Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Popes

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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) 04:58, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Popes


Mini-portal abandoned since 2007. Redundant to the head article Pope and its navbox Template:Popes.

Created in June 2007‎ by, who last edited in 2010. The lead of WP:POG says "Do not create a portal if you do not intend to assist in its regular maintenance", and that has not happened here.

The subpages were all created in 2007. No new content sub-pages have been created since, and no topics have been changed. Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Popes shows a modest set:
 * Portal:Popes/Selected biography/1, /2, /3, /4, /5, /6, /7, /8. That's a set of 12-year-old content forks covering only 8 out of 264 pages.
 * Portal:Popes/Selected article/1, /2, /3, /4, /5, /6, /7, /8. Again, 12-year-old content forks, mostly on topics which belong in the broader Portal:Catholicism, e.g.  /2 is Sistine Chapel, /4 is First Crusade, /5 is Second Crusade.
 * Portal:Popes/Did you know is a set of unlinked bullet points, basically unchanged since 2011. It is nothing to do with WP:DYK; it's just an unsourced trivia section, contrary to WP:TRIVIA.

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 head article Pope and its navbox Template:Popes (plus a series of other navboxes on the same page, including Template:Papacy). Wikipedia has articles on all 264 popes, plus a navox to link them all ... so why on earth are we luring readers to waste their time on a pseudo-portal which links to only 8 of them?

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:Popes, 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 Pope, 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.

Maybe some day 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 12-year-old content forks on only 8 popes.

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) 03:04, 31 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom, redundant to the navbox. The only content which has been added is the quotes and DYKs, and they don't add much. Certainly some of the DYKs are not remotely interesting (Benedict XI followed Benedict X? Really?)  Hut 8.5  08:44, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
 * @Hut 8.5, read it more closely. There no Pope Benedict X; the DYK fact is that because Antipope Benedict X was so notorious, the regnal numbering skipped from IX to XI to avoid a legitimate Benedict being associated with him. &#8209; Iridescent 07:02, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete as per analysis by nominator, which is thorough. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:40, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete. Per nom. Britishfinance (talk) 16:57, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - Abandoned draft of a portal, 64 subpages, created 2007-06-07 16:57:09 by User:Bewareofdog. Never went alive. Nothing to keep. Portal:Popes. Pldx1 (talk) 21:45, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete. - A not notable page(s). Plenty of articles already, portal not needed.The Zeus is Ha-Zeus (talk) 23:11, 2 June 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.