Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Basketball

Portal:Basketball

Portal:Basketball (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

All prior XfDs for this page: Miscellany for deletion/Portal:National Basketball Association Miscellany for deletion/Portal:National Basketball Association (2nd nomination)

Portal:National Basketball Association (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Basketball nomination

Neglected portal. Shameless copy-paste of Portal:NBA. Six never-updated selected articles created in December 2013. Six never-updated selected bios. Three created in December 2013. Three created in March/May 2014.

Errors

• Toronto Raptors list minutiae about the team's history, but nothing about winning five division titles and a championship over six years.
• Duke–Michigan men's basketball rivalry article is ostensibly GA class, but fails to explain that the rivalry has been dead for six years. So does the entry.
• Juwan Howard left the Miami Heat in 2013 to coach that same team. He then left the Heat this year to coach the Michigan Wolverines.
• Yao Ming retired from professional basketball in 2011 but his already out-of-date entry was apparently carelessly copy-pasted from Portal:NBA in 2014
• Michael Jordan has owned an NBA team since 2010
• Tim Duncan retired from basketball in 2016 and now coaches the San Antonio Spurs

Mark Schierbecker (talk) 23:06, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Bundling note This discussion began on 15 Oct, but Portal:National Basketball Association was not bundled here until 17 October,[1] from the since-deleted Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:National Basketball Association (2nd nomination)—Bagumba (talk) 00:25, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

• 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:Sports), without creating duplicate entries. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:27, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
• Keep Basketball is a topic which is broad enough to sustain a portal, and the problems can be easily remedied. SportingFlyer T·C 04:46, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
• Delete: the portal was never completed, it's easier to start from scratch. For the little I know about basketball, with three items at Portal:Basketball/Selected picture the portal already manages to give a biased view of the topic. Actively harmful. Nemo 07:44, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
• Conditional keep, basketball is a great topic for a portal, focused enough but with a wide selection of articles. The problems with Selected articles about BLPs need to be fixed, but that can be easily done by automated transclusion, and if someone fixes them, this keep becomes unconditional. (BLPs and other articles that easily go out of date need to use automation or require a lot of attention otherwise). —Kusma (t·c) 09:23, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
• Keep basketball is a big enough subject to have a portal.Catfurball (talk) 19:27, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
• Delete per nominator, per the delete votes above, and per the fact that there is no good reason to keep such a portal as this. Low page views (26 per day in the last 3 months, compared to 4,483 for Basketball) [2] and the condition it is in mean zero value is added by such a portal. There is no policy or guideline which suggests this portal should exist. Portals are not content, like an article is, since they are for navigation instead. It is therefore improper to use rationales meant for keeping articles to argue that this failed navigation device should be kept. There is no reason to think that hoped-for improvements and long-term maintenance will ever materialize anyway, even if promised or done at the last minute just to stave off deletion. Simple assertions that the topic is broad enough are entirely subjective; rather, that it is not broad enough is demonstrated by the lack of pageviews and maintenance. The community's consensus not to delete all portals is not a consensus to keep all portals. Content forks are worthless, since they go out of date, preserve old and inferior versions of article content, add pointlessly to the maintenance burden, and are vandalism magnets; therefore they should not be saved. I support replacement of links rather than redirection, to avoid surprising our readers. -Crossroads- (talk) 01:36, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

National Basketball Association nomination

Neglected portal. Page was kept at MfD in 2011 where one very myopic editor claimed "maintenance is never required, but optional like articles." Eleven selected articles:

• Four never-updated entries created in November/December 2008
• Seven entries created in September 2011. Four never updated. One minor edit in January 2013, one in February 2014, one in March 2016.

Errors

• Steve Nash retired in 2015
• Dirk Nowitzki retired in 2019
• Rose Garden was renamed "Moda Center" in 2013
• The Portland Trail Blazers have won six division titles, not four

Mark Schierbecker (talk) 22:15, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

• 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:Basketball), without creating duplicate entries. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:26, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
• Delete and merge to Portal:Basketball (though the merge may be only technical.) SportingFlyer T·C 04:47, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

  @SportingFlyer: The basketball portal is also being nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Basketball. Please also reassess based on the latest copyedits here at NBA. Regards.—Bagumba (talk) 10:50, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

• Fair enough, there's plenty of content here, valid sub-portal from Basketball, willing to change to Keep. SportingFlyer T·C 12:55, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

• Comment I've copyedited to address the errors mentioned in the nomination.—Bagumba (talk) 05:54, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
• Keep Errors have been addressed. "Four never-updated entries" is a red herring, unless there is something out-of-date. This portal is on my watchlist, and I've removed vandalism in the past,[3] unlike other truly neglected portals that get deleted. This portal gets it's share of traffic, which is on par with Portal:Association football, more than Portal:Cricket, and twice as much as the generic Portal:Basketball. —Bagumba (talk) 06:01, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
• Keep popular enough subject for a portal.Catfurball (talk) 19:30, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
• Delete per nominator and per the fact that there is no good reason to keep such a portal as this. Relatively low page views (56 per day in the last 3 months, compared with 4,043 for National Basketball Association) [4] and the link-preview and navbox features of that article mean zero value is added by this portal. The fact it had many errors when not being scrutinized at MfD, errors pointed out by the nominator, suggest that more such errors will crop up down the road. There is no policy or guideline which suggests this portal should exist. Portals are not content, like an article is, since they are for navigation instead. It is therefore improper to use rationales meant for keeping articles to argue that this failed navigation device should be kept. Simple assertions that the topic is broad enough are entirely subjective; rather, that it is not broad enough is demonstrated by the lack of pageviews and maintenance. The community's consensus not to delete all portals is not a consensus to keep all portals. Content forks are worthless, since they go out of date, preserve old and inferior versions of article content, add pointlessly to the maintenance burden, and are vandalism magnets; therefore they should not be saved. I suggest replacement of links to Portal:Sports (not Portal:Basketball, given its MfD) rather than redirection, to avoid surprising our readers. -Crossroads- (talk) 01:20, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

  Portal:Opera, a featured portal, averages 33 views/day,[5], while Opera averages 1,252 views.[6] I don't get the claims about Portal:National Basketball Association.—Bagumba (talk) 04:01, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

• Bagumba, that's not a very helpful comparator. The WP:Featured portals process was discontinued in March 2017, a year after its last review, so all we have now is former featured portals. WP:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Opera was ten years ago, in 2009, so it's misleading to cite that as current. The review itself is worth examining; like all FP reviews, it's devoid of any structured assessment against a checklist of criteria, and it's mostly about formatting. Every GA review I have been through has been massively more thorough that that supposed "Featured" status review. So I wouldn't have given much weight to that FP review even when it happened ten years ago. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:11, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Bundling Statement

I am boldly bundling these nominations into one nomination, since they are being discussed at the same time. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:28, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Basketball Portals

Title	Portal Page Views	Article Page Views	Baseline	Articles	Type	Comments	Notes	Percent
National Basketball Association	63	7574	Jan19-Jun19	15	Basketball	Originated 2008 by sporadic editor who last edited April 2019. Articles content-forked between 2009 and 2011. No material updates since 2011; some edits through 2017, and a few cosmetic edits Sep 2019.		0.83%
Basketball	24	6028	Jan19-Jun19	12	Basketball	Originator inactive since 2009. Last maintenance (as of 16Oct19) appears to be 2014.		0.40%

• Comment - The above are some measurements and notes on these two basketball portals. Since they were nominated at the same time and there is cross-discussion, I have bundled them. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:37, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - By the way, the percent figure, which is misplaced but is not very important, is the ratio of portal page views to article page views. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:41, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
• Delete may be a broad topic, but it's clear that no one wants to maintain a portal on it. It's clear that the tide has turned against the necessity for portals in Wikipedia unless someone is willing to keep them active and functional, and there is no evidence that this is being done. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 02:54, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
• Subpage activity No material updates since 2011; some edits through 2017, and a few cosmetic edits Sep 2019. This statement on the NBA portal (perhaps on the Basketball one too) is inaccurate. The portal is composed of multiple subpages. Portal:National Basketball Association/Did you know has had activity (by me) since 2012.[7]—Bagumba (talk) 03:37, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - Updates to DYKs are not material updates. DYKs are not a material feature of portals, just a device for providing general trivia. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:55, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
• Question - Is someone willing to maintain Portal:Basketball if Portal:National Basketball Association is merged into it? Otherwise both portals should be deleted. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:55, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
• Delete both per lack of maintenance and low page views. No point in keeping portals in which neither readers nor editors are interested in. SD0001 (talk) 17:06, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
• Delete both, in the absence of a portal maintaine, without prejudice to a new Portal:Basketball that has a maintainer and a maintenance plan and does not use content-forked subpages (which rot). Neither has a large number of articles. Neither is being maintained or is about to be maintained. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:28, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
• Delete both, per nominator and per Crossroads. Nobody wats to maintain ether portals, and see no sign of interest from the respective WikiProjects. -BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:45, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
  • @BrownHairedGirl: Nobody wats to maintain ether portals I fixed the errors indentified in the NBA portal nomination. I am willing to help enhance things, but I do not see clear guidelines on what remains deficient. While the input from all has been sincere, honestly, the discussion has had the feel of a kangaroo court. Regards.—Bagumba (talk) 23:58, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
    • @Bagumba: the narrow scope (a single sport in one country) can't be fixed by editing. Nor can the near-total lack of interest from the WikiProject National Basketball Association: searched its talk archives both for "Portal:Basketball Association" and for "Portal:NBA, and the only post-2010 hits are notices of deletion discussions. Portals need multiple maintainers to avoid key man syndrome, and WikiProject support is the best way of achieving that, but it's not available here. So I see no basis for sustaining the portal.

As to what material changes would help, I could give you my own personal views on that, but they would only be my personal view. There are no consensus guidelines on what portals should contain, and instead of making proposals for RFC now what portals should contain, the portal enthusiasts have spent most of this year devoting their energies to opposing the deletion first of TTH's tsunami of portalspam, and then of almost-unviewed, abandoned junk portals. So there are no consensus-based guidelines for portals in general and the apathy at the WikiProject means that there is no reason toe expect a consensus to be developed there.

I'm sorry that you describe this MFD as a kangaroo court. The principle that portals need an active team of maintainers and ongoing WikiProject support is well-established, in many hundreds of MFDs. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:58, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you describe this MFD as a kangaroo court. I'm used to policies and guidelines, as well as WP:NOTCOMPULSORY as far as requiring users to sign up. Shrug.—Bagumba (talk) 02:51, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

I dunno what prompted that mention of WP:NOTCOMPULSORY. I see no suggestion in this discussion of any compulsion.

As to policies and guidelines, that's what I am used to as well. But sadly the broad consensus-building processes required to create them have never been a forte of WP:WPPORT. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:02, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Re: NOTCOMPULSORY, you and others have stated the need for maintainers, which seemed (to me) like sign ups were needed here now to avoid deletion. I'm not a portal deletion discussion regular, so perhaps that's par for the course. —Bagumba (talk) 03:48, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

@Bagumba: I am just interested in whether there is a group of people who have volunteered to do the work on an ongoing basis. They may indicate that by a making a commitment somewhere, or just by doing the work on a sustained basis … but either way there is no compulsion. We just need some sound reason to believe that the portal will be maintained on an ongoing basis, and that it won't be dependent on one individual.

It have seen this sort of response a few times before, and I am always surprised by it. I don't see how some editors translate "there needs to be regular maintainers" into "you must do the work". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:50, 23 October 2019 (UTC)