Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Serer portals

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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) 08:16, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Serer portals


Two mini-portals, abandoned since creation. Redundant to the head articles Serer people and Serer religion, and to the navbox Template:Serer topics and the sidebar Template:Serer religion.

I have nominated these two portals together, because the two topics are v closely linked, and my initial thought was that they could be merged. However, analysis shows that their scope is already much better served by the head articles.

Both portals were created by : Portal:Serer people was created in November 2011‎, and Portal:Serer religion in August 2015‎. Each portal remains substantially unchanged since shortly after creation. The lead of WP:POG has said since late 2006 "Do not create a portal if you do not intend to assist in its regular maintenance", but that has not happened here.

WP:POG guides that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". But in this case, he maintenance has been minimal, and both portals receive pitiful pageviews. In Jan–Feb 2019, Portal:Serer people received only 8 pageviews per day and Portal:Serer religion received only 6 pageviews per day. That's only half the abysmal median of 14 dailly pageviews for all portals in the same period. By contrast, the head aricles got way more views: 119/day for Serer religion, and 120/day for Serer people.

The lists of sub-pages are slim:
 * 1) Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Serer people shows:
 * 2) * 4 selected articles and 4 selected biogs, but Portal:Serer people/Selected biography/3 and /4 are both blank, so there are really only 6 pages.
 * 3) * Portal:Serer people/Did you know has had no new additions since 2012. None of the items appear related to WP:DYK, and even if they were DYKs, they still shouldn't be displayed. 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 7-year-old list loses the newness, so its only effect is as a trivia section, contrary to WP:TRIVIA.
 * 4) Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Serer religion shows:
 * 5) * 4 Selected articles, 3 Selected biographies, and 1 Selected Pangool. That 8 pages in all, in each case with topics unchanged since creation in 2015.
 * 6) * Portal:Serer religion/Did you know again appears to be a trivia section unrelated to WP:DYK. It has been changed since its 2015 creation only by the removal in 2019 of an ifobox which bizarrely found its way in there.

Discarding the two trivia collections in the DYK pages, that leaves 6 selected pages in Portal:Serer people plus 8 in Portal:Serer religion. That's a total of only 14 articles, locked in series where a different item can be viewed only by purging the portal page. By contrast the navbox Template:Serer topics and the sidebar Template:Serer religion show between them a total of 95 unique articles, with all titles viewable together and with built-in previews.

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 articles and the navboxes.

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 the link to navbox Template:Serer topics or to the sidebar Template:Serer religion, 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 either of these this link to the articles Sere people and Serer religion, then 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 someday someone will build and maintain a portal on Serer topics which actually adds value for readers. But if so, they will do better to start afresh, rather than building on these old and redundant content forks ... and in the meantime it is unfair on our readers to lure them to a pair of portals which never really got off the ground and which have been completely outstripped by new technologies.

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) 06:30, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - I concur with the analysis by BHG. Pageview statistics are summarized here:

Merging the two portals into 1 will still only result in 14 daily pageviews, which is far less than what will justify the human time required to support a miniature Main Page. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:54, 3 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete - As per nominators rationale on both portals. BneiBrakPhone (talk) 12:22, 3 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete
 * - Abandoned draft of a portal, 37  subpages, created 2011-11-14 01:09:17 by User:Tamsier. Never went alive (4+2). Nothing to keep. Portal:Serer people
 * - Abandoned draft of a portal, 26  subpages, created 2015-08-07 17:35:44 by User:Tamsier. Never went alive. Nothing to keep. Portal:Serer religion
 * Pldx1 (talk) 14:11, 4 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.