Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Istanbul

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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. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:33, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Istanbul


Mini-portal on the Turkish city of Istanbul, almost unread. It was created in early 2009 by a disruptive sockpuppet, and has been abandoned late 2009 apart from one sub-page being added in 2012. Redundant to the FA-class head article Istanbul.

WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". This is arguably a "broad subject area", because the population of the Istanbul metropolitan area is about 15 million people ... but it clearly fails the other two tests:
 * 1) No maintenance. See below for details.
 * 2) Low pageviews: the portal has consistently had low single-digit pageviews.  Readers consistently prefer the head article by a ratio of over 4,000:1 1500:1, which is the highest ratio I have ever seen for a portal

The portal was created in January 2009‎ by, who had for blocks for disruption and edit-warring before being indef-blocked in December 2009 as sockpuppet. (See block log). TF did a further 65 edits the portal over the course of 2009, but after TF was blocked no other maintainer appeared.

Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Istanbul shows a modest set of sub-pages, including:
 * Portal:Istanbul/Did you know/1, which is the only DYK page. It was created in January 2012, and  carries an impressively large collection of 57 DYK items, which do appear to be genuinely sourced from scrutinised process at WP:DYK. (Many other portals' DYK sections are just unsourced  and unscrutinised trivia which usurp the good name of WP:DYK).  However, . 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 these items date from 2004 to 2012. This seven-to-fifteen-year-old list loses the newness, so its only effect is as a trivia section, contrary to WP:TRIVIA.
 * Portal:Istanbul/In the news, whose content is in Portal:Istanbul/In the news/Wikinews ... which was bot-updated, but the last update was in December 2017‎. That's probably a trivial job to fix, but the lack of even that trivial fix illustrates the portal's abandonment.
 * Portal:Istanbul/Selected biography/1, /2, /3, /4, /5 and /6. All were created in January 2009‎ by, and none has had any non-trivila edit since then. Four of them (/2, /3, /4, /5) are BLPs, which are wildly outdated.
 * There are four "selected article" sub-pages. Portal:Istanbul/Selected article/1 and /3 have had no edits since TF created them in Jan/Feb 2009. The other two have only minor drive-by tweaks.
 * Portal:Istanbul/Things you can do, created in 2009‎ by and with only two trivial edits since then.  It would be better renamed to Portal:Istanbul/Things you could have done ten years ago
 * Portal:Istanbul/Selected quote/1 and /2, both unsourced creations by TF in early 2009, and unedited since then.
 * There are also 5 panoramas and ten pictures, which I have not examined, but they add no value

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 any of this links to Istanbul, open in a private/incognito tab, and mouseover any link. Or try it only on any link in the head article Istanbul.
 * 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 Istanbul, open in a private/incognito tab, and click on any image to start the slideshow of 70 images.  It's a vastly better image gallery than the portal.

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. Whatever potential value it might have had it 2008, it is now a failed solution to a non-problem. Time to delete it. Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:38, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per the thorough and highly detailed investigation of the portal by the nominator,  Brown HairedGirl . Portals stand or fall on their merits in the now, not what could someday hypothetically happen with them, and this one falls flat. It's just a useless time suck that lures readers to abandoned junk. I am strongly against allowing recreation, as a decade of hard evidence shows Istanbul is not a broad enough topic under WP:POG to attract readers or maintainers. Newshunter12 (talk) 20:42, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I also oppose allowing re-creation, for the same reasons. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 21:28, 16 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete, concurring with the analysis by User:BrownHairedGirl. Changing the metric baseline for a portal that has almost no viewers just confirms further that the portal has almost no viewers.  Another portal by a banned editor.  As Portal:Moscow and Portal:Beijing have shown, the great cities of the world are better travel destinations than portal destinations.  Changing the design of a portal that no one views just changes what isn't being seen.  Just delete it.  Robert McClenon (talk) 02:30, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete cities don't need a portal.Catfurball (talk) 16:14, 17 August 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.