Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Alieu Ebrima Cham Joof

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. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:32, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Alieu Ebrima Cham Joof[edit]

The scope of this topic is not large enough to warrant a portal. Most of the content here besides the main article is broadly related to the history of the region Cham Joof was from. The DYK section is composed of factoids selected from the main article, and as far as I can see, not of hooks featured on the main page in the DYK section. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:22, 18 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. There doesn't seem to be much content included (as far as I can see only one additional article, and two images of no obvious relevance). Much of the other suggested material is either of limited relevance, a stub or orange-tagged. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:02, 19 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete ~~and I put more thought into this vote than the person who created this page did making it.~~ thought this was an automatically created portal. I oppose portals about single people or single companies or organizations as too narrow a scope. The success of Wikipedia is based on articles which already present information in a way that readers appreciate. The proof is in the readership. Almost every time you compare portal readership to article readership on a topic the contrast is huge. In this case the article is only gets 378 page views a month and for some reason the portal is ovr 200 page views. A merger to the article seems in order with a redirect. I can't understand where the portal views are coming from but we should send the readers and editors to the best option available - the main article. Legacypac (talk) 04:23, 19 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This topic is large enough or has the potential to be large as the subject is relevant in two African nations: Senegal and The Gambia. The organisations he founded; his books; his work in politics, broadcasting, academia, trade unionism, nationalism, etc., are so broad I don't even think this portal scratched the surface. I created the Cham Joof article over 7 years ago, and although I have not worked on the portal, I think the editor who created the portal did a good job with the resources available to them. As regards to images, the editor contacted me last year asking if I have any free images to upload at Commons, as the 2 images I uploaded many years ago I licenced as non-free. I promised to upload a free image but due to life and work, I totally forgot. I also promised to translate the Traditional African religion portal to French at French Wikipedia as I promised I would do. I totally forgot about that. It is also my understanding that the editor is going through a personal bereavement as per our conversantion on their talk page. I don't think they will even see this and I think it is quite mean-spirited for someone to degrade the editor by referring to their mental state when they created this portal. Totally unacceptably!Tamsier (talk) 09:51, 19 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Tamsier: Portals are not about potential scope, they are about displaying the existing content in a different format. The best way of promoting this topic is to write and improve the content relating to the subject on the main Wikipedia, translate content from other-language Wikis and, as you mention, upload images, especially free ones. Espresso Addict (talk) 18:48, 19 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Espresso Addict: There are lots of to do list and red links which encourages editors to create articles for those subjects, subjects which are very important in the history and culture of Senegal and The Gambia, two African countries which are already under represented. We should be encouraging editors to create notable African related content, not dissuading them or deleting African content. I don't know what's the rush/point in deleting this.Tamsier (talk) 02:26, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Tamsier: I view portals as being mainly a gateway for readers with a side of encouraging readers to convert to editors. WikiProjects are there to encourage editing within a subject area. There is also no reason to consider deleting Portal:Senegal and Portal:The Gambia. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:39, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, hand-written portal about an important African politician. Useful "Things you can do" section to encourage editing. Clearly not perfect, but a reasonable start. —Kusma (t·c) 10:02, 19 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Kusma and Tamsier: So far as I can tell, we have mercifully few portals about individuals at the moment. However, if this level of inter-relatedness between portal articles was sufficient to have a portal on Wikipedia, that sets a precedent for tens of thousands of other single-individual portals. I'm not exaggerating: most figures in popular culture have more relevant material about them; but in each case, including this one, the portal is redundant to the main article. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:11, 19 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Vanamonde93: We have at least 580 at the moment. Most of them are terrible and should be deleted, even though for many of the people, it would be possible to write a good portal. Personally, I see no value in portals aimed at readers only. However, the portal we are discussing here is going out of its way to encourage readers to become editors. We don't need to attract readers (they don't have much of a choice in encyclopaedias these days anyway), we need to attract and retain editors. Do portals help with that? In my experience, it only works with a huge amount of effort, just like keeping a Wikiproject alive is a lot of work saying thank you and suggesting interesting things to do for people. So without an editing community or at least a cheerleader, the portal probably won't work all that well. But I don't see why we should discourage people from trying, especially as the quality (by my personal standards) of this one is so much higher than that of many zero-maintenance ones. —Kusma (t·c) 20:33, 19 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Kusma: I respect the principle of that argument; but in this case I'm skeptical that even a well-written portal would have much value, because all the content compiled into it will be about regional history rather than the individual. Which is why I think it's misguided. It's not an unreasonable call, though, so we can agree to disagree. I've been wondering for a while whether we need a mass MfD for single-person portals, but I just don't have the patience to create it. Vanamonde (Talk) 22:23, 19 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I was staggered to find we have 580 (!) in total, but a few of them will predate the current madness and possibly be useful. I recall Barack Obama used to be featured (the only single-person featured portal I can recall), and I am strongly arguing below that Jane Austen serves a useful purpose. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:13, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The ones in the top level of this category [1] may be the ones that pre-date Transhumanist's work. Some of these might well be viable if restored to their original form; Shakespeare, for example. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:31, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that number surprised me too. I think your examples are the exceptions that prove the rule, though. How many people have material about them that is as widespread as Shakespeare? Also; the fact is that we have a very large number of navigational tools at our disposal; portals, lists, categories, navboxes, and the rather unpopular "overview" articles. I think we could comfortably afford to lose at least one of these methods altogether. Vanamonde (Talk) 05:24, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It would be interesting to find out which navigational tools are actually used and how much. Personally, I tend not to use portals for navigation at all, and rarely use navboxes. In mobile view, three of the methods are hidden (navboxes, categories and portal links). Instead of these well-curated navigational tools, mobile view uses some automation to suggest three "related articles" (and I have no idea how much they help readers). Anyway, if we could come to a consensus what portals are and what they should do, we could probably decide on what is or is not a good topic for a portal. Despite my keep vote above, I am also not convinced that we should have portals about individual people at all, but discouraging them and deleting someone's effort are two different things. —Kusma (t·c) 09:18, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Vanamonde93:, As stated by @Kusma:, we have over 500 of them. There are also many "to do" list and red links which I believe encourages editors to create African related content - which as we all know is already under represented. Can the portal be improved? Absolutely! All content can be improved. I however do not understand what's the point or rush in deleting content especially for an area which is already under represented. When I go through portals or articles and see to do lists/red links, it encourages me to create content if I'm interested in the subject. Believe me, it encourages content creation and editor retention. Further, the subject is an important figure in the history and culture of that region (and that is even before taking into account the to do list and red links). He played a very important part in the history of those subjects as commented on by other editors. I therefore totally understand why the creator connected the dots.Tamsier (talk) 02:57, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, having a portal for just about any one person is ridiculous. I don't dispute his historical importance, but there simply aren't enough articles to make this valuable to the reader. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 13:34, 19 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Not every hand-written portal is worth keeping. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:50, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete an important figure, sure, but for a portal to be a good idea we need to have a substantial number of articles about the person, and we don't. Category:Alieu Ebrima Cham Joof doesn't contain enough and many of the ones it does contain are other people associated with him. Per WP:POG portals should be about broad subject areas and should have a number of articles above start class in the topic area. Hut 8.5 07:56, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - No portals for individual themes.Guilherme Burn (talk) 19:55, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Could you clarify?--Auric talk 22:28, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Auric:I don't see sense in the existence of a portal for a single person, a single singer, a single company, etc.Guilherme Burn (talk) 11:09, 21 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: too narrow a scope per WP:POG. SITH (talk) 21:02, 30 March 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.