Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Number theory

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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. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 00:24, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Number theory


Abandoned mini-portal.

Created in April 2008‎ by, whose last edit was in 2017, and whose last edit to this portal was in August 2008. The lead of WP:POG has said since 2006 "Do not create a portal if you do not intend to assist in its regular maintenance", and this one has not been maintained.

Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Number theory shows only 6 subpages with content:
 * Portal:Number theory/Did you know is a just a collection of factoids, with no connection to WP:DYK. It's just a trivia section, contrary to WP:DYK and WP:TRIVIA.
 * Five selected article pages: Portal:Number theory/Selected article/1, /2, /3, /4 and /5. All were created in April 2008‎ by Cenarium, and there have been no topic changes since.
 * Portal:Number theory/Topics, a list of only 21 topics, compared with 29 in the navbox Template:Number theory.

WP:POG requires that portals be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers"'. This one has attracted no maintainers, and while it's 23 daily pgeviews in Jan–Feb 2019, which is 2½ times the abysmal median of 13 for all portals, but still onlt yy% of the 1093 daily views for the head article Number theory.

Per WP:PORTAL, "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". But this is massively less useful in every respect than the head article Number theory and its navbox Template:Number theory.

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:Number theory, 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 Number theory, 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.

So this portal is just complex way to give the reader an outdated excerpt of the lead of one article outa possible 6 ... when previews of  a much wider set are built into the head article.

Maybe someday someone will build and maintain a portal which actually adds value for readers. But if so, they will do better to start afresh, rather than building on these 11-year-old content forks.

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) 23:59, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I've corrected some editorial errors in the nom. DexDor(talk) 19:56, 26 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete - Concur with the analysis by BHG. Number theory is a very slowly evolving field, so that it doesn't change very often, but that makes it more important that the portal reflect any actual events such as the proof of theorems.  The nature of the discipline changes the need for maintenance, but does not eliminate it.  Robert McClenon (talk) 00:51, 26 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete - Abandoned draft of a portal, 19 subpages, created 2008-04-11 21:18:25 by User:Cenarium. Never went alive. Nothing to keep. Portal:Number theory. Pldx1 (talk) 13:06, 26 May 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.