Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Alaska

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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. ‑Scottywong| [confess] || 03:41, 19 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Alaska[edit]

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

Poorly maintained portal.

  • Average daily pageviews in the first half of 2019 are 18 for the portal versus 5755 for the parent article (.313%).
  • Created in October 2007 by Mr.crabby, who only maintained it for about thirty minutes. Other users' maintenance attempts (such as those by RadioKAOS, The Transhumanist, and NA1k) have not been enough to draw attention to this portal.
  • Twenty-eight selected articles that are rather old, with several added in 2008, and several more added in 2012. They have barely been updated since then. Attempts made by Northamerica1000 to add some featured content a month ago nonetheless boil down to content forking.
  • This portal has only been mentioned on the corresponding WikiProject's talk page a total of three times: once in 2006 announcing to the creation of the portal, and then twice in 2012 detailing certain improvements made to the portal. It hasn't at all been mentioned since then.

Time to just delete this already. ToThAc (talk) 19:58, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • @ToThAc: Aspects of your nomination are erroneous. Please see the page's Revision history, and note that the portal was updated and expanded with new entries in early October 2019. It seems that you may only be checking portal subpages when deciding whether or not to nominate for deletion. If this is the case, please be sure to check the main portal page's Revision history as well, as some portals use transclusions with articles that are listed directly on the main portal page. North America1000 20:06, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @ToThAc: See the page's Revision history, and note the following edits that occurred. I have provided the edit summaries that were left below (underline emphasis mine). All of these edits occurred on 4 October 2019‎ (UTC). As I stated, aspects of your nomination are incorrect. It would be nice if you would consider revising the nomination to correct those errors in it. It is time-consuming for me to have to spend my time correcting them for you; I'd rather be doing other things.
  • Diff – Maintenance: Overhauled portal with modernized wiki markup using transclusion from articles to display content, which provides readers with current, up-to-date information. Used selections moved here from Portal:Alaska/Selected article. Also added a couple of select city entries.
  • Diff – Maintenance: Portal updated/further expanded with new selections - Added more FA/FL-class articles
  • Diff – Maintenance: Portal updated/further expanded with more new content - More articles rated as B-class added to the Selected article section, to round-out the portal and provide a more comprehensive overview of the state. Also added GA-class: Alaska Airlines
  • Diff – Maintenance: Portal updated/further expanded with new selections - Added more GA-class articles
– North America1000 20:21, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Northamerica1000: Done. Also, by "unhelpfully vague", I meant the fact that you were only now being specific to what you meant by "entries". ToThAc (talk) 20:33, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment to closer – Here is the diff the nominator performed in amending the nomination. North America1000 20:40, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – The entire Wikipedia:Content forking page was written specifically in regards to articles, and states nothing about Portal namespace content. Fact is, there is nothing about portals on the page at all; even the word "portal" is not present. Conversely, the word "article" is used 100 times throughout the page (as of this post, link). Ultimately, the use of Redundant fork toward Portal namespace content is a slippery slope and overextension of the Content forking guideline page, as well as the intent of the page when it was written; it's only about articles. North America1000 20:44, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    @Northamerica1000: That's the letter of the guideline, but since these are carbon-copied sections of articles in portalspace, they still go against the spirit of the guideline. ToThAc (talk) 21:52, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • So glad to see the portal wars finally getting around to AK.... Looking at the recent history of this portal, it has been edited almost entirely by the small group of folks who have been single-handedly trying to keep and maintain what many Wikipedians see as a failed idea. Editors with an actual connection to this subject abandoned this portal years ago. Even including the recent edits, the last 100 edits to this portal go back 12 years. I personally don't believe that portals are sustainable or justifiable if they're only being updated by, for lack of a better term, The Portal Rescue Crew. Portals need people with an interest in the subject who are willing to dedicate their time to maintaining specific portals as opposed to jumping from one to the other to try and keep them all running, and I just don't see that level of interest here. Alaska is big place, but it's population is relatively small. We haven't even managed to get Alaska up to good article status, it seems unlikely we're going to maintain a portal. At the end of the day I think it's best to just delete it as I don't believe the current mania for portal rescues is a viable long-term solution. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:55, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep looks good and seems to have been updated before this nomination. Not sure a dislike of portals or chastising those that actually improve the encyclopedia or trying to predicting the future is a reason for deletion of anything.--Moxy 🍁 21:31, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. @Moxy: Okay, I'm going to be extremely blunt here: this vote is utterly insufficient.
  • First of all, NA1k's "improvements" are just a single piece of the puzzle, as I've already mentioned in my initial rationale. What needs to be taken into account is the nature of the improvements, not the improvements themselves. Your other "argument" plainly boils down to WP:ILIKEIT.
  • Second, accusing me of using WP:IDONTLIKEIT as an argument errs on the side of being uncivil. Never have I once said that I don't "like" portals, and that's outside the scope of this discussion anyways.
  • Third, accusing me of chasing away editors counts as casting an aspersion. Plus, simply browsing through the massive number of closed portal deletion discussions from last month further proves my point that portals not unlike this one simply are not wanted by the community. Please check the evidence before you make your argument.
  • Fourth and finally, accusing me of predicting the future essentially denies the antecedent. As Newshunter12 repeatedly states, "Portals stand or fall on their merits in the now, not what could someday hypothetically happen with them, and this one falls flat." Such is the case with this portal.
If you're really trying to make me and other users out as a "portal destroyer who chases away those who improve the encyclopedia", please stop while you can. ToThAc (talk) 22:26, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. looks good and seems to have been updated before this nomination – so just a link to the Main Article Alaska, and a random article on a Polar Bear (which was not considered notable enough for the main topic article, thus a POV FORK), and another random article on a Steller sea lion (also not considered relevant enough for the main topic article, another POV FORK), is what is now considered "good" in portal-world? This makes no sense and makes Wikipedia look like a failed project to our readers. Britishfinance (talk) 11:05, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
What is funny is the comments were not directed to you or related to your original nomination rational.--Moxy 🍁 22:44, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Browsing through the massive number of closed portal deletion discussions from last month shows that portals are simply are not wanted by the handful of editors who dutifully turn out every day to paste a similar delete !vote into each MfD. Certes (talk) 23:11, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That is a bit unfair Certes – you could say that "The Portal Rescue Crew" (TPRC), as Beeblebrox terms it, are a similar group at MfDs? You participated in the recent Portal TfD where editors who have never appeared at a Portal MfD unanimously !voted delete on WP:TFD#Template:Basic portal start page? At some point, TPRC needs to recognize the almost complete abandonment, as evidenced in the extensive analysis at Portal MfDs (way above the standard at AfD, imho), by editors, readers, and even vandals – we have Main Articles that are indefinitely protected, like Mesopotamia, due to extensive vandalization, but even these vandals have abandoned Portal:Mesopotamia per Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Mesopotamia?
As we have discussed at a Portal-specific level at each MfD, and will do again here for Portal:Alaska, these portals are not abandoned because of editor habits, fashion, or another trend; but because they are functionally obsolete. Main Articles are far better for content, NavBoxes are far better for navigation, and WikiProject Directories are far better for lists of ranked topic articles.
A portal has become an inferior platform, and thus no editor outside of TPRC wants to spend any time on them. Even if all of the editors who have !voted to delete a portal over the last two years disappeared from WP, they will still mostly all get deleted over the next decade because of this functional obsolesce, and the residual issue of POV/FORKING.
It reminds me of John Kenneth Galbraith's famous quote: "Faced With the Choice Between Changing One’s Mind and Proving That There Is No Need To Do So, Almost Everyone Gets Busy On the Proof". At this stage Portal MfDs are more of an exercise in behavioral science than rational argument. It is not doing anybody any good imho? Britishfinance (talk) 01:10, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately the community disagrees Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/RfC: Ending the system of portals.----Moxy 🍁 06:44, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
But that is not a valid argument as I am not not saying that all portals are functionally obsolete (e.g. the Main Page works). That RfC asked whether all portals should be abolished, and yet, despite the fact that there are clearly some valid portals that work, the RfC still received a very high % of supports (in fact, the close of that RfC did not seem to bear a material resemblance to the !votes). Again, here we are arguing over a Portal:Alaksa that only has a link to the main article Alaska, and a link to a polar bear article and a sea lion article? That cannot be a good use of your time, Moxy, or my time? It seems crazy to me – do you really feel that Portal:Alaska, given its functional obsolesce to Main Article Alaska + NavBox Alaska + WikiProject Alaska directory, has a future? Would you bother spending time on it? Sorry for asking what might seem to be "dumb questions", but I feel that Portal:Alaska is only going to turn prospective Alaska editors away from Wikipedia, as it looks like a failed project. I would prefer, as I have advocated elsewhere, that many Portals should get merged into WikiProjects, and links to WikiProjects put in Main Articles? However, I accept that I am in a minority so far in having such a view :(. thanks. Britishfinance (talk) 12:32, 11 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Lets remind ourselves that Portal:Alaksa is a link to the topic Main Article Alaska, plus a link to the WP Polar Bear article (not considered notable enough in relation to Alaska to be in tbe Main Article, so we have FORKING), plus a link to the WP Steller sea lion article (also not considered for the Main Article). The rest are just paste-ins of the Main Article Alaska NavBoxes, a POV'ed selection from the Wikipedia:WikiProject Alaska rated article directory (which has a structured database of all 10,447 Alaska articles), and links to other Portals. That is Portal:Alaska.
Portal:Alaska is a hugely poor substitute for the Main Article, that provides a large structured, heavily edited and scrutinized, content guide (with mouseover links to sub-topics) on Alaska. It also has the full set of NavBoxes at the bottom (which are transcluded to all sub-topic articles and thus also fully scrutinized), plus the WikiProject link on the Talk Page.
Why would anybody want to click into Portal:Alaska to get a link back to the Main Article and some individual editor's opinion that a Polar Bear and a Steller sea lion are important items to consider regarding Alaska? This is why Portal:Alasksa is abandoned, outside of TPRC activity (per above).
The Main Article Alaska is indefinitely protected due to vandalization, however, no such protection is required for Portal:Alaska because even vandals ignore it. Portal:Alaska is a forked+POV'ed+abandoned personal view by TPRC on Alaska that none of the Main Article Alaska editors, or the WikiProject Alaska maintainers, want anything to do with. Britishfinance (talk) 01:31, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - The followers of Genseric probably turn around and retreat from the article quickly because of the climate, which is colder than in their native Scandinavia, thus leaving the portal alone. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:28, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - In the first half of 2019, the portal had an average of 18 daily pageviews, as contrasted with 5755 for the article.
    • The intended Portal Guidelines were never approved by a consensus of the Wikipedia community, and we have never had real portal guidelines. We should therefore 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. (There never was an actual guideline referring to broad subject areas, and the abstract argument that a topic is a broad subject area is both a handwave and meaningless.) Common sense 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 selected articles (not only by an a priori claim that a topic is broad) (the number of articles in appropriate categories is an indication of potential breadth of coverage, but actual breadth of coverage should be required); (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 maintenance, (a) with at least two maintainers to provide backup, with a maintenance plan indicating how the portal will be maintained (b) the absence of any errors indicating lack of maintenance (including failure to list dates of death in biographies). Some indication of how any selected articles were selected (e.g., Featured Article or Good Article status, selection by categories, etc.) is also desirable. Any portal that does not pass these common-sense tests is not useful as a navigation tool, for showcasing, or otherwise.
    • User:Northamerica1000 does appear to have replaced the content-forked subpages with an embedded list.
    • The pageview rate of the portal is still low. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:28, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question - Is the argument about content-forking still applicable to this portal? Is this portal still using content-forking, or a meganavbox? Robert McClenon (talk) 05:28, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Northamerica1000, Moxy. ɱ (talk) 16:12, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Delete - On the one hand, the argument about content-forking appears to have been answered, because this portal is no longer using content-forks of articles, but an embedded list that functions as a mega-navbox. On the other hand, the portal still has a low viewing rate, and there is no reason to expect that changing the portal design will increase the viewing to where the portal is a useful navigational supplement to the head article and categories. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:23, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per the nom. Abandoned for seven years until NA1K, a serial drive-by portal one-off updater, added some content, which means nothing. Portals need sustained maintenance from a team of topic knowledgeable editors to be worthwhile for readers, not random one-off maintenance by a serial one-off updater. Has a very low readership that is a minute fraction of the head article Alaska's readership. The B-Class head article also has several rich and versatile navboxs, which are all readers need. This portal was created in a time when it was thought every U.S. state by default should have a portal, but now about half of U.S. state portals have been deleted for being unread or abandoned, and this one should join them since it serves only to distract readers from the head article. Newshunter12 (talk) 04:58, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • since it serves only to distract readers from the head article. - Is this fact or opinion? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 17:04, 11 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Portals in general do not need sustained maintenance as adding transclusions to FA and GA articles updates the information presented in real time. If a portal presents incorrect info about a biography then it would be the fault of the article, not the portal. Of course they still would need to be on watchlists for routine vandalism, but the heavy handed load work argument presented here just isn't accurate. The next question would be.... do the articles presented present a NPOV of Alaska? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 17:02, 11 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as an unmaintained portal. Portals can't be WP:HEYed; they need constant monitoring and maintenance, and that requires a team of people. This is because of technical limitations (e.g., can't watchlist a portal to notice changes, must review manually). There's more that can be said about this, but the maintenance needs of portals have been discussed ad nauseum over this past year, and I'm loathe to write or read another dissertation on the subject. Portal:Alaska is a good example of an unmaintained (and also unused) portal. Delete it. – Levivich 17:38, 11 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Transclusions have already been added to the main portal page per Portal:Alaska/Selected article, meaning that any update to a featured article linked to the portal will also show up on the portal in real time. Think of it as a mirror.... if you watch the articles linked to the portal for vandalism then the portal will be fine. Again... I'm sorry but claims of extreme maintenance are overblown. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 18:09, 11 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think Levivich makes a substantive point - portals are not articles. An abandoned article can be WP:HEY'ed, but an abandoned portal cannot? If the Main Page was not edited for 10-years, would we keep it? And remember, this whole thread is about an abandoned page that only had a link to Main Article Alaska, a link to a polar bear article, a sea-lion article (both of which are not "emblematic" of Alaska), and paste-in's of the NavBox and a selective, and an out-of-date carve-out of the WikiProject Alaska structured topic directory? Any potential Alaska editor who clicks on Portal:Alaska, is going to think WP is a failed project imho – why are we scoring own goals? Britishfinance (talk) 19:01, 11 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Actually if you look at the history of the main page [1], the edits are few and far between. This is because the pages are either transcluded, or they are sub-pages. An argument I can make is that the main page of Portal:Alaska has more edits than the history of the main page: [2]. Of course then we would have to bring up the sub-pages and everything that goes with it. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 21:32, 11 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep agree with Moxy and Knowledgekid87. I see portals as a net positive, and they do not need to be constantly fussed over IMO. Wm335td (talk) 22:22, 11 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - As I argued in other Mfds, the community has decided not to allow the creation of ten thousand portals. Therefore second level countries subdivisions are unnecessary and narrow. Second level countries subdivisions can be worked per sections on country portals.Guilherme Burn (talk) 15:07, 12 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    @Guilherme Burn: Agreed; the country portals, if they are of broad enough topics, can easily handle the load of having subdivision portals merged into them. ToThAc (talk) 23:41, 12 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note to closing admin. I don't want in any way to prejudge the outcome ... but if you close this discussion as delete, please can you not remove the backlinks? I have a bot (BHGbot 4) which allows me to easily replace them with links to the next most specific portal(s), without creating duplicate entries.
In this case I think that the appropriate new links would be to Portal:United States. Alternative suggestions welcome. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:19, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per many of the above. IMO, this is a sufficiently broad topic. A well-constructed portal requires little maintenance and low viewership doesn't mean that deletion is necessary. Lepricavark (talk) 20:47, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – Britishfinance: I removed two entries from the portal per your concern expressed above about them: Polar bear, Steller sea lion (diff). This took about thirty seconds to perform, including writing the edit summary. North America1000 21:48, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Northamerica1000, I don't think that the Portal will suffer without them :) All the best, Britishfinance (talk) 21:56, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Thank you for removing the dead rats from the portal so that the bear and the sea lion can't eat them. Robert McClenon (talk) 07:02, 14 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If this is how editors are treated who act in good faith to fix a problem then we are in big trouble. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 15:12, 14 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Haven't you heard? It's open season on NA1K. If we can't hold an admin accountable for personal attacks, then certainly anyone can get away with mild-yet-unprovoked rudeness. Lepricavark (talk) 19:13, 14 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep – A broad enough of a topic, has received some maintenance, and has potential to be significantly improved with more article and content additions. It would be nice if the page views could be brought up a bit more. North America1000 21:51, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep U.S. states should have more than enough content for a portal. SportingFlyer T·C 04:37, 15 November 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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