Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Cape Cod and the Islands

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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. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 02:39, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Cape Cod and the Islands

 * – (View MfD)

Neglected portal. I'm aware that WP:POG was found to not, in fact, be a legitimate guideline, so I'll instead address this scenario-by-scenario.
 * Average daily pageviews in the first half of 2019 are 15 for the portal versus 973 for Cape Cod (1.54%), 1537 for Martha's Vineyard (.976%), and 1067 for Nantucket (1.406%).
 * The portal was created in early 2009 by the only maintainer,, who sporadically edited the portal and its subpages throughout 2010 up until early 2013. They've since received an indefinite global ban by the WMF for undisclosed reasons, and no other editors have actually done any "continued" maintenance to the portal.
 * Selected articles are rather old; there are only thirteen, with only /4 being updated in late May 2013, and the rest updated in early March 2011. (This only includes edits that are 100% manual.)
 * Selected biographies are also rather old; only /11 was fixed to a transclusion in mid-2018, while the rest were last updated in March and April 2011; all edits past then are routine maintenance.
 * Did-you-knows are yet also rather old. The newest DYK nomination on the list appeared in February 2013 (the oldest was in November 2005), some DYKs have next-to-no relation to the subject matter as a whole (Harrison Thyng and Dave Morey), some DYKs have information that cannot be verified, and every single one is over six years old, basically constituting WP:TRIVIA.
 * WikiProject Cape Cod and the Islands has been marked as inactive for two years; and this specific portal is never mentioned anywhere on the WikiProject's talk page or its archives, showing lack of interest even back then.

So yeah, basically what said here applies to this scenario as well:

Like most portals, this one uses a failed design concept, trying to create a magazine-style page by displaying article excerpts. But whether this is done by automated transclusion or by content forks, this model is now irrelevant, because for the last few years the Wikimedia software has offered to non-logged-in readers (i.e. the people for whom we create Wikipedia) automatic previews of any link simply holding the mouse pointer over the link. Similar functionality has been available since 2015 to users of the Android app).  This works on any set of links, so try it by right-clicking on this link to Template:Statistics, 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.

Far from adding value, as portals are supposed to do, this one therefore does a significantly worse job of navigation and showcasing than the head article and its navboxes ... because on those pages, the preview is available for each of a whole set of pages, rather than just for one item at time chosen at random from a tiny list which is not displayed in full and whose selection criteria are undisclosed. The "Refresh with new selections below" model of choosing new content is a massive usability fail: it is a counter-intuitive, cumbersome blind-date way of selecting from an undisclosed list of articles.

Time to delete this already. ToThAc (talk) 19:08, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * 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 an AWB setup which allows me to easily replace them with links to the next most specific portal(s) (in this case Portal:Massachusetts), without creating duplicate entries. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 20:13, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete as per analysis by User:ToThAc. Portal: Cape Cod and the Islands was originated in 2009 by an editor who was banned in 2016.   *Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Cape_Cod_and_the_Islands shows 11 biographies,13 articles, 25 pictures, 7 DYKs, a lot of confusing redirects, and other subpages.  The articles and biographies were content-forked between 2009 and 2010.  The connections between the biographies and Cape Cod is sometimes obscure.  Biography 4 is Joseph Biden, whose relation to Cape Cod is not specified, and who is described as Vice-president of the United States.  (Well, Cape Cod is part of the United States.)  Biography 9 is Paul McCartney (who in his long career probably did perform on Cape Cod, but it doesn't say when).  Most of the articles have had cosmetic changes, but the Biden article illustrates the hazard of content forks.
 * 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.
 * Not enough viewing, and no maintenance. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:33, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per nominator. This is yet another long-abandoned portal, with a bunch of decade-old content forks, and decade-plus-old DYKs, some of them fake.
 * None of this should be any surprise. The last 6 months of portal MFDs have repeatedly shown that sub-national division very rarely attract enough readers or maintainers to avoid decay.  17 portals on US states have already been deleted because they were abandoned or neglected. But this is not a sub-national division  even a sub-sub-national division; it's an informal sub-sub-national division, consisting of Barnstable County plus islands in other counties.
 * It doesn't even have a standalone head article.  is just a redirect to a few paragraphs at Cape Cod.
 * The whole flawed idea of creating a portal for this narrow topic appears to be simply and personal hobbyhorse of the portals's now indef-global-banned creator, who also created the associated WP:WikiProject Cape Cod and the Islands. That project has been tagged as inactive since 2013, and the last discussion in its talk page was in August 2013.
 * This whole saga of failed portal + failed project demonstrates yet again that there should be some sort pre-creation scrutiny process for portals. This portal has been rotting for a decade because it should never have been created in the first place. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 22:53, 2 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. I agree with BHG there should be some sort of pre-creation scrutiny for these things. -Crossroads- (talk) 05:16, 3 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.