Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Volleyball (2nd nomination)

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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: No consensus to delete. — xaosflux Talk 15:43, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Volleyball

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

A navbox-cloned automated portal, redundant to its components.

Created[1] in February 2016‎ by Mmhuang (talk · contribs), but was just a load of redlinks. Per WP:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Volleyball, it was redirected[2] in April to the article Volleyball. In 4 March 2019‎ it was re-created[3] by Bhunacat10 (talk · contribs) as a fully-automated navbox-cloned portal. The redirct has been restored twice, but each time Bhunacat10 has reverted to the navbox-clone.[4][5]

This is one of the last fully-automated portals to be created. It is one of only a few dozen remaining fully-automated portals, out of over 4,000 created by @The Transhumanist (TTH) and others. Most of the portals built off a single navbox were deleted at 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. Over a thousand other automated portals have been deleted in other MFDs.

However, further analysis has shown that many other types automated portals are also redundant, including this one.

It draws its "selected articles" list solely from the lists on a set of 9 navboxes:

It draws its "selected images" list solely from the images displayed in a series of articles:

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 on e.g. Template:International volleyball or on any of the other pages listed above.
  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 the article Volleyball, or any of the other articles above.

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

This redundancy has been belatedly acknowledged by TTH, who wrote at the start of this month "New encyclopedia program features will likely eventually render most portals obsolete. For example, the pop-up feature of MediaWiki provides much the same functionality as excerpts in portals already, and there is also a slideshow feature to view all the images on the current page (just click on any image, and that activates the slideshow)."

Per

WP:POG
requirement that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". However, creating portals which actually add value for readers requires some effort in curation and selection, rather than just telling a script to harvest pages randomly from a set which already has excellent navigation, previews, and image galleries. I thought that this principle had been very well-established at hundreds of MFDs in recent months, but evidently Bhunacat10 wants another discussion, so here we are.

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) 10:21, 18 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
]

This is not "another" discussion: it is in fact the first discussion of the present portal, which was created in a totally new form in March of this year. The MfD from 2017 is of no relevance. OK, fire away: Bhunacat10 (talk), 11:58, 18 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@
WP:IDHT issues? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:27, 18 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
]
Well BrownHairedGirl if you ever get tired of reiterating the same arguments over and over at numerous MfDs, why don't you raise your general issues about portals in the form of a general community discussion at an appropriate venue? Some of us have been imploring you to adopt this course for weeks past. But maybe you didn't hear that?: Bhunacat10 (talk), 19:42, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Bhunacat10, I tired of it a very long time long ago. But when editors try group nominations, some portal fans come along and shout that there must be individual discussions.
And when anyone tries proposing a generalised discussions, you and other portal fans shout "war on portals", "gaming the system", "just promote portals" etc.
I heard all that loud and clear, which is why I do individual nominations. After several thousand automated portals have been deleted at several hundreds discussions, include at two of the best-attended and most strongly-upheld MFDs ever (one, and two, I hoped that by now there just might be a chance that you would accept the overwhelming consensus and let the redirect stand . But no, you have absolutely no substantive argument to make, but you still insist there has to be another discussion. #YCMTSU
--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:55, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete with
    silver bullets and with prejudice against re-creation. - This is a zombie portal. It was already killed once, and has been brought back from the dead. This portal has the highest ratio of pageviews between the head article and the portal that I have seen yet. The head article has 5679 daily pageviews. The portal has 2 daily pageviews. This portal is an undead creature. Get rid of it, and do not leave the option for it to come back. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:37, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    • Robert McClenon, where do you get your "2 daily pageviews"? In the four weeks preceding this discussion it was averaging 13 per day, and never less than 5. Still not much, but you might try to get your facts right. I leave it to others to assess the constructive insight of the rest of your comment: Bhunacat10 (talk), 19:42, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Compare that with a median of 13 pageviews a day in Jan–Feb 2019 for all portals. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:01, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In this instance, however, the above discussion shows that during the Jan–Feb 2019 period this was not a portal at all but a mere redirect. The 2 per day must have been puzzled readers who expected to view a portal and backtracked to find out why they were looking at an article: Bhunacat10 (talk), 09:37, 22 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The reasons why it doesn't enhance are clearly set out in the nomination, and Bhunacat chooses to ignore them. It's simply that this whole lark of making a dedicated page to show the lead of the articles and a slideshow of the images is already built in to every Wikipedia page. I am not sure what Bhunacat finds so hard to understand about that.
It seems that Bhunacat is yet another of the editors who believe that portals should be kept because some editors like making them, rather than because they assist readers. The fact that Bhunacat is not alone in this keep-the-portal-because-I-liked-making it game does not alter the fact that there has never been been any support in the portal guidelines for creating portals for the pleasure of making them. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:21, 25 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
OK, for form's sake again, let's recap this discussion.
First, it is suggested that I have vexatiously insisted on "another" discussion here, despite many other portals having been deleted as a result of recent MfDs. What does this portal have in common with those that have been deleted? Claims not made here:
  • Old, abandoned, outdated Red XN
  • Uses subpages that are static forks of the parent articles Red XN
  • Created in the course of a mass-creation "spree" Red XN
  • Contains empty sections, redlinks, or software error messages Red XN
  • Based on a single navigation template Red XN
  • Based on multiple navigation templates that are all transcluded in the main article Red XN
  • Displays only a small selection of articles Red XN
Next, claims that are made here:
If we disregard the empty unpleasantness of "pseudo-portal", "zombie portal", "IDHT" and so on, we are left with the argument from the "mouseover" and "slideshow" facilities.
Are these facilities an adequate substitute for the selected-article and selected-image elements of a portal page, on a topic extending over many navigation templates and many hundreds of articles? To what extent are they available to mobile users? What proportion of ordinary readers know about these facilities and know how to access them? Do we see no value in a page that brings these elements together with the Recognized content, In the news, Did you know and other elements present in most portals?
If we do judge the "mouseover" and "slideshow" facilities a sufficient substitute for portals, we should forget portals forthwith. But this is a community debate that has not yet taken place, needs to take place, and cannot meaningfully take place dispersed over a large number of sparsely attended MfD discussions such as this one.
My conclusion: there are no grounds in policy, precedent, or consensus to seek deletion of this portal: Bhunacat10 (talk), 12:54, 27 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
My conclusion: that @Bhunacat10's verbosity continues to mask a severe IDHT problem, exacerbated by a persistent failure to actually read the nomination.
The nomination states very clearly that the problem is that the pseudo-portal draws its "selected articles" list solely from the lists on a set of 9 navboxes, and that it therefore fails the core principle of
WP:PORTAL
, which is to add value for readers. The whole of Bhunacat's comments continue to be wiklawyering evasion, which ignores the failure of this pseudo-portal to add value and instead diverts into demolition of a long series of straw men.
The redundancy of pseudo-portals forked off a single navbox was clearly established about six weeks at the mass deletion: one, and two. Bhunacat doesn't seem to have heard that.
So the problem remains that a navbox-forked portal is nothing more than a bloated way of listing a subset of the links on those navboxes. And Bhunacat offers no attempt to explain how readers might be helped by this redundancy. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:30, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In the meantime, it is unfair to lure readers to a page which offers them so much less than the head article(s). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:46, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • As you surmised, I'm no expert on volleyball, but I do know that it's a major global sport with a great deal of presence on Wikipedia, and I think if we have portals at all, we should have one for volleyball. Happy to work with
    WP:G4. Those are my motivations: the more we shout at each other the less I understand yours: Bhunacat10 (talk), 12:29, 3 June 2019 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Keep - Keep per now. This portal seems to be a successful case of single-page layout. The concept of single-page portals is not entirely bad, it still needs to mature ... or die with all other portals.Guilherme Burn (talk) 23:19, 3 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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