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) 16:15, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Statistics

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Another long-neglected portal with a limited set of content. It has a large set of old DYKs (including some fake), and only 7 selected articles plus 6 selected biographies. This total of 13 topics is little over half the risibly low bare minimum of 20 recommended by the former guideline WP:POG, which has now been downgraded to an information page. This portal uses redundant content forks to display excerpts of the lead of the selected articles, but most of the content forks have not been touched for years.

Portal:Statistics got an average of 81 pageviews per day in January–June 2019. This is above average for a portal, which shows interest in the topic of statistics, but it is a tiny fraction of the average 2,964 daily views of the head article Statistics. Readers are ill-served by being directed here rather than to the B-class head article Statistics with its excellent set of navboxes.

This portal was created[1] in July 2008‎ by Btyner (talk · contribs), who also created a limited set of sub-pages. The list of Btyner's portal-space contribs shows that their last edit to the portal[2] was reverting a vandal in April 2009. Since late 2006, WP:POG had warned editors "Do not expect other editors to maintain a portal you create", but that warning was not heeded here.

Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Statistics shows a modestly large set of 77 sub-pages, but it's much less impressive when scrutinised:

Half of that is made up of 38 "Did you know" pages. The most recent of them are /18 to /38, all created in Feb 2013 by Illia Connell (talk · contribs), and all untouched since. I used random.org's tool to randomnly choose a set of 7 of these DYK pages to sample: /5, /11, /14, /26, /27, /30 and /33.
I found no evidence that /5, /11, /14 had ever been part of the scrutinised WP:DYK process. They are just unscrutinised trivia which usurp the good name of WP:DYK.
The remaining four (/26, /27, /30 and /33, all created by Illia Connell) are genuinely sourced from WP:DYK. However, the lead of WP:DYK says "The DYK section showcases new or expanded articles that are selected through an informal review process. It is not a general trivia section" and this set of items which are all more than 6 years old lose the newness which is their raison d'être. They have become just WP:TRIVIA.
The 7 selected articles are all ancient. /1 and /2 were created in 2008; /3, /4, /5 and /6 were created in 2008; /7 was created in 2013. The first 4 are untouched since 2008/09, and the most recent edit to any of them was in 2013.
The 6 selected biographies are also ancient. /1, /2, /3, /4 and /5 were all created in 2008/09; /6 was created in 2013. Only /2 has had any non-trivial edit since then, and that was in 2012.
Portal:Statistics/Featured and good content is the one part of the portal which has actually been maintained, because since January 2013[3] it has been automatically updated by bot.

WP:WikiProject Statistics appears to be active, but shows no interest in the portal. The only mentions on its talk page of this portal are a 2008 announcement of its creation, an a 2009 discussion on its topics list. In the ten years since then, there is not a mention.

This abandonment is presumably why in January 2019, User:The Transhumanist (TTH) "restarted"[4] the portal as an automated page. This "restart" converted the portal into an automated clone tool, which drew its all its selected articles from the navbox Template:Statistics, and made the portal merely a bloated version of the navbox, just like TTH's deluge of navbox-clone portalspam which was deleted in April in two mass deletions of similar portals (one, and two). So in May 2019, I (BHG) reverted [5] the portal to a pre-automated version. That restored the portal to its abandoned state, from which it has not been rescued.

Like most portals, this one uses a failed design concept, trying to create a magazine-style page by displaying article excerpts. But whether this is done by automated transclusion or by content forks, this model is now irrelevant, because for the last few years the Wikimedia software has offered to non-logged-in readers (i.e. the people for whom we create Wikipedia) automatic previews of any link simply holding the mouse pointer over the link. Similar functionality has been available since 2015 to users of the Android app). This works on any set of links, so try it by right-clicking on this link to Template:Statistics, and selecting either "open in private window" or "open in incognito window" (depending on how your browser labels it). That will show the page as a logged-out reader sees it ... including a preview when you mouseover any link. Similar functionality has been available since 2015 to users of the mobile app.

Far from adding value, as portals are supposed to do, this one therefore does a significantly worse job of navigation and showcasing than the head article and its navboxes ... because on those pages, the preview is available for each of a whole set of pages, rather than just for one item at time chosen at random from a tiny list which is not displayed in full and whose selection criteria are undisclosed. The "Refresh with new selections below" model of choosing new content is a massive usability fail: it is a counter-intuitive, cumbersome blind-date way of selecting from an undisclosed list of articles.

Like many portals, this is a failed solution in search of a non-existent problem. . Time to just delete it. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:06, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note to closing admin. I don't want in any way to prejudge the outcome ... but if you close this discussion as delete, please can you not remove the backlinks? I have an AWB setup which allows me to easily replace them with links to the next most specific portal(s) (in this case Portal:Mathematics), without creating duplicate entries. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:15, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per BHG's analysis, and per the fact there is no good reason to keep portals that are in this condition. Relatively low page views and the condition it is in mean zero value is added by such a portal. Portals are not content, being for navigation instead, so it is improper to try to compare dilapidated and useless portals to articles and say they should just be fixed. There is no reason to think that hoped-for improvements and maintenance will ever materialize anyway. The downgrading of POG cuts both ways - there is no policy or guideline which suggests this portal should exist. Simple assertions that the topic is broad enough are entirely subjective; rather, that it is not broad enough is demonstrated by the relative lack of pageviews and maintenance. Content forks are worthless and should not be saved. -Crossroads- (talk) 02:40, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - A well-viewed but unmaintained portal, as per the analysis by User:BrownHairedGirl.

Since the Portal Guidelines have been downgraded to the status of an information page and we have no real portal guidelines, we should use common sense, which is discussed in Wikipedia in the essay section Use Common Sense and in the article common sense. The portal guidelines were an effort to codify common sense about portals, and we should still use common sense. It is still a matter of common sense that portals should be about broad subject areas that will attract large numbers of viewers and will attract portal maintainers. This imposes at least a three-part test for portals to satisfy common sense: (1) a broad subject area, demonstrated a posteriori by a breadth of articles (not only by an a priori claim that a topic is broad); (2) a large number of viewers, preferably at least 100 a day, but any portal with fewer than 25 a day can be considered to have failed; (3) portal maintainers, at least two maintainers to provide backup, with a maintenance plan indicating how the portal will be maintained. Any portal that does not pass this common-sense test is not useful as a navigation tool, for showcasing, or otherwise.

DYKs are never a reason to keep a portal. Most portal DYKs are general trivia sections, and too often portals are really just coatracks to hang trivia from.

Only 13 articles, and, as BHG notes, they are left over from 2009 or 2013. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:46, 2 October 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.