Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Taoism

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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) 08:19, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Taoism


Static portal. Abandoned since 2014 changes by a confirmed sockpuppet, having previously been largely abandoned since 2008.

Created in December 2005‎ by, who last edited in early 2018.

It escaped the 2018 rush to automation. But the list of subpages at Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Taoism shows just a set of static pages, many of which were reworked in 2014 by, who has been indef-blocked ("AE") since June 2018 for sockpuppetry (see SPI)
 * Portal:Taoism/Featured article. Same topic (Chinese Taoist Association) since 2008
 * Portal:Taoism/Featured concept. Same topic (Wu wei) since AE's in edits 2014
 * Portal:Taoism/Featured deity. Same topic (Three Pure Ones) since 2008
 * Portal:Taoism/Featured person. Same topic (Laozi) since creation in 2005
 * Portal:Taoism/Featured picture. Same image (File:Changchun-Temple-Jiazi-Dian-0347.jpg) sice AE's edits in 2014
 * Portal:Taoism/Featured practice. Same topic (Taoist meditation) since AE's edits in 2014. It had previosuly been a linkfarm from 2008–2014
 * Portal:Taoism/Featured school. Same topic (Shangqing School) since AE's edits in 2014
 * Portal:Taoism/Featured scripture. Same topic (Daodejing/Tao Te Ching) sice 2008

WP:POG says that unless automated, the content selection should be updated monthly, or preferably weekly. Even on a monthly cycle, this pseudo-portal has missed over 60 consecutive updates, and over 150 updates in all.

In theory, this a broad topic. But in practice, it has not met the WP:POG requirement that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". In Jan–Feb 2019 it got only 28 pageviews per day, which is twice the median of 13 per day for all portals, but still well under 1% of the 3,264 daily views of the head article. And it has consistently failed to attract maintainers.

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 Taoism and its excellent sidebar navbox Template:Taoism.

Two newish features of the Wikimedia software means that the article and navbox 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 on e.g. Template:Taoism
 * 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 the article Taoism.

Similar features have been available since 2015 to users of Wikipedia's Android app.

That sets a high bar for any would-be-portal-builder to vault if they try to satisfy the WP:PORTAL principle that "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". It would take a lot of work to make a portal which genuinely offers more than the head article Taoism ith its navbox Taoism.

But maybe someone will find a way to make such a better portal, and a team of editors to maintain it ... 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) 18:43, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - I concur with the analysis by User:BrownHairedGirl and thank her for the metrics. Students of intellectual history will be interested that Lao Tzu is winning, at least among this mostly non-Asian audience, but that doesn't justify the portal.  Robert McClenon (talk) 21:16, 20 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete - Abandoned draft of a portal, 25 subpages, created 2005-12-04 05:37:32 by User:LatinoMuslim. Never went alive. Nothing to keep. Portal:Taoism. Pldx1 (talk) 15:00, 29 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.