Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Dance

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. While the keep/delete votes were close to even in this discussion, the keep voters did not put forth a convincing argument to refute the fact that this portal has been unmaintained for years, or to show a solid plan for ensuring that it's regularly maintained. Portals are not articles, they don't have any content in them. If portals aren't accurately representing the content in the articles that comprise the portal's subject area, then the portal serves no good purpose. ‑Scottywong | [confabulate] || 23:28, 18 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Dance

Portal created in 2005 and supplemented by a jungle of blank subpages in 2006, but never completed. 627 edits by 176 users didn't manage to compensate its fatal flaws.

Its neglect is so complete that for 8 years now it features a "selected biography" about a dancer whose article doesn't even exist in main namespace (and never did). Nemo 16:43, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The article did exist in article space. It was deleted on 19 July 2011 after a deletion discussion, and was then moved to portal subpage space on 26 July 2011. It was thus an undead creature walking like a zombie. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:20, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - The "selected article" selection method described in Portal:Dance/Selected biography is standard in many portals and is not supported per mainteners. Note that two nominations were made in 2011 and 2012, one executed but not taken from the "Nominations" section and the other never answered. This can be frustrating for an editor and makes us wonder if the low number of portal pageviews really is the lack of links in the main namespace.Guilherme Burn (talk) 17:19, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. Need to give a hard look to the ~50 portals which use that system. Nemo 19:57, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - As noted by User:Nemo bis and User:Guilherme Burn, Portal:Dance, like many other portals, appears to use a technique that is meant to encourage readers to add articles, but that does not work and may result in an article that exists only as a portal subpage and not in article space. Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Dance shows what appear to be 20 articles and 20 biographies, but most of them are placeholders, and there are 4 articles and 10 bios, one bio of which is not in article space. Except for the editor contribution, they were content forked between 2006 and 2008. The editor contribution was provided in 2011. They were tweaked between 2008 and 2015. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:22, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The portal has 44 average daily pageviews in the first half of 2019, as contrasted with 1764 for the article. *
Since the Portal Guidelines have been downgraded to the status of an information page and we have no real portal guidelines, we should use common sense, which is discussed in Wikipedia in the essay section Use Common Sense and in the article common sense. The portal guidelines were an effort to codify common sense about portals, and we should still use common sense. It is still a matter of common sense that portals should be about broad subject areas that will attract large numbers of viewers and will attract portal maintainers. This imposes at least a three-part test for portals to satisfy common sense: (1) a broad subject area, demonstrated a posteriori by a breadth of articles (not only by an a priori claim that a topic is broad); (2) a large number of viewers, preferably at least 100 a day, but any portal with fewer than 25 a day can be considered to have failed; (3) portal maintainers, at least two maintainers to provide backup, with a maintenance plan indicating how the portal will be maintained. Any portal that does not pass this common-sense test is not useful as a navigation tool, for showcasing, or otherwise.
Common sense says that a method of encouraging reader contributions that leaves them unreviewed for eight years is a failure. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:22, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - This is "interesting". It seems that the subpage on Matt Barber was created on 26 July 2011, and an article on Matt Barber was deleted on 19 July 2011 as per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matt Barber. The portal subpage was a zombie page, being used to evade a deletion discussion and preserve the life of something that was supposed to have been killed. (I moved the portal subpage to Draft:Matt Barber to review it as a possible article, and found the deletion history. It looks as if the draft may have to be deleted also.) This is at least one more way in which portals with content-forked subpages are a bad idea. They are dangerous, like zombies; they may eat the brains of editors. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:51, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I've declined Draft:Matt Barber (dancer). It can be left to dance in the dark for six months, at the end of which time it can dance off to the underworld unless someone can supply more recent sources that establish notability for Matt Barber (dancer). This isn't directly relevant to Portal:Dance, except to illustrate that portal subpages eat the brains of editors and are dangerous. Keep your silver bullets handy. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:01, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete this zombie-infested and rat-infested portal that is not being maintained, with silver bullets. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:13, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I have just found my way here from following up a comment at Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Improve_representation_of_DYK_in_portals. I am fairly new to editing, and don't know much about portals. I have added them to only a few articles I've created, and hadn't added any to an article about a choreographer I recently created, which will be on the main page in DYK on Wednesday. Just checking some of the dancers I've noticed at DYK, their articles are also lacking any portals, let alone this one. I don't know what maintenance portals require. Certainly it would be easy enough to find more articles to add to a portal, by looking through relevant categories (which I have learned to add to articles). I gather that some fields in portals are filled through finding relevant content in main page fields (like DYK and ITN). Wouldn't it be more useful to readers to encourage editors to add portals to articles, rather than deleting portals because they don't have much content? RebeccaGreen (talk) 20:25, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- @RebeccaGreen: It appears that in the past, there was a lot more enthusiasm for making portals than now. Today, many of us realize there were way more portals than were useful to readers and than maintainers could support, and thus on too narrow of topics. Having lots of links from mainspace doesn't generally alleviate this much, and so that is not the problem - the problem is that the topic is just too narrow for a portal, and they sit neglected for many years. -Crossroads- (talk) 17:10, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Performance Portals

Title	Portal Page Views	Article Page Views	Percent	Comments	Articles	Notes	Baseline	Deleted
Musical theatre	11	1128	0.98%	Originated 2007 by editor who last edited 2016. Articles from 2005, last edited 2017.	14		Jan19-Jun19	FALSE
Opera	24	1438	1.67%	Originated 2008 by sporadic editor who last edited May 2019.	81	Said to be well-maintained. Many DYKs, monthly anniversaries, many images. 42 articles and 39 biographies, some added in 2019.	Jan19-Jun19	FALSE
Theatre	26	1113	2.34%	Originator inactive since 2010. Minor maintenance in 2018.	34		Jan19-Jun19	FALSE
Dance	44	1764	2.49%	Originated 2005 by editor who last edited 2009.	14	Appears to be 20 articles and 20 bios, but 4 articles and 10 bios, forked 2006, tweaked between 2008 and 2015.	None	FALSE
Music	136	2956	4.60%	Complete calendar of birth dates. Updated in April 2019. Originated 2005 by editor who last edited 2009.	24		Jan19-Jun19	FALSE

Dance

Delete per above, and per the fact there is no good reason to keep such a portal as this. Low page views and the condition it is in mean zero value is added by such a portal. There is no policy or guideline which suggests this portal should exist. Portals are not content, being for navigation instead, so it is improper to try to compare dilapidated and useless portals to articles and say they should just be fixed. There is no reason to think that hoped-for improvements and long-term maintenance will ever materialize anyway, even if promised at the last minute just to stave off deletion. Simple assertions that the topic is broad enough are entirely subjective; rather, that it is not broad enough is demonstrated by the lack of pageviews and maintenance. Content forks are worthless, since they go out of date, preserve potentially inferior versions of article content, add pointlessly to the maintenance burden, and are vandalism magnets; therefore they should not be saved. -Crossroads- (talk) 17:05, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Editors making arguments related to low hits WP:POPULARPAGE: that is definitely an argument to avoid. The question is not hits, but does this page add value to Wikipedia, and it does. We need more portals not less. In addition WP:NOTCLEANUP a need for repairs is not a reason to delete. Wm335td (talk) 16:24, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- It does not add value because it's fatally flawed. Nemo 06:12, 15 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I am in agreement with Wm335 on this one, we also have a community consensus not to delete all of the portals. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 23:09, 14 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Per nom. The nom's examples of the "zombie article" still on this portal (and there are only a few articles quoted), is another example of why an unmaintained and abandoned portal is a real problem in Wikipedia and makes us look like a failing project. Portal adds nothing to the existing good topic main article+navboxes (in fact, the quality of the navboxes means that any possible use the portal might still have is now gone - hence the abandonment by editors and readers). Arguments of POPULARPAGE and NOTCLEANUP are relevant to Article AfDs (where notability is the key). An abandoned out-of-date portal that nobody (editor or reader) wants to support, needs to be deleted – wuold we keep the #1 Wikipedia portal, the MainPage, if it was in such a state? Britishfinance (talk) 20:03, 15 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I've proposed which topics should be suitable for portals here, on my userspace. Dance clearly qualifies under this proposal: it has a corresponding WikiProject, making it useful as a navigational guideline, and more than enough featured content/good articles to add to a table which can be transcluded. SportingFlyer T·C 05:21, 16 October 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.