The result of the discussion was: delete. MER-C 20:14, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
These 5 portals are examples of a common phenomenon: manual portals, on arguably broad-ish topics (all big cities), not broken, but abandoned as micro-portals. They fall way below the minimum standards in several respects, and are redundant to their respective head articles and their respective state portals. Each of them started out as a redirect in 2006; all of them have history of poor-quality portals being built, abandoned and then redirected again. The current portals mostly date from work in 2017 by Bahnfrend (talk · contribs).
WP:PORTAL says that "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". Portals are not content. They are tools to help readers navigate a topic and to showcase some of its best and/or most significant article ... so unless they are actually currently fulfilling that goal of actually offering an enhanced experience, we shouldn't lure readers away from article space with a promise of enhancement which just leaves them disillusioned with the whole notion of a portal. And given the long history of these portals oscillating between redirect and abandoned portal, the eventualist approach is like Waiting for Godot. In recent weeks, hundreds of abandoned portals have been deleted: the consensus is that waiting for Godot is not a wise strategy. Just as undersized categories are routinely deleted at WP:CFD per WP:SMALLCAT, under-sized portals are now routinely deleted at MFD.
Meanwhile, two newish features of the Wikimedia software means that a topic's head article and its navboxes offers most of the functionality which portals like this set out to offer, and does some of the job much better than a portal. 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 then select "open in private window" (in Firefox) or "open in incognito window" (Chrome).
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 these portals fail the basic requirements even of the guidelines written before the new technologies changed the game:
Portal | Article | Navbox | Last new content[1] | Sub-pages | Selected articles | Selected biographies | Selected pictures | Most recent DYK addition | Portal daily pageviews[2] | Head article daily pageviews[2] |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
P:Adelaide | Adelaide | ((Adelaide landmarks)) | 2017-06 | Sub-pages of P:Adelaide | 2 | 2 | 2 | no DYKs | 5 | 2,169 |
P:Brisbane | Brisbane | ((Brisbane)) | 2017-06 | Sub-pages of P:Brisbane | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2010[3] | 9 | 2,336 |
P:Melbourne | Melbourne | ((Melbourne)) | 2017-07 | Sub-pages of P:Melbourne | 2 | 2 | 20 | 2013 | 11 | 4,583 |
P:Perth | Perth | ((Perth landmarks)) | 2017-02 | Sub-pages of P:Perth | 2 | 2 | 20 | 2012 | 7 | 2,335 |
P:Sydney | Sydney | ((Sydney)) + 4 other navboxes | 2018-05 | Sub-pages of P:Sydney | 6 | 2 | 3 | 2015 | 7 | 4,167 |
I usually propose that abandoned portals be deleted per WP:TNT, without prejudice to re-creation. But given these portals' long history of a cycle of re-creation and abandonment, I think it's better to just delete these portals and all their sub-pages. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:53, 4 June 2019 (UTC)