Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:IndyCar

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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) 04:22, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Portal:IndyCar


Mini-portal abandoned since shorty after its creation in 2012 with abysmal readership, still showing 2012 results under the heading "Current World Championship standings". Redundant to the head article IndyCar and to a series of navboxes, including Template:IndyCar Series Seasons.

The portal was created in July 2012‎ by, who created the subpages within a week. Then he did 3 more edits later that year, and hasn't toucjed the portal thereafter. Since 2006, the lead of WP:POG has said that "Do not create a portal if you do not intend to assist in its regular maintenance" ... but that didn't happen here, and 7 years later nobody has filled the gap.

Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:IndyCar shows a modest set of subpages:
 * Portal:IndyCar/Selected picture/1, /2, /3 and /4: all unchanged since Harrias created them in July 2012
 * Portal:IndyCar/Selected article/1, /2 and /3: all unchanged since Harrias created them in July 2012
 * Portal:IndyCar/Did you know/1, /2 and /3: all unchanged (apart from formatting) since Harrias created them in July 2012. . 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 seven-your-old list loses the newness, so its only effect is as a trivia section.
 * Portal:IndyCar/Championship standings: only one formatting tweak since 2012, so still displaying 2012 results under the heading "current".

WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". But in this portal has been unmaintained for 7 years, and it has been almost readerless. In January–June 2019, the portal averaged only 5 pageviews per day, which is barely above the background noise of editors poking around. By contrast the head article averaged 343 view per day in the same period.

Per WP:PORTAL, "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". But just as the Wikipedia main page requires huge amounts of work (it is maintained by several large teams of busy editors), a mini-mainpage also needs lot of ongoing work if it is going to add value over the head article. This one has had no work, so it is massively less useful in every respect than the head article IndyCar and its navboxes including Template:IndyCar Series Seasons.

Two newish features of the Wikimedia software means that the article and navboxes offers 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:IndyCar Series Seasons, 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 Indycar, 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.

Those new technologies set a high bar for any portal which actually tries to add value for the reader. But this portals fails the basic requirements even of the guidelines written before the new technologies changed the game. Time to delete it. Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:41, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete fully endorse this. Portals serve no practical purpose. As mentioned, this is well out of date, making it even less useful. Harrias  talk 21:09, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete Topic is too narrow. Can be completely covered at Portal:Sports. UnitedStatesian (talk) 21:51, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete as per analysis by BHG and by portal originator. Will someone please check the weather in Tierra del Fuego?  Robert McClenon (talk) 23:43, 10 July 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.