Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Discworld

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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 | [prattle] || 23:54, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Discworld

 * – (View MfD)

Abysmal portal. Time to just delete this. ToThAc (talk) 19:23, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Average daily pageviews in the first half of 2019 are 11 for the portal versus 2850 for the parent article, or .386%.
 * Selected articles were nearly all added within a span of four hours in early April 2007 (with the exception of the last one, which was added two days later), and were never updated outside of basic routine maintenance. Selected books and characters are mostly the same.
 * DYKs are all fake, and none were ever part of the scrutinized DYK process. That's not to mention that there are only five.
 * Created in April 2007 by and only maintained for a few hours. There have been no other maintainers.
 * Delete per nom. This is also too far on the narrow side of topics to be covered by a portal. bd2412  T 19:50, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - Portal DYKs have almost never been scrutinized by any process. The whole purpose of portal DYKs is almost always to maintain a general trivia section, thus evading general Wikipedia policy about trivia sections.  So?  So what else is new?  Robert McClenon (talk) 23:46, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - This is a fanfiction portal, a portal maintained by fans of a particular fictional universe. Fans should be entitled to their fun, but Wikipedia is not a web host.
 * 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.
 * There doesn't appear to be non-canon fan additions on the portal. That is neither a reason to keep nor a reason to delete.
 * Low readership, not much maintenance. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:46, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete as fancruft per above and per the fact that there is no good reason to keep such a portal as this. Low page views and the condition it is in mean zero value is added by such a portal. There is no policy or guideline which suggests this portal should exist. 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 long-term maintenance will ever materialize anyway, even if promised at the last minute just to stave off deletion. 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, since they go out of date, preserve potentially inferior versions of article content, add pointlessly to the maintenance burden, and are vandalism magnets; therefore they should not be saved. I support replacement or removal of links rather than redirection, to avoid surprising our readers. -Crossroads- (talk) 03:36, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per the delete-!votes above. Fictional universe works of one author is far too narrow a topic to make a viable portal, which is why this one has just rotted for over a decade.  AS others have noted, this is just fancruft ... and worse still, it's neglected, rotted fancruft. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 14:14, 9 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. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 14:15, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment. I also support the above suggestion re removing the backlinks. Britishfinance (talk) 23:32, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

The portals which have been kept at MFD are on very broad topics, usually with over an article count numbered in the tens of thousands, and with an active WikiProject actively supporting the portal. By contrast, Category:Discworld+subcats contains a total of only 401 articles. I just used WP:AWB to check them, and 275 of the 401 are redirects, and only 32 of those 401 have been assessed as better than start-class (i.e. class=A, B, C, FA, GA, or List). That is a tiny set, which would barely make a modest navbox; and WP:WikiProject Discworld was tagged as "defunct" in 2014, and is currently tagged as "inactive". -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 16:46, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment 1: what do you mean "DYKs are all fake"? They are information from within a fictional universe, so they are fiction. "Fake" seems misleading. 15:56, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment 2: can someone point me at an example of a "maintenance plan" for another portal? Tom pw (talk) 15:56, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose: (1) "broad subject area" The topic fulfils the "broad subject area" criteria, as indicated by the number of articles within the scope. (2) Number of viewers: viewership is not the same thing as usefulness. (3) maintenance - this portal is about a highly-successful book series with various media spin-offs. However, the book series is static (because the author died), meaning it doesn't require the same level of maintenance as something involving a more-rapidly evolving topic. A portal about a static subject isn't going to change much. Tom pw (talk) 15:56, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * a few notes:
 * it's a pity that your !vote chose to ignore the convention that the when the creator of page comments at XFD, they should disclose their role by noting "as creator" beside their bolded !vote. You created this portal, and should have disclosed that.
 * the entries in Portal:Discworld/Did you know are all fakes, because they are not products of the scrutinised process at WP:Did you know. the pages says "The DYK section showcases new or expanded articles that are selected through an informal review process. It is not a general trivia section" ... but the contents of Portal:Discworld/Did you know do not relate to new or expanded articles, and they have not been through DYK's informal review process.  They are simply unsourced and unchecked factoids which usurp the good name of WP:DYK: in other words, pure WP:TRIVIA.
 * In the last 6 month, MFD discussions have scrutinised over 900 portals, and repeatedly found that only very broad topics attract enough readers and maintainers to make a viable portal. Very few sub-national region portals have survived, and many country portals have also failed. Portals on individual people have all failed, including Shakespeare, Jesus, Muhamad, Shakespeare, Bob Dylan. The sub-topics of mathematics have all failed, as have huge numbers of sports portals, and most religion portals (including e.g. Anglicanism, Buddhism).
 * PS At WT:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Discworld I have listed all the articles in Category:Discworld+subcats:
 * 32 Discworld articles: class= A, B, C, FA, GA, or LIST
 * 275 Discworld article-space redirects
 * 96 Discworld articles: NOT redirects, and NOT assessed as class = A, B, C, FA, GA, or LIST
 * I hope this helps to demonstrate how Discworld is actually a tiny, narrow topic. Only 128 actual articles, and only 32 of those assessed as being of even the minimum quality to be included in a portal. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:12, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * User:BrownHairedGirl - thank-you for the comprehensive explanation. I was unaware of point #1, otherwise I would have been sure to disclose. Tom pw (talk) 18:48, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * User:BrownHairedGirl - In American English, it could be said that you are preaching to the choir. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:24, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * @Robert, I am not so sure that is chorally-inclined.  --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 19:39, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * User:BrownHairedGirl I didn't say that User:Tompw was in the choir. They are probably on Discworld, not in the United States or Ireland.  It means that you are preaching to those who are already in your church.  You are preaching to me and to Mark S and to NH12 and to ToThAc, but we are already in your church.  Maybe that is what you meant.  Robert McClenon (talk) 20:53, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I know, Robert. You and Mark S and Crossroads and ToThAc are broadly on the same page as me.
 * But I was replying to Tom, who clearly hasn't gotten to the same place. Tom created this portal years ago, doesn't seem to have touched it since, and seems unaware of all the discussions that have taken place over the last 7 months. So it seems only courteous to explain some of the issues which led to the deletion of so many portals. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 21:05, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * FYI, I am highly chorally-inclined. But that's a horse of a different colour. Tom pw (talk) 18:48, 17 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete. Way too narrow a topic (doesn't add anything above the existing navbox on the topic).  Effectively abandoned and unsupported by any WP editor (and thus also violating the dynamic purpose of Portals over and above the main articles+navbox).  Unread by the public, which is consistent with its lack of usefulness.  Britishfinance (talk) 23:29, 9 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.