Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:1930s

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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. ‑Scottywong | [gossip] || 06:04, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Portal:1930s

 * – (View MfD)

Stillborn portal, only mildly improved by later tweaks which took it from disastrous to abysmal. Vastly inferior to the comprehensive and well-maintained head article 1930s.

Created in July 2016, and by May 2018 it was still a still a forest of redlinks: see version 07:16, 13 May 2018. The only actual content was three selected biographies.

On 16 May 2018 it was then expanded a little by using Transclude random excerpt to display selected atrticles. Five selected articles: Great Depression, League of Nations, Spanish Civil War, Dust Bowl, Salt March.

18 months later, the latest revision, dated 30 Sept 2019 shows the same five selected articles and the same three biographies: 1: Neville Chamberlain, 2: Katharine Hepburn, 3: Mahatma Gandhi.

That's a disgrace. We are luring readers to what purports to be a portal on the 1930s, but which doesn't even list headline topics such as Stalin, Hitler, Soviet Collectivisation, Nazism, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mussolini, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the Sino-Tibetan War or WWII ... never mind important topics such as the New Deal, intercontinental commercial airline flights, Éamon de Valera, Chiang Kai-shek, Charlie Chaplin. If this was a high school project, it wouldn't just be a fail; it would be grounds for disciplinary action for not even trying.

No doubt one of the portals fans will be along in a minute to claim that more articles could be added. Indeed they could, in theory ... but in practice, we can see that after more than three years, nobody has done so. Yet again, there is clear evidence that nobody wants to maintain this portal, and another re-run of the hasty-additions-to-try-to-stave off deletion won't solve either the lack of ongoing maintenance, or the fundamental redundancy.

The redundancy is that this portal is entirely un-needed. The head article 1930s is a well-maintained list-style article, with links to 1,030 articles. That's 129 times as many as the pseudo-portal. Better still, the selection of links is all displayed in front of the reader in an easily-navigated list, instead of the portal's absurd mechanism of hiding the list and requiring the reader to perform the counter-intuitive task of purging the page to see just one more random item. (If there was a competition for user-hostile design, that model would be a strong candidate for outright winner).

Why on earth are we wasting readers' time and insulting their intelligence by luring them to this abysmal, neglected pseudo-portal, rather than directing them to the massively better head article?

Luckily, not many readers waste their time on the pseudo-portal. Despite 6,410 links to this portal from articles and categories, in January–June 2019, the portal averaged only 18 views per day, while the head article averaged 404 views per day.

But that's still a total of 3,207 readers in the first half of 2019 whose time was wasted. Time to just delete this pointless page. The head article does the job vastly better. Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:01, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Note on backlinks. I don't want in any way to prejudge the outcome ... but if this discussion is closed as delete, I propose that the backlinks should be removed.  I have an AWB setup which allows me to easily replace them with links to the next most specific portal(s), without creating duplicate entries, but in this case I see no suitable alternative.
 * 6,313 of the backlinks (out of a total of 6,410) are from categories, nearly all of them generated by Module:FindYDCportal. Removing one line from that module will turn off those links. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:06, 2 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete as per analysis by User:BrownHairedGirl
 * 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.
 * This portal is about a decade that was marked by poverty, but the portal has a poverty of articles.  Just delete it.  Robert McClenon (talk) 16:13, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per BHG's eloquently pointed out "grounds for disciplinary action". According to my queries, this portal stands out for its aging. For such a sensitive topic I'm afraid we must focus and direct users to the best we've got, which is clearly not this. Nemo 20:33, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep in summary the argument for deletion here is that the portal has plenty of scope for improvement and the portal concept is a failure. The first one is not a reason for deleting something. It's not like it would be impossible or even difficult to add more articles to the portal. It also isn't the case that the current content is unsuitable, or that improving the portal would involve throwing it away and starting again. The community has rejected the idea of getting rid of portals in general, so arguments that the portal concept isn't useful go against that judgement. I note that the demise of WP:POG as a guideline is now being used to justify making up arbitrary criteria for keeping portals on the guise of "common sense". The idea of deleting portals just because they get fewer than an arbitrary number of page views has just been rejected so rationales based on that have no merit.  Hut 8.5  21:02, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * it gets tedious having to repeatedly counter the misrepresentations of WP:ENDPORTALS. That was a proposal to delete all portals in one go, and it was rejected.  It was not a decision to keep all portals, or even to keep most portals, let alone a decision to keep abandoned junk.  If you want to propose that the community agree to keep even abandoned junk portals, the WP:RFC is thataway.
 * However, thank you for confirming my prediction that someone would be along soon to note that the portal could theoretically be built. That is of course theoretically true, just as it's theoretically true that a minor football team could become a great one if only it got a billionaire owner in a spendy mood, who bought all new players, and moved it out of smalltown to some big city where he built a huge new stadium.  Not impossible, but highly unlikely.
 * Like most defenders of this sort of abandoned junk, it has no plan for its improvement: no WikiProject to guide it and feed it, no teams of maintainers to build it and keep it fresh.   Hut's argument basically amounts to Waiting for Godot, keeping faith an extremely unlikely possibility, despite mounting evidence that the possibility is receding.
 * So what Hut wants us to do is continue to lure readers to an abysmal page which is overwhelmingly likely to remain abysmal ... even tho we already have a much better alternative in place. Our readers deserve much better than that.-- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 21:31, 2 October 2019 (UTC)


 * I don't agree that this portal is "abysmal". Sure, it's not the best portal on Wikipedia, and there are plenty of ways it could be improved, but it is complete, it can be presented to the reader and there is at least a bit of value in doing so. If that wasn't the case then I would be a lot more amenable to deleting it. We don't delete stuff just because it can be improved. If we did then we'd have to throw away a lot more than this portal. And yes, I get that you think that portals with this quality level should be deleted just for that reason alone, but I don't and you can't point to any wider consensus which supports that. I wasn't claiming that WP:ENDPORTALS means no portals can be deleted. I was saying that it means we can't delete individual portals because of a reason which would justify deleting all portals. Because we decided not to do that.  Hut 8.5  21:48, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Eight articles on the whole decade, none of them about the rise of Fascsim in Europe about Stalinism in the USSR .... and yet you say that it is complete. You can't be serious.
 * For goodness sake, please tell me that you were joking or trolling or something.
 * And no, these problems of tiny article set + abandonment + v few readers does not apply to all portals, so that's a straw man.-- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 23:00, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * No, I'm not trolling or joking. WP:AGF. By "complete" I mean it doesn't have any missing sections, placeholders, redlinks etc. It is presentable and isn't a work in progress. The normal recommended number of selected articles for a portal is in the 20-25 range so you're saying that the difference between 8 and 20 is the difference between absolutely unacceptable and OK. I don't see that. Nor is it much of an effort to add a few articles on the topics you mentioned. I'd be happy to do so if the portal survives MfD. The only argument I was saying applied to all portals is the statement that the portal is redundant to the head article. This is one of the arguments brought up to support ENDPORTALS.  Hut 8.5  06:49, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * OK, I accept that you aren't joking.
 * But still, regardless of whether those arguments stand up (and I don't think they do), those arguments seem to me to consist entirely of sterile formalism. The effect of your stance is that the relevant test is that a page is "complete" so long as isn't technically broken, even if it has no meaningful content.  That seems to me to be a completely misplaced focus.
 * And your offer to "to add a few articles" will just shift the portal into the sort of twilight zone in which hundreds of portals have rotted for years: not completely useless, but still of very little utility, and with no prospect of long-term maintenance or development. That logic seems to me to be far more focused on preserving the scant efforts of the editors who have created the portal than on serving our readers. My focus has always been on serving our readers, and it's only in portal space that this seems to a controversial view.
 * I would probably disagree with any argument to keep the portal, but I could have respect for an rationale which provided some reasonably plausible path to making this portals into something which would reliably add significant value over and above the head article. But without that, the objections seem to me to be a case of not seeing the wood for the trees. Please do remember that WP:IAR is policy ... and that if some interpretation of rules is leading you down a path to a pointless outcome, the you're on the wrong path. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 14:16, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The portal does have meaningful content. It has a bunch of selected articles, some DYKs, links to categories, etc. All perfectly good stuff which would still be worth keeping even if we wanted to make the portal as great as possible. I don't see anybody objecting to any of it here either. I think it does add at least some value to the encyclopedia, and it looks like you agree with that as well. Sure, there are plenty of ways to make it add more value, but that doesn't mean that deleting it would help. On the contrary deleting it would make the encyclopedia a little bit worse. That isn't "formalism", it's the core of why we decide to keep and delete pages. I don't think maintenance is even much of a priority here, I doubt our understanding of the history of the 1930s is going to change that much at the very broad brush levels of portal summaries.
 * I think a fair analogy to this portal would be a stub article which is a few sentences long. If nominated for deletion on the grounds that (a) it doesn't cover much about the subject and (b) it has remained a stub for some time, the nomination would very likely fail because of WP:ATD/WP:SOFIXIT. Why? Because even stubs add value to the encyclopedia and provide useful content to people interested in the topic. If someone cares that much about it being short then they can expand it, which improves rather than hurts the encyclopedia. We would delete the stub if it was impossible to expand, if it had no intelligible content, or if it was actively doing damage, but not just for being short.  Hut 8.5  18:16, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * You're at it again, comparing a portal to an article. The article is content; the portal isn't.  if there's any original content whatsoever in the portal, then every last scrap of it should be instantly removed, because it's unsourced.
 * No, I don't agree that the portal adds any value whatsoever to the 'pedia. It's basically just a list of 8 topics, of which outdated content forks  are displayed two at a tine with the list hidden, all wrapped in fluff.  That's simply an absurd failure of both scope and usability..
 * The fluff consists of:
 * a first-level category tree. Pointless, because exactly the same info is available from the head article's link to the category.
 * A set of DYKs. Per WP:DYK "the DYK section showcases new or expanded articles that are selected through an informal review process. It is not a general trivia section", but old DYKs lose the newness, so they are just trivia, contrary to WP:TRIVIA.
 * And that's it. As far as I can see, your argument now is that a page displaying an excerpt of two articles at a time is somehow superior to a page which links to 1,030 articles, ecah of which has a built-in except preview. You may not be aware of this, but for over a year the Wikimedia softeware as offered non-logged-in readers (i.e. the vast majority of readers) a built-in preview of any link, activated on mouseover.  Try it for yourself by right-clicking on this link to 1930s, and selecting either "open in private window" or "open in incognito window" (depending on how your browser labels it). That will show the page as a logged-out reader sees it ... including a preview when you mouseover any link. Similar functionality has been available since 2015 to users of the mobile app.
 * So basically you're trying to tell us that a page which displays 2 excerpts adds value over a page which displays 1,030 excepts. That doesn't compute. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 22:22, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * So you think the portal should be deleted because it is redundant to the head article. That's a criticism of portals in general, not this portal in particular. Any vaguely well developed article will give the reader an overview of the topic with rather more links than the portal will have, and where the reader can use the preview functionality to show the initial content of the link. However if we accept the argument that portals have no value as a result of this then we ought to get rid of all portals, and the community has rejected that idea. I know you don't agree with that argument, but there isn't much point in pinging me just to say so.  Hut 8.5  06:44, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Hut, that's a criticism which can be made of portals in general, with varying degrees of validity. But it applies very strongly here, for two reasons:
 * The portal is so poor. It has a tiny selection, and it has been abandoned.
 * The head article is an exceptionally good alternative, because it is structured as a list, so it's very easy to navigate. Its design is much closer to what portals should be than most portals are.
 * Regardless of any wider issues, it seems to me to be thoroughly perverse to defend the retention of a portal which is so massively inferior to the head article. Whatever the logic behind that defence, it amounts to a determination to direct our readers to a page which will serve them very poorly, when a vastly better alternative is available. I think readers deserve much better than hat. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 05:56, 10 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep - I don't understand why WP:SOFIXIT doesn't apply here, BrownhairedGirl appears to have some suggestions about articles to add, so why not just do it? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 23:58, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I am bemused to see how some editors' determination to make a sarcastic comment is not matched by a willingness to read. The reasons I didn't just add topics are all set out in the nomination:
 * My suggestions are just off-the-the-top-of-my-head notes on core topics. They still wouldn't make a rounded portal.
 * A portal needs ongoing maintainers (plural), not a lone editor doing a drive-by addition. I have refuse to emulate the hit-and-run brigade.
 * I deplore the hideous Rube Goldberg machine model of portals built on content forks, and will not put my energies in building on a fundamentally broken design.
 * Even without a hundred well-chosen additions, the head article would remains a vastly more effective portal than the portal page. I don't put my energies into redundant pages.
 * The only sofixit that I would do to this redundant pseudo-portal is to replace its entire contents with, per WP:ATD-M.  But I prefer to seek consensus rather than doing that boldly.
 * As usual, KK87 is very keen to keep a redundant page on the grounds that some day, someone might make it worthwhile. It's notable that KK87's enthusiasm for sofixit has never extended to doing a single edit to any portal which has brought to MFD (see KK87's portal-space contribs).  It's a classic WP:GODOT stance, which shows contempt for the readers who get lured to abandoned junk portals. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 03:13, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * You are putting more effort into deleting portals though than I am, effort that can easily be used for improvement. WP:SOFIXIT is a guideline, you are citing an essay (WP:GODOT) that has no community consensus. Deletion should be the very last resort, and not a solution to those who just want to get rid of "junk portals". There are exceptions of course which include out of date damaging information, but I do not see this as an issue here. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 13:53, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * As usual KK87 offers no path to improvement, let alone ongoing maintenance, never mind producing a page which adds value over the head article. This is all just a faith-based hope that against all the evidence, keeping abandoned junk will somehow lead to magical maintainers magically appearing to magically make the page add value over the head article even though KK87 has not made any attempt to explain how the portal might add value. Religious mysticism can be great for the soul, but it's a terrible way to make editorial decisions. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 22:36, 3 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete per above, and per the fact there is no good reason to keep portals that are in this condition. Low page views and the condition it is in mean zero value is added by such a portal. 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 maintenance will ever materialize anyway. The downgrading of POG cuts both ways - there is no policy or guideline which suggests this portal should exist. 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 and should not be saved. -Crossroads- (talk) 05:10, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - If I had copied several old Wikipedia entries for a project in high school, I'd have received a failing grade. For some reason this is just what passes for quality content for a diminishingly small group of all-too-easily impressed portal defenders who have no plans to fundamentally improve this space. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 06:42, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete Creating and maintaining portals on such non-topics is just a bad idea. SD0001 (talk) 18:01, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
 * 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.