisfaction with the status quo of portals, but shied back from agreeing to delete them all en mass, absolutely no surprise there. I think Portals needs a massive restructure, a reboot, and that all but the top portals, the ones currently linked from the main page, need to go. But by "go", I mean restructured, archived, not deleted. I think that navigation portals need structure for the portals and pathways, not thousands of standalone doors. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:29, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Climbing is a major sport, practised worldwide, with many different types; it is an adequately broad topic. Many of the arguments brought here more & more feel like "I DON'T LIKE IT" dressed in wikiacronyms. Per my comment elsewhere, relying on the Foundation's buggy new code to provide a portal replacement is unwise. It is certainly not supported by a community-wide RfC, which in my opinion would be required. If you feel the need to respond to this comment, feel free to do so, but please DO NOT ping me. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:49, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Espresso Addict, the rhetorical flourish of dismissing reasoned objections as "I DON'T LIKE IT" is a sleazy and dishonest game. I am sad to see you reduced to that, because you can do so much better.
As you well know,
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 in practice this portal has only a single maintainer, a new editor in the first flush of wiki-enthusiasm who expresses OUTRAGE that before creating a portal they might have sought out other editors interested in maintaining it. We also have clear evidence that the previous portals in this topic area were abandoned and underused.
The irony of it all is that despite EA's cry of "I DON'T LIKE IT", the only "I DON'T LIKE IT" at play here is EA's decision to simply ignore the two tests which qualify the "broad subject areas" requirement. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 04:42, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Climbing, and redirect all the subpages. Climbing is the parent article that serves to provide a source-based NPOV-compliant introduction and navigation options. The Portal is non-encyclopedic, and presents and reads like a pro-climbing pamphlet. Redirect to preserve the history while it is decided how to revamp the whole portal concept, which is a process that has no chance of keeping such narrow topics as stand alone portals. All that is good about this portal should be built into the article Climbing. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:07, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree with your assertion that climbing as a topic is too small to deserve a portal overview of its topics for reasons explained above. But still I would like to hear your opinions about this portal being POV and paying an undue amount of attention to only some aspects of climbing. If this portal happens to survive this deletion discussion, please tell me your concerns on the talk page of the portal, or on my own talk page and I will try to address them. Hecato (talk) 15:26, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hecato, this portal has far from the worst POV attractiveness (politics is far more attractive to POV), but this topic like all topics is vulnerable to Wikipedian's unconscious bias. It is virtually unavoidable. The answer is
WP:NPOV, by presenting viewpoints only as they exist in sources, and ensuring explicit viewpoint presentation by active voice phrasing with explicit sourcing. Now, to illustrate I look at Portal:Climbing vs Climbing, and am appalled at the state of the article, being completely unsourced. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:35, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply
]
Keep per the rationales of User:Hecato and User:Espresso Addict above. I feel that the topic is broad enough to meet the portal guideline relative to its topical coverage on English Wikipedia. This new version of the portal was created on 20 June 2019, and as such, the nomination for deletion is premature, in my opinion, occurring just 16 days after the page was created. The crystal ball prediction above stating, "there is no reason to think that this portal will attract readers" is premature; again, the portal has only been live for 16 days. Furthermore, the portal's creator herein has stated that they are willing to improve and address concerns about the portal, so there is also an active maintainer. North America1000 22:28, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Note to closing admin.
WP:POG
, not least because NA1K repeatedly supports unsuccessful proposals to remove from it any wording which might support deletion of even completely abandoned portals. POG provides two clear factors to measure a portal's breadth: "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers".
Note the wording: "large numbers", applied to both readers and maintainers.
So we have yardstricks by which to measure this. Sadly, the systematically deceptive NA1k routinely comments in MFDs by omitting any mention of these yardsticks, as where NA1K asserts I feel that the topic is broad enough.
Average daily pageviews of portals on en.wikipedia in April–June 2019To counter this assertion of feelings, we have actual evidence:
Very few portal attracts the large number of readers required by the guideline. In Q2 2019, only 6.2% of portals got even 100 pageviews per day. NA1K offers not a shred of evidence to suggests that this portal has any characteristic which would place it in that mere 6.2% of portals which pass even the pathetically low thershold of 100/day.
As NA1K well knows, POG requires that a portal attract large numbers of maintainers. Yet here we have one lone maintainer, a new editor in the first flush of enthusiasm. The ranks of deleted portals are filled with portals created with enthusiasm by an enthusiastic newcomer who disappeared soon after. No evidence has been offered to suggest that this portal is an exception to that pattern.
As an admin, NA1K knows much better than to repeatedly misrepresent established guidelines in order to obscure wording which she has unsuccessfully tried to remove. I hope that the closure of the discussion does not endorse the systematic deception practiced by NA1K. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 18:30, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Please take your personal disputes elsewhere. And none of those numbers or thresholds are official guideline. Nowhere in the guideline is a number set for minimum pageviews or maintainers. And one active maintainer is usually enough for any other portal to avoid deletion. Regarding me being merely an "enthusiastic newcomer", I am an extended confirmed user. And I do not appreciate these assumptions about me lacking character and getting bunched together in insulting generalizations. --Hecato (talk) 18:52, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Hecato: you have made 592 edits after being signed up for 33 days; that is very firmly in newcomer territory. And "enthusiastic" is a compliment.
My objection to NA1K's conduct is not, as you claim, a personal dispute. It is an objection to this consensus-forming discussion being disrupted by an admin who has chosen yet again to be intentionally deceptive about
WP:POG
, which explicitly requires "large numbers" tactically .
I understand that you may wish to ally yourself with NA1K since your objectives in this discussion coincide. But no matter how vehement your objections I will not desist from challenging NA1K's sustained practice of deception. If you choose to define yourself as defender of NA1K's practice of systematic deception in pursuit of their goals, that is entirely your choice. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 20:10, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I could be critical of your practices as well, which I believe I have been, but that is not the point of this discussion page. If you wish to criticize that user's integrity and practices then choose the appropriate venue instead of doing it in every discussion they are involved in. And the policy states specifically portals should be about broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers. It does not state: portals need to have large numbers of pageviews at all times and if they have below 100 daily views, then they need to be deleted. And if they have one maintainer then that is not enough either. And if those maintainers have not been long enough here, then they are no good anyway and don't count. I believe that is just your personal addition. --Hecato (talk) 20:34, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hecato:
I am criticising NA1K's integrity and practices in this discussion because NA1K is using those dishonest practices to attempt to sway this discussion. I will do so in any discussion in which any editor deliberately misrepresents policy.
please do not use {{
tq
}} to wrap words which are not a quote. That is deceptive and misleading
We agree that POG says "large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". You are at least doing better than NA1K, who pretend that this phrase doesn't exist. So now that we agree what the guideline actually says, tie for a reality check. Do you agree that
One portal maintainer is not a large number of portal maintainers?
That less than 100 page views per day is not a "large numbers of interested readers"?
Those are the two realities about which NA1K is in denial. Where do you stand on them? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 23:28, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, let us dissect that sentence from the guideline. All it says is that portals should have a broad subject area because that might (is likely to) lead to large numbers of readers and maintainers. Which is implied to be desirable. It does not state a portal needs to have a large number of readers and maintainers. It does not state a broad subject area will instantly and necessarily cause large numbers of readers and maintaners, just that it is likely to lead to it. And it does not set out numbers for any of these parameters. It does not state a portal needs to be deleted if it does not meet these (non-existent) numbers. It does not state a portal needs to be deleted if it does not have at least two maintainers. I hope this cleared up your confusion about what this sentence does say and what it does not say. --Hecato (talk) 06:48, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - There are editors here who seem willing to make improvements to the portal, give it a chance. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:05, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Is It Needed?. I am naive concerning "portals." Climbing seems quite sufficient in my opinion. An internet search for "climbing" produces an immediate link to the Wikipedia article, which I think is fairly well-written, and directs one to any number of sub-genres. Please explain the added value of a preliminary portal that more or less does the same thing? It would appear the entire purpose of this portal is to emphasis formal competitions, such as the Olympic Games. I think it's a mistake to introduce the reader to the sport from this perspective. For example, "bouldering" is listed under the section Sport Climbing. I suspect many boulderers would take exception to this categorization. Oldtimermath (talk) 04:31, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think it is needed. Portals offer a more visual and interactive narrative than an article ever could. Plain boring list of links that you can hover over are nice and all, but they are not as engaging and powerful as placards, slideshows, videos and selected content (selected along objective lines, not advocating for POV here). Some of these you can put in articles in lesser forms, but they always take a sideline position. Thanks to technical templates the information in the portal is always up to date, for instance the lead sections of important articles are transcluded into this portal. This means the overall quality of the climbing topic scope has an influence on the quality of the portal. As I understand it, all of this has been underutilized in other portals in the past and odd compromises have weakened them, trying to make them more like articles or navboxes, so I understand that many users don't appreciate the power of portals. Regarding your concerns about the categorization of bouldering and the perceived focus on sport climbing, let us work it out together. The portal is new and I did not get much criticism yet. I think the right path forward would be constructive dialogue to improve the portal and shared editing, building a robust interactive introduction to the topic, not deleting it. And your ideas would be very welcome for that. Hecato (talk) 06:19, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hecato. "is it needed"? I think it is very hard to say it is, given the age of portals and their next to zero use. The few pageviews per days could well be only bots and crawlers. For what is it needed? What will happen differently in its absence? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:35, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It is needed like a navbox is needed. It a tool for navigation and exploration according to a set of rules. A different set of rules than lists and navboxes. The better question is: is it useful? And I think it is. The portal is new and not well linked into the article-sphere yet. I don't think pageviews tell us much right after its creation. As I see it, one feature that all popular portals have in common is that they are well-linked in their respective article scope. Readers can not click on something they don't know exists. Hecato (talk) 06:42, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Needed like a navbox? For navbox navigation purposes, it is inferior to a navbox. Navboxes are easily understood and edited, to fix problems for example. This is not true for the portal. The portal is not comprehensive in navigation aids, and does not appear intended to be, instead presenting only a selection of options.
Rules for navigation by Portal? What are these rules? This goes to the purpose question being asked at both WT:POG and the Village Pump RfC. I can find or even imaging sensible workable rules, not with so much content featuring.
Mainspace to Portal space linking is uncommon. What are the prospects for serious linking, and why should this portal be different from most portals? For navigation by wikilinking, the parent article is how that is supposed to work best. Every relevant other article gets linked, usually directly, tangential relations within two wikilinks. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:11, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This somehow turned into a discussion about the purpose of portals as a whole instead of a discussion about whether this individual portal is a good member of the set of portals. Do you care to continue this discussion somewhere else, maybe on that village pump you mentioned, so as not to fill up this discussion with meta topics? Please tell me on my talk page. Regarding the linking of portals, I think Portal:Science is a good example. It is linked in almost every article even tangentially related to science, at least I find it linked whenever I do any research on science topics. Hecato (talk) 07:33, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Looks a vibrant and informative Portal page. Far more interesting in appearance than the page on Climbing, if I'm honest, and serves as a good 'shop window' on the subject. I'm quite impressed by its contents and appearance (apart from the image of a person with ice tools on an indoor climbing wall. That needs changing.) I see no need to focus on the reasonable number of views thus far, as user hits have never featured in any article deletion discussions, nor should they for portals. Nick Moyes (talk) 02:38, 11 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Reluctantly delete Admittedly, the portal is more visually attractive and fashionable than Climbing, but that said, it seems more style than substance. The main article has been shaped by a number of devotees over a period of time, and I think it does its job quite well.
Delete this portal is terrible to me, sorry.Catfurball (talk) 20:09, 26 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I know that at least one or two of you are climbers, but to what extent does one need to be an expert of sorts in the subject to develop this portal, or to pass judgement on the existing effort? My opinion is that one should have a depth and a breadth of experience in order to create an entrance path that reflects more than current trends in an activity created over a century and a half ago. It's a sport perceived by many as a lifestyle, rather than merely a collection of technical disciplines leading to formal competitions. And it has a rich history of daring feats and colorful characters. I suppose that's the crux of my concern. FWIW Oldtimermath (talk) 05:10, 11 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I wish to expand the portal in that regard. I don't think deletion is the right remedy to your concerns, but thanks for your opinion anyway. Hecato (talk) 05:36, 11 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The notion that the portal "is terrible to me" is entirely subjective, a
WP:IDONTLIKEIT argument, and provides no valid rationale for deletion. North America1000 01:43, 30 July 2019 (UTC)[reply
]
Comment – The following table shows pageview statistics for a variety of sports portals, some of which have been kept and some of which have been deleted. It probably won't change the result, which is that this portal will probably be approved (kept). However, sports portals do not attract readers. Portals have been shown not to be an effective way to promote topics within Wikipedia.
Title
Portal Page Views
Article Page Views
Baseline
Comments
Ratio
Percent
Articles
Notes
Climbing
National Basketball League (Australia)
1
546
Jan19-Feb19
546.00
0.18%
Volleyball
2
5679
Jan19-Feb19
2839.50
0.04%
Not deleted. Created March 2019, and was just a redirect during the sample period.
National Basketball League of Canada
4
390
Jan19-Feb19
No maintenance since 2015. Two articles.
97.50
1.03%
2
Baseball in Japan
4
140
Jan19-Feb19
No maintenance since 2011.
35.00
2.86%
9
IndyCar
5
343
Jan19-Jun19
Originator edits, but not this portal since creating it in 2012. No apparent maintenance since 2012.
68.60
1.46%
4
Rock climbing
6
464
Jan19-Feb19
77.33
1.29%
Gaelic games
6
103
Jan19-Feb19
17.17
5.83%
Swimming
16
399
Jan19-Feb19
Deleted
24.94
4.01%
4
Badminton
17
5793
Jan19-Feb19
340.76
0.29%
Figure Skating
18
974
Jan19-Feb19
Peak of article views at 4988 on 26 January
54.11
1.85%
National Football League
20
8691
Jan19-Feb19
Created in 2012. Last maintained in 2012.
434.55
0.23%
12
Basketball
23
6332
Jan19-Feb19
Originator inactive since 2009. Last maintenance appears to be 2014.
275.30
0.36%
30
Olympic Games
29
5125
Jan19-Feb19
Originator inactive since Jan 2017. Appears to have been last maintained in 2010.
176.72
0.57%
25
Portal has been renamed.
Baseball
38
2742
Jan19-Feb19
Originator last edited in 2014. Last maintenance in 2014.
72.16
1.39%
23
Sports
43
2677
Jan19-Feb19
Originator inactive since 2012. No indication of recent maintenance.
Other Stuff Exists. It isn't clear what argument I am said to be presenting. I am stating what the other stuff is. As I noted at the beginning of the comment, we can see what the outcome of this MFD will be, which is Keep. To a retired information technology engineer, quantitative data on other stuff may be interesting as data. But when the portal is nominated for deletion again in December 2019, or in August 2022, don't say that the numbers weren't available. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:18, 11 July 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
