Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:World War I

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. $Salvio giuliano$ 23:05, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:World War I[edit]

Abandoned portal. Portal about narrow topic (see my coment bellow). Fails in WP:P "providing links to project spaces". All sections are outdated by at least a decade. This has led to some inaccurate and outdated information being presented to readers, exemples dates in Battle of Verdun / Portal:World War I/Selected event/2 and Gallipoli campaign / Portal:World War I/Selected event/9. Portal:World War I/Selected picture/7 deleted in 2013. The Selected quote section has no references or WP:V. The Featured content section shows delisted articles Władysław Sikorski, Western Front (World War I), German occupation of Luxembourg during World War I, Finnish Civil War, E. T. Pollock and Arthur Percival. Major topics shows a red link Participants in World War I. Guilherme Burn (talk) 21:27, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - By "narrow topic" based on WP:P and in the absence of a guideline, I mean that a broad topic is one that guarantees the creation of a portal for all elements in the same category. Example, countries are broad topics, military conflicts are not, I cannot create a portal for all existing conflicts.Guilherme Burn (talk) 21:37, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. As its subject matter rarely changes, this portal does not demand constant maintenance. Most military conflicts are too narrow for a portal, but the World Wars are exceptional. The topic is broad enough to include 35 FAs and about 100 major subtopics, and it is reasonable to retain a portal to feature them. It is completely normal for a portal to display the lead of a showcased article without references, linking instead to the article which contains the references, just as references are normally omitted from the lead of the article itself. One might question that universal standard in a wider forum, but adherence to the norm is not a valid reason to pick off an individual portal. If there are errors, such as one of a hundred articles still being in draft (surely a sign that the portal is not abandoned), then let's fix them rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Certes (talk) 22:52, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep It's difficult to understand why a topic as complex and detailed as the first world war would not be considered a broad topic, but a single country would be. This seems a subjective evaluation. Certes has made relevant points about the portal itself. There are some core topics which still deserve a portal, if any topics so deserve. This is one such. BusterD (talk) 01:07, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Broad" had a specific meaning within WP:POG. This led to absurdities such as Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Culture, where too broad a topic and not a broad enough topic were both eagerly accepted as arguments for deletion. Following the rejection of POG, we can now use the dictionary definition of broad, and I think World War I qualifies, even if a medieval conflict between two places we've never heard of wouldn't. Certes (talk) 10:00, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment the portal is rated as a featured portal by WPPortals ... -- 64.229.90.172 (talk) 03:01, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- It's a legacy thing. It became a featured portal in 2007 and inherited this rating when the WikiProject was created more than a decade later, but the actual best practices formulated by the community in the meantime suggest something different from what this portal is: A portal with content-forked subpages. We deleted Portal:War for this reason, which is a broader topic than World War I. If someone actually starts soon to rework this portal according to the contemporary single-page blueprint, I will not support deletion. —Alalch E. 09:23, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  Reworking the portal would be the ideal solution, but risks setting a precedent that establishes MfD as the way to force other editors to perform a non-urgent task this week. We must not repeat the mistakes of 2019, where each portal in turn was nominated for deletion, with over 100 simultaneous MfDs running at one point, leading to an acrimonious ArbCom case. Certes (talk) 10:10, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  If we see it that way it would be the MfD analogue to WP:HEY, and I am not against that. I am against mass nominations.—Alalch E. 11:23, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  
  I am also willing to help, and to prove this, I've started implementing the needed changes.—Alalch E. 16:25, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The suggestion that the First World War is a "narrow topic" is preposterous. As others have said, the subject matter rarely changes so the portal doesn't require a high degree of maintenance. The portal is stable; that is not the same thing as "abandoned". It might be true that some of the selection lists need updating but that is not a sufficient reason for deletion by any stretch of the imagination. Waggers TALK 12:17, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. Barely updated, an example of a near-moribund portal as touted by BHG. --⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:17, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Keep because the portal has been redesigned, and appears likely to be adequately maintained in the near to medium future.
- - The portal previously had the usual architecture for legacy portals, using copies of articles, which are therefore content forks. That legacy architecture was never a good idea, but survived for 17 years with this portal and other original portals. The portal has been redesigned to transclude the articles instead.
  - In 2022, the portal had an average of 68 daily pageviews, as opposed to 22,835 daily pageviews for the lead article World War I. Approximately 0.3% of readers want to use a portal, and that is enough if there is nothing wrong with the portal. There was something wrong with the portal until today. In 2021, the portal had an average of 67 daily pageviews, as opposed to 18,152 for the lead article.
  - This portal is not one of the ones that was nominated for deletion in 2019. That is neither a reason to delete nor a reason to keep.
  - I fail to see value in portals, but 68 readers a day see value in this portal, and that is enough to keep it if it is being maintained and does not have content forks, and it is now being maintained, and the content forks are being done away with.

Robert McClenon (talk) 21:57, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Some work was done during this MfD, that makes this a harmless portal. Seeing that it is extremely unlikely that editors would agree to delete Portal:World War II, I don't think it's sensible to create a situation where we have the WWII portal but don't have the WWI portal, because it was deleted. At some point, I will make a list of redundant supages for deletion. —Alalch E. 15:08, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I often see comments from folks who don't see the value of portals, and coming from Robert McClenon, I take such comments in the spirit in which they are intended. On the other hand, the busiest page on Wikipedia is a portal, the main page. For my part, I think the main page is a good concept as a portal. For a long period in Wikipedia's history, many wikipedians thought modeling work after the style of the main page was in the interest of all readers. It may be possible that most wikipedians have moved past that stage. Whether or not Wikipedia should host portals is beyond the scope of this conversation; if all portals have been deleted one by one it's impossible to have a reasonable conversation on their continued usefulness in general. BusterD (talk) 15:31, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment to User:BusterD - Yes, the main page is a portal, and a portal is a miniature main page. The main page requires a great deal of maintenance. Many editors share in the work of maintaining the main page, and they can be and are proud of their contributions to the main page. Portals require maintenance. The appropriate amount of maintenance for a portal may be roughly dependent on the size and scope of the topic area. However, many portals no longer have any maintenance. Fewer editors want to maintain portals than either want to maintain the main page or want to create portals. Maintaining the main page is important. Creating portals is fun. Maintaining portals is ... maintenance. And I think that the idea of deleting "all portals" "one by one" is a straw man. We are considering whether to delete some portals one by one, and I have said that this portal should be kept "one by one". Robert McClenon (talk) 05:19, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Portals can be designed so as not to require nearly any maintenance. —Alalch E. 11:08, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I will take this liberty to briefly comment on Wikipedia's history. Literally thousands of strawmen, made into bricks, thousands of portals deleted one by one at MfD, some in massive batches. I appreciate we are engaged in a quite civil good faith discussion, I appreciate Robert McClenon's agreement, and I vary slightly with Alalch E. only in this particular: now portals are designed to require little maintenance. Maintenance is a moot argument. When we identify a portal which needs repair or update, perhaps nominated at MfD, we have a capable and motivated team with automation tools available, and thanks to exhaustive and massive portalspace deletions in the last few years, not so much work to do. As an aside, I never thought of building an old-style portal as an enjoyment. With the modern automation (and as we have unfortunately seen), a representative portal on any minor subject matter could be assembled in mere minutes. Nobody's suggesting we go back to the kind of random portal creation silliness which complicated life for portalistas like myself. Notes of irony and levity are gently scattered between the letters of this comment. Please forgive my venting. BusterD (talk) 15:45, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom and WaltCip, as a stalled and unmaintained portal. — Sundostund mppria ^{(talk / contribs)} 18:32, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What maintenance does this portal require, beyond the 30 updates made this week? Certes (talk) 19:52, 17 April 2023 (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.