Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Weapons of mass destruction

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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) 12:18, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Weapons of mass destruction


Long abandoned micro-portal.

Created in November 2006‎ by, whose last contrib to en.wp was in early 2019, but whose last edit to this portal was on 13 November 2006 2006, 8 days after he created it.

Since Liam moved on to other interests, there seems to have no other significant edits to any part of the portal:
 * Portal:Weapons of mass destruction/Selected article displays the same topic (Chemical warfare) as when created on 5 November 2006
 * Portal:Weapons of mass destruction/Selected biography displays the same topic (J. Robert Oppenheimer) as when created on 5 November 2006
 * Portal:Weapons of mass destruction/Weapons of mass destruction news displays the same topic (2006 North Korean nuclear test) as when created on 5 November 2006
 * Portal:Weapons of mass destruction/Did you know carries the same two items as on 7 November 2006. . 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 thirteen-year-old list loses the newness, so its only effect is as a trivia section.

The lead of WP:POG says "Portals which require manual updating are at a greater risk of nomination for deletion if they are not kept up to date. Do not expect other editors to maintain a portal you create" ... and this one has not been maintained or updated.

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 Weapon of mass destruction and its sidebar navbox Template:Weapons of mass destruction.

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:Weapons of mass destruction, 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 Weapon of mass destruction, 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:
 * 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 this portals has been unmaintained for thirteen years, and it has abysmal page views. In Jan–Feb 2019 it got an average of only 21 pageviews per day, barely more than the abysmal median for all portals of 16 views/day and a mere  3.2% of the 643 daily views for the head article.

Time to just delete it. Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:11, 8 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete with conventional weapons. Neither silver bullets nor weapons of mass destruction are needed.  As analyzed by BHG.  This portal has related portals listed, so a comparison is provided:

Robert McClenon (talk) 15:54, 9 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete - few redeeming qualities. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 10:26, 14 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.