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Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Montreal

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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. — JJMC89 (T·C) 03:52, 2 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Montreal

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Portal:Montreal (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
(Time stamp for bot to properly relist.) Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:57, 27 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Another catch from the Sea of Abandoned Portals. This one has been abandoned since 2005 as a static page, with one selected article, one biog etc. All the same topics as 14 years ago.

Created[1] in July 2005‎ Larineso (talk · contribs), over a month before the portal namespace was created.

Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Montreal shows a small set of sub-pages:

WP:POG#How_often_to_update? says that unless automated, the content selection should be updated monthly, or preferably weekly. Even on a monthly cycle, this pseudo-portal has missed over 165 consecutive updates.

In theory, this a broad topic. But in practice, it has not met 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". This has not attracted maintainers, and in Jan–Feb 2019 got only 12 pageviews per day, compared with 5,126 views per day for the head article Montreal.

Per WP:PORTAL, "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". But despite the effort put in here, the result is a much less effective introduction to the topic than the head article Montreal with its navbox {{Montreal}}.

It is time to stop wasting the time of readers by luring them to this abandoned draft, and time to abandon the magical thinking that this abandoned relic will some day magically attract magical editors who will want to resurrect it. If any editor does want to build a real portal, they will be far better off without this relic and its ancient content-forked sub-pages; instead they should build a modern portal without content-forked sub-pages (see e.g. Portal:Mecklenburg-Vorpommern or Portal:Geophysics).

But do note that newish features of the Wikimedia software means that the article and navbox offer most of 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:Montreal.
  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 Montreal.

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

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) 13:24, 18 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I can work on this one ...would like to point out that WP:POG#How_often_to_update? is not based in reality as 90 percent of portals dont meet that criteria and automated portals are being deleted ...time to look at that guideline that is not based in reality. Will redo portal after deletion as the coding is very very old.--Moxy 🍁 13:48, 18 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Moxy: I tend to the view that the high proportion of non-update portals reflects the very poor quality of portals as a whole, rather than a flaw in the guideline.
And it's not true that all automated portals are being deleted. The fully-automated clones are being deleted, but there is no deprecation of the automatic transclusion of leads from articles (that's much better than the diabolic farm of content-forked sub-pages), and no deprecation of rotations of selected articles.
However, now that each navbox has built-in preview, it is better for the article selection in a portal to avoid topics which are already in a relevant navbox. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:45, 18 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The main problem with this thinking is that 60 percent of our readers don't see navbox and out of the 40 percent left only 2 percent will ever scroll to the bottom of a page to see said box that has a preview. Best to assume not all navigate the same way or can all see the same thing...so best to give options to our readers when it comes to article navigateion. That said I agree portals did not workout as the community though they would but we have them so let work out real guidelines that reflect what's actually going on with portals. Transclusion of a lead or random article in no real way affect the quality of a portal....care in selection of articles that represents the beas we have to offer about a topic is what we are really looking for in portals.....this transclusion stuff is what got us here in the first place.-Moxy 🍁 01:32, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Moxy: No need to scroll anywhere to see that a link has a preview. Just mouseover.
If you mean scroll to the bottom of a page to find the a navbox, then the same applies to the portal link.
But the big issue is search. Good search is what killed most web portals in the late 90s, and it's still what makes portals largely redundant.
If the discussions can produce guidelines on how to make a portal which genuinely adds value, then fine. But we still don't need to keep this abandoned portal. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:37, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - To add to the discussion between User:BrownHairedGirl and User:Moxy, what hasn't been addressed much in portal deletion discussions is that a portal is a miniature Main Page, and the Main Page is a labor-intensive effort. Any new portals, and any portals that are kept, should either be intended to be labor-intensive efforts, like the Main Page in miniature, or experiments in automation to see if the work associated with the Main Page can be reduced. If a portal doesn't fit into either of those categories, it isn't useful. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:48, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:57, 27 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.


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