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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. Consensus is that "copious documentation of a very narrow topic: the career of one musician/actor" (wording from BHG) is not sufficient to meet WP:POG. In other words, the existence of lots of articles about a narrow topic does not make it a broad topic, it makes it a comprehensively covered narrow topic. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:03, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Beyoncé

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Portal:Beyoncé (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
(Time stamp for bot to properly relist.) ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:59, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Single performer bio portal same as Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Brandy Norwood. Article does a better job. This was restarted in September as an automated portal evidently because it was not being maintained. No reason to believe the restarter will maintain this page (and yes automated portals need maintaining). Legacypac (talk) 17:02, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sure it is - it was not maintained before and the editors that restarted it have shown they can"t and will not maintain portals they create. So who? Legacypac (talk) 05:41, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Check the history - it has had plenty of edits. SportingFlyer T·C 05:48, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep – Meets WP:POG. Expandable from the pre-automated version, and I already expanded it a bit with some of this content, including the re-addition of the Recognized content and Related portals sections. More can be done. North America1000 08:36, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Northamerica1000 & @SportingFlyer: no, this does not meet WP:POG. POG requires that portals be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". In this case Beyoncé is not even in the top 10,000 topics: it is level-5 vital article, the lowest tier of VA, for topics ranked 10,001–50,000 in importance. It's very clear that the community does not want even 5,000 portals. let alone 10,001–50,000.
And it also fails the second part that principle: it doesn't "attract large numbers of interested readers". See the Jan–Mar 2019 pageviews: only 12/day for the portal, vs 13,869/day for the head article. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:29, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@BrownHairedGirl: Beyoncé is a "broad subject area." The importance is a red herring - the question is whether the topic is broad enough in scope to have enough content to justify a portal. I've seen 20 articles quoted several places, which this clearly meets. Even your "even 5,000 portals" claim is pointed against portals. What is clear to me is the community does not want a large number of portals created in bulk, and there's not much consensus around anything else. SportingFlyer T·C 18:52, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@SportingFlyer, of course it is pointed against portals, because the evidence points against portals in all but a very few cases. You claim that the question is whether the topic is broad enough in scope to have enough content to justify a portal, but that's only one of the tests. 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 the overwhelming majority are unmaintained and barely used. I'm sorry that a long-standing guidance backed up by hard data looks to you like some sort of bias, but the numbers are clear: readers don't need and don't use this portal. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:09, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
PS The "broad subject area" claim is bizarre. The topic is the life and works of one sole musician, which is very narrow, The fact that en.wp editors have covered that topic in copious detail does not make bit anything other than a narrow topic; it just makes it a copiously-documented narrow topic. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:17, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@BrownHairedGirl: Let's cut to the chase here - my definition of passing WP:POG is 20 or more articles to sustain a topic, based off the current guidelines, which Beyoncé clearly passes. What's your definition of "narrow?" Basically all these arguments are WP:USELESS, but that is not what the community has said recently about portals. SportingFlyer T·C 19:20, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@SportingFlyer, OK, I'll cut to the chase too. Your personal criterion of 20 pages is no part of POG. Its simply a WP:ILIKEIT test, and arguments based on it should be discarded by the closer.
Meanwhile, "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers" is part of POG, and I have shown you hard data by which we can measure it.
So the policy issues are very clear. The remaining question is what on earth drives you to defend a navigational device which readers do not want, is contrary to long-standing guidance, and do so in the midst of huge ongoing drama? Whats this really about? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:28, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@BrownHairedGirl: There are two separate issues here - whether portals should remain, and if so, which portals should remain. This is not a discussion of "whether" but rather a discussion of "which." This is a topic which is broad enough to attract readers and portal maintainers. That it has not done so is not relevant to whether it should be kept, and respectfully, unlike say WP:GNG which at least provides something tangible for us to argue over at AfD, whether something is a "broad subject area" is currently being decided case-by-case with differing results based on participation. "Personal criteria" aside, the "20 pages" has been quoted in other MfDs. I'm too lazy to sort through them now, but it's not a number I arbitrarily picked. SportingFlyer T·C 01:36, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, @SportingFlyer, this is a discussion of which portals should remain. And that's why I have supplied evidence-backed, guideline-based reasons to delete this portal. It's a pity that you seem unwilling to acknowledge that the hard data is on the table.
As to the minimum of 20, it is proposal which has been advanced by some of the portal fans, and even written unilaterally by them into the guidelines occasionally, only to be reverted. It has never had broad consensus support. I for one consider it to be insanely, risibly low; the minimum should be at least one order of magnitude higher, preferably two orders. For smaller numbers, navboxes and series of navboxes do a much better job (see e.g. the series under Category:Ireland constituency navigational boxes, which I built; or the series by nth Parliament at Category:United Kingdom by-election templates, which I had some hand in.
Also note that a minimum is not a mandate. Similar rough thresholds apply in several other contexts, but again not as a mandate. For example, WP:SMALLCAT has an informal but commonly accepted threshold of 5 pages, but that is not take as a license to chop up a 60-page category into a dozen morsels. WP:DYK has a rigid minimum size which again is not a mandate; longer articles can be rejected.
What you may have seen at MFD is me and some other editors citing that claimed minimum when seeking deletion of portals with even narrower scope, making the point that the portal doesn't even meet that absurdly low minimum. See e.g. MFD:Portal:Industry, California. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:35, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I disagree with the "absurdly low minimum." There's no bright line test, and a review of Beyoncé's content on the site shows the topic broad enough to maintain a portal on. The "hard data" only shows it's not currently being used much, but to me the "hard data" is a "whether" argument, not a "which" argument. There's nothing else on the site I'm aware of we delete because it's not being used, apart from, perhaps, abandoned drafts. SportingFlyer T·C 04:22, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Could use more and more detailed input
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:59, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – Per the relisting comment requesting more detailed input, which is most appreciated, below is the category tree and Recognized content for Beyoncé (in collapsed form), which includes featured articles and lists and a plethora of good articles. Per content available about the subject, and the significant amount of high-quality content, the subject passes WP:POG to qualify for a portal.
Beyoncé Recognized content
Featured articles
Featured lists
Good articles
Main page featured articles
Good topics
– North America1000 03:10, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Continued discussion
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Mostly offtopic; there is literally nothing to be gained from rehashing these arguments/attacks ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:06, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • Well, those that opine for deletion of portals should take steps such as this to ensure that red links aren't interspersed everywhere afterward. I do so all the time, such as after an AfD discussion has resulted in deletion. It seems that those that !vote a lot to delete may not bother to actually do so, with a potential premise that since deletion can correlate with not caring about the content, there is then therefore no need to spend more time on the content. In this manner, such inaction can then be used to qualify for the deletion of other content; a vicious circle of sorts. A portal listed twice, well, sometimes minor errors occur, but I don't see that as a qualifier for deletion of an entire portal. That would be like deleting an entire article just because it was WP:OVERLINKed. North America1000 04:51, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
        • That is the most ridiculous thing I have read in a long time. You geniuses on the WP:WikiProject Portals team ENSURED these portals would be impossible to maintain, as all the links to portals are via templates and so CAN'T be removed using Twinkle or any other related automated tools (like we do after an AfD). And none of you stopped to think "wow, maybe we should see if the community is cool with everything we are doing" before the thousands of portals were created (or, for that matter, just read the guideline). Don't blame the deletion nominators for the mess YOU created in the first place. UnitedStatesian (talk) 05:04, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
          • I had no involvement in the coding of the auto-portal templates, nor did the entire project at all. Makes no sense to blame an entire project for the actions of the one or two who worked on the templates. My overall participation in the project has actually been rather minimal, and actually, I resigned from the project because of concerns in the direction it was going. So, one user created thousands of portals, and yet the whole project is to blame? Were project members supposed to constantly monitor the creator of all those portals, like nannies? Other participants are likely just people that signed up out of general, basic interest, just like me. I'm a member of many projects, but I don't constantly monitor them all. Blaming an entire project for the actions of one is rather ridiculous, no? Anyway, if I think about other reasons to consider regarding this portal, such as how it can be easily reverted to its non-automated version in a simple few clicks, then I'll consider posting more. North America1000 08:41, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
            • A big problem with automatically including content from elsewhere into a portal it was not designed for is that weird stuff gets in and/or breaks the portal. Non-vandal good edits at the source can mess up the portal in unexpected ways. You can watchlist the portal all you want but you have to visit it regularly to check for automatic errors that don't show up as watchlist edits. No ome on Team Portalspam thought this through. They were not even checking creations as the errors from day one show. If we wanted to read bot creations there are lots of really low traffic sites out there to visit. Legacypac (talk) 05:18, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – The notion of some sort of "required" maintainer goes squarely against the grain of WP:NOTCOMPULSORY, part of the WP:NOT policy page, where it states, "Wikipedia is a volunteer community and does not require the Wikipedians to give any more time and effort than they wish. Focus on improving the encyclopedia itself, rather than demanding more from other Wikipedians." There certainly is no requirement for "maintainers" that edit in other namespaces. MfD is not cleanup. North America1000 11:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - If this portal is not maintained, then only worth to be deleted. Pldx1 (talk) 12:21, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - By WP:POG portals should be panes for a vast content. Portals for single biographies fail in WP:POG. The vast majority of portals do not receive actual content for years, in this case about five years. Fan-created, after abandoned, do not arouse community interest. Single biography portals are very distant from the main page according to Portals tree, 679 pageviews (30 days) for Portal:Beyoncé compared to 369,117 pageviews (30 days) for Beyoncé also demonstrates that readers do not see much sense in exploring a narrow topic portal like single biography portal..Guilherme Burn (talk) 11:30, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - While Beyonce is quite a notable public figure, I don't think her article scope is enough to count as a broad topic area that requires a portal tão help navigate. Meszzy2 (talk) 18:27, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep sure, the scope is not broad, but I think we should keep portals which showcase a substantial amount of high quality content, as this one does. Hut 8.5 22:10, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hut 8.5, Who is the intended audience of this showcasing (readers? editors?). What would the showcasing be intended to achieve? DexDor (talk) 19:44, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't a place for general discussion of the merits or purpose of portals in general. Hut 8.5 20:10, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
So look at the specifics. It gets only 12 pageviews, which is 0.084% of the views of the head article. Readers do not want it your showcase. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:44, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
We don't decide to keep or delete things based on pageviews, except possibly when we're trying to decide whether a redirect is a plausible search term. The pageview figures you cite are far higher than the average article gets. Hut 8.5 11:35, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That response would carry a lot of weight if portals were content. But they are not content, just a navigational device. So the fact that readers don't want and don't use this navigational device is good evidence that it is a superfluous navigation tool. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:06, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Portal 804 page views Article 372,601 page views in 30 days. The portal is getting extra traffic from the clean up. Who are we fooling when we think we are showcasing anything? 800 pages views is dismil for a page linked off a page with 372,000 visitors, plus all the other places this portal is linked from. Legacypac (talk) 20:06, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Clearly, Beyoncé's highly successful career in both music and film has attracted a lot of covergae on Wikipedia. We not only have a few lots of articles which pass WP:GNG, but 6 FA-Class articles and 107 GA-Class articles and 2 featured list].
However, WP:POG requires that portals be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers".
This is clearly not a "broad subject area". On the contrary, it is copious documentation of a very narrow topic: the career of one musician/actor. This reflects Wikipedia's systemic bias towards popular culture, and while it's great that editors have done such a fine job of containing the topic, the depth of coverage does not alter its narrowness. We have articles on tens of thousands of notable, living musicians, but this topic is about just one of them.
Note the second part of that POG intro: "likely to attract large numbers of interested readers". We have hard data on that, from pageviews. The data below is for January–March 2019:
Page Total pageviews Pageviews per day
Beyoncé 1,248,166 13,869
Portal:Beyoncé 1053 12
That amounts to 1,185 views of the head article for every view of the portal. Or to put it the other way round, the portal gets 0.084% of the page views of the head article.
The figures for Jan-Mar 2018 are similar: the portal got only 12 pageviews per day
It's not hard to see what is happening here. The head article does an excellent job as a navigation hub, and the navbox cross-links the articles. Readers simply don't need to look for the articles.
It is not hard to see why portals such as this are so little used.
  1. Wikipedia pages are so heavily interlinked that even a modestly well-written head article on a topic is of itself a portal. This isn't like the mid-1990s web, when web pages were mostly plain text with a few links at the top and the bottom; rich interlinking is now the norm, and portals are redundant.
  2. Search. As web analysts such as Jakob Nielsen noted as early as 1998, good search killed navigation, because users found it much easier to search than to navigate a website's menu structures. That's why search suddenly became de rigeur on web sites, and why the major web portals such as Yahoo fell off a cliff. Readers simply don't need portals any more; they are like road atlases in the era of satnav.
It's time to stop luring editors into fettling a type of page whose heyday was over before Wikipedia was even created. Most of these portals are simply redundant forks of the head article, which offer much less navigational utility than the head article. And just look again at that pageview data: readers do not want then.--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:37, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete:
  1. Portals are for "broad subject areas". Beyonce isn't a broad subject, she's an individual person.
  2. This particular portal is for the most part a fork of the head article, making it redundant.
  3. Furthermore, pageview statistics show most people who want to find out about Beyonce simply go to her article.
Therefore, delete as it falls outside portal scope. SITH (talk) 11:59, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Portals about individual people are of very doubtful usefulness because the obvious place that anyone is going to start navigating the topic is the article about that person, which in this case has numerous attached navboxes and categories to aid that navigation. --RL0919 (talk) 20:03, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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.


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