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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. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:08, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Computer graphics

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Portal:Computer graphics (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Abandoned mini-portal on the topic of computer graphics.

Created[1] in June 2008‎ by Dhatfield (talk · contribs). 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: Dhatfield's last edit to this portal was in September 2008,[2] (only 3 months after the portal was created).

Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Computer graphics shows a modest collection of sub-pages:

  • only 8 selected pictures (there are 17 pictures in the head article computer graphics)
  • only 8 selected articles. The first five were created 2008. Portal:Computer graphics/Selected article/6 was created in 2013, and /7 and /8‎ were created in 2008, and merged from Portal:Computer-generated imagery
  • Portal:Computer graphics/Did you know contains the same 4 items as when the page was created in 2008.[3] 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". I have not checked whether these items are actually drawn from DYK, but even if they were, a set of 11-year-old entries loses the newness .. so either way their only effect is as a 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 Computer graphics and its poor navbox Template:Computer graphics.

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:Computer graphics, 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 Computer graphics, 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 eleven years.
  • WP:POG#Article_selection requires that portals have "a bare minimum of 20 non-list, in topic articles". But after 11 years, and even after Portal:Computer-generated imagery was merged here, it still has only 8 articles, a mere 40% of the bare minimum.

Maybe someday 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 10-year-old content forks.

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. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:03, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging the participants in the April MFD: @Legacypac, Dhatfield, Robert McClenon, Pldx1, and Waggers ... and the closer User:MER-C . --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:11, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments - I'm going to wait a few days and see if someone volunteers to maintain this:
      • This portal had 36 daily pageviews, with 981 pageviews for the head article. The deleted portal had 9 daily pageviews, with 998 pageviews for the head article.
      • That is a projection of 45 daily pageviews, which is very good for a portal, although far less than the 1979 pageviews for the two combined articles.
      • The real issue is the inadequate coverage of articles.
      • A display of animation would be appropriate and would be what would probably persuade me to support keeping the portal. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:17, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Robert McClenon, how does it look to you after that wait? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:32, 25 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - it's a stub portal and needs expanding; that's no reason for deletion. WaggersTALK 10:02, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Waggers: as I am sure you very well know, the stub concept applies to articles; there is not and never has been any such thing as a stub portal any more than we have stub categories. Consensus-formation is disrupted by fantasy assertions such as yours.
Leaving aside the fantasies, the reality is that this portal falls far short of the minimum standards which have been part of the portal guidelines for over a decade. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:07, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • As I'm sure you very well know, you don't need to pick an argument with every !vote you disagree with. My opinion stands; there are portals that have limited content and need expanding and there's nothing wrong with calling them stub portals. Deleting them is not the answer, any more than we would delete a stub article. The principle is exactly the same. WaggersTALK 14:25, 13 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    As I'm sure you very well know, this is a consensus-forming discussion, not a vote. So editors reply to each other.
    The reason that the stub concept doesn't apply to portals is that stubs are for content, and portals are not content.
    There is nothing in any policy or guideline that requires is to waste the time of readers by luring them to a page whose purpose is as a showcase and/or navigational aid, but which does neither. This portal comes nowhere near the minimum standards for portals.
    It's all very easy to glibly say that abandoned portals like this need expanding, but the reality is that after 11 years of neglect it is as plain as a very plain thing that nobody is interested in expanding it or maintaining it. The fantasy that there are armies of editors wanting to develop portals is what left so much of the portal namespace littered with someobody's long-abandoned pet project. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:35, 21 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - WikiProject Computer graphics is Inactive. Unlike the article, the portal does not present any information about the practical use of computer graphics. It also no information about the historical development of the technology. All articles linked in the portal are already linked in the article. Portal:Computer graphics/Selected article/5 and Portal:Computer graphics/Selected article/6 are outdated in relation to the linked articles.Guilherme Burn (talk) 16:26, 13 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Per nom. Another largely abandoned portal since creation bar house-keeping by the TH in 2018. Nothing really here beyong being an out-of-date cut-and-paste of the main article+navbox. Main article is already tagged for serious issues (WP:OR and expansion); why would any reader bother with such a portal when the main article is already not to be trusted? What limited resouces we have in this topic, should be focused on improving the main article, and not a portal that nobody seems to want or read. Britishfinance (talk) 12:05, 17 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Does not meet the breadth-of-subject-area requirement of the WP:POG guideline. UnitedStatesian (talk) 20:30, 17 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - This portal has been waiting for a maintainer for weeks, and for years.
One common method for the design of portals, in use at least since 2005, has involved sometimes large numbers of subpages of the portal, one for each selected article and picture, and sometimes for news items and Do You Know (DYK) items. Often the subpages for selected articles consist of a copy of the original article, or a copy of the first part of the original article. The subpages for In The News (ITN) and DYK items may also be copies of the lead paragraph or a portion of the article page. This approach to design of portals is sufficiently commonly used that it can be considered standard. However, it is an honorable experiment that has failed, and should be abandoned. In numerous cases, it has been found that portals have displayed outdated and incorrect information to the reader. These discrepancies have been especially common with, but not limited to, political leadership. These discrepancies are a serious problem because they cannot be readily corrected. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, meaning that any reasonably computer-literate person can edit an article; but editing the displayed information in a portal requires specialized technical knowledge of how portals are implemented, which is presumably why errors persist, sometimes for years. An editor who has Twinkle installed can tag articles in need of editing if they do not have the time or knowledge to fix them; but tagging via Twinkle is not available for portals. Experience has shown that the use of portal subpages that copy portions of articles results in outdated information being displayed, sometimes for years, because it is difficult to correct. This design technique, partial article copies, has been an honorable experiment over the course of more than a decade, but the experiment should be assessed to have been a failure. Some other design approach for portals should be used in the future.

Robert McClenon (talk) 04:26, 26 June 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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