Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:British Library

 __NOINDEX__
 * 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. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:10, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Portal:British Library


Abandoned mini-portal on a narrow topic. Redundant to the head article British Library and its navbox Template:British Library.

Created in May 2011‎ by. The lead of WP:POG has said since late 2006 "Do not create a portal if you do not intend to assist in its regular maintenance", but that has not happened here: Rock drum's last edit to any part of this portal was in December 2011

There were a lot of formatting changes in 2018, and in October 2018 this was converted by @The Transhumanist (TTH) to an automated format which drew its article list solely from the navbox Template:British Library. This made the portal simply a bloated and redundant fork of the navbox. (For a full explanation of why this type of portal is redundant, see the two mass deletions of similar portals: one, and two, where there was overwhelming consensus of a very high turnout to delete a total of 2,555 such portals).

In April 2019, @UnitedStatesian reverted the portal to its pre-automated format.

That leaves an old-style portal with multiple sub-pages, but the list of sub-pages at Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:British Library is modest:
 * 10 Selected Pictures
 * 4 Selected Articles, all completely unchanged since creation in 2011
 * 2 Selected floors, a pair of floorplans, unchanged since creation in 2011, and which probbaly don't belong on Wikipedia: WP:NOTTRAVEL.
 * 3 sets of DYK pages, each with the same topics as in 2011. . 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 this set of 8-year-old lists lose the newness, so its only effect is as a trivia section, contrary to WP:TRIVIA.

Per WP:PORTAL, "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". But this page which displays one article at a time from a set of 4 articles is massively less useful in every respect than the head article British Library and its navbox Template:British Library.

Two newish features of the Wikimedia software means that the article and navboxes offers nearly all the functionality which portals like this set out to offer. Both features are available only to ordinary readers who are not logged in, but you can test them without logging out by right-clicking on a link, and the select "open in private window" (in Firefox) or "open in incognito window" (Chrome).
 * 1) mouseover: on any link, mouseover shows you the picture and the start of the lead.  So the preview-selected page-function of portals is redundant: something almost as good is available automatically on any navbox or other set of links.  Try it by right-clicking on this link to Template:British Library, open in a private/incognito tab, and mouseover any link.
 * 2) automatic imagery galleries: clicking on an image brings up an image gallery of all the images on that page. It's full-screen, so it's actually much better than  a click-for-next image gallery on a portal.   Try it by right-clicking on this link to the article British Library, open in a private/incognito tab, and click on any image to start the slideshow

Similar features have been available since 2015 to users of Wikipedia's Android app.

WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". The British Library is the world's largest single library, but it's still only one institution ... and the proof of its narrowness is that it in 8 years it has not attracted maintainers. Nor has it attracted readers: in Jan–Feb 2019 it had an average of only 9 pageviews per day, which little over half the abysmal median of 15 views per day for all portals, and less than 2% of the 516 daily views for the head article British Library.

Maybe someday someone will build and maintain a portal on this topic which actually adds value for readers. But if so, they will do better to start afresh, rather than building on these 8-year-old content forks ... and in the meantime it's unfair to readers to lure them to this abandoned page.

So I propose that this portal and its sub-pages be deleted per WP:TNT, without prejudice to recreating a curated portal in accordance with whatever criteria the community may have agreed at that time. Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:17, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - The subject of this portal is a greater archive of knowledge than Wikipedia. To make a use-mention distinction, that means that scholars need the British Library, but they and we do not need Portal:British Library.  I concur with the analysis by BHG.  Robert McClenon (talk) 00:53, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - Abandoned draft of a portal, 32  subpages, created 2011-05-11 18:16:42 by User:Rock drum. Never went alive (4 articles !). Nothing to keep. Portal:British Library. Pldx1 (talk) 13:08, 4 June 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.