Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Portal:War References

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. There really are no policies surrounding portals, so it's fairly difficult to weigh arguments on the basis of policy; the consensus, however, seems to be that a portal might in principle be useful, but not this one, which is unmaintained and moribund. If @ Hawkeye7: or anybody else wishes to work on this portal or salvage something, I am willing to userfy it or selectively restore parts of it. $Salvio giuliano$ 11:06, 1 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Portal:War

Derelict portal. Of the 61 "featured" articles in rotation, 48 have been delisted. Under WP:MILHIST ratings, two are now A-class, six are GA class, ten are B class, twenty-six are C class, and four are Start class. Portal:War/Featured article/5 points to Lord's Resistance Army, a B-class article, instead of Lord's Resistance Army insurgency (also B class), where LRA was moved in 2008. These entries have all been copy-pasted from their host article rather than transcluded. Very few of these entries have been updated since they were created in 2005 and 2006. This has led to some inaccurate/outdated information being presented to readers, such as the fact that apparently no Medal of Honor has been awarded since 2020. Portal:War/Featured picture/1 is a deleted image. Portal:War/Featured picture/7 claims that the M4 carbine is heavier than the M16A2 (it is definitely not!). Someone has gone to the trouble of transcluding entries on Portal:War/Selected conflict, however something must be done about the images. Some of the entries are causing text sandwiching issues on my screen in Vector 2022.

Delete per nom, but I'm interested in this portal being substantially reworked during this discussion: not featuring sub-par articles, switching to transclusion and implementing more robustness in every other potentially needed way, so that not much maintenance is needed (making it so that the kind of information that is likely to become outdated and needs reviewing from time to time is not even presented on the portal in the first place), not presenting false/outdated information, fixing formatting issues identified by the nom. If all of this is done I will switch to keep. — Alalch E. 10:37, 25 March 2023 (UTC) reply
- I think that Portal:Video games is acceptable. It uses Template:Transclude lead excerpt and Template:Transclude list item excerpts as random slideshow (the list is maintained by a bot as part of WP:RECOG). Featured topics are nice too. If the war portal can be changed to be like the video games portal, or better, that would be nice. There are many warfare-related featured topics, but the war portal doesn't feature featured war topics. — Alalch E. 14:56, 25 March 2023 (UTC) reply
Delete - Moribund portal, lack of maintenance; actually harmful for users to keep it around in its current state... -- ⛵ WaltClipper -( talk) 14:53, 25 March 2023 (UTC) reply
Delete. There is no reason to keep something so poorly maintained and obviously stalled as this. — Sundostund mppria ^{(
talk /
contribs)} 19:39, 26 March 2023 (UTC) reply
Delete per nom. There is no reason to keep unmaintained portals like this around. Partofthemachine ( talk) 21:07, 26 March 2023 (UTC) reply
Soft Delete:
- - As stated by other editors, this portal has very little maintenance, and has the old portal design with forked subpages. As noted, it has incorrect information.
  - In the year 2021, the portal had an average of 450 daily pageviews, while the head article War had an average of 1868 daily pageviews. That is a very high ratio of views of the portal compared to views of the head article, at 24%, which illustrates that there is reader interest in portals for broad-area topics such as war. I don't know when I have seen such a high ratio of portal views to article views. However, viewers who want to see high-level information want to see correct high-level information, which they are more likely to find with links and categories.
  - I don't think that portals are useful, and have come to the conclusion that the fascination of some editors with maintaining portals is mystical, but this is a portal topic where there clearly is a reader desire for a portal. This portal is the wrong portal, but the creation of a new portal with an architecture using transclusion should be encouraged. I don't think that I have previously encouraged the creation of a properly designed portal.
  - Attention is called to the charts of daily pageviews in year 2022 for Portal:War at https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&range=last-year&pages=Portal:War and daily pageviews in year 2022 for article War at https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&range=last-year&pages=War . The peaks of 5485 views of Portal:War and 10714 views of article War were both on 24 February 2022. That was the day that Russia invaded Ukraine. This illustrates that readers really do view Wikipedia for background to the news of the day.
  - The portal is useless, and may be actually harmful, but there is one set of subpages that should be preserved, which can be seen at /info/en/?search=Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:War/Selected_anniversaries and includes 366 sets of military history events, on each day of the Gregorian year. This is useful and interesting in itself.
  - The portal should be deleted, without prejudice to an improved portal. The calendar file of anniversaries should be preserved.

Robert McClenon ( talk) 18:02, 27 March 2023 (UTC) reply

I agree that the selected anniversaries are okay and should probably be accepted as an exception to a single-page-style portal here, but if the portal is deleted, the subpages will be liable to G8, so I don't think that something can really prevent them from ultimately being deleted. — Alalch E. 22:04, 28 March 2023 (UTC) reply

What do you suggest we do with the selected anniversaries, User:Robert McClenon? Schierbecker ( talk) 22:35, 28 March 2023 (UTC) reply

User:Schierbecker - Ask the Military History Project if it has a use for them as fun facts. In any case, move them into project space. Work went into their development, and they should be de-orphaned somehow. Robert McClenon ( talk) 06:31, 31 March 2023 (UTC) reply

Neutral about portal delete, but I disagree with keeping the selected anniversaries subpages if portal deleted. These material are in their totality non-referenced and WP:CONTENTFORKING with main space material. Guilherme Burn ( talk) 00:10, 29 March 2023 (UTC) reply

Comment - I am surprised by the lack of votes keep. In several metrics (pageviews, incoming links, involvement of the related Wikiproject) this is one of the best wikipedia portals. All the problems mentioned are inherent to the portal space (See this user essay WP:DexPor). If this exclusion is consummated, perhaps it is time to bring the discussion about portal space back to the table. Guilherme Burn ( talk) 23:58, 28 March 2023 (UTC) reply
- Per our guidelines, portals can be linked from a lot of articles, so I'm not really surprised that there are a good number of links and therefore pageviews/clickthroughs. Ed ^{[talk]
  [majestic titan]} 01:26, 29 March 2023 (UTC) reply
  - The number of page views is deceiving. Most of the military-related portal links were replaced with Portal:War during the last round of portal MfDs, so it is not surprising that this portal gets so many views. Schierbecker ( talk) 02:04, 29 March 2023 (UTC) reply
@ WP:MILHIST coordinators: last call. Schierbecker ( talk) 00:05, 29 March 2023 (UTC) reply
Weak delete - Portals are continuing to die their slow death. While the page views on this are significantly better than on many other portals, this one is abandoned and moribund. As one of the MilHist coords, I'd say "involvement of the related Wikiproject" is relatively minimal here, as most of our time is consumed with writing articles and A-class review. I wasn't even aware this portal existed, and I've been a member of MilHist since 2016. The pattern of "portal rescues" I've observed these past few years does not inspire much confidence in me that this will be continuously maintained long-term, even if a short-term overhaul is effected now. - Indy beetle ( talk) 00:27, 29 March 2023 (UTC) reply
Keep I am willing to address the concerns expressed here. This would include overhauling it to use the modern templates. The project has more than enough featured articles and pictures to replace the ones that have been stricken. The portal attracts a reasonable volume of traffic, and lack of maintenance should not be considered a criterion for deletion. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:42, 29 March 2023 (UTC) reply
Delete per Indy beetle. Ed ^{[talk]
[majestic titan]} 01:26, 29 March 2023 (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.